Bill C-300: Letter of Support from KAIROS
| 17.11.09
November 16, 2009
Dear Member of Parliament,
On behalf of KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, I urge you to support Bill C-300, An Act respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas in Developing Countries. KAIROS unites 11 Canadian churches and church-related organizations from eight denominations in work for justice with partners in Canada and internationally.
This legislative initiative is strongly supported by our religious member institutions, as well as our global partners who are working to promote human rights and environmental protection in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Our global partners remind us daily of the urgent need for Canada to hold Canadian-based companies accountable for their activities abroad. Many communities in the global South are facing forced displacement off their lands in the name of resource extraction, and their rural livelihoods are being threatened by contaminated water systems. Some community leaders have received death threats, or worse, been killed, for their efforts to defend their rights.
Bill C-300 would create financial incentives for Canadian extractive sector companies to respect human rights and protect the environment in their overseas operations. It will help ensure that the government of Canada performs due diligence around human rights and environmental issues when extractive sector companies seek government assistance from Export Development Canada, the Canada Pension Plan or our foreign missions abroad.
New mechanisms proposed in Bill C-300 would address some of the shortcomings of the federal government’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy that was unveiled by International Trade Minister Day in March of this year.
We encourage you to support this bill and help Canada become a CSR leader internationally. If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 416-463-5312 x 244 or mcorkery[at]kairoscanada[dot]org.
Yours sincerely,
Mary Corkery
Executive Director
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Read the letter to John Mcaky from the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), an independent federation of 198 peoples’ organizations in the Cordillera region, northern Philippines.
Read the letter to John Mckay from the Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC), an organization in the Philippines with 20 years of experience in environmental research, education, advocacy and community services.
