CSO letter to World Bank President re CAO report on Bulyanhulu mine

December 12, 2002

Mr. James Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank Group
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433 U.S.A.

Dear Mr. Wolfensohn,

We are writing to express dismay at the recent Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman report on the MIGA guarantee of the Bulyanhulu gold mine and to request your urgent intervention.

The CAO is a mechanism that non-governmental organizations have pushed hard to establish. Your personal support for the initiative played a major role in ensuring that the CAO was established. As all parties have observed, the CAO's effectiveness rests on the respect and trust it enjoys amongst the public: integrity, transparency, even¬handedness and thoroughness are thus critical to all aspects of its work.

Compliance Officer (9) Environment Audit- June 15, 2004

June 15, 2004

Mr. Fraser Reilly-King
Halifax Initiative
153 Chapel Street, Suite 104
Ottawa ON KIN 1H5

Re: Compliance program file number 2236-4-1-2003

Dear Mr. Reilly-King:

This letter is a follow-up to my letter of May 7, 2004 and should serve as the conclusion of the Halifax Initiative complaint.

Your letter of complaint dated July 28, 2003 regarding the Cernavoda 2 nuclear power plant transaction came within EDC's compliance program. It was accepted and followed the compliance program process. A recommendation that a compliance audit be conducted was made to EDC Executive Management (Management) in October of 2003.

Management accepted the recommendation and the work was divided into two parts.

Press Release: March 26, 2009

Government Squanders Opportunity to Hold Extractive Companies to Account
(Ottawa- March 26, 2009) Today’s government announcement on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has squandered the important consensus reached by industry and civil society organizations on how to ensure that the overseas operations of Canadian extractive companies adhere to international environmental and human rights standards. Almost two years ago, the multi-stakeholder Advisory Group to the National Roundtables on CSR in the Extractive Sector submitted its consensus report to the Canadian government. Today’s long-awaited response ignores the report’s central recommendations.

Press Responses: June 14, 2006

EMBASSY REPORT
By Jonathan Montpetit

Ottawa Pressured to Crackdown on Canada's International Bad Boys

Extractive firms behaving well in the community where they do business isn?t just an exercise in public relations. It can have a lasting effect on their bottom line when acts of vigilante justice draw attention to abuses and consumers take notice.
Last December, a medical facility in northern Ecuador owned by a Canadian mining company was torched, literally sending more than $20,000 worth of equipment up in smoke.

Op-Ed: June 28, 2007

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/230187

Canada's Responsibility
by Gerry Barr, President-CEO Canadian Council for International Co-operation
June 28, 2007
PM sees payoff in adding Americas to foreign agenda

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided Canada should "re-engage" with the Americas, and in July he's visiting four states in the region to start up his new foreign policy direction. In a world where the majority of the population lives in underdevelopment, Harper rightly says of the Americas, "We also have countries that have development challenges." But will Canada lessen those challenges or add to them?

NGO WORKING GROUP ON EDC (February 2000) : Backgrounder on EDC and the Environment

Prepared by the NGO Working Group on the Export Development Corporation, a project of the Halifax Initiative

The Canadian Export Development Corporation (EDC) is the main source of publicly supported export financing in Canada, designed to complement the private financial sector wherever possible. A federal Crown corporation, EDC provides Canadian exporters with financing products to help their customers, and with commercial and political risk insurance, particularly for higher-risk and emerging markets. In 1998, EDC worked with 4,183 customers in 200 countries, helping Canadian companies to generate nearly $35 billion in sales and foreign investments.

Pages