May 19, 2000

The Honourable Pierre Pettigrew
Minister for International Trade

Dear Minister Pettigrew:

The federal government is considering whether changes should be made in the way that the Export Development Corporation (EDC) operates, a Canadian taxpayer-supported agency, assists Canadian business interests abroad. The choices that the federal government makes about how EDC operates will have significant social and environmental consequences.

As a Crown corporation, EDC pays no taxes, enjoys limited liability, and its credit is backed by the Canadian government. Yet it operates largely in secret. Unlike other government agencies, EDC is not subject to the Access to Information Act, and it keeps the projects it funds a secret. It has no binding standards requiring its projects to adhere to well-accepted social, environmental, labour or human rights standards.

Liberals plan watchdog for EDC: Ombudsman would try to keep
controversial Crown corporation `accountable'
PUBLICATION The Ottawa Citizen
DATE Fri 19 May 2000 
EDITION FINAL
SECTION/CATEGORY News
PAGE NUMBER A1/Front
BYLINE Jack Aubry 
STORY LENGTH 733
The government is looking at establishing an ombudsman for the Export Development Corporation as part of an effort to improve the much-criticized Crown corporation's ``accountability, compliance and access to information.''

 
EDC projects damaged environment: report: NGO group attacks lending body's environmental review standards
PUBLICATION The Ottawa Citizen
DATE Tue 04 Apr 2000
EDITION FINAL
SECTION/CATEGORY News
PAGE NUMBER A5
BYLINE Jack Aubry
STORY LENGTH 632

CANADA'S EXPOSURE TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES - March 31, 2000
 
 
 
 

PUBLICATION The Ottawa Citizen
DATE Sun 19 Mar 2000
EDITION FINAL
SECTION/CATEGORY News

This submission analyses the report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) entitled "Exporting in the Canadian Interest: Reviewing the Export Development Act". Our recommendations are primarily concerned with Chapter 9 of the Report on the Review of the Export Development Act (hereinafter the Gowlings report).

Tuesday, November 16, 1999

Canadian NGOs Launch Campaign to Make EDC Responsible to People and the Environment

 
Agency under fire over dam
PAUL KNOX

The Globe and Mail, November 16, 1999
The photos look idyllic -- a broad river, forested shorelines, thatch-roofed houses here and there along the bank.
Kimy Pernia Domico, an Embera- Katio Indian from northwestern Colombia, lived in one of the houses. He used to fish, until the fish stopped running. He still plants corn, rice, plantains and manioc.

In 1999, Amnesty International raised alarms about the killing of four indigenous people protesting a hydroelectric dam in Colombia that has devastated their food source and, if completed, would flood most of their land.

In 1998, an accident at a mine in Kyrgystan resulted in two tons of cyanide entering a river. A lack of an emergency response plan worsened the disaster, leaving two people dead and over 600 hospitalized.

I am the Coordinator of the Halifax Initiative.