Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
 
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This just in... "Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told mining executives Monday morning that the federal government is upholding its G8 commitment to ensure mining companies disclose payments made to governments both at home and abroad."
Please read the article for more. I participated in the federally-sponsored Open Data for Development Challenge (ODDC) in January and worked with the non-profit Publish what you Pay who are doing great work pushing for this kind of disclosure from extractives industry.
Minister Oliver's statements are relevant for the open data and aid transparency communities because the questions of standardization and distribution are still unresolved.
I'm sure everyone will agree that the data about foreign spending by the extractive industry should be provided in a machine-readable (and human readable) standard formats. On the question of distribution, Oliver said:
"We want to make it as easy as possible, so we will not create a central database. Instead, we would require that reports be posted to company websites, with the government and public notified." Taking this distributed approach makes it more difficult to enforce standardization and to do any kind of aggregation over these data.; "government and public notified" is way too vague a requirement, and unenforceble.
Some form of centralization of the spending data should occur. The options for such centralization are many: data hosted by an industry group; hosted by a civil society group; hosted by the provincial securities commissions; hosted by federal gov't. We discussed these options at length at the ODDC.
With this statement by Minister Oliver, it would be great to hear responses from this community on the issues.
Ted Strauss
Ted Strauss Co-founder of Trudat.co
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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Agreed - I’ve long been confused about why the government hasn’t signed up to EITI which is a data standard for doing what they they claim this does.
This may be why. It’s the ability to fudge by creating opacity through obscurity. On Mar 3, 2014, at 10:18 AM, Ted Strauss <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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http://eaves.ca/2014/03/04/canadas-opaque-transparency-an-open-data-failure/
+1 On 2014-03-03, at 1:49 PM, David Eaves wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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Great post! +1 If there is anyone on this list with deeper knowledge about EITI and Canda's relation to it, it would be great to hear from you.
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 2:55 PM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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In reply to this post by James McKinney-2
+1 from me too. On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 11:55 AM, James McKinney <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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In reply to this post by Ted Strauss
Yes it is! Always good to reference where some of the intel comes from! In this case, from Civicaccess.ca and Ted! Cheerst
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Ted Strauss <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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The info really came from CBC reporter Trinh Theresa Do, who covered the speech and published the story immediately. On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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This has also been a project of mine for some time (along with IATI where the news is better). EITI compliance was part of my OGP suggested recommendations for the government and I've had several conversations with them about it over the past two years. Signs that it was unlikely to go well were growing although the G8 communique gave me hope that it might be turned around. Sadly no. -- @daeaves Sent from my iPhone
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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thx David. On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:47 PM, David Eaves <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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In reply to this post by Tracey P. Lauriault
Hi all,
Just wanted to post a follow up about the Oliver statement and open disclosure in the mining sector. Publish what you pay posted a press release in response to the announcement. It can be found at <a href="https://app.getsignals.com/link?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pwyp.ca%2Fimages%2Fstories%2FPWYP-Canada_Press_Releases%2FPWYP-Canada's_response_to_the_GOC's_commitment_March-3rd-2014.pdf&ukey=agxzfnNpZ25hbHNjcnhyGAsSC1VzZXJQcm9maWxlGICAgIDmnK4KDA&k=6033a63e-96e7-47ca-ca65-24e655fc3e60">this link, and i'll paste the complete text below.
I consider the press release to be a bit soft spoken, for the reasons that have been brought already up in this thread: the vagueness about implementation will lead to secrecy by obscurity, to borrow David's phrase.
But I applaud PWYP for taking an active role in this debate, and for pushing for consensus among industry, government, and civil society. Yesterday, alarmingly, Minister Oliver was promoted to finance minister, only a couple weeks after his statement on this issue. Connection?
Ted PUBLISH WHAT YOU PAY - PRESS RELEASE Monday, March 3rd, 2014 Government of Canada Announces Progress on Payment Transparency for the Extractive Sectors
Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Canada welcomes the Government of Canada’s continued progress on the implementation of its June 2013 commitment to develop mandatory transparency standards for payments made by Canadian oil, gas and mining companies to governments, both at home and abroad. This commitment will increase the transparency of 60% of the world’s mining companies and over a third of the world’s oil and gas companies, greatly advancing global efforts to improve transparency and accountability in the extractive sectors.
“We’re pleased the government will work with the provinces towards implementation, and we welcome the commitment to enact complementary federal legislation by April 2015,” said Claire Woodside, Director of PWYP-Canada.
The details of the standard announced today will further harmonize global transparency efforts by ensuring alignment with a new law passed in the European Union in 2013. The government proposes to require reporting by all public companies and medium and large sized private companies of payments above a threshold of C$100,000, on a project-by-project basis. “While the $100,000 threshold captures critical payments, we would encourage the government to examine the unique Canadian context and to consider including a complementary threshold of $10,000 for venture issuers and medium sized private companies, who represent a large portion of our market,” said Woodside.
In addition, the government committed to the disclosure of payment information to the public in full, setting an example for the U.S. where the American Petroleum Institute has lobbied for a rule that maintains company anonymity. “We welcome Canada’s commitment to ensure payment transparency is disclosed to communities, governments and investors in full, on a project-by-project basis. This will enable communities to trace the economic benefits of resource extraction, thereby helping them to uphold their human rights” stated Lina Holguin, Policy Director at Oxfam Quebec.
PWYP-Canada supports the Government of Canada’s commitment to require the public disclosure of disaggregated data, but believes that creating a central repository for such data will increase its usability and further demonstrate Canada’s xisting commitment to the G8 Open Data Charter. “It is great to see the government commit to a standard that requires this level of detail, which has the potential to improve accountability and governance in resource-rich countries,” said Samantha Burton, Advocacy Manager at Engineers Without Borders Canada, “But to reach its potential—to be truly transparent—the information must also be easy for citizens around the world to access and compare.”
Going forward, PWYP-Canada welcomes further engagement with the Canadian government on this important commitment to develop mandatory payment reporting standards. We encourage the government to ensure that the standards developed closely align with the recommendations of the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group released in January 2014. Given the global importance of Canada’s mining, oil, and gas sectors, PWYP-Canada believes that the development of a strong payment reporting standard in Canada is critical, as this data will be a vital source of information for governments, communities and civil society organizations in Canada and the over 100 countries where Canadian
extractive companies are active. For more information about the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group visit www.pwyp.ca For More Information Please Contact
Claire Woodside, Director Publish What You Pay Canada 1-613-237-6768 x.7 or (c) 1-613-794-3536
Samantha Burton, Advocacy Manager, Engineers Without Borders Canada, PWYP-Canada member organization Office: 416-987-6440 Cell: 416-877-0710
For French Media Requests: Lina Holguin, Policy Director Oxfam-Quebec Cell: 819-923-0041
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Re: Joe Oliver wants miners to disclose foreign payments (CBC)
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Hi everyone, Thanks for sending around our press release Ted (I had promised to do so and then it dropped off my radar!). I don’t know most of you on this list, so to introduce myself, my name is Kady Seguin and I’ve been working on the PWYP campaign for several years now. I thought I would share with you all that yesterday the Government of Canada held a consultation for CSOs engaged in this field to further discuss their implementation plan. They offered up some specific details, and allowed us to provide our views on each specific piece, noting that nothing is written in stone as they are still consulting. There are several ways in which the Government of Canada’s plan thus far aligns with international best practice established by the US and the EU. Of course, one of our areas of concern was the idea that companies post their reports on their own website. It was loud and clear that this would present numerous problems, and that the government should revise this. This is actually what already happened in the UK, where the original idea was for companies to post reports on their websites, but they then decided to create a central repository. We have also recommended that the government establish an informal working group of various actors to help explore the best way to disclose this information in a way that is easily accessible and useable. We will certainly be following up on this with them, and are definitely open to collaborating with individuals/organizations much more experienced in open data! As for the ministerial shift that occurred, I doubt there is any connection as this is a fairly benign issue compared to other portfolios for NRCan and Oliver’s ties to Bay St made him probable choice. We were encouraged to see that the new Minister will be keeping a key policy advisor within NRCAN who has followed this file, as we hope she will be able to secure active support from the new Minister. I should also say that the commitment has come from the PMO’s office and therefore we do not foresee the ministerial shift having a big impact on this particular agenda. If anyone has any questions, we are of course happy to discuss, and thank you for the keen interest on the extractives transparency front! Best, Kady From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Ted Strauss Hi all, Just wanted to post a follow up about the Oliver statement and open disclosure in the mining sector. Publish what you pay posted a press release in response to the announcement. It can be found at this link, and i'll paste the complete text below. I consider the press release to be a bit soft spoken, for the reasons that have been brought already up in this thread: the vagueness about implementation will lead to secrecy by obscurity, to borrow David's phrase. But I applaud PWYP for taking an active role in this debate, and for pushing for consensus among industry, government, and civil society. Yesterday, alarmingly, Minister Oliver was promoted to finance minister, only a couple weeks after his statement on this issue. Connection? Ted PUBLISH WHAT YOU PAY - PRESS RELEASE Monday, March 3rd, 2014 Government of Canada Announces Progress on Payment Transparency for the Extractive Sectors Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Canada welcomes the Government of Canada’s continued progress on the implementation of its June 2013 commitment to develop mandatory transparency standards for payments made by Canadian oil, gas and mining companies to governments, both at home and abroad. This commitment will increase the transparency of 60% of the world’s mining companies and over a third of the world’s oil and gas companies, greatly advancing global efforts to improve transparency and accountability in the extractive sectors. “We’re pleased the government will work with the provinces towards implementation, and we welcome the commitment to enact complementary federal legislation by April 2015,” said Claire Woodside, Director of PWYP-Canada. The details of the standard announced today will further harmonize global transparency efforts by ensuring alignment with a new law passed in the European Union in 2013. The government proposes to require reporting by all public companies and medium and large sized private companies of payments above a threshold of C$100,000, on a project-by-project basis. “While the $100,000 threshold captures critical payments, we would encourage the government to examine the unique Canadian context and to consider including a complementary threshold of $10,000 for venture issuers and medium sized private companies, who represent a large portion of our market,” said Woodside. In addition, the government committed to the disclosure of payment information to the public in full, setting an example for the U.S. where the American Petroleum Institute has lobbied for a rule that maintains company anonymity. “We welcome Canada’s commitment to ensure payment transparency is disclosed to communities, governments and investors in full, on a project-by-project basis. This will enable communities to trace the economic benefits of resource extraction, thereby helping them to uphold their human rights” stated Lina Holguin, Policy Director at Oxfam Quebec. PWYP-Canada supports the Government of Canada’s commitment to require the public disclosure of disaggregated data, but believes that creating a central repository for such data will increase its usability and further demonstrate Canada’s xisting commitment to the G8 Open Data Charter. “It is great to see the government commit to a standard that requires this level of detail, which has the potential to improve accountability and governance in resource-rich countries,” said Samantha Burton, Advocacy Manager at Engineers Without Borders Canada, “But to reach its potential—to be truly transparent—the information must also be easy for citizens around the world to access and compare.” Going forward, PWYP-Canada welcomes further engagement with the Canadian government on this important commitment to develop mandatory payment reporting standards. We encourage the government to ensure that the standards developed closely align with the recommendations of the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group released in January 2014. Given the global importance of Canada’s mining, oil, and gas sectors, PWYP-Canada believes that the development of a strong payment reporting standard in Canada is critical, as this data will be a vital source of information for governments, communities and civil society organizations in Canada and the over 100 countries where Canadian extractive companies are active. For more information about the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group visit www.pwyp.ca For More Information Please Contact Claire Woodside, Director Publish What You Pay Canada 1-613-237-6768 x.7 or (c) 1-613-794-3536 Samantha Burton, Advocacy Manager, Engineers Without Borders Canada, PWYP-Canada member organization Office: 416-987-6440 Cell: 416-877-0710 For French Media Requests: Lina Holguin, Policy Director Oxfam-Quebec Cell: 819-923-0041
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