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People living in communities near valuable mineral deposits often complain that they don’t receive enough of the economic benefits associated with them. But as the call for greater transparency in the mining sector gains momentum worldwide, they are increasingly holding their own governments responsible, rather than just the mining companies.
They say if miners want to operate in more stable investment environments, they need to encourage host governments to play by the rules and engage with local community members.
The Canadian mining industry seems to agree. Earlier this year, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) teamed up with transparency organizations to ask the provincial securities commissions to make it mandatory for companies listed on Canadian stock exchanges to disclose how much they pay governments.
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told the PDAC convention on Monday that the federal government wants to work with the provincial and territorial securities commissions to implement mandatory reporting standards on a project-by-project basis. If the securities commissions don’t implement these standards, the federal government will put its own legislation in place by April 1, 2015.
Once the information is collected, it will be dispersed to “citizens around the world who are impacted by Canadian mining operations,” said Claire Woodside, director of Publish What You Pay Canada. The United States and European Union already have similar laws in place, although the U.S. has been working on its rules since 2010.
Now that the transparency movement is gaining momentum and local communities can get a sense of what mining companies are paying governments, they are becoming more vocal in their demands for a fair share of the profits.
Jaff Napoleon Bamenjo, co-ordinator of a network of non-profit networks in Cameroon, said he is working with 45 communities to demand their share of the money paid by mining companies. They are legally entitled to 25% of the taxes and royalties paid by mines, but the central authority doesn’t make these transfers systematically, he added.
No one in Cameroon thought about these issues before because they had no idea how much money the government was receiving from resource extraction, he said. Now, they want their share of the money.
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