VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – The public disclosure of hundreds of reports detailing payments to governments by Canadian extractive companies heralds a new era of transparency for the mining sector, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) working closely with the country’s Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act (ESTMA) say.
The reports, filed with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and posted on its website, have been made available owing to the implementation of the ESTMA, which requires all Canadian registered and listed extractive companies to disclose payments in excess of C$100 000 made to governments, creating greater transparency over the taxes, royalties and other forms of disbursement that companies pay.
The act was championed through an innovative collaboration with Canadian mining industry associations, NGOs and the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Canada welcomed the first reports being made public following the May 27 deadline for filing reports for the 2016 financial year.
“With more than 1 200 Canadian-listed extractive companies operating in over 100 countries, the disclosure of payments in Canada will increase the transparency of the extractive sector globally.
These new reports will also provide meaningful data about payment flows to federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada, where this information has previously not been available to the public in a systematic way,” PWYP Canada director Claire Woodside told Mining Weekly Online during a telephone interview.
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