Reputation management

FEW governments have aligned their interests so closely to those of their country’s energy and mining firms as Canada’s Conservative administration. The prime minister, Stephen Harper, has boasted of Canada as an “emerging energy superpower”. Under the banner of “responsible resource development”, his government has done its best to ease the way for minerals firms, at home and abroad, including directing some foreign aid to countries where Canadian firms wanted to drill. Ministers point with pride to the C$174 billion ($169 billion) in export revenues from sales of minerals, oil and gas in 2013 and to the fact that Canada is home to more than half of the world’s publicly listed exploration and mining companies.

But the downside of seeming so cosy with extractive firms is that whenever one of them gets in trouble—an inevitable occurrence with 1,500 firms active in more than 100 countries—the country’s image is tarnished too. So the government has recently begun to reduce that vulnerability by taking a stricter line on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and bribery by Canadian firms operating abroad. Protecting the national brand is “a huge part of it,” says Andrew Bauer of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, a group that monitors the industry and lobbies for openness.

Ed Fast, the international trade minister, admitted as much on November 14th, as he introduced new rules that require Canadian resources firms involved in disputes with local communities to take part in a resolution process. If any firms refuse, the government will withdraw its economic diplomacy on their behalf.

In Mr Fast’s eyes, Canada’s brand shines like a freshly minted ingot, and simply needs to be preserved rather than restored. Campaigners beg to differ. They note a slew of protests against Canadian firms’ projects, from Romania (pictured), where environmentalists are objecting to plans for an opencast gold mine, to Guatemala, where guards at a nickel mine have been accused of gang rape.

The government is also promising to strengthen the mandate of its official “CSR counsellor”, whose job is to advise resources firms and mediate in their disputes. The post has been vacant for a year, and the previous incumbent made little progress because the companies were not obliged to co-operate. The move did not go far enough for some campaigners, who had wanted the counsellor to be made independent of government.

Still, they had better luck with a new law introduced last month, to curb bribery by mining and energy firms by demanding more transparency from them. The law, which still must be fleshed out in detailed regulations, requires them to disclose all payments made to domestic and foreign governments. It brings Canada broadly into line with British legislation and with rules being contemplated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It helped that the law was backed by an unusual coalition of non-government organisations and mining companies themselves. The legislation “is pretty faithful to our recommendations”, says Pierre Gratton, head of the Mining Association of Canada.

It seems that the miners’ experience in dealing with local communities is making them more sensitive to their concerns about corruption and other ills. In contrast, the oil and gas firms are lobbying for the transparency law to be weakened. They want to be given exemptions in countries whose local laws conveniently prohibit the disclosure of such payments. They also want to avoid having to give a project-by-project breakdown of their payments, without which the information would be of little use. There is still room for backsliding by a government that is unashamedly business-friendly. But a public plea for it to stand firm, from a former Shell executive, may yet stiffen ministers’ spines. A watered-down transparency law would certainly take the shine off Canada’s brand.