Yes, certainly, that's what we would hope and that's what we would wish for.
I've heard mining companies respond to this kind of question by saying, “Well, we just follow the laws of the country where we operate, and if we don't have to do these things, then we don't have to do them. We just follow the laws.” In fact, that is all that Canada has required of our mining companies. All that Canada does require is that our mining companies follow the laws of the country where they're operating, not live up to a higher standard.
The only way to address this problem from Canada is to implement something like mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, because that's something we have control over. We can't, obviously—and we wouldn't want to—control the laws of other countries.
Many of these are developing countries. Many of these are very poor countries. We're talking about places like Papua New Guinea, where our Canadian mining companies are operating. We can't tell the Papua New Guineans what standards they should put on our companies, and often our companies get around those standards anyway, for various reasons. What we can do, however, is require—mandate through legislation—that our companies do environmental and human rights due diligence, that they assess the risk that their operations and the operations of their subsidiaries are putting to people and the environment, and that they then report on that risk and tell us what they've done to stop that harm from being done. If that doesn't work, then people can sue in Canada.
Quite frankly, when lawsuits are filed, it does sharpen the attention of the lawyers in the corporations and the managers of the corporations, because now they're actually being sued, and this could have real consequences.
That is something that Canada can do and that we should do.