The CNCA questionnaire is also available in PDF format.
For years, Canadian multinationals have been implicated in serious human rights abuses and environmental damage around the globe. The abuses include killings, sexual violence, water contamination, land grabs, and forced labour. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, to the metals in our phones, we are all connected to corporate harm.
The communities and workers who suffer these harms are often unable to access justice or remedy. Human rights defenders, labour rights defenders, and environmental defenders who stand up to powerful corporations frequently face violence, intimidation or criminalization.
Canada has international obligations to protect, respect, and fulfil human rights. This includes the obligation to protect against human and labour rights abuses by non-state actors, such as Canadian businesses operating abroad. However, Canada has not implemented the necessary laws and policies to uphold these obligations, relying instead on voluntary or reporting-only measures which have been ineffective to stop corporate abuse.
Canada has also failed to equip the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) with the investigatory powers, resources, or independence from government needed to effectively serve impacted people – as government’s own experts, and even the previous CORE, have called for. The CORE is an urgently-needed public institution, which the government can and must equip with the necessary tools to fulfil its mandate. Absent these powers, CNCA has advised impacted people to approach the CORE with caution.
Communities and workers around the world have called on the Canadian government to finally hold Canadian companies accountable. Several jurisdictions, including some of Canada’s largest trading partners, have now enacted, or are in the process of developing, enforceable legislation to prevent and remedy corporate abuse.
This issue matters deeply to Canadians. Over 50,000 have signed a petition calling for legislation to ensure Canadian companies respect human rights throughout their global operations and supply chains.
The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability is asking federal political parties to state their positions on corporate accountability for Canadian companies operating abroad.
- Will your party support comprehensive mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation? Such legislation requires companies to identify, prevent and remedy all human rights abuses and provides for liability when companies cause harm in their global operations (subsidiaries and supply chains).1
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- Will you make the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) independent, provide it with the power to compel documents and testimony, and ensure the office is well-resourced so it can effectively investigate human rights abuse allegations linked to Canadian corporations operating overseas?2
