Promoting international development through corporate social responsibility: the Canadian government's partnership with Canadian mining companies

Abstract/Résumés

A recent trend in mainstream international development discourse has been to emphasize the role corporations can play in promoting sustainable development in the Global South. In Canada, this is exemplified in a recent public-private partnership between the Canadian government, three Canadian mining companies, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to deliver development projects through the companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This new partnership poses serious questions about the role, if any, that governments should be playing in financing the overseas CSR projects of multinational corporations. The paper argues that the Canadian government is increasingly allowing corporate actors to influence the country's development agenda, to the detriment of civil society actors. Moreover, the government is using CIDA (now DFATD), and ODA, not to promote development abroad, but to aid Canadian commercial interests by helping Canadian mining companies obtain a social licence to operate.

Actuellement, la tendance du discours dominant sur le développement international est de souligner le rôle que peuvent jouer les entreprises pour promouvoir le développement durable dans les pays du Sud. Au Canada, cette tendance est illustrée par un partenariat public-privé récemment signé entre le gouvernement, trois compagnies minières et des organisations non gouvernementales (ONG) internationales, dont l'objectif est de réaliser des projets à travers des initiatives relevant de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE). Ce nouveau partenariat soulève des questions sérieuses sur le rôle que doivent jouer les gouvernements, le cas échéant, en finançant les projets RSE des firmes multinationales outre-mer.

Le présent article soutient que le gouvernement canadien autorise de plus en plus de compagnies à influencer le programme de développement international du pays, au détriment des acteurs issus de la société civile. Il souligne aussi que de plus, le gouvernement utilise l'ACDI (désormais, MAECD) et l'ADE, non pas pour promouvoir le développement à l’étranger, mais pour soutenir les intérêts du commerce canadien en aidant les compagnies minières à obtenir un permis social d'exploitation afin qu'elles puissent mettre leurs projets en œuvre.

Keywords:

• Canadian government
• mining companies
• corporate social responsibility

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Hevina Dashwood, Marlea Clarke, Marie Gagne, Begum Uzun and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous versions of this paper.

Notes

1. A fuller account of the emergence of various development theories, or a normative argument about what “development” should look like, is beyond the scope of this paper.

2. It should be noted that there are also purely economic criticisms of CSR. Milton Friedman (1970), for instance, argues that “the social responsibility of business is the pursuit of profit”.

3. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines ODA as “the sum of grants and sub-market-rate loans made to developing countries to promote economic development and welfare” (Sachs 2005a, p. 79). This therefore does not include military aid, or aid to higher-income countries.

4. What is entailed by self-interest in this case can vary. According to Pratt (2001), historically this has included a promotion of commercial interests in response to pressures from dominant class interests, pressures of bureaucratic politics, and security interests (for instance, strategic commercial alliances during the Cold War).

5. The goals include issues such as eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality, among others (Sachs 2005b).

6. The Consensus includes an emphasis on market principles, including fiscal policy discipline, privatization of state enterprises and reduction of public spending, trade liberalization and economic opening toward foreign direct investment, and deregulation (Pieterse 2012).

7. Historically, Canada has been one the poorest international performers in terms of fragmentation and policy coherence (Carment et al. 2013).

8. Canada's efforts to allow the private sector a greater role in development are part of a larger trend amongst OECD donors (Bulles and Kindornay 2013, Kindornay and Reilley-King 2013, Swiss 2013), though the precise nature of this involvement has varied between different states.

9. It should also be noted that the Conservative government decided on the merger without consulting CIDA or DFAIT personnel, who learnt about the decision on budget day, along with the rest of the country (Swiss 2013).

10. Frynas (2005) gives the example of Statoil's Akassa project in the Niger Delta, which, through a partnership with a development NGO, was able to effectively take local voices into consideration in developing their CSR development projects.

11. There is little research on the degree to which the voices of local communities have been taken into consideration in the case of the other two pilot projects (i.e., those in Burkina Faso and Ghana).