OTTAWA and TORONTO – The Canadian mining industry is moving toward a greater payment transparency standard for all publicly traded miners in Canada. The recommendations have been launched to provide Canada's federal government, provinces, and securities commissions with a blueprint for a payment reporting framework.
Government implementation of these recommendations will provide citizens around the world with valuable information about payments from companies to governments in countries that produce minerals. Increased transparency will allow citizens and media to hold their governments to account for the revenues generated from mining activities and help to ensure that these revenues contribute to sustainable development and poverty reduction. Enhanced payment transparency is critical to ensuring that governments mobilize natural resource revenues to fight poverty and promote development.
These recommendations would require publicly traded mining companies in Canada to disclose project level payments to domestic and foreign governments. The working group recommends that authorities require large mining companies to disclose all payments above $100,000 and venture issuers to disclose payments above $10,000.
The guidelines were created by the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group after more than a year of multi-stakeholder consultations across Canada. Members of the working group are the Mining Association of Canada, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, Publish What You Pay-Canada, and the Revenue Watch Institute.
Click on the PDF document at the top of the right hand column to read the recommendations.
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