When: Thursday February 9th, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Where: Tequila Bookworm, 512 Queen Street West, 2nd floor
While many Canadian corporations and their subsidiaries have acted unethically and unlawfully in developing countries, they have been able to commit crimes abroad with impunity. Some corporations—particularly those in the extractive industries—have literally gotten away with murder, hiring mercenaries to assassinate vocal critiques of their operations. In other cases, they wreak environmental havoc, exploiting weak environmental regulation in developing nations in order to carry out their operations with utter disregard to sustainability or the wellbeing of local communities.
There is no legal mechanism to hold these corporations accountable in Canadian Courts for these injustices—yet. Bill C-323, the Act to Amend the Federal Courts Act, is a bill that has been forwarded by NDP MP Peter Julian. It proposes to amend the Federal Courts Act to permit any person in the world to bring civil action against any company, entity or person for breaches of international human rights or international treaties to which Canada is a signatory that occur anywhere in the world.
The bill calls for extending the authority of the Federal Court system to protect foreign citizens against a broad range of human rights violations committed by Canadian and non-Canadian corporations and persons operating outside Canada. It would allow lawsuits in Canada for a host of universal human rights violations, such as genocide and torture, as well as activities that significantly destroy the environment or violate key international labour rights.
Join community activists Christine Mettler, Marie Sydney, and Raul Burbano as they host round table discussion on why this bill is important and discuss strategies to create a national campaign to put pressure on Parliament to push for the bill to be passed.
For more information, visit:
http://passthebill.ca/
This event is hosted by Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (www.solidarityresponse.net/) and part of Latin American & Caribbean Solidarity Month