More than a decade after the federal government created a “toothless” position to police Canada’s oil and mining companies operating overseas, Ottawa has announced there’s a new sheriff in town.

The Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprisse (CORE) will be an independent officer who will investigate allegations of human rights abuses linked to Canadian corporations operating abroad.

“To fly the Maple Leaf means something. It means being associated with a set of values,” said International Trade Minister François-Philippe Champagne in a news conference Wednesday.

“This is an extraordinary brand to have in the world today,” he added. “But it also comes with responsibilities.”

Unlike its predecessor, the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor, the new position will not require the permission of a company to investigate. Nor will the ombudsman need a complaint, as they will have the power to launch their own investigations and publicly report their findings.

“It really is momentous,” said Julia Sanchez, president of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, an umbrella group of Canadian aid groups. “There’s no other such position in the world.”

“We’re often behind. But here, Canada is first. We’re ahead of everyone else.”

About 60 per cent of the world’s mining companies are based in Canada, making this the ideal place to pioneer ways to ensure mines respect local people’s rights when operating abroad, Sanchez said.

The ombudsman won’t deal with only mining companies, the government said in its announcement. The position’s scope will cover the mining, oil and gas, and garment sectors, but is expected to later expand to all other business sectors where Canadian companies operate internationally.

While the ombudsman won’t have the power to impose sanctions or penalties, both their investigations and their recommendations will be made public. This creates the potential incentive for companies to avoid any reputational damage that could come from publicly ignoring recommendations.

The government will also consider cutting off a company from trade advocacy support and future funding received through Export and Development Canada if the ombudsman recommends it, Champagne said.

Activists have applauded the announcement, especially those who have spent years working with the often isolated and impoverished communities affected by violence and environmental degradation around Canadian-operated mines.

“We deal on the ground with very hard situations where it’s very difficult to get the truth,” said Shin Imai, head of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project at Osgood Hall law school at York University.

“In the communities, we hear terrible stories of murder and rape. But the company will give a very different story. And people can’t tell the difference.”

Until now, if you were a poor peasant from a country like Guatemala, you had virtually no recourse if your town was affected by violence linked to a nearby mine. Villagers from Guatemala have tried to sue a Canadian mining company in Ontario court, but Imai said the ombudsman will be a better solution.

“Now we have independent, arm’s-length ombudsman with investigative powers who will have the budget and mandate to expose the truth,” Imai said.

The idea for a mining ombudsman dates back more than a decade to a roundtable held by the federal government in 2006 that brought together mining companies, human rights campaigners and people affected by mining.

While the roundtable called for an ombudsman to act as a point of contact for people directly affected by the operations of Canadian mining companies abroad, the then-Conservative government instead created a watered-down position, called the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Councillor in 2009.

That position will be dissolved at the end of its current mandate in May.

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The CSR counsellor received six complaints during its entire existence. None of the complaints was investigated or resolved because the mining company declined to participate each time.

“The CSR counsellor’s office was structured and designed to be toothless,” said the CCIC’s Sanchez. “They needed the agreement of companies in order to move on anything.”

“From the start that was putting the CSR counsellor in an impossible situation where they wouldn’t be able to achieve results and they didn’t.”

Since the new CORE ombudsman is the first of its kind, the government has also created an advisory body to help it, made up of members of civil society and business.