Projects
There is a loose correspondence between the research work that I do (see “Research” on the side-bar), and applications of it in particular projects.
My volunteer and professional work in the “South-North context” has evolved from an initial focus on comparative human rights experience and education, and in particular, labour rights and organizing, to a focus on corporate accountability and law and development, all the while moving from criticism to critique.
I was initially engaged in asking whether and how union organizing was undertaken in the “low wage” jurisdictions from which the jobs were apparently fleeing in North America as a result of the exit option made available by globalization (each key term in that sentence could be contested: moving on). This was more or less Harry Arthur’s fault: one question of many arising out a seminar he conducted on Globalization.
In the absence of enforced labour standards, the next level of “law” that held out hope for some kind of betterment of working conditions were and are voluntary codes of conduct. I did some research into these forms of “self-enforcing” rules, and the organizations that assist in developing and monitoring them. The basic conclusion is that in the absence of a real threat of enforcement, voluntary codes lack effectvieness in a systemic way. Occasionally they have effect, but broadly, they do not signifciantly offer protections to workers.
This analysis led to a second and closer look at corporate structures and accountability, sometimes known as “governance”. This is a huge field and burgeoning as I write, especially in the trans-national and trans-systemic arenas, and governance norms and practices are compared and analysed.
The analysis of corporate finance by quasi-government institutions such as EDCs leads to questions about the criteria for funding, and to the question of institutional funding of corporations within an program of ‘development’ itself. It is s short step from there to International Financial Institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank. I have conducted research into the legal status of these organizations, and placed that within the larger mandate, conception and history of these extraordinary institutions.
Some of the products of this story are linked to these pages, listed below.
1. The Chixoy Dam Case: Paradigmatic Bad Development Policy.
2. Montana Verde: Indigenous Activism and Land Claims.
3. Export Development Canada and the Financing of Bad Development.
4. Glamis Gold in Guatemala: Mining Disasters.
5. Observatory of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers South/North Network with Association of Latin American Labour Lawyers and National Lawyers’ Guild.
6. Bacongo Case: Canadian Mutlinational’s Energy Projects in Belize.
7. UPS v. Canada: Intervention by CCPI on Constitutional Jurisdiction of NAFTA Tribunals.