Statement To Shareholders of Noranda Mines Limited

Publisher:  Task Force on Churches and Corporate Responsibility
Year Published:  1977
Pages:  4pp   Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX288

This pamphlet outlines the role of the Canadian churches since the rise of the Chilean junta in 1973 and focuses particularly on the churches' opposition to the investment plans of Noranda Mines Limited in the Chilean copper industry.

Abstract: 
This pamphlet outlines the role of the Canadian churches since the rise of the Chilean junta in 1973 and focuses particularly on the churches' opposition to the investment plans of Noranda Mines Limited in the Chilean copper industry. The churches have attempted to ease the suffering created by this regime both at home and abroad. They have assisted in material aid programs to churches in Chile and in the settlement of Chilean refugees both in Canada and elsewhere. Clergy and churchworkers in Chile have become subject to persecution, as have the workers and trade unionists. The Canadian churches have interceded with the Canadian government to make it more responsive to the plight of the Chilean people. The churches have carefully considered what impact corporate investment and bank loans in Chile might have and have come to the conclusion that these could only strengthen the Chilean dictatorship. They concluded as well that such investment would lend international credibility to the present regime and would render it more impervious to international pressure to cease its repression. In the case of Noranda, the churches, as shareholders, have proposed the following:

1) that Noranda inform the Chilean junta of objections raised by its shareholders and other groups and organizations in Canada about the continued and systematic repression of all civil and political rights;

2)that Noranda declare that entry into a partnership with the Chilean junta under present conditions is incompatible with its own standards of morality;

3) that Noranda proceed with its investment plans only after the U.N. Commission on Human Rights indicates that civil and human rights have been restored. Noranda has so far maintained that it must reject the
churches requests on the grounds that as a foreign country it cannot involve itself in the domestic political affairs of its host country. However, the churches respond by emphasizing that corporations have
become powerful social institutions and cannot be other than of significant and political and social import. The churches appeal to their fellow shareholders to associate themselves with the position and proposal set
out in this statement.