Canada

The principles of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have not been embodied in legislation in Canada. Rather, in recent years the federal government has promoted best practices in CSR. These efforts have focused particularly on mining and other extractive industries, because Canadian companies in this sector conduct, through subsidiary entities, very extensive operations in other countries. Law-making activity in the area of CSR and private international law has been most intense, not in the federal or provincial legislatures, but in the courts. A number of important cases have involved lawsuits brought in Canada against Canadian companies, in which foreign claimants seek to recover compensation for environmental and social harm caused by the operations of these companies’ subsidiaries abroad. The jurisdiction of Canadian courts to hear such cases has been upheld, but no case has yet progressed to a decision on liability. As well, courts have considered questions of choice of law in relation to failures to uphold CSR principle in foreign operations. They have also dealt with the enforcement of judgments, granted by a foreign court against a foreign company, against the assets of a Canadian subsidiary of the foreign judgment debtor. The challenges faced by the claimants in this body of cross-border litigation have to do both with Canadian private international law and with the Canadian rules about the legal responsibility of shareholder corporations for wrongs committed by corporations that they wholly or partly own.