Panel Three: Understanding challenges and opportunities for industry and investors

On this panel speakers give examples of the adoption of FPIC policies by corporations and industry bodies, why different sectors of business such as finance and extractive corporations may have an interest in adopting FPIC, and the challenges that remain.

Moderated by Alan Young, this panel features Lina Holguin, Francois Meloche, and Ian Thomson.

Click here for Francois' full powerpoint presentation.

Lina Holguin:

Lina Holguin is the policy director of Oxfam-Quebec. She leads Oxfam’s policy work on Extractive Industry in Canada. She has worked for 18 years in the field of international development and humanitarian aid. She joined Oxfam in 2000.

Before being part of the Oxfam family Ms. Holguin conducted research on the impact of media in peace-building for both Panos (London,UK) and the International Centre for Humanitarian Reporting (Geneva) and she offered training on the role of media and peacekeeping at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Center. She has also been journalist for radio, television and print media. She worked for Radio Canada International (Montreal), the BBC World Service (London, UK) and for the main Colombian national television news network.

She has a Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European Peace University, Austria and a Degree in Journalism and Social Communication from the University of La Sabana, Colombia.

François Meloche:

François Meloche is Extra Financial Risk Manager for Bâtirente, a pension fund system servicing members of the CSN labour organization, in Quebec, Canada. Mr. Meloche has over a decade of experience in the responsible investment community having worked for Jantzi-Sustainalytics, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and Groupe investissement responsable inc. He is also co-founder of Equiterre, an organization advocating responsible consumption.

Ian Thomson:

Ian is the Resources and Rights Partnerships Coordinator at KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives. KAIROS brings together 11 national churches and other religious institutions in Canada, and 22 global partners in Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific, working together for social and ecological justice. Since 2005, Ian has coordinated KAIROS’ work on corporate accountability and ecological justice. He also chairs the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA), a civil society network advocating for law reform in Canada to hold extractive sector companies accountable when they are complicit in human rights or environmental abuses abroad. Ian holds engineering degrees from the University of Toronto and Queen’s University.

Moderated by Alan Young:

Since 1990 Alan has worked as a facilitator, planner, analyst and activist with a wide range of conservation groups, Aboriginal organizations, companies and governments across Canada. His focus has been on sustainability strategies for the extractive sector, which have involved projects throughout North America, Latin America and Europe.

He started his work as coordinator of the joint federal/territorial and Aboriginal Porcupine Caribou Co-Management Board in the Yukon. From 1994 to 2002, he served as Executive Director of the Environmental Mining Council of BC. In 2002, Alan left EMCBC to form the Materials Efficiency Research Group to focus on his interest in bringing different sectors together to build joint solutions to social and environmental issues in the extractive industries. Since 2003 he has worked on diverse projects including socio-economic impact assessments, large scale conservation strategies, certification programs in the forestry and mining sectors, as well as various legislative reform initiatives in the extractive sectors nationally and internationally.

He is Chair of the Centre for Science in Public Participation, Vice Chair of Global ForestWatch Canada and Director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Fairmining Collaborative.