By Catherine Solyom
The Montreal Gazette
Houses for the homeless, wireless Internet for remote villages, new computers for the local school, kite-sailing competitions, a centre for the disabled.
These are a few of the things Barrick Gold has helped finance during the last few years in communities living near its controversial Pascua-Lama mine, under construction in the Andes mountains on the Chile-Argentina border, as part of its commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), or as it is called in Spanish, “mineria responsable.”
If these programs sound like they are beyond the normal purview of a Canadian gold mining giant, that’s because they are. Barrick often works with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who are better acquainted with health and social problems in their own communities. The NGOs share their expertise; Barrick puts up the money.
It’s hard to be against CSR, now part of the playbook of most Canadian mining companies wherever they have set up shop around the world.