Trust deficit? What trust deficit?

For decades, some critics have felt at liberty to describe the mining sector as lacking public trust, but the reality doesn’t really conform with that accusation, at least in Canada.  More than a dozen years of national public opinion studies have documented precisely how Canadians feel about mining, including the sector’s strengths and weaknesses.

In an opinion piece published in The Northern Miner this week there were several observations offered about the mining sector, which deserve to be challenged.

The column by Kevin PCJ D’Souza begins with “The mining industry has a trust problem. Broad based trust in our industry is at an all time low.” Neither of these assertions hold up against the evidence as far as Canada is concerned. Here are some findings from our latest survey of 3,400 Canadians across the country, in March.

• 80% say they have a favourable impression of mining companies operating in Canada, the highest number recorded since these tracking surveys began in 2012.
• 83% say the industry does a good or acceptable job of being good neighbours.
• 82% say the industry does a good or acceptable job of being honest/trustworthy.
• 80% say the industry does a good or acceptable job of earning public trust.
• 85% say the industry does a good (33%) or acceptable (52%) job of “fulfilling their responsibilities to society.”

In order to avoid any confusion about what people mean when they give the industry an “acceptable” rating, we asked respondents to clarify how they used that response category. Just over half (55%) said that when they offered an “acceptable rating they meant “I feel they are doing a good job,” 44% said “I have no reason to offer a poor rating but don’t know enough to offer a good rating,” while 9% said to them “acceptable” implied “I am somewhat disappointed.”

So, when it comes to “fulfilling their responsibilities to society,” the proportion of respondents who feel the industry is doing a poor job (15%) plus the proportion of the “acceptable” responses which could be characterized as negative in nature (9% of 52%), amounts to a total of 20% who are disappointed or unhappy with the sector.

The point here is not that there is no room to improve public perception, or no need to work to continue to earn trust day in day out, and the author described actions and conduct that companies from any sector should embrace. But we also have to be clear-eyed about the current situation.  Canadians by and large think the industry in Canada is valuable for the economy and takes its responsibilities for environmental management, safety, and collaboration with local and Indigenous communities seriously.

That’s why 81% believe “Canadian mining deserves to have a good reputation.” And 83% think Canadian companies operating abroad are helping raise environmental standards for mining around the world. By a margin of 72% to 28% Canadians think the mining sector is ethical rather than unethical.

Mining companies in Canada embrace their social and environmental responsibilities and the public has noticed and appreciated the effort. The Mining Association of Canada pioneered the first site level ESG performance measurement standard in the world, Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM), which has at its core a commitment to engage with and respect the communities where the industry operates, particularly its Indigenous partners. Doubtless, TSM has contributed to this reputation.

Does it matter when public trust is mining is so badly mischaracterized?

It sure does.

Those who believe in the importance of ESG efforts must know that enthusiasm for these policies will suffer if these efforts are dismissed out of hand.

Companies shouldn’t get credit for things they don’t do, of course, but to pretend that there is a trust crisis in mining — at least in Canada — is so far from the truth, it does a disservice to all the effort that has gone into this area in Canada over the last couple of decades, and diminishes the good work done by hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers, who make an effort to produce useful products for the world with standards of care that they can rightly be proud of.

— Pierre Gratton is the president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada. He was previously president and CEO of the Mining Association of British Columbia (MABC), and from 1999-2008, served as vice-president, Sustainable Development and Public Affairs for the Mining Association of Canada (MAC). In this capacity, he was instrumental in the development of Towards Sustainable Mining, MAC’s flagship program that is gaining international recognition and adoption.

Bruce Anderson is one of Canada’s most experienced public opinion pollsters and chief strategy officer with Spark Advocacy. He has been conducting reputation research for the mining sector for more than a decade and has conducted many similar studies in banking, insurance, forestry, oil and gas, motion pictures, and other sectors.