Editorial Corporate giving not just a frill

Placer Dome, now in the major ranks of Canadian mining companies, the other day pledged to give $500,000 toward a $34- million campaign fund for a major hospital in Toronto, the funds to be used for the hospital’s capital and research needs. Noranda Inc. is considering a similar contribution.

A million dollars from just two mining companies for this kind of project is not, in the vernacular, exactly chicken feed. It is perhaps, considering the whole area of corporate donations to charitable organizations, indicative of the new-found prosperity just now moving to the bottom lines of many of the companies in Canada’s mining industry.

Yet that same industry has been cited as one of the country’s worst industry segments when it comes to providing financial support for social and community needs. Arguing in a recent Montreal address that corporate philanthropy of this kind is in fact integral to the primary function of any good business, Allan Taylor, chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada, said 56 per cent of mining companies in Canada (with over $25 million in assets), in fact give absolutely nothing to charitable organizations. Generally, these can comprise health and welfare, education, cultural and civic and environmental groups.

At the same time, it must have been a considerable embarrassment to the bank chairman to have to admit that the group with the very worst record in this respect belongs to companies in his own financial services sector, 74 per cent of which give nothing. The best is manufacturing, with just a 23-per cent-failure-to-give rate.

On the other hand a full 90 per cent of all Canadian companies give nothing, so it seems neither fair nor reasonable to castigate the mining industry too much for its shortcomings here. Certainly the big companies, such as Noranda, Inco, Falconbridge, have a good and consistent record of giving, in both good times and bad. To cite just one instance, at a time earlier in this decade when the company was losing literally millions, Inco poured about $5 million into Science North, at Sudbury, an organization that is registered as a charitable institution.

Where the bank executive did provide a useful service with his speech was in making it clear that corporate giving of this kind is very much a part of the business of business. “I believe,” he said, “that a requirement of all truly responsible corporate citizens is that they donate to the societies in which they live — whether in cash, goods and services, volunteer time, or all three. The reason is simple. We’re not strangers passing in the night. We’re committed to Canada and to its communities for the long haul. Our customers live here. Our shareholders live here. Our employees live here. We live here.”

The mining industry generally has not had an outstanding record in recognizing this, and responding accordingly. If because of the current uplift in its financial fortunes it should begin to open its purse strings a little more, it should not be thought of as a short-term response possible only when times are good, but as something that should continue to be a part of every company’s long-term philosophy and practice.