WWW.LEXPERT.CA
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2016/17
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LEXPERT 27
Letcher, Gary A. Letcher Akelaitis LLP
(604) 566-8936 gletcher@laal.ca
Mr. Letcher's practice encompasses a range of environmental law issues
including contaminated sites litigation, acid mine drainage, waste manage-
ment & environmental assessment and permitting. He has acted on many
of BC's significant contaminated site matters and acted as lead counsel
for a multi-national corporation in the resolution of the Britannia Mine
contaminated site matter.
Levy, Eric M. Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP
(514) 904-8177 elevy@osler.com
Mr. Levy focuses on corporate and securities law. His work encompasses
initial public offerings as well as other public and private placement of-
ferings of many Québec-based and multinational companies in various
industries, including mining.
Lissoir, Luc Gowling WLG
(514) 392-9571 luc.lissoir@gowlingwlg.com
Mr. Lissoir focuses on P3s, project financing, PE, M&A and Corporate
Finance. He acts for consortiums, developers and lenders on infrastructure
matters and major asset managers on fund formation and investments
in Canada and internationally.
Lyons, Catherine A. Goodmans LLP
(416) 597-4183 clyons@goodmans.ca
Ms. Lyons counsels private and public-sector clients in planning and
environmental law and social licence. Her brownfield and greenfield re-
development experience includes cost-sharing agreements, infrastructure
financing and environmental approvals.
MacFarlane, Alex L. Gowling WLG
(416) 369-4631 alex.macfarlane@gowlingwlg.com
Mr. MacFarlane is a partner in Gowling WLG's Toronto office and leads
that office's Restructuring and Insolvency Practice Group. He specializes
in complex cross-border restructuring and insolvencies, providing advice
to debtor companies, directors and officers, financial institutions,
monitors and receivers, in respect of a wide array of industries,
including mining companies.
MacKay, Kari Goodmans LLP
(416) 597-6282 kmackay@goodmans.ca
Ms. MacKay practises corporate/securities law focusing on M&A, corpor-
ate finance and governance. She advises on international mergers, asset
transactions and multi-creditor financings focused on the Mining and
Natural Resource sector. Ms. MacKay has extensive experience at all
project stages, project financing (alternative financing), technical
reporting, off-take agreements and asset dispositions.
Canada's ESTMA – together with its counterparts
in other wealthy nations – is intended to provide some
measure of transparency regarding how much govern-
ments in developing countries collect in payments from
extractive industries.
Under ESTMA, publicly listed companies in the
extractive sector are required to report payments to all
foreign and domestic governments for each fiscal year
beginning aer June 1, 2015. Privately owned extrac-
tive-sector companies with headquarters, operations or
assets in Canada must also report, if they meet two out
of three criteria, assets of at least $20 million, revenues of
at least $40 million and workforces of at least 250.
Payments to a single government department total-
ling $100,000 or more in a year must be reported in sev-
en categories: taxes; royalties; regulatory fees; infrastruc-
ture improvements; production entitlements; bonuses;
and non-stock dividends — plus any categories sub-
sequently added by regulations. Companies have 150
days aer their fiscal year end to submit their reports to
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and publish those
reports online.
ESTMA serves as the flip side of Canada's Corruption
of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA), says Erik Rich-
er La Flèche of Stikeman Elliott LLP in Montréal. e
recently toughened CFPOA, with unlimited fines and
prison terms up to 14 years, is intended to deter Cana-
dians from paying bribes to government officials, Richer
La Flèche says. ESTMA, meanwhile, makes it harder for
those government officials to divert legitimate resource
payments from public coffers to private accounts.
"ESTMA is not really intended to change the way
mining companies do business," he says. "It's to change
the way officials in resource-rich developing countries
do business. It forces them to be accountable for the rev-
enues they receive."
"is is all directed at the so-called 'resource curse,'"
says Melanie Shishler of Davies Ward Phillips & Vine-
berg LLP in Toronto. Shishler says mining companies
routinely make legitimate payments to governments in
developing countries, "but sometimes it's not easy to
find immediate corresponding benefits" to citizens in
those countries.
While Guimond agrees that ESTMA is primarily
aimed at catching graers in other countries, she cau-
tions that it can be used in combination with the CF-
POA and the Criminal Code to bring charges against
Canadians, at home or abroad.
It's a major cultural change from the not-so-long-ago
days when many international businesspeople regarded
bribes, large and small, as an unavoidable cost of com-
peting for business in certain countries — to the point
that some corporations would even claim these kinds of
expenses on their taxes. But she says she's confident com-
panies are now getting the message.
LEXPERT-RANKED LAWYERS
