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Earning distrust: overstated profit and revenue, understated debt, accounting fraud, bribery, theft, insider trading, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and disregard for human rights and environmental issues all have disgraced the world of business.

Article Excerpt
Some corporations do everything they can to avoid the costs involved in creating a safe workplace and installing pollution control equipment. These bad actors often move operations to countries where environmental and safety regulations are nonexistent or are poorly enforced.

A recent newspaper report revealed that senior officials in the federal government have been warned that Canadian mining companies operating overseas in developing countries have the potential to create environmental disasters that could "seriously embarrass Canada." The report referred to a 2004 briefing to the Department of Natural Resources, which said the country needs to do something to reduce the risk of a major environmental accident. The warning came about five years after a series of accidents occurred at Canadian-owned mines overseas.

A dam collapsed at Cambior Inc.'s Omai gold mine in Guyana in 1995 and released cyanide into a local river.

In April 1998, a waste reservoir broke at the Los Frailes mine in Spain sending toxic sludge into the nearby Rio Agrio. About five million tonnes of acidic water--containing sulphur, zinc, copper, iron, and lead--spilled, threatening the nearby Coto de Donana wetland area, a world-famous nature reserve. The Los Frailes mine is owned by Boliden, a Canadian and Swedish mining firm. A few people were burned by acidic sludge, and thousands of birds, fish, and shellfish died as a result of the accident. The World Wildlife Fund describes it as "one of the worst environmental disasters ever to happen in Europe." The environmental group accused Boliden and Spanish officials of being negligent because they didn't inform local residents about the dangers of the spill. It was estimated that 6,000 hectares of farmland were affected with long-term economic damage calculated to be around $75 million. Critics said previous warnings about lack of safety at the dam went unheeded.

A month later, in May 1998, there was an accident at another mining site run by a Canadian company in Kyrgyzstan. This one happened when a truck carrying 20 tonnes of sodium cyanide crashed into the Barskoon River. About 1,700 kilograms of the deadly chemical leaked into the river, which is the main source of drinking water for local people. Delays in telling residents resulted in 400 being hospitalized, and at least two deaths.

As of July 2006, the Conservative government had not set up rules to protect the environment and citizens of countries where Canadian mining companies operate.

Corporate critics also target pharmaceutical companies. Some drug manufacturers have put products on the shelves knowing them to be harmful while hiding this knowledge from consumers.

For example, in December 2005, The New England Journal of Medicine accused authors of a Canadian-led study involving the painkiller Vioxx of withholding information about the drug's risk of causing heart problems. The 2000 study, called VIGOR, was funded by the drug's maker Merck & Co. While the study promoted the drug as causing fewer stomach problems than the older anti-inflammatory drug naproxen, critics say it downplayed the possible risk of heart attacks.

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