Mining Association of Canada (MAC) senior vice president Ben Chalmers said Canadian miners were keeping pace with stakeholder expectations by balancing the need to allow time for integration of those standards, with timely reviews to keep lifting standards higher.

He said the establishment of MAC's Towards Sustainable Mining standards back in 2004 had put members in front of many others. One of the benefits of adopting Environment Social Governance programmes at that point was that internal efforts to improve performance and meet standards were part of daily life by the time the recent wave of ESG pressure hit the mining sector.

"There was steady progress over the past 10 years - there's been an increase in all our indicators over the past 10 years - but what's changed in the past two-to-three years is we're seeing more and more stakeholders getting interested in the performance of the industry," Chalmers said. "Specifically I'd point to the role of our customers.

As an example of TSM's evolution, he cited progress and then resetting of community engagement standards, which some 50% of miners were meeting when first established. As that number edged toward 90% in recent years, MAC reviewed and updated the standards, which were published late last year.