Foreign Affairs committee  The problem we found with the Victory Foundation is that the NGOs operate very independently. If you have someone doing water in Ghana and someone else doing lights in Ghana, they don't necessarily talk to each other. What we're trying to do is get the NGOs themselves to talk to

Foreign Affairs committee  Again, it's collaborative networks. I think we've covered that lots of times today, and that's good.

Foreign Affairs committee  But the government has to do things a little differently. Part of that is that it provide funds, and not just for one agency or just one region, but saying: “Here's the money. You have to work collaboratively on the ground, you have to work collaboratively on the delivery side, a

Foreign Affairs committee  It's to be a facilitator. I call it co-leading or co-branding, with not just the government in charge, but with everyone working together. At the end of the day, I think it's possible. I think it has already started, and I hope it continues at a much faster pace than we've seen s

Foreign Affairs committee  So I'll turn it into a question: What can we do? We could have internships for students, including MBA students, who would love to spend a summer internship in Africa trying to help companies build. But they're also prepared. They aren't just going in there unprepared. In additio

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, we have two aspects. One is, let's back up on Nexen and Yemen, because the co-author of the book was a vice-president international for Nexen, who actually implemented all the programs you saw. That's the good news.

Foreign Affairs committee  The bad news is that Nexen has lost the concession in Yemen.

Foreign Affairs committee  So even though there was a lot of good work done, the host country didn't give enough recognition or appreciation for the work that was done by Nexen. Actually, the CEO for Nexen at the time was Charlie Fischer, who is one of our MBA grads from the Haskayne School of Business.

Foreign Affairs committee  On the government lead, I've already described the government calling for a summit of five or six of the senior people in extractive industries, getting them in the room together with the government and saying let's see if we can work better on this. If the lead comes at the CEO

Foreign Affairs committee  In terms of international development work, the extractive industries are ready with technology in terms of the work they're doing in zinc, for example, which you've already heard about. The key aspect here is that each company is doing its own individual part, but we need to do

Foreign Affairs committee  It seems to me that there is a lot of information at the grassroots level that never gets to the top level in corporations. Most people who are in corporate responsibility or international development work are off to the side in corporations and relatively junior. Those people ha

Foreign Affairs committee  It seems to me that the issue always is whether the glass is half empty or half full. I think most corporations say they're doing more than they've done before, and many people would say they could be doing more. My view is, there's more that could be done and there's a role for

Foreign Affairs committee  I think CIDA can play a major role and already does. It would be helpful for CIDA to document its successes in the field, because there's not enough documentation of why things work in the field and why they don't, which could then be made available to the private companies that

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. First of all, it's good to be here. To summarize my comments, what I'm talking about is that smarter money from the Canadian government and collaborative networks can produce sustainability and long-term results for people who need help. I don't really hav