Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Just to clarify what Sandstorm actually does, it is a business, so it is exactly what you say, but we will go in and will provide capital for someone to build their asset; then we allow them to continue to operate it. So although we don't actually do the act

Foreign Affairs committee  Sierra Leone is a place where there are many opportunities to help a lot of lives. It's a very poor country. The average GDP is only about $1,000 a person per year, and there's not a lot of good wealth dispersion, so it's a very tough place to operate. There are a lot of very poo

Foreign Affairs committee  No, we're solely supported by Canadian private citizens.

Foreign Affairs committee  Many of the opportunities in mining tend to be in developing countries, which because of the political risk haven't had as much historical mining, so a lot of deposits are still sitting there. One of the things you have to understand in the mining industry is that you will not ge

Foreign Affairs committee  Very quickly, it's that the companies need the support of the communities, and that's one way to get it. It's the same concept as advertising. I think that if our government is going to facilitate these types of things, they should expect the companies to pay for any benefit the

Foreign Affairs committee  I would say yes. We are often asked by our institutional investors what countries we are willing to go into and invest in. Often I say that it's not the country as much as it is the company and how they're operating in that country. If I can invest in a company that I think has

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely. We have invested in an asset in Brazil, for example, that is in a very poor community. We've invested in the mining company that has built the mine there. They have gone out and built schools and put programs in the community and have tried to garner the support of th

Foreign Affairs committee  If you could take the GDP of a country from $2 billion to $8 billion and accomplish more in a couple of years than 1,000 organizations and government entities have accomplished in the previous decade, then I think that speaks for itself. But to answer your question, I don't thi

Foreign Affairs committee  Rght now the Sierra Leone government's entire budget is, I think, if memory serves me correctly, half a billion dollars a year. Those companies provide more than double that in tax revenue, and they would hire tens of thousands of people. I agree with you that this is a problem

Foreign Affairs committee  My company has never invested in Sierra Leone. In fact, we've never invested in Africa. The charity side came before that. So it's just pure charity in Sierra Leone.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. First, I would say I have talked with a number of government officials around the world. This year I'm going to be on every continent except Antarctica, and I've been in 15 cities in the last two and a half months, so I have, I think, a very good feel for what t

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, honourable members of Parliament and ladies and gentlemen. I am humbled to be here before you today. I would like to give you a bit of background on myself. I'm the president of a small charity that's building and operating schools in Sierra Leone. I'm also