Yes, please.
Mr. Chair, I want to continue on this discussion around the importance of our extractive sectors in Canada and also on their capacity to augment our reach in the world.
First of all, within Canada one of the biggest challenges facing our country is the reality, the sad reality, that our fastest-growing and youngest population, aboriginal and first nation Canadians, is also our most economically disadvantaged and socially disenfranchised. One of the industries that has had, and has in the future, the greatest capacity to strengthen and improve the standard of living for aboriginal and first nation Canadians is our mining sector, our extractive sectors, and I would add to that our oil and gas sectors, because exploration and development of these natural resources frequently take place in communities that are contiguous with or part of aboriginal and first nation communities.
I was in Mr. Jean's riding over the weekend, as I mentioned. We met with aboriginal and first nations Canadians and heard from them directly on the benefit of natural resource development in creating jobs and opportunities for their young people. My fear is that these changes....
If we are to believe the representatives of the TMX, which is not just a stock exchange in Canada but the stock exchange wherein 80% of the mining deals in the world are transacted, these changes are going to harm Canada's leadership in the extractive sector.
Now, just think for one moment of what that is going to mean for the future jobs and opportunities in the extractive sectors for Canada's first nations. I think it's going to have a negative effect.
It's not just from the stock exchange and the financial communities. We're hearing from the prospectors and developers of the country. We are hearing from the junior miners. The reality is that we have a lot of big mining companies, but do you know what, Mr. Chair? There's a lot of wealth and opportunity created by some of the smaller ones, and in some cases some of the bigger ones started pretty small as well. If you look—and this is not in the mining sector—at a company like Suncor, and you go back long enough and look at the roots of Suncor and some of these companies, you will see that they started off pretty small.
My concern again is whether, at a time when it is tough to finance mining deals, it makes sense to pile it on and do something that we're being told absolutely and unequivocally is going to be damaging.
Furthermore, Mr. Chair, if you look at Canada's role in the world.... I mentioned Latin America on this. I want to talk a little bit about Africa and the opportunities we have in the extractive sectors in places like Mozambique and sub-Saharan Africa in mining, and places like Gabon. Canada has had historically a strong relationship with Africa. This goes back across governments, including the Liberal governments and the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.You can go back to the leadership role that Joe Clark played as a foreign minister in fighting apartheid, and Canada's role at that time in ending apartheid. The incredible amount of goodwill we have in Africa is important when you're considering the amount of wealth that's going to be generated in Africa in the extractive sectors over the next decades.
Now China's there. China's there in a big way, and they're successfully investing in and building infrastructure in Africa, but I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that I believe Canada's influence could benefit Africa and help influence Chinese investment in terms of corporate social responsibility. It's not enough to send in three boats—one with the workers, one with the steel, and one with the concrete—ready to build the infrastructure.
I think Canadian CSR can help guide not only activities of Canadian companies but the activities of massive foreign investors from places like China as well. I think we can play a partnership role in that, and I'm worried we're going to diminish our opportunity to do that—