Thank you very much. I find this discussion very interesting, and I want to just drift off a little bit.
You mentioned Sierra Leone. A few years ago, I visited Sierra Leone. I went with the parliamentary group. We got on a bus in Freetown, and when we were going up the street, the tour lady said, “That's a Nova Scotia house.” I thought I had misunderstood her. I'm from Nova Scotia. We have three members here from Nova Scotia. When we went a little further, she said, “That's a Nova Scotia house.”
I asked here what she was talking about. She said that in 1792, fifteen boatloads of black Canadians and former slaves left Alexa McDonough's harbour and sailed to establish Sierra Leone. I didn't know anything about that. It's not in our history books. There's nothing about it there, but I think it's a tremendous bind between Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.
Some of the other members and I also went to the amputee camp there. There were 250 young people with their hands chopped off because of the blood diamond conflict you were talking about.
Anyway, it really did bring back thoughts when you brought that up.
We just came back from Kenya as well, and accountability is a big issue in all of these countries. One of the issues that came up was that a lot of funding partners delay funding if there's a question about accountability. Almost all of the recipients that Ms. McDonough and I and our group met with said that when money is held up for accountability reasons, people suffer and people die. I just wonder what your thought on that is. When there is an accountability issue or a concern, how should a government react? Should they delay money, stop money, or just keep on going?