Thank you, Chair.
I appreciate that probe and the drilling down a bit. We're going to hear from other witnesses who might help us with that and I'm sure they'll share information.
Thank you to our guests today.
One of the issues we've dealt with at this committee has been.... One of the tools in the tool kit for government is SEMA, as you know, and presumably with your experience from the former Yugoslavia you know the history. I guess one of the tools that could be used here--and granted you've already identified that there's not a lot of Canadian investment there--would be SEMA.
My concern—and I will be talking again on Burma, but not today—is how we define how SEMA is implemented, because it is a policy tool that I'd say is fairly new, if you want to look back to 1992 when it came into place. But what we need is to understand the scope of investment. I don't see it today, but perhaps you could provide the committee with a list of exactly what Canadian companies are investing and to what degree.
I'd also be interested in indirect investment, because one of the concerns I had around Burma--and we discussed it at committee--was that the lens we were looking through was one of future investment. I would argue--and this is just my argument--that we should have been going back to existing investment in Burma. If we decide to use this as a direction for the government, a policy tool, we would do the same, looking at not just who's directly investing in Sudan, but indirect investments, so that we are able to touch all of the dollars that might be invested, just as information.
The other thing I want to mention, to see if you had any experience or knowledge of it, is that I was talking to some people today about this issue, and they identified, notwithstanding that there's not a lot of Canadian investment in Sudan presently for reasons aforementioned--there's a lot of investment by Chinese and Indian companies--that there's also a lot of interest in our oil in Canada. The proposition was contract prohibitions and employing CSR, corporate social responsibility, with those companies--for instance, Chinese oil companies that are very interested in our tar sands--and saying, before you invest in oil in the tar sands, let's take a look.... I know our government's interested in this. They announced that they were going to talk about a lens on foreign investment, because they were worried about national security, particularly around investment in the tar sands, and that we can employ the same tack and use that as a tool.
I'll just finish with this comment. The reason I'm concerned about investment in Sudan and Darfur is because of what it does to people. People are being moved off their property. They are not being compensated. The oil companies and the people who are investing there--and these are reports that I've heard and read--are sometimes using the places where drilling is going on for military purposes, and there's dual use going on in terms of the equipment.
I would like to put a question, I guess, to our government. Is there a way to put contract conditions on investment in our oil fields as much as looking at what is going on in Canadian investment and indirect investment, as well, in Sudan?