Thank you, Chair.
Thank you both for coming. I particularly thank you, Mr. Shrake, for coming and talking to the committee about a real live situation.
I want to direct my question to Professor Macklin, because Mr. Shrake does, in effect, put a live example in front of the committee. He talks about his company putting $80 million in, and that at one point it was valued at several hundreds of millions. Now he's written it down to $20 million. He's being effectively forced to withdraw his company's presence in the community because the government isn't renewing its licences.
They've got pretty serious allegations--which he describes as gross misstatements, if not outright lies--about murder and various other activities. It's a bit of a difficult situation, to say the least. And he's come here to defend his company's reputation, which is one of the things the mining companies are very concerned about, their reputation, and the ironic effects of a country with 40% unemployment having a significant employer withdraw from activity in El Salvador.
Ironically, as I was listening to his testimony, I was thinking this is actually the case for Bill C-300, because there's no place for Mr. Shrake--or for that matter Mr. Steiner--to go. These kinds of allegations will go on and on and on and on because there's no resolution to these allegations. And whether the NGO is motivated by good motives or motivated by bad motives, or something in between, it just carries on.
So using Mr. Shrake's I think heartfelt presentation to this committee, make the case as to why Bill C-300 would actually be good for Pacific Rim.