That's fine.
I've looked at the notes that have been sent so far and see that it's a very broad agenda. Even though it's a broad agenda, it is hard for us to see how we fit, given our ongoing concerns. Let me explain to you.
I'm here with two of my colleagues who have accompanied me over the years. One the one hand, there is Dr. Ana Lucia Camaiora, and on the other, there is engineer Manuel Mayorga La Torre.
What we have been concerned about, of course, is poverty in developing countries--in ours and in the over 25 countries in which we've worked--but our focus has always been on what we can do so that the enterprising poor can take advantage of the global economy. What can we do so that when, for example, a Canadian firm or the Canadian government wishes to invest or to make credit or technology available in Peru, Peruvians can rise to the occasion?
That's our focus, rather than what it is that a Canadian firm, for example, or the foreign private sector, can do for us. Let me tell you the reasons for this emphasis, because they are important if we're going to be able to contribute from this side--and we may not.
Essentially we find that foreigners who come here are willing to go by the rules and even have a certain degree of empathy towards, say, the indigenous people in the midst of whom they are forced to work, whether they're in an extractive industry or whether they are creating infrastructure. The problem we see, rather, is on the part of our people, which is that they do not have the legal instruments with which to hook into and take full advantage of, for example, foreign investment.
Let me use another country to set my example. We have, let's say, a group of Awajúns, indigenous people in the Amazon, and an American firm has found--as is now the case--gas or oil or gold. This American firm asks, first of all, for a concession of property rights in the Amazonian region and obtains that concession for, say, 60,000 hectares. Now, the first thing that firm does is of course to make sure that there is a good title that will be protected and honoured by the Peruvian government, whatever election results we have, and it will ask for that to be inscribed in the bilateral investment treaty between Peru and the United States.
By the way, I'm sure there's also a bilateral investment treaty between Peru and Canada, like the one we have between Peru and the European Economic Community, the purpose of which is to give security to investors.
Now, once they do that, the quality of that title or the security behind that title has increased manyfold, because now the property right--or the concession, if you want--is doubly secured, not only by the Peruvian government but also by the American government in this case,and in addition by the fact that the Peruvian government can't do anything without the American government.
Among other things, for example, the Peruvian Parliament cannot go back on that treaty. It cannot go back and discuss it or the terms of it. Already, then, this American firm has gotten not only a property right but a super property right, because it's guaranteed by two governments.
Then the American firm goes to the United States and gets another guarantee with OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which again, to a certain degree, securitizes that title, so to speak, by saying that they will also guarantee it in front of all financial authorities and make sure that this concession of a U.S. company in the Peruvian jungle now is doubly secure. So the title becomes a super-duper title.
Then they go to the World Bank MIGA—the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency—the purpose of which is of course to help investment in developing countries or promote investment in developing countries. That then passes a procedure called the multilateral investment guarantee program, so by that time, the Peruvian title is a super-duper-duper title.
Now let's go back to the indigenous people in Peru, this tribe of Awajúns, which is right next to the American investment. They also have territory, but the first problem they have is that it isn't titled. Not only is it not titled, but we haven't made a distinction between sovereignty and title.
In other words, according to our law, supposedly all these people are sovereign, but that means being recorded in a certain way, and we have found out that not more than 5% of the total are actually covered as being sovereign nation. On top of that, they don't have property rights by law. In other words, sovereignty means that you are politically free. Property rights mean that you're economically free, and they don't have that, nor do they have the tools to do that. Even if they wanted, with the American company, to find how they could benefit from corporate social responsibility, how the technology could benefit them, or how they could do a joint venture with the American company, they couldn't.
They can't even go out on the market because, unlike the American company, which has a super-duper-duper title that is so secure that it is much better than the Obama title, because Obama can always come around and say, “Eminent domain: I need to expropriate for the purposes of infrastructure” or “I'm going to put an airport where that is”.... The Peruvian title is untouchable, and that Peruvian title will get that foreign company enormous amounts of money, or enormous amounts of money or capital or loans will be raised whether it be in Toronto, London, or New York, and the Indian population will of course not thrive.
What I'm trying to say, basically, is that from our side, we focus very much not on what your companies can do for us, because we've actually had contact with certain Canadian companies that would be more than willing to let the indigenous people around them participate in shares and actually do whatever's necessary to operate in peace as long as they are able to carry out their activity.... The problem is that the indigenous people in Peru will never be equals because they cannot exercise their property rights. They have no limited liabilities. Whatever rights they have cannot be transformed into shares. They can't issue bonds. Also, they can't organize in any other way that is not simply political, which means as that of a tribe.
With this, I will end this short statement, but at least hopefully I've kicked the ball onto the field in a manner that will be useful to tell you that as a private think tank and activist organization, or non-governmental organization, if you wish, we think much more can be done for our poor people by getting Canadians and people with technology and know-how in governance who want to give security to actually help us create the same conditions in our country for the natives--by the way, as opposed to the situation in your country, the natives are not the minority but the overwhelming majority--rather than having us focus on foreign firms that won't be able to give our poor people much more than sops along the way.
This is more or less the way we see things. I hope this is useful as a starting point.