First of all, infrastructure and education are probably the two most important capital-building types of expenditures that governments can undertake, and of course they can be very poorly done, as opposed to well done. What you want to do is get them well done.
Also, we know that governments must have a certain role in the infrastructure file, whether it's building roads or making sure there are port facilities. Some countries I have worked in had a very tough time with that, and it did hurt their trade a lot, and of course it's an area they have to improve on. But at times there was also a lot of corruption associated with various projects and other things like that, so that really hurt a lot. Rule of law is something that's really critical.
So sometimes, in regard to some of the things you need to do, it isn't to just have the program. It's also to get the other things done so that things move ahead well, and that's a story of Asia in terms of the growth. I worked in China through the 1990s and saw what they did. They did build their policy capacity during that period. They of course made the investments themselves to grow, but they also got a lot of help from the IMF and the World Bank--especially the IMF--on just getting the right public policy institutions in place.
I can tell you that on the tax side, which was of course the area I was brought in for, they had a horrible system in terms of the way they collected and audited taxes. They got a lot of advice from the IMF about how to separate out functions among collection, registration of taxpayers, and auditing. Before that, you had the same person doing all three, and it was really susceptible to serious corruption. The Chinese did listen. They thought it made a lot of sense. In fact, they liked to hear what other countries were doing, and then they thought it through as to how best to do it themselves.
But it's an example of how you also need to have the institutions in place. If you look at Canada just on the issue of tax administration alone.... The IMF works a lot with many companies to improve their tax administration. Why? Because that's one of the most important things they can do to help reduce deficits in countries, so that countries then have the money and the wherewithal to spend on things like infrastructure and education and to get it right.
We have great experts in Canada who go to all of these countries all the time in regard to trying to improve their tax administration, their statistical collection, and all of these other things. That's just one example of the kind of building of policy capacity that's really important. That includes the justice system, the court system, and a number of other things.
Some countries will respond better than others, but I think where Canada can have the most leverage is in those countries where we have a very active private sector operating, and along with the kind of expertise we have in Canada, I think we can actually help certain countries really improve themselves.