Thank you, Chair. Thank you both for being here.
The purpose of this study is multi-faceted. One of the things we all share—as a committee, and I think as people in general in western civilization—is wanting to help those who are less fortunate, or who aren't as far developed, to at least have a decent lifestyle. That's been frustrating. When we look at Africa, in general, there's been so little of that advancement that's taken place.
When we had Mr. de Soto here, he pointed out the very obvious fact that we expect them to be where we are, having gone through that whole process of history. We've obviously been through the parliamentary system and government in general, but also we've evolved with technology. We're expecting them to be at this plateau, when he had to discover all those discoveries and make our way up.
I, for one, am frustrated because I also went to Ghana. If we go back 100 years, most of us came from farms and lived on farms. But when you go to any African country, or any third-world country, the vast majority of people live in villages or live in cities, so they missed that key ingredient. I believe entrepreneurship is innovation, and innovation is taught on the farm better than anywhere else. We have a lot of very clever people who are good at selling wares, but lack that training. The horse is out of the barn.
The question goes to both Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Eaton. Have either of your organizations examined that? We know where the problems are, but now that we're in this situation, how do we get them to start to operate on the same economic scale and the same structural scale that we have in western civilizations—now that all those things have happened and you can't put the genie back in the bottle?