Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here with us today. It has been a very interesting investigation into this topic on the part of this committee.
Mr. Bebbington, I find it interesting that you are talking about Peru in particular. We had Hernando de Soto here on November 22. One of the things he told us was that 63% of the property in Peru is owned by women. Women are obviously making some decisions on their own futures. I find that very interesting.
I want to turn the tables a little bit, though. A month ago, I was in South Sudan. These are going to be questions directed to both of you. Mr. Bergeron, I may flip back and forth here. I was in South Sudan. It is a country that has enormous wealth in oil. There are also agricultural possibilities there. They believe they have mineral resources. I can't comment on that. I don't know. I expect the gold companies are probably doing some investigation there. What we observed in this brand new country is that they are struggling to build institutions and to build capacity to deal with the revenues they have.
We've seen what's happened in Nigeria. I was there a year ago. Nigeria, which has this huge pot of money available to it in oil resources, is finding it exceedingly difficult in the context of that government to handle the money well. I think that Goodluck Jonathan, the current president, is making some real endeavours. But here are countries that have enormous resources and opportunities to really provide for their own populations, yet the populations are desperately in need.
What's missing? How can Canada be a participant in helping a country like South Sudan get on its feet, get the capacity building that needs to be done, help it with its institutions, and help it move forward? Do you have any ideas on those?