Thank you.
This goes back to the initial question about the objectives of this study. There seems to be an ambiguity. Is it about the role of the private sector in achieving Canada's business interest—mining-friendly laws, etc.—or is it about your question, promoting social and economic development?
In the whole discussion—with all my respect, Mr. Watson—you were speaking about “development goals”. I beg to differ: I think you're speaking about the promotion of business interests. The very fundamental thing is the blurring between our policies with regard to economic and commercial policy and our policies concerning our development mandate.
This goes back to something that's been around for a long time: thinking that if you simply have investment, it's going to bring development. It's not happening. This is what the report of the ECA is all about; this is where the strategy, which took four years to put forward, has something very interesting to say. We work with mining engineers, we work with geologists—all sorts of people from the mining industry. It's not that there's no place for mining; it's about being very clear about our motivations and about what this study concerns.
Are we here to talk about Canadian development policy? If we are, we should be talking about how the mandate is respected to promote and to reinforce the policies of the countries in which we're operating.
This means a whole lot of things. It's not compatible with what's going on. A study by Ernst & Young suggests that 92% of mining and metal companies have cross-border inter-company transactions. So all this money supposedly is going into the countries, but all sorts of mechanisms explain that much more is coming out. A UNDP report in 2011 suggested that for 38 of the 48 least-developed countries, $246 billion between 1990-2004 has come out in illicit financing.
We have to be paying attention to what is going on about the flows. It's one thing to say that these countries are not robust, but the whole way the corporate sector is working, it means that much more money is coming out of Africa—and there are books and documents to show this—than is flowing in.
If we're serious about promoting development, we have to be much more scrupulous about the kinds of business ethics we have, and also about the legitimacy of regulatory frameworks. We've done books on regulatory frameworks. Countries have been told to keep their taxes low. Companies are saying: “Keep your taxes low. Let us hire contractual labour. But we're going to do CSR studies.” It is completely ambiguous to have this kind of position.
You have to be coherent in what you're promoting. Business logic has a right to exist, but it's something very different, and you don't promote it simply by saying that through investment you're going to promote development. That's not going to happen.