First, I think we're completely blurring what international development means in Canada. Second, we're implicating the Canadian government and the Canadian people in projects for which we don't have the criteria to do any kind of follow-up, and we haven't given ourselves the mechanisms to see what is actually going on on the ground, which is a very dangerous position.
Just before coming, I read last night the most recent Norwegian Council on Ethics report. I'm referring to the 2011 report. Since 2008, two of the companies with which our government is now partnering have been in the list of companies in which the Norwegian government refuses to invest its pension funds. They follow up; they find very telling things. I have never understood why our country, where mining investment is much more important, cannot have the same kind of rigour in following up where we are accountably as a people and as a government. It's not just about companies.
In terms of the impact this policy is going to have, these are projects that are building short-term social licence. They're about charity, not about development. The clock, in terms of where expectations are now on the African continent, is not where it was 25 or 30 years ago at the time of the Lagos plan of action, when these same problems were brought out. The thinking is in a very different place.
Where Canada is now, in terms of understanding the messages that are coming out of Africa and just not paying attention to them, is going to have very long-term detrimental impacts on our own reputation internationally.