Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I also want to thank both of our witnesses for their extremely informative presentations. My first question will be for Mr. Baker.
I was especially struck by something you said.
I'll say it in English. If you don't mind, I'll switch from one language to the other. It's the poor translators who suffer, but my notes are in English.
When you're looking at money going in and out of developing countries and you say that developing countries are our debtors, in a way I think it's quite understandable. The first duty of private companies is to their shareholders, who are usually outside of developing countries.
It reminded me of a French official who was talking about the independence of a specific African country, which I won't name.
He said that had they known how profitable it would be, they would have given the country its independence much sooner.
I don't think we have any problems with private companies making profits and taking these profits out of developing countries, although we'd prefer that they left more.
What we are studying here is the role that private companies can play in development, and I wonder what you would see as the limits of this role. Some private companies build schools or hospitals, but it seems they're not able to build the infrastructure, what I call the legal infrastructure and management infrastructure, which will enable developing countries to provide a counterweight to that effect. This can only be done by a government-to-government kind of assistance.
Am I mistaken?