Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like some clarifications. Mr. Shariff, everything you are advocating—helping farms, small farmers and small businesses—is not really the main topic of discussion. We have nothing against microcredit and we encourage it. It develops expertise and that creates wealth, as you said. The point here is about giving out money that belongs to the Canadian taxpayer. Each and every Canadian is giving money to large companies that are already well set up in some countries and are probably already making millions of dollars in profits. That is what we are talking about. We have to make a distinction between giving money to a company that is already well established and already has employees, and giving it to a non-profit organization.
My question is about the redistribution of wealth; both witnesses can answer. If we give international assistance money to a company that is already very profitable, that already hires workers, and that is developing a country's natural resources, do you really think that that will allow wealth to be redistributed? Redistributing profits would be a good way to create wealth around a company.
Does a company extracting natural resources benefit the people? Let us be honest and talk about things as they really are. Does it really benefit the local population, or the company? I am talking here about companies that are set up to make profits, not about your very well respected non-profit organization. So we have to distinguish between a mining company and a non-profit organization.