In both of those countries where I visited, WUSC is thrilled to pieces with what Canada is doing in building these kinds of partnerships.
In Burkina Faso I had the opportunity to visit the Essakane mine being built by IAMGOLD. They have done phenomenal work without any public dollars. It's phenomenal what they're doing. The people are thrilled with the fact that their children now have the opportunity to go to school. They have a proper health clinic there that is properly staffed with people who are trained experts in health services. So there are some tremendous things going on in these countries.
I look at that and I say, so Canada wants to partner to build on these things. It's not that all of our aid money is being diverted into putting money into the extracted industry; it's simply one partnership we are building amongst a multitude of other things we're doing to ensure that growth and development can go on in the economy.
What we know is that we, not Canada alone but western society, have put $1.23 trillion into Africa in the last 60 years, and it hasn't been fruitful in many cases. We need to do something different.
We're looking at how we create sustainable economic growth in developing countries. It has to be a key to reducing poverty. We want to work to provide education and, most importantly, job skills training.
If we look at Peru, for instance, we have a project there with Barrick Gold and World Vision. We have opportunities for families to develop new employment income and really to add to their own family income. Obviously, building the capacity of the government to assist in putting those regulations in place is one of the things that has to be very important.
I just have a comment before I stop on your paper here, where you talk about the tying of aid. Canada has untied all of our aid to Africa. We've doubled our aid to Africa. We've untied our aid. We aren't putting our money into what you say here are middle-income countries for our own commercial benefit. We have money going into Afghanistan, Haiti, Zambia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the DRC, Tanzania. These are not middle-income countries. Canada is very much focused on where we could help to build capacity, who needs the money, and where can we make a difference.
Now I want to turn to Mr. Shariff, if I may.
You talked about three things under targeting marginalized sectors of the population. You talked about direct investment, knowledge transfer, and financial contributions.
I would like to know from you if you could talk about whether or not some of that direct investment could come as well in a partnership with CIDA from the diaspora. For every country there is in the world, we have a population base here in Canada, and people who are very concerned about their home country would like to know how they can help. Is there something that can happen there with financial contributions?
On the knowledge transfer, I've said this before. My son-in-law is from Ghana. He is a brilliant young man. He just received his doctorate in electrical engineering. How do we help this knowledge transfer back to their home countries?
I've said a lot. I don't think I've left much time. Sorry to both of you.