Thank you, Chair.
It's too bad Mr. Brown didn't have time to have a rebuttal.
Mr. Brown, you've got the government all wound up. We'll see if we can get some sensibility here.
I think there is no dispute that there is some good work being done by CIDA, and there is some good work being done by companies, as you mentioned. I remember seeing Nexen, in Alberta, and the work they did in Yemen. There was no public money; it was good benevolent companies that have good shareholders who want to get good things done.
I think the whole question today is extraction companies and giving companies public money to distribute aid. It's a slippery slope. If we start with one company, what other companies are there? It's kind of shirking our responsibility by letting these companies get away with that.
You don't see this happening in Scandinavian countries or European countries. Even the United States and Japan are not using their extraction companies or oil companies, or whatever they have, to do the aid work. We saw what happened at SNC-Lavalin.
Mr. Brown, you mentioned how rules of engagement are quite different in these countries than in ours.
You wonder why a company would even want to get into it because it opens up a hornet's nest. They're not only answering to their shareholders, they're answering to the public of Canada, so is it really worth doing that aid project?
I'd like you to speak a little more on what other countries are not doing and why they're not doing it, and how much trouble we can get into if we continue with more and more aid going to these extraction companies.