Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank both of our witnesses for their testimony today and for their contributions to our committee.
I have a question for Professor Brown. We know you've written extensively on CIDA and have some strong criticisms about the department and the government's approach to how they are spending CIDA's funding. In January you were quoted extensively in the Ottawa Citizen article written by Elizabeth Payne. In that piece you called the shift of aid dollars to support the work of Canadian mining interests overseas as an effort to “whitewash the negative effects of their resource extraction”.
We are concerned on this side of the table about this approach. I believe Canadians are also pretty much concerned about this new approach. We seem to be partnering with for-profit multinational corporations and non-profit NGOs to promote projects that seem to be doing more to promote clean extractive industries than to reduce poverty, which is the mandate of CIDA.
Could you expand on this? The committee would benefit highly from your comments on this one.