Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
This has been a most interesting study for our committee, and I think it would be fair to say that every one of us on this committee wants to see progress on emerging economies and how Canada can best help in getting emerging economies up and running. I think all of us share that same sentiment; it's a matter of how we get there.
It was interesting to hear some of the things you've said today. I was particularly interested in your comment, Mr. Reilly-King, that CIDA's doing some good things. Certainly our objective is to help and to be there in times of need.
You know, Canada is the only country that is current with all of its payments to the global fund. We made a contribution of $50 million last year to GAVI Alliance, over and above our other contributions. Canadians also made a contribution in east Africa last year to a desperate humanitarian need—$142 million went into the east Africa drought relief fund. Currently we have about $42 million that has gone into the Sahel region. Canadians respond with tremendous generosity when we are called upon to assist.
But those are always the things that are urgent and the things we can't predict. So how do we help these countries get themselves to a point where they in some measure can respond to their own challenges, and how can Canada support that?
Mr. Heaps, you were talking about a council for clean capitalism, and I would like to hear more of that. We are not in any way averse to knowing what the total costs are when things are going on. Obviously that has to be part of an assessment that needs to be done whenever a company is going in, and to help countries make those assessments.
You also talked about the need for—I'm sorry, maybe it wasn't you, maybe it was Mr. Reilly-King—political leadership, effective institutions, and civil service, but you probably don't disagree, Mr. Heaps, that those things need to be in place. When you are doing this council for clean capitalism, are you helping countries make those assessments, and helping to build those institutions that can start making the assessments themselves?