Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Maybe we'll get a chance to carry that on, Peter.
First of all, I'd like to say that our hearts go out to the families who have lost loved ones in this terrible catastrophe in Bangladesh. I was in Bangladesh four years ago. I met a lot of people when I was there and I would hate to think that any one of them lost a loved one in this catastrophe. Every one of us wants to see things improve there.
Bangladesh is a country that has great potential. They've done a lot of things right in the last 40 years, but there is still much to be done, so all of us can be participants in that.
I'm not an engineer, but I worked in the drafting department of an engineering company when I was putting myself through my degree. I had the opportunity to look at a lot of building code issues, and so out of my own personal interest I just took a look at where Bangladesh was at with its own building code. I understand that they adopted their first building code in 1993. They updated that in 2006 on the recommendation of the centre for fire science and technology at the Tokyo University of Science, so they've had some good input.
They have a lot of old buildings there, and in my observation, a lot of the rebar they use comes from old ships that have been sunk in the harbour, so probably the standard of rebar that we would expect here is not what we would see there. I also noted that in the magazine Popular Mechanics there was quite an article about why concrete crumbles, and some of the things that we look at here are just not the issues that we see in some of these emerging economies.
Peter, you were saying that when you go into a country you have—in Honduras perhaps this was alone—a U.S. based engineering firm that gives you a report on the buildings that you would go into. Can you talk about the process that you've used? How did you come to use this particular company? What do you look for and what would be your response to a report that's given to you by an engineering company?