Thank you for your question.
Actually, in the DRC, the Canadian embassy is very active in the area of mining. As you know, since the departments of foreign affairs, trade and development were merged, we work on those issues under a unified umbrella.
Of course, it is extremely difficult for a company to do business in the DRC because the DRC government is not only illegitimate but, unfortunately, it is also predatory. Efforts are made in the mining industry to try to divert mining resources from the public coffers or from export.
In those cases, we have to provide Canadian companies with support in order to put pressure on the ministries involved to comply with the country’s laws, and we are succeeding in that. Often, they do not even abide by their own laws. So we provide that support. At the embassy, for example, we meet with entrepreneurs and chief executives in the mining sector. They tell us which challenges they are facing in the country, what might be called the “administrative minefield”. We try to navigate through the administrative minefield together.
For example, I often go to see the minister of mines, and other ministers, such as the economic minister, to explain the situation to them. By exerting pressure in a teaching role, things generally work quite well.