Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to welcome our two guests here today.
I'm pleased to have this perspective. We've listened to a number of people before our committee. I was struck by the reports of people carrying around their constitutions and actually talking about them. There was a kind of engagement, and I would suggest that it was those people who ultimately gained the most, the ones who were living in poverty and gained access to health care. But they were talking about the value of that discussion.
I'm not so sure whether they don't see the corruption or are not directly affected by it, but they were certainly speaking highly of the change. I'd like to look at the context of their lives in that country before Chavez, and I'd like a comment on the initial euphoric change that they saw.