Gentlemen, I wasn't expecting to be surprised here today. When Cliff Davis, the CEO from Nevsun, spoke to us by teleconference, I came away from that particular testimony believing he had no familiarity at all with UN responsibilities. He couldn't state clearly whether the company had never used forced labour. It might be perhaps we didn't ask the right questions. Irrespective of that, this is a significant move forward, and the company deserves to be commended publicly for that.
As the critic for international human rights for the official opposition, I have people from many different nations come before me, indigenous people who talk about the pressures that are put on them by their own government and the complicity they see, whether it's there or not, by Canadian companies. Saying that Nevsun is functioning within the context of its workplace in reasonable conformity is exceptionally good news to hear, but the obvious question is, what's next?
I think your second trip was probably well worthwhile, because there's a disparity here in the kinds of testimony we hear about life on the ground in this country. What we as Canadians would always want from our companies, the corporate social responsibility that we expect here, we expect in any country. There has been a resistance to that before.
Mr. Romaine, I'm pleased that you're working with this company as well. If in the end there's a message passed on to this government, because we're still hearing some pretty horrendous things about this....
The surprising part for me is the access to people that you talked about. Obviously the first time you were resistant to that. Have you come away from that actually feeling that was relatively wide open?