I would argue that there has to be an increased emphasis for sure, because the reality is that when you talk to most people, their number one concern is about their security. I don't know anybody, when I talk to families down there.... The polls in El Salvador talk about how almost 80% of the families would leave the country if they could. That's 80%. Everybody is worried about their children.
The situation is that of the two gangs, the M-18 and the MS-13, the MS-13 are the more sophisticated. They're evolving substantially, and they're serious. People are fearful. They're fearful for their lives, because there's a massive amount of extortion. Everybody's being extorted, including taxi drivers and other people. This is their bread and butter.
What happens is that if you're not careful when you are doing development, you can be supporting a co-op that is then being extorted by the gangs. What does that mean? It means the profits are going to criminality. To me, if we're going to do development, those economies are losing a massive amount of money because of these security problems. I think in some cases they've talked about as much as 15% of GDP. It's serious. It's very serious.
My issue, and this is an issue that I've talked about with people involved who care about it, is that I think there has to be more emphasis on looking at the government and security agenda. It has to be taken hand in hand with the development agenda. They have to be managed together, because right now I would argue that 95% of the Canadian money goes for development and 5% might go to the other areas. I think there's a problem with that mix. I think it needs to be looked at.