Those are the kinds of things I think this committee should be asking of the staff who do this kind of work. I think they would be able to provide that information for you.
I know as a practitioner of business development in the oil industry that when I go to Angola and we are bidding on blocks offshore, we are competing with the national oil company from China. When the President of China comes and says on the same day that he will build airports, the infrastructure around the port authority, and a railway, and that, by the way, he would like them to talk to the Chinese oil company that's there with him, you can imagine that Nexen doesn't have any conversation or any need to stay in the meeting to talk to them about getting those blocks for oil. This is what we're up against.
It's not only the Chinese. The French operate this way with Total in Nigeria. When it comes to debt forgiveness, they have meetings while Total is in another room having a different discussion. They're not linked, but there's a dotted line between the discussions that go on between the French government and Total. Norway is the same with Stats.
In Canada we don't operate that way, and we can continue to do that, but we are at a huge disadvantage as companies when we're told to go and compete with the rest of the world. The playing field is not level when we compete with Chinese companies, with French companies, with American companies, or with British companies.
That's what we have to understand as Canadians and as Canadian legislators. If you're telling your companies to go and compete, don't assume that it will get you the results. It's much more complicated than that.