Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses for their testimony and for helping us with this study.
I'm going to come to you in entirely good faith and with some open questions. I've been working on this in my role as parliamentary secretary for the minister, and we're keenly aware of the fact that improvements need to be made, as well as of the economic contributions that the mining sector makes.
I'm going to turn to Ms. Dhalla first. You used one word, which is competitiveness.
When we relaunched the responsible business conduct strategy, we revised it and we felt it was an improvement. We attached an attestation whereby they must agree to this responsible business conduct in order to avail themselves of the trade commissioner services. We created the CORE. We're the only country in the world that has an ombudsperson. I appreciate that people have concerns—they've been expressed today—that the ombudsperson needs greater powers, but we have an ombudsperson. That's a good start.
I'll say to you in all candour that when I've been in places like South Africa for Indaba, I've talked about these great things and how I think it makes Canadian mining entities more attractive for those investors that you said want legitimate good actions on the part of corporate actors. I've received push-back, to be blunt.
I'm wondering how you could help me and our government deal with some of that push-back. For the many people who say to me that these are steps in the right direction, there are still those who say to me that when we're dealing with entities like China in a race for critical minerals on a continent like Africa, a lot of the gloves are off. I would like us to hold ourselves to a better standard than that.
I want your best pitch as to how we should be making that pitch to Canadian companies.