Foreign Affairs committee  I think I'll use this as an opportunity to reaffirm some of the things I was recommending in my initial remarks because at least two of the three of them are based on best practices. I think that in view of the target population that Canada is aiming to have an impact on, namely

Foreign Affairs committee  Sorry, I apologize. I didn't get translation there, and I would ask if Rod wants to take the question first and I could follow on and interpret from his answer.

Foreign Affairs committee  In principle, I wouldn't rule it out.

Foreign Affairs committee  The example you're raising, to me, sounds like a flagrant misuse of the intention of the DFI. That's not to say mining companies are bad. That's not my point. It's simply that the intention of this is not to be a quick and easy way for corporates to access financing that they oth

Foreign Affairs committee  I apologize. My French is okay, but not the best, and I'm not getting translation, but I think I understand the question. I'm not uncomfortable with that by design. I think that a DFI is first and foremost a financial institution with a development mandate, so it is important th

Foreign Affairs committee  The Grameen Bank is a micro-finance institution. There are obviously very many micro-finance institutions around the world, some of them better than others. Yes, I think DFIs absolutely can have lending to MFIs as part of their portfolio. I think this is well within reason, and i

Foreign Affairs committee  I wouldn't put it in the 15%, no, unless it's in very specific adherence to what that MFI is then going to do by way of on-lending through the capital made available through Canada's DFI.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't want to give you a non-answer here, but I think what's important is that, for any DFI, there need to be clear guidelines and standards for how any investment is made and what the impacts of those particular investments are from a social, environmental, and financial persp

Foreign Affairs committee  Great. They are all important questions. In terms of that balancing out of some of the pieces you were speaking about, obviously it depends on what the mandate is and how precisely that gets defined and set. Some DFIs are purpose-built to be more aggressive in pursuit of financi

Foreign Affairs committee  Excellent. Thank you so much. I'm sorry that I can't be there in person, but I'm very thrilled to have the opportunity to address you today. I know that for each of you this kind of proceeding is pretty normal for your day-to-day, but for me to have the opportunity to interact w

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll just weigh in, if everybody can hear me on that end. I think the bar that we set for ourselves is that a government must have the capacity to manage and deal with all of this influx of donor money and aid money. If that was our bar, I think we wouldn't have very many partn

Foreign Affairs committee  I would jump in with— Oh, sorry.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. I would just jump in by saying, of course, that now [Technical difficulty—Editor] perhaps people have not really been paying enough attention to delving into the questions of whether or not this is truly something that can be aligned with a more effective approach. In

Foreign Affairs committee  I think there isn't a lot of evidence to suggest that aid programming is an effective way to change the way that, frankly, less than responsible governments make decisions about public policy and how they choose to govern. There are a lot of people, in our view, who try to overst

Foreign Affairs committee  My pleasure.