On Monday, the committee met with John Sullivan, the Executive Director of the Center for International Private Enterprise and Chris Eaton, Executive Director of the World University Service of Canada. Both witnesses discussed the importance of political and economic institutions in the economic development of developing countries. Mr. Eaton specifically discussed a pilot project being run in Ghana where his organization is attempting to direct revenues from the local mine to the development of the local economy. The Minutes for the meeting can be found here.
On Wednesday, the committee met with Alex Counts, President and CEO of the Grameen Foundation, an organization formally headed by Mohammed Yunus that is credited with creating and popularizing the idea of micro credit. They also met with Katleen Félix from Fonkoze, a development organization that works in Haiti in the realms of micro-credit, micro-insurance and facilitating remittances. In the second hour, the committee met with senior officials from DFAIT to discuss progress and purpose of the Canada-EU political framework agreement.