Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's nice to be back at the foreign affairs committee.
Thank you for appearing and for your presentations. I want to echo your positive comments about your staff. I must ask you to pass on my thanks and compliments to your staff on the briefings and the information. They seem to have been very helpful and very open. This department has taken a lot of criticism in recent months, and I'm sure you're thick-skinned enough to absorb more.
Rather than adding to the pile-on that you've experienced recently, I'd like to begin by saying that I'm very pleased, given this “out of Africa” thesis that we've been listening to for the last while from some in the opposition parties that we are apparently as a government withdrawing from Africa and not continuing the support that's been offered in the past, to see the Prime Minister's announcement yesterday on the $105 million Canada-led initiative to save a million lives in Africa.
I think your department believes, your staff believes, and we believe as a government that there's a role for us to play there and that we should play it—in particular, on reducing child mortality and maternal mortality. I'm pleased to see the initiative announced, in particular the willingness to address the critical shortage of health care workers, and in particular expanding on our previous announcement of an African health systems initiative, something that has already seen some positive results, I believe, in terms of, for example, the vitamin A supplement program, the mosquito-netting program for malaria prevention, and so on. There is a number of initiatives there that are making a positive difference, I believe.
It's great to have these announcements; it's great to say we're going to save a million lives. It's wonderful, and I think everybody should be encouraged by the noble intent. But what plans do you have to track the results of this initiative? What specifically are you going to do as a department to make sure that our landing is as good as our take-off?