Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for my colleague from Medicine Hat to know that the task of finding out how to help developing countries was given to a fully independent committee established in 1959 under the aegis of the World bank.
Experts were asked to study how much money was needed, for how many years, and what would be the end results if x amount of money was given over a period of 20 years.
Around 1990 they concluded that if we gave 0.7% of our GDP, we could provide enough help to developing countries break free from chronic poverty.
Fighting against poverty is a way of working against terrorism. When we ask the Canadian government to increase its participation, we are saying “Give us an idea of the time needed to reach the 0.7% level. We are not expecting that all the billions of dollars will suddenly flow into Afghanistan. The needs are so great all over the world that we will have to ensure a fair distribution of these amounts according to the best of our knowledge”.