Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
As you said, my name is Gerry Barr. I'm the president and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation. It's a membership body that takes in about 90 of Canada's leading civil society organizations working around the world. The council is also one of the principal organizations in Canada active in the Make Poverty History campaign that now engages the energy of many hundreds of citizens' organizations and more than a quarter of a million Canadians, who are pressing the government to take key steps targeted at eradicating global poverty and, here in Canada, at ending child poverty.
Of course, it's not the first time our organization has been before the committee to urge Canada to play its proper role as a foreign aid donor, commensurate with the strength of Canada's economy. Canada also needs to improve the quality of its aid, and that's why we welcome enormously Bill C-293, voted forward yesterday in the House of Commons for committee consideration. There is support in all parties for the idea that Canada should now commit both to more and better aid.
We hope that MPs will send that message powerfully once again when the time comes to vote on Motion-223, introduced this week by Caroline St-Hilaire of the Bloc Quebecois, which calls for a concrete financial strategy to achieve the aid target of 0.7% of gross national income in foreign aid spending and new aid legislation. So it is a very pertinent motion to the reflections of this committee, and it's coming up soon.
When you look at Parliament today, plainly there is a will to do better on all sides of the House, but is there a way? I think that's really where this committee and of course the Minister of Finance come in. CCIC is seeking a commitment from the current government to a strategy that would raise Canada's aid contribution to 0.5% of GNI by 2010; to increases in the international assistance envelope, targeted at official development assistance purposes of 18% annually; and subsequently to achieve the internationally accepted target of 0.7% of GNI by 2015.
Our organization estimates that Canada's ODA performance in 2006-07 will be $4.5 billion—in reality, unchanged from last year—notwithstanding a planned 8% annual increase. Canada's aid to GNI performance for 2006-07 is estimated at 0.32% and is likely to decline to 0.3%, producing a plain downward trend in Canada's donor performance overall. The decline results from a strong growth in the Canadian economy that will easily outreach the modest projected increases of 8% annual growth in Canada's aid budget. In fact, the current strategy of 8% annual increases in Canada's aid budget is unlikely to improve Canada's current GNI performance much by 2010.
During the last election, Mr. Harper took on a personal target for increasing aid spending to the level of average donor performance by 2010. At the time Mr. Harper made that commitment, the average donor performance was 0.42%. There are ways to achieve that target. We'll set them out in a brief, which I'll be able to provide to the committee in several days, once the estimates have come out.
Parliament has a goal of 0.5% by 2010, which was articulated about a year ago in June when it gave consensus support to this committee's 12th report to the House. It seems likely that, thanks to Madam St-Hilaire, Parliament will again offer an opinion on the subject—and we judge that this will be successful too. That is the optimum public consultation for this committee, and I urge you to pay heed to Parliament when it speaks on this.
Thank you.