I would like to address some quick comments and questions to Dennis Howlett. It's unfortunate that Mr. McKay has gone. His better aid bill is headed in the right direction. We supported that because our government does believe in delivering aid better. There are all sorts of books out there that talk about the way we've done it wrong for so many years. So I was glad to hear some of your comments that it can be done better.
Our budget bill this year is to improve debt cancellation for those countries that owed money back to Canada. So we are moving forward on that. When we talk about the 0.7%, it's a bit of a challenge because most people look at that as a solid number but not everybody counts it the same way. A lot of countries claim things as ODA-able that we don't.
The other issue is that much of our development assistance we cannot count as ODA-able. So we do an awful lot more than is qualified in the 0.32% or wherever we're at now. I would remind everybody that at the end of the Mulroney era we were at 0.5%, and we know what happened in the meantime. So we're working to bring that back up. We've doubled aid to Africa. We've untied food aid, which I think is a very positive step in the right direction.
The other thing I would like you to comment on is this. I have been at some OECD meetings where Canada has been recognized as one of the best countries at actually delivering the dollars that it commits in emergency situations. Could you share your thoughts on that? I know there are a lot of countries that make a grandstand announcement of how many millions of dollars they're going to commit, and then you don't see them again. I'm sure you've heard that.