Hello, everybody.
Thank you, Wayne. It's great to be here today.
I don't live in P.E.I., but P.E.I. is my home, so it's a delight and a pleasure to be here today with my son Jasper, and with Mary.
You've heard the statistics on Canada's role in the world and how our aid for developing countries has decreased in the last four years. We have 300,000 members in Canada and our work is rooted in gratitude, gratitude for the prosperity and the health and opportunity we have here. We're really just talking about sharing that gratitude mindfully with the rest of the world.
We're very grateful also for previous governments that increased aid through maternal and newborn health. The Conservatives were all over that in the last mandate. We're grateful for the current government's commitment to women and girls and the feminist international assistance policy.
This is something we shouldn't argue about, but unfortunately, as the two previous speakers mentioned, our commitment in dollar terms to international development assistance has dropped for the past few years. There is a very predictable increase that we'd like to see as a community, but it's reasonable to hope that by the time the next election comes, this government should be investing at least as much as the previous government did, and we're not on track to do that.
I'm very grateful for the opportunity to speak. You'll probably see a lot of T-shirts like mine as you're travelling the country.
Thank you for your time.