Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm now going to fish for another compliment to this committee.
We appreciate your comments about the work we did together, collaboratively and across party lines. We reached unanimity in urging the government to move on 0.7%. I hope that resolve remains, because it was absolutely humiliating to be in the Nordic countries and the U.K. last week, as a committee, facing governments that are literally between 0.9% and 1% in some cases, having resolved to exceed the 0.7%.
But it's also true—and I say this in response to Mr. Broadbent's comments—that this committee urged that Rights and Democracy gain some increased funding after five straight years of the biggest slide in the resources they had to work with. By raising this, you've actually put me off my original intention to question in another direction.
As you may or may not be aware, Tom Axworthy and Jeffrey Kopstein appeared before this committee a couple of weeks ago, arguing for a new structure, a new agency, to be set up to engage in democracy-building work internationally. I'm trying to build on the repeated theme of the importance of democracy building really being about working with civil society in failed and fragile states, and also in developing countries that are, one hopes, moving toward democracy.
To really raise the question, if we have NGOs that are starved for funds, if we have civil society groups in those countries that are starved for funds to do the democracy building, do we need another new agency, or do we need to get on with delivering the 0.7%, get on with expanding Rights and Democracy's ability to do the job? Should we keep on trying, as a committee, to push forward on these fronts?