I regard this as a friendly amendment, Chair, and I think it actually strengthens the clause. I would like to suggest a modification that I think is agreeable as a consequence to my friend's amendment.
You'll notice that in the second part of her amendment she deletes lines 12 to 17, and I propose that we replace 12 to 17 with a very specific phrase, “Canadian official development assistance”. In other words:
Canadian official development assistance abroad shall be defined exclusively with regard to these values
The point of this is to start to address the issues that the finance department raised yesterday. You'll recollect, Chair, that they were concerned that Canada would be stopped from any other assistance--not necessarily ODA assistance, but assistance--and that would be an unintended and unfortunate consequence of this bill. We think that by putting in this clause and another one several small amendments that arise as we go through the clauses, we will in fact address the concern that the finance department raised.
Then I believe again my friend would find it acceptable that we add a subclause (3) on purpose, which would read:
This Act does not apply to funds delivered to IDRC.
You'll recollect that there was a brief submitted by IDRC, and they were concerned that this bill would negatively impact some of the research they do. That would be, again, an unfortunate and unintended consequence, so we want to make it particularly clear that it doesn't apply to crown corporations. So perhaps we could have a friendly amendment on a friendly amendment.