Thank you very much, Mr. Patry. I will be sharing my time with Ms. Barbot.
Thank you very much for coming today and for sharing your extremely important opinion with us.
When preparing last year's Doha Round, agriculture and small farmers were discussed intensively. We realized, after hearing various groups speak to us about the conditions there, that it was absolutely necessary to protect some African farmers against rules that would restrict their market access, and imports that could destroy their livelihood.
We also discussed agriculture when Canada's new foreign policy was presented, which contained nothing about agriculture. We discussed it because there was no reference to it in the document. And so we have embarked on this. We need to draft a new policy, we need to work on this.
I realize that we need to consult the people concerned, but I think that there is one decision that we must make now and that is to increase agricultural assistance for small farmers, especially in Africa, because that is how we will be able to tackle poverty and disease—as you mentioned—for undernourished bodies are more vulnerable to diseases. That is also how we will be able to tackle desertification. Trees are being planted in order to prevent desertification because desertification is what makes farming impossible. I also think that small farmers would benefit from cooperatives. Small farmers selling their crops individually cannot negotiate acceptable prices on their own.
Various measures could be used, for example, giving women access to funding. Canada, however, has to restore adequate funding. In this document it says that from 1990 to 2000, Canada's agricultural support in sub-Saharan Africa went down by more than 57%.
Of course, various players must be consulted. But there has to be a commitment to increase and sustain assistance in order to give communities the opportunity to prepare.