Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for sharing your expertise and experience today on this immensely complex subject. Of course, the time is too short to get to the heart of the problem.
I'm sure committee members welcome your favourable comments about the better aid legislation, which has been driven very much by the many civil society spokespersons who've come before the committee and by the committee in moving it to what is nearly the final stage of adoption.
I think your comments added to the excellent report card done by Halifax Initiative, and they really do pose a challenge to us to try to think through what kinds of public accountability mechanisms and processes could actually get at some of these problems. I'm sure the Halifax Initiative report is welcomed by the government, and probably the previous government as well. Fair enough. There have been some complimentary references to some improvements. But it remains a serious, serious problem that the very countries most in need of the Bretton Woods institutions serving them are actually dropping out—and the perverse results of that are astounding, really. They're accelerating their repayments, which is probably a killer thing for them to be doing, in order not to come under the heavy heel of the punishing policies required of them.
I'm wondering if we can ask you to turn your attention a little bit to the question of what accountability mechanisms...and here, I'm really asking you to focus on Canada and our responsibilities as parliamentarians. Clearly, there are the big issues of needed reforms at the Bretton Woods institutional level, but it's also clear that we have very extensive public accountability processes, and so on, through the Auditor General, with respect to our domestic operations. But it seems that when it comes to the Bretton Woods institutions—which involve a lot of money, but also have a massive impact on the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet—our institutions and processes are very, very frail and very weak.
I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about two things, really. What would these mechanisms look like, ideally, and how do you see us as a committee engaged with civil society in moving through a process to get us to where we need to be to actually do the job?