Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for coming. It's always good to hear from you.
I returned from Mali only two weeks ago and I met with our CIDA officials there who are doing a pretty good job of trying to meet the challenging needs in Mali.
I was also in Nairobi last year. Coming from east Africa myself--I grew up in Arusha--I am aware of the complexities that are in Kenya and in east Africa in reference to the challenges faced by farmers.
Today you have alluded to climate change and its impact on food security, which you have eloquently illustrated. But one has to understand that climate change affects everyone, including Canada. So Canada itself has the same challenge that Africa is having but we have a stronger capacity to deal with it. There is less capacity in Africa to deal with it.
Hence, it's a cooperative effort between NGOs, the government, the farmers and everybody working together, as you rightly pointed out. So it is not an easy solution that is to be addressed tomorrow. On climate change, it's a longer-term solution that will highlight it.
I'm looking at the immediate impact here and saying that one of the factors on this, Mr. Clark of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, is helping the food security in Africa. We send food from here and we tie it down.
We are thinking of what might happen if we untied the food aid and allowed the aid to be addressed internally. Sometimes there is a bumper crop and sometimes there is a low crop, but using the internal economy of the country itself to address the security need rather than coming from here, would the Canadian Foodgrains Bank think this could be one of the positive features addressing a long-term security issue?
My second question is this. Specifically coming from east Africa, corn is a very important staple in the African diet. A report that came from the UN talked about using corn and everything for biofuel, having a negative impact on food security, specifically for countries in Africa and in Latin America. What do you think of that?
I would like to hear from you on these two questions.