On the financial crisis, we initially thought that Africa was going to be spared the impact of this. But what we are seeing in the past month is that it's starting to accelerate and deepen the impact on many African economies. We're in danger now of people sliding back into poverty who had actually emerged from poverty through very hard-won efforts over the last 10 years.
The same is true of the food prices. Food prices skyrocketed. They have come down, but the impact on the poorest members of society has been absolutely devastating in some parts of Africa.
Within CIDA, we're looking at our programs to try to help mitigate the impact of the financial crisis by getting some of our resources into general budgetary support for the government more quickly so that social services will not suffer as greatly as their own revenue sources begin to come under stress. We're looking at these issues right now. We will try to manoeuvre our programs to try to mitigate some of the impact of this crisis.
I'm not minimizing it in the slightest. In fact, it's a real tragedy in that as this financial crisis begins to bite, people tend to be slipping away from the development goals that were set for them.