I have heard that Canada's current contribution is approximately 0.29% of its GDP. That isn't very much, in my view, to enable African countries to achieve one of the millennium objectives for development and to reduce the dire poverty currently afflicting Africa by 50% by 2015. In the global economic context, with the crisis countries are facing, won't the reduction in aid from Canada represent a major setback for these countries that are beginning to emerge? In the global economic context, are we not inflicting more suffering on these countries, all the more so since some of them have been removed from CIDA's priority list?
On May 13th, 2009. See this statement in context.