Thank you.
Going last is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Many people have already said the things that I had wanted to speak about, but I fully agree with them. If I may, since I agree with what my colleagues have said, I will continue on from where Serge left off. Perhaps he would have gone on, had he had more time.
CIDA's current cooperation framework was put in place, and we are extremely pleased with it. We hope that it will have a significant impact in the areas of health, governance and women's rights, which we talked a lot about during the previous meeting when we arrived a little late.
This is not just about the Congo; it's a much broader issue. However, since I have but few opportunities to appear before you, this is the time to say it. In some way, this code of cooperation excludes players with important political knowledge about the Democratic Republic of Congo. We can talk about the Congolese civil society, which plays an extremely minor role in the implementation of Canadian initiatives and, of course, Canadian civil society.
I really feel it is important to mention this, since Canadian civil society organizations—mine, that of my colleagues and many others—have not been involved in implementing the choices that Canadian cooperants have made recently with regard to implementing programs such as Alesse, in the context of women's rights. Instead they have chosen to turn to multilateral organizations under the UN, which are clearly quite efficient in some ways, but which have at least two small defects. First, they are quite expensive. That little detail is often forgotten. Second, they are not required to report back to the Canadian government. There are few to no Canadian organizations benefiting from this support, from this work. It's important to say this because Canadian civil society organizations, including mine, have been working in the Democratic Republic of Congo for many years now.
There are perhaps several hundred local Congolese partners working on women's issues, who could implement projects. Finally, a project was undertaken that had been supported by another country, fortunately or unfortunately. It concerned the rights of women in Kinshasa and was an opportunity for us to provide information in all the national languages. Thanks to this project, we were able to turn the spotlight on this issue, but unfortunately, Canada has not undertaken the same kind of initiative. In my opinion, this is a significant loss.
That is essentially what I wanted to say.