Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for appearing here today, Madam Minister.
I first want to commend you for the extraordinary job you did during that crisis in Haiti during the earthquake, and for the reaction of your staff and your people to get there as fast as you could. Given the circumstances of the country, it must have been an extremely trying and testing time, particularly with the unfortunate bereavement of some of your own people and the people there on the ground too, whom they must have met and known as well.
Congratulations for that. It's a tremendous effort.
Of course, you are aware that I was in Haiti in 2006 for the election and saw for myself first-hand the tremendous need of that country, even at that time. We travelled through Jacmel, and unfortunately it was badly hit by the earthquake too.
At that time, we had some ongoing funding of $555 million that had been committed. To walk into the earthquake with, in my understanding, an additional commitment of $150 million and an additional commitment of $400 million to support reconstruction.... I can just imagine some of the decisions that you have to make on where your priorities should be lying. Of course, I certainly would agree that an extremely high priority of decision-making was required to allocate that money there, and it has to come from someplace too.
Perhaps you could tell us a little of some of the difficulties of rolling out the funding there, because I think it would be interesting for everybody to hear that there are some conditions and circumstances that are beyond everybody's control. You touched a little bit on the huge amount of rubble, but there are other circumstances too.