Thank you.
As I'm listening to this conversation, it's all very fascinating, but I sometimes think I am at a business development meeting, because when I really look at the purpose of our aid—and I'm talking about international development here—it is to reduce poverty. That's the primary driver. At times of crisis and otherwise, that's where Canadians want their funding to be going—to reducing poverty. I don't think its goal is to further private sector interests or short-term trade priorities. If that happens, that's wonderful. Yet a lot of the focus I've heard today has been on putting infrastructures in place or institutions in place that will help the mining companies or other companies that should go in.
When I've looked at public and private working together—and I've seen some projects in which they have worked well together—they've gone in and actually looked at the human rights issues. They've looked at the rights of workers. They've looked at the environmental impact. They've also looked at advocacy.
When I look at a wonderful institution like yours—I'm trying to learn more about it as well—you do work out there, but when I look at the report you did, the annual report for 2010, you're primarily funded through government sources and the National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn also receives money from the government. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way, in this case, because it's what you do with that money.
Canada's aid budget has been frozen. It cannot go up. We're actually falling behind, and that's what we're hearing from many of our partners. We are anticipating further cuts in the budget. There is a budget coming up. We're worried. We're not sure if that's going to happen. Really, with such a shortfall in our aid budget just because we're frozen—and by the way, we haven't gone up to our commitment of 0.07%—my biggest fear is that the government will look at ways of doing work with the private sector in such a way as to mask some of the underfunding and in a way that will not actually put into place long-term development. It will not be addressing poverty in a long-term, sustainable way, but rather with what could be very short-term interventions. You go in with a mining company. You're there for four, five, or ten years maybe. Then you're gone.
I have a lot of fears about our aid being so closely tied to one particular industry. It's not being driven by the community, as you said. It's not coming up from the grassroots. It's once again coming from here, and with a very corporate agenda and softened social responsibility.
What role do you think the public sector has to play in our international work, or do you think the private sector can do it all? Expand on that for me.