Thank you.
I want to thank all of you for coming to present to us. It's really nice to see good friends sitting across the table.
I want to start off by acknowledging the amazing work I think the Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliates do in the way of international development. Not only do you commit to building social justice here at home, but you also carry that mandate out internationally.
One of the things that concerns us is the increasing politicization of our aid over the last number of years. One of the high-profile cases was the cutting that occurred to Kairos's funding because they believed the organization was critical of the Conservative foreign policy. There are other cases, maybe not as high-profile, maybe not involving as large a company, that are coming to light as well. We've seen lots of news stories in the media recently about CIDA's shifting its focus to partnerships between NGOs and private firms, many of them from the extractive industries.
We hear reports from the NGO community that they feel uncomfortable with these partnerships. They feel that they are not being awarded the projects under this new competitive bidding process. Some of them are feeling under pressure to seek some of these partnerships. I know that the CLC has had a good working relationship with CIDA over the years. I've been party to many of the reports you've made. CIDA continues to fund some good projects in partnership with the CLC.
Do you share the overall concern with this new direction, and what will be the impact on labour organizations if this shift in focus continues?