Thank you very much.
I want to make one thing clear. We're not saying there is no role for the private sector, but I definitely don't see a role for the for-profit private sector.
You wrote an article that was published recently in Embassy. You wrote that “Traditional development actors like CIDA and NGOs play critical roles in immediate poverty alleviation and building enabling environments for development...”.
You also praised the U.K. for the stance it has taken on its international development. As you know, Prime Minister Cameron recently said that despite the economic state they are in, they're going to continue to live up to their commitment. He sees development as the right thing to do in moral terms and profoundly in the national interest.
Unfortunately for us here, our funding has essentially been frozen. The ODA envelope has been frozen. This freeze means that by 2014 our aid budget will have fallen to 0.28% of GDP, which will be the lowest in the 22 OECD countries—and shame on us.
We feel that despite the fact that maybe we have been buffered the most from the economic woes and that we're one of the wealthiest countries on earth, Canada is increasingly abandoning the world's poorest people and countries.
As you know, we have a federal budget coming up this week. I think a few people know that. A coalition of groups came to Parliament Hill last week to urge this government not to fight the deficit on the backs of the poor, a very heart-moving lobby. In light of your comments in Embassy about the critical role CIDA can play in alleviating poverty, do you share the view of this coalition that the budget must not slash foreign-aid funding?
I'd like a very brief answer, because I have another question, please.