Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair.
Allow me to start by giving you a very brief description of the program as it was at the time of the coup. For Canada, it was a country of focus and, as a matter of fact, the largest recipient in west Africa at the time. It was receiving volumes of assistance in excess of $100 million a year.
It was focused in the areas of children and youth. In that, we were primarily within health and education. We have been in those sectors for some time and have been achieving some considerable results. We have a number of objective measures that can demonstrate concrete, tangible progress that has been realized. Similarly, in education, both with access to schools and the quality of the education received and with more textbooks for young children, these were some of achievements.
On the food security side, we were working in the agriculture area through irrigation, through microcredit, and through the development of markets. Once again, we have a list of some pretty impressive concrete results that have occurred.
Then, with regard to overall governance and oversight, we had a number of programs that were working very well to provide some teeth to the democracy, in the sense that there was excellent oversight. We have a flagship with the Auditor General of Mali, where we're working closing with our Canadian Auditor General. They have become very important in the scheme of things in Mali in terms of providing local oversight to their processes.
So there's a number of significant achievements to point to, and some of these achievements and programs were done directly with the Government of Mali, involving financial transfers to the government. These became the subject of the suspension at the time of the coup, instituted immediately at the time of the coup. This resulted in a significant statement and significant cuts at time of coup. In total, it represented $45.6 million in moneys we withheld that we would have otherwise spent had the coup not occurred. So that's a pretty tangible reaction right there.
In terms of what we're still able to do, in the communiqué issued by Ministers Oda and Baird it was clear that we would suspend financial transfers to the government. I have quantified those already in what I have just said. But in terms of what is continuing, it's support through non-governmental channels, NGOs, international bodies, and humanitarian types of assistance. Where conditions allow, that part of the program is still continuing.