Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you ever so much to you both for two extraordinary presentations. Really, I am nearly speechless, and it doesn't happen that often.
To start with, we are in general agreement that what is at issue here is not so much the merger. To merge or not to merge is not the question here.
I hear, again, a common point in both of your presentations with which I fully agree. In particular, regarding humanitarian assistance, we need to keep that separate from Canadian priorities. It has to be based on international standards, humanitarian principles, and international humanitarian law. I fully agree with that.
On a number of issues you've mentioned, I could go on and on. Also, on the need for a full discussion, this is so important. It's such a rare opportunity to discuss the whole mandate of the minister and the department. As you will guess, we fully agree that this shouldn't have been done through a budget implementation bill. We need long consultations to do things properly.
I have so many questions. I'm sorry, I'm losing track of them.
One point, Mr. Munro, that you made was about the very slow process in the approval of projects and programs due to the centralization in the minister's office. What we seem to note is that as centralization is increasing, as you were saying, the speed is slowing, and it also presents a problem of transparency because a lot of people are saying that they don't know what the criteria are any more. It's very difficult to evaluate on which basis a project is or is not approved.
Could both of you expand a bit on this?