Thank you. I'm going to share my time with Madame Péclet.
I just wanted to nail something down. Mr. Robertson, I think I'll put it to you.
We had witness testimony at the last committee hearing about the concerns right now of the concentration of power within the Minister of Foreign Affairs' office, and we've certainly seen that in announcements, etc.
The concern you've mentioned around making sure we still have that voice for international development is certainly aligned, and we all get that with our foreign policy. But in the legislation as you see it, we have “the minister”, and that's the foreign affairs minister, and then “additional duties”. I certainly get and agree with this idea of putting people together and thrashing things out, but my concern is right now what we have is a very concentrated office, and we have a structure that's going to bring in another office.
You were underlining the concern around development dollars and where are they going to go. How do you see managing...we'll call it creative tension? Some others might have other words for it, but how do you ensure that things aren't going to be swallowed up by one minister? I think that's a fair concern, and certainly when you see the legislation structured the way it is, how is this going to happen? Who's wagging the dog, so to speak?
We had someone else who said trade could learn a lot from those in CIDA who are doing good CSR work.
The Kofi Annan report just on Africa, which I'm sure gained a lot of attention for you, is something that is a lesson. You can't just look at GDP and exports; look at results. And that usually comes from a sensibility of those who are in international development. How do we make sure we're not, within the structure, losing that important voice?