Thank you.
In the interest of full disclosure, 19 years ago my first international posting to Bosnia was with CANADEM, and 14 years ago I was a program officer with the Parliamentary Centre and actually more recently served on the board. I am, then, very familiar with and well aware of the excellent and good work that you do, and I think that leveraging it is going to be one of the goals of this committee.
The question I have is about the need for some sort of overarching entity that would fund this kind of work but also be a clearing house and be able to fill that gap.
When this started being talked about 20 years ago with Democracy Canada and then leading up to the 2007 study, the Parliamentary Centre at the time, CANADEM, and I think IDRC, Rights and Democracy and a number of organizations vehemently fought against it. I remember that there was talk of the council.
I wonder, if we had actually implemented this in 2007.... I know that Rights and Democracy is gone, and I think your two organizations are largely in existence today, in a much smaller capacity, because of private donations and outside funds. Would things have been different today for you and for some of the organizations that have disappeared, had we actually implemented this in 2007, with a funding mechanism separate from the whims of governments back and forth?