Thank you very much.
Thank you, all, for appearing.
I prefer to say “Your Excellency”. We're very grateful for how kind you were when we had our delegation to Ukraine quite some time ago. I didn't realize you were in the department, and it's great to see.
I'm not going to ask you a question about it, but I do hope that there will be follow-up. We are doing this study, as my colleague Ms. Vandenbeld has said.
I'm deeply troubled that, several budgets back, only 4% of the budget was on democratic development. I think you can anticipate that we'll be asking for more. It is one of the action items in the policy, and it obviously is not delivering properly if it stays at that small percentage.
I would like to ask, first of all, two questions related to emergencies and humanitarian assistance.
A number of issues have been raised with me by civil society organizations since I gained this portfolio. First, consistent with the feminist international assistance policy, have you established or do you intend to establish a dedicated pool of aid for gender in emergencies? In other words, a dedicated pool, not just giving money.
Second, Canada has committed that 25% of its aid is supposed to go to local actors; in other words, organizations in the receiving countries for humanitarian assistance. Have you tracked the money going to local groups, and if so, can you release that?