There are some big donors, like some neighbours of Canada, that cause some concerns. We're watching that very carefully. I would say that, yes, it's probably a difficult environment. Although the advantage of having done this job for 15 years is that I've seen many crises—political, financial—and the Global Fund has always survived that because there has been this strong commitment and the belief that we are achieving results, so we maintain the confidence and trust, even when the external environment has not been conducive.
The same applies, so far—let's be very open—with the current U.S. administration. I mentioned before that the reason is due to the very strong bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress. We have very strong support from Democrats and Republicans and so far, they have not allowed a single cut to the Global Fund. That is a very important factor.
I'm not underestimating the pressure and I'm not saying that this will always remain the case, but so far, it has been because of this strong support. Scott is an expert on that because Scott is coming from the U.S. and has huge experience working with the U.S. Congress. He is working very hard to keep it that way, so that we maintain this bipartisan support.
We are watching all of that very carefully and we trust that, in the end, the confidence, the results, and the functioning of the Global Fund will prevail.
We talked a little bit about migration and the challenges for some countries. Of course, one other effect of migration, not so much in Canada...but we've seen in Europe where the wave of migration into a number of European countries put a lot of pressure on government budgets and, in some cases, also on development budgets. Fortunately, some of that has been reversed. There were major donor countries to the Global Fund that diverted some of the development aid money to refugees in their countries, but currently that trend has been reversed. We have to keep an eye on that as another effect of international migration. It sometimes puts development budgets under pressure and we have to defend that collectively, also because I deeply believe that, by improving the living conditions in these countries, we are also addressing some of the motivation for migration.
Health is a very tangible one. People do feel whether they have access to health care or whether their children have access to health care....if not, they will try to go somewhere that they might. I think this is a contribution to making sure that people have the right living conditions wherever they are born and where they normally want to live.