Thank you very much, Ms. McPherson. Of course, I always welcome your input. You have a lot of experience in development and it's great to work with you on this file.
When it comes to the budget, I just want to clarify a couple of things because I think you raise some really good points.
There was an increase of $1.4 billion in the ODA budget on top of the existing budget in Budget 2021. This is in addition to the $1.7 billion in new resources we mobilized last fiscal year that went to, on the one hand, fighting COVID-19, with $940 million for the ACT A process, making Canada the fourth largest contributor in the world to the ACT A. This I think is something that is extremely important in the global fight against COVID-19. It also included $400 million in additional dollars for humanitarian and development programming last year.
I agree that there is huge challenge around the world, but we have mobilized significant new resources in the last year alone. This year alone it's $700 million in additional dollars to fight many crises around the world.