I've been very impressed by those countries that have reached a kind of national consensus on the fact that development assistance is beyond partisanship and should be seen as a foundational principle for their countries. I think it would be great if Canada could maintain the same level of consensus and understanding about why it's important for us to get our levels of development assistance up. I don't mean this as a comment or anything about Parliament, but there are very few questions in Parliament about the amount of development assistance. There are starting to be more now, which is great. I was as clear as I could possibly be while still being a special envoy of one particular government and saying, “Look, we simply have to do more.”
With COVID, I think we can make a very strong case as to why it's not just morally the right thing to do, but it's actually economically and socially the right thing for us to do. Otherwise, as Mark and David have said, we're going to have more conflict; we're going to have more migration; we're going to have more refugees. We're just going to go into a downward spiral, which is in nobody's interest. It's not in Canada's self-interest to do this.
I think there has to be a real effort, and frankly, I hope your committee can do this. There can be a consensus in the committee that there are some targets we should be trying to reach. We're not going to help reach the sustainable development goals by 2030 unless we integrate those goals into our own budgeting and what we do as a country. That's, ideally, where we should be.
That's about as much as I can say, except to assure you that I say this privately to my employer as much as I say it publicly. I really believe that we have to get our act together as a country and commit ourselves to taking these steps forward. I make this case all the time, and I would encourage the whole committee to make this case.