Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses.
Your presentations will once again be invaluable to this work.
As representatives of non-governmental organizations and other organizations, you're probably the best observers on the ground to report on the effectiveness of our responses. There hasn't really been a budget and we have updates, including one scheduled for next Monday. However, estimates suggest that the federal government has invested up to $800 billion to deal with the pandemic since it started. We don't know the exact amount. We're talking about four to five times more money than we invest in a typical fiscal year.
The Minister of International Development appeared before us on November 17 and told us that Canada supposedly allocated an additional $1 billion to respond to the impact of the pandemic internationally. One billion dollars is one-fifth of what the government normally spends on international development in the budget, according to the latest appropriations that we passed recently. This $5 billion also includes Canada's contribution to the United Nations system.
If Canada, in response to the crisis, invested four to five times more than what it normally invests and allocated only one-fifth more than what it usually allocates to international development, would you say—as you observe the situation on the ground—that some of the development assistance has been drained away to deal with the pandemic in developing countries?