Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, for inviting me to appear before you today. Greetings.
I am coming in from Lagos, Nigeria. It is about 10:27 p.m. here. It's an honour to get to talk to you folks about what's happening on the ground in a developing country, as well as to field your questions in my area of expertise. I'm glad to do so.
Before I go any further, since this is the first time I'm getting to speak to her since her election and to see her now in a new role, I want to extend congratulations to an MP who I worked with very closely in the past.
MP McPherson for Edmonton Strathcona, congratulations again on your election. It's good to see someone from an international development background now making policy as well, so thank you for that.
I think the reason for my being invited here is more on the private sector side of things than on the practitioner or impact of development co-operation side. I did have the honour of serving as the director of policy to three different international development ministers in the previous government, and I have had the opportunity of seeing how Canadian aid and Canadian foreign policy impact developing countries around the world.
I'll focus my comments on three main areas: food security, gender-based violence, specifically women, peace and security, and the last part of my talk will be on Canada-Africa relations.
Suffice it to say, I sat in on the last panel, and I think you also heard a lot from other experts. There's no doubt we are facing an unprecedented global crisis. It's affecting everybody. It's affecting people here, although not as severely as one never would have expected or would have thought initially. Definitely, its impacts on global development and on the global economy are obviously unprecedented, as well as its impact on the private sector, especially the private sector economy of smallholder farmers and small and medium scale entrepreneurs in developing countries. The impact is going to be great, and we can't overlook that.
With regard to food security, the UN Secretary-General recently warned that COVID would disrupt the functioning of food systems, resulting in health and nutrition consequences and a severely underfunded and under-seen impact on mothers and babies, especially in developing countries. The pandemic has exposed an already vulnerable system in the sense of food security, and this is going to continue. The UN 2020 global nutrition targets have been slowing already. At this point, there is absolutely no way we're going to meet them without having a lot more boldness, a lot more ambition and accelerated progress towards meeting those goals.
There is also gender-based violence. Much like in the Ebola outbreak, which some people have spoken about today, instances of violence against women increase during emergencies. This is no different. In fact, this is being called the hidden pandemic.
I'll move very quickly to the third point, which is Canada-Africa relations.
The pandemic and the response to this has to.... It's a good time to reset our relationship with Africa to provide the kinds of infrastructure and framework that allow for better co-operation between businesses, and to enhance the markets here. When the pandemic is over, the bigger issues will always be how will people survive here and how will the market strive....
Thank you.