I heard from CSOs and NGOs in Canada that have partners in various parts of the world but in Africa as well. They are calling for more aid, more development dollars and more of our programming to flow through our Canadian-based CSOs and NGOs to partner organizations for two reasons: efficiency reasons and—I'll come right out and say it—also less risk of corruption when it goes government to government down in the channels there.
The notion has been put forward that Global Affairs at times has preferred multilateral organizations rather than bilateral organizations or through our own organizations because that's less work, quite frankly, with regard to accountability. We're all in favour of accountability with regard to Canadian taxpayer dollars, but it's more work for our government to make sure that this accountability is there when it's not transferring that accountability responsibility to a multilateral organization.
How would you respond?