Minister, that's what I like to call the “translation break”.
In your mandate letter, the Prime Minister set out as your objective to increase Canada's international development assistance every year towards 2030, in order to realize the United Nations' sustainable development goals. I would remind you that donor countries have been given a target of 0.7% of their gross domestic product.
However, in the last federal budget, the government indicated that 15% of the international assistance budget would be used elsewhere. You were quoted by Radio‑Canada saying that money wasn't everything and that it wasn't enough to simply announce funding, but also to ensure that the right programs were in place in order to get the desired results.
My question is very simple, Minister: do you still believe that the target of 0.7% of gross domestic product is an objective that we should reach and that we should strive to reach? Do you still intend on hitting that target?