Thank you very much for that question.
Indeed, Paul Hagerman is a good colleague. I would agree with him that there needs to be a better balance between short-term humanitarian assistance and longer-term assistance for food security, especially in the world's poorest and food import-dependent countries.
Obviously, the provision of humanitarian food assistance is addressing what we consider to be short-term emergencies. It's unfortunate that the amount of this aid is not indexed to food prices. When food prices rise, it means that the impact of what Canada is able to provide is definitely weakened. At the same time, we have to be careful not to rely on humanitarian assistance as a long-term strategy. That's where the recent reduction in Canada's development assistance overall, including for rural development, is unfortunate.
There need to be more resources put toward increasing the capacity of the poorest countries to produce their own food, and to do so sustainably. If Canada can be a leader in providing assistance, for example, for agroecological farming methods that rely less on synthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels, this could go even further to help insulate developing countries from shocks caused by the kinds of events that lead to higher prices across the board—food, energy and fertilizer.