Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all very much for being here today.
I want to thank you for bringing up the fact that there are a lot of French speakers outside of Quebec. I represent the French quarter in Alberta, and about 20% of my riding is French. It's an important thing to note, but my questions today are for you, Mr. Devlen.
In an article in 2021, you spoke about the need to align our foreign policy with public opinion, and I've struggled with this for a very long time. I've thought about this in terms of our international development efforts, and one thing I wonder about is the fact that, first of all, in recent years—over the last 15 years or so—there have been massive cuts to public engagement and massive cuts to public education with regard to public opinion around global citizenship. The implications of that are that we're no longer talking about it in schools, in media and in universities the way we used to do. On the other hand, we're saying that we should align with public opinion when we have not invested in making sure that Canadians are engaged in public opinion.
Could you talk about the implications of that? Then, if this is the case, if we have a population whose public opinion has not been informed by some of these initiatives, should we be trying to align with that public opinion?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.