You've already succeeded in doing what I wanted you to do, which was to bring the context closer to the ground, because I want people listening your presentation to realize that you folks have a heart. There are many times that people in public service are just “number crunchers”; they're just this or they're just that. I was concerned, because I know of some of the activities and have heard of some.
One of the things you just mentioned, benchmarks, was the next point I was going to. In our discussions before at this committee, we've talked about nations that have poor human rights records and how we can improve that, and whether we could tie our CIDA funding or any moneys that we're investing in those countries to benchmarks. Particularly concerning was the “boy-dance” thing in Afghanistan, which we heard about. Here we are with our military fighting in that country, with all kinds of resources going there. How do we hold them accountable to us to do something to stop these kinds of horrific things--by tying our aid to it?
Of course, one person said, well, you know, we'll tell them that we'll remove our troops if they don't do this. But this is a long-time effort. This is a huge systemic cultural change.
I agree with you that your planning has to be for generations, not just years, because this cultural thing is in more than one or two countries. It is across the board.
So I was pleased to hear your response.