Mr. Gashirabake, I want to join with my colleagues in expressing our appreciation for your presence and your testimony here today, and also our appreciation for recalling for us the heroism of Nelson Mandela, the anniversary of whose passing is tomorrow. As it happens, and as I mentioned to you, before the hearing we had an all-party press conference today to call for the release of three imprisoned prisoners of conscience who were themselves inspired by Nelson Mandela.
You noted Mandela's sort of clarion call of education as a transformative change agent. That led you into the concern about the diminished access to post-secondary education here in Canada. I think your call for enhanced resources in that regard is timely, because I've just received, as I believe my colleagues did, a letter from the Minister of Finance, who is now in the process of drawing up the budget and who has asked for input from each of us as to recommendations we might have for the budget.
This notion that you placed before us of the importance of enhancing access to post-secondary education, particularly in view of the diminished access resulting from the suspension of the millennium foundation scholarship, I think would be an important contribution that we could make in our representations to the finance minister.
That brings me to the question on Rwanda. As you may know, while the Rwandan government provides assistance to the survivors of the genocide, it does not provide assistance to the children born of rape. At the same time, the Canadian government, if I may say so, in 2012 terminated its development assistance to Rwanda, I think on the grounds that Rwanda appeared to be enjoying a growth rate of 6%. But this masked the 45% poverty rate in Rwanda.
I have two questions. One, do you believe that Canada should renew its economic or development assistance to Rwanda? Two, by doing that, should it then itself have standing to call on the Rwandan government to assist the children born of rape?
It's hard for us to do it now that we've suspended our own assistance to Rwanda, but we could renew it, and at the same time, in a bilateral way, seek to get Rwanda to renew its assistance to the children of rape victims. What might be your comment in that regard?