Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for their testimony today. I particularly appreciate the comment that the work we do in the committee and the work you're all doing to promote inclusive education is good not just for children who require that inclusiveness but good for education systems and good for all children. I think that's really important.
I also think there is something to be said about how it becomes such better education. My son has ADHD. I have a private member's bill on ADHD that talks about making sure that the teachers and the doctors have the training to identify and treat ADHD, because we know that if it is treated and dealt with, there are some real positives, and there is an extraordinary cost if it is not. For me, I see that echoed around the world as we look at inclusive education.
Now, one of the things that I will disagree on a bit with our witnesses is that this is not a political issue. I'm sorry to say that it is a political issue, because what we are looking for here is increased funding. We're looking for increased funding to be able to do the work that Canada should be doing.
At the moment, our official development assistance is set at 0.3% of GNI. That is insufficient. We have a political party in this country that ran the last election on a 25% cut to ODA. These things cost money. We need to contribute to them. It is money up front. It is money that we need to spend now so that we don't pay a thousand times more later on, at a later date. From my perspective, I'm sorry, but this is political.
I appreciate what we heard, which is that there is a systemic review that is needed. One of the things I'd like to ask Mr. Jenkins is, how do we ensure that our ODA is better spent? Knowing that we have limited dollars, knowing that we need to have a systemic review of where that is going, do we need to tie strings...? Do we need to look at things like our multilateral organizations and demand data from them? We've heard today that there is insufficient data. Is this something that could be done to make sure that our ODA is being spent appropriately?
I'll start with you, Mr. Jenkins, if I could.