Thank you.
I have a couple of questions. I was reading some of the millennium development goals, the report that was issued by the UN with respect to Africa, and one of the items they mentioned--and you mentioned it too, Ms. Sheffield--was with respect to the role that women play in agriculture. I'm going to go into a bit of a different area here. One of the things they mentioned was the need for more of a role, better sustainable agriculture, crops that for instance are more resistant, better transportation. I think somebody mentioned infrastructure modes as being one of the big issues that is stopping Africa from achieving some of its millennium development goals. I wonder if you could comment on that.
One of the other things that struck me was they mention in this report the lack of actual statistics. A lot of the member nations that the report covered actually don't have appropriate statistics. They don't maintain statistics and they don't look at things in the right way, so it's very difficult for organizations and for governments to truly understand the depth of the problem they're having.
Another area they mentioned was with respect to trade and how it's important that developed nations improve their trade with Africa so that there's more of an opportunity to trade agricultural products. I suspect that goes not just for Africa, but for other impoverished nations. The reason I bring that up is because we've been focusing a lot in Parliament with respect to opening up new trade markets for Canadian goods and there have been a lot of delays with respect to opening up trade markets in some of the poorer nations. There's also a lot of discussion right now about potentially limiting the access to modified seeds with respect to agriculture. I'm worried about that in relation to how this will impact Africa in the future.
I wonder if any of you can talk about that as well, more of a long term with respect to how we meet the nutritional needs in Africa.