Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
I realize that often it is not just money that is being transferred in our bilateral systems. Often money is part of it. There was a budgetary figure not this year but last year or two years ago where we spent tens of millions of dollars in direct transfers to help other countries with their national debt problems, for example.
To me that is not a purpose for CIDA. That is not something that Canada should be doing at this time, giving other countries direct assistance to help with their national debt problems when we have the biggest national debt problem we have ever had in our history. There are times when direct money is transferred. In those cases we have to restrict the mandate of CIDA through legislation to eliminate that abuse.
Second, there are times when instead of thinking of strictly humanitarian reasons, we start to think of Canada's commercial interests. Madam Labelle mentioned the other day that 60 per cent of our money is spent here in Canada, sometimes for buying foodstuffs and so on but sometimes for reasons that are more commercial in nature and not particularly geared for the poorest of the poor whom we should be helping.
In those cases, I am concerned. The Auditor General this year did not specifically identify any horror stories. He tried to zero in on the process and the problem within CIDA that he identified by a lack of legislation and some other things but tried to avoid the horror stories as I have tried to avoid them today in my presentation. However those horror stories still exist. We can go back through the last 10 years of Auditor Generals' reports to see them in their fullness.
That is why we need to restrict it to humanitarian aid. I realize that sometimes it is goods and services that are also exchanged but by and large we need to restrict it to the poor, make the mandate strict in legislation and we will not only enhance CIDA's reputation within Canada, which is very important at this time as it is flagging, but improve our opinion abroad as well.