Mr. Speaker, my question concerns foreign aid. The member talked about poverty in the world. I think Canadians are a compassionate group of individuals.
I had the opportunity of representing my constituents in Africa last September. Eight or ten different countries came together to try to discern how to apply the funding Canadians gave to Africa for relief for poverty and HIV-AIDS. We visited some HIV-AIDS hospitals and talked with some of the NGOs.
There is no Canadian alive who would not dig deep into their pocket to support those individuals. The problem is how do we ensure that the money for relief measures, including poverty, gets to where it is needed.
This leads to my question regarding the former government's policy and direction concerning money going to foreign relief. How do we ensure that those dollars get to where they are needed? The former government's policy was that all the money would be applied through the governments. Many of those governments are quite corrupt.
Let us not put it that way. Let us put it another way and talk about our first nations people. Nine billion to twelve billion dollars go to first nations people, yet we have third world conditions. We see a bureaucracy that becomes weighted. Somehow we have to get over that.
Would my colleague tell us how his party would apply those dollars directly to where they are needed, and not necessarily going through governments but through NGOs?