Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all members who participated in the debate. I appreciate both those who are for and I somewhat less appreciate those who are against. So many people said so many nice things about me that I feel like I have just come from my own funeral. I hope that does not auger poorly for the bill.
This continues to be and will always be an extremely important bill in order to focus our thoughts on what ODA is all about. What is official development assistance all about? Is it about poverty alleviation or is it about a whole bunch of other things? That is what this bill is about.
I appreciate that on the other side we received what I might call spiritual support for the notion of the bill. As in life, spirit does not pay the bills. I hope that we are strong enough and that we will see through this issue, so that we put some teeth in our official development assistance. The teeth are in this bill. The practicality is in this bill. Whatever else this bill is, it is not naive.
I do not dispute with the hon. member that we do other good things. I do not dispute that for a second. Our official development assistance must be focused on poverty alleviation and only on poverty alleviation.
If in fact those are values that we all adhere to and support, fine, then we will continue to do those things, but it will not come out of this particular budget. It will only count if it is in favour of poverty alleviation. Those are the issues and that is where the debate is to be joined.
I do not see this as a naive bill, with the greatest respect to my friend opposite. I see this as a bill that asks for accountability. Presumably accountability is something that this new government thinks is an important thing. Apparently, those members thought it was an important thing when they were in opposition, as Mr. Harper, Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton wrote to the then Prime Minister--