Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition initiated by the sociology students of Sir James Dunn Academy in St. Andrews, New Brunswick and signed by students and residents of St. Andrews in recognition of the fact the United Nations 2006 Millennium Development Goal report indicated that, between 1990 and 2002, the number of people living in extreme poverty in Africa increased by 140 million, that an estimated 824 million people in the developing world were affected by chronic hunger, that 10.5 million children died from preventable causes before their fifth birthday in 2004 and that global rates of HIV infection was still growing.
Therefore, the petitioners call upon Parliament to immediately take the necessary steps to establish a specific plan and timetable to increase Canada's aid budget to achieve an aid level of 0.7% of Canada's GNP by 2015.