Mr. Speaker, I would just like to ask the member the same question I asked the Bloc. There are two crises pending related to financial affairs.
One is on polio. The government has reduced the money for polio. We are talking about very small amounts of money. It is actually shocking that 10% of Canadians are not vaccinated, and for only 60ยข we could stop a child overseas from being in a wheelchair for the rest of his or her life, or in poor countries even crawling if they do not have wheelchairs.
Therefore, I would ask if the member would join me in lobbying the government to reinstate the money for fighting polio, in some form. Maybe it would not be in this budget. There are different ways of doing it. It is such a small amount of money, it could be done in supplementaries.
The second thing is that tomorrow, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium has to make a decision on the fact that rice has increased three times in cost and 140,000 people in refugee camps in Burma are going to have their rations cut in half of what they need to survive. The six types of food they get now will be cut to just simply rice and salt, and they will get half enough rice in a day to live.
I am just wondering if he could also help me encourage the CIDA minister to provide an additional $1 million a year from Canada. Canada has been funding this for 10 years already, but we would need to add $1 million. There is another $6 million shortfall but the other donor countries would follow suit, I am sure, if Canada led.
I am hoping the member would join me in lobbying the government for these small amounts of money, one way or another, whether it is in the budget or some other form, to solve these humanitarian crises that have arisen.