Mr. Speaker, we will be voting against the motion before the House.
This motion is an extremely transparent attempt simply to reopen the abortion debate which we have clearly said we have no intention of getting into. By voting against this motion we are proving that we will not reopen the debate. In addition, the motion contains rash and extreme anti-American rhetoric that we simply cannot support as a matter of foreign policy.
I am rising today to speak to this motion and more specifically, to outline how important food security is in the context of maternal and child health. Before I get into the details, let us first look at the present landscape.
More than one billion people around the world have too little to eat or are malnourished, which is the result of a number of factors. These include population growth, volatile food prices, transportation and agriculture costs, as well as a struggling economy and reduced global investment in food and agricultural development.
While we are focusing on this, the Liberals are focusing on something else. Instead of supporting the Prime Minister in his efforts to make the lives of women and children in third world countries better, the Liberals only see an opportunity to cause controversy where there is none and slam our neighbours to the south which they should not be doing. For the Liberals, this statement is simply business as usual.
For the men, women and children who go to bed hungry every night, a lack of access to sufficient safe and nutritious food can have a devastating impact on their health and severely limits their ability to learn in school, to earn a living and otherwise to live well on the basic necessities of life.
This makes food insecurity a central obstacle to reducing poverty and in keeping mothers and children healthy at the most critical points of their lives, for mothers during pregnancy and in the years that immediately follow, and for children during their early years of life.
Within the global context, Canada is among the leading donor countries committed to countering food insecurity. In fact our government has made the issue a major focus of the Canadian International Development Agency whose very mission is to lead Canada's international effort to help people living in poverty and to do so in a way that is efficient, focused and accountable.
Since the 2008-09 food crisis, the number of people living without access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food jumped from 923 million to over one billion, one-sixth of our world's population. The majority of these individuals are farmers living in rural areas, and of course, women and children.
This is particularly significant for two reasons. One, worldwide approximately 500 million small-scale farmers cultivate food for more than two billion individuals. Two, women account for a large proportion of agricultural production in the developing world and are therefore important agents of economic development and food security. We cannot hope to reduce poverty if the very individuals who bring food to the world are incapable of even feeding themselves.
From national and regional perspectives, we know that governments must strengthen their ability to address food security. We know as well that in the global context, difficult economic forces continue to aggravate the stability of food systems. The same goes for volatile energy crises which make food more difficult to access given that its production, transportation and distribution rely heavily on energy markets, and likewise for the unpredictability of a changing climate, including changing intensity and frequency of rainfall which can negatively impact and influence the global food system.
As a government our imperative is to help the world's poorest and most disadvantaged to overcome these challenges and to make it less likely for them to be affected by food shortages and constraints to agricultural productivity.
To help navigate these waters, the Canadian International Development Agency has a food security strategy that clearly outlines three priorities: sustainable agricultural development, food aid and nutrition, and research and development.
Most poor people living in rural areas earn their income from agriculture. In fact, according to the 2008 World Development Report, agriculture programming is two to four times more effective in reducing poverty than investments in other sectors.
CIDA's plans for sustainable agricultural development therefore include doubling agriculture investments by supporting national and regional agriculture strategies which support the ongoing efforts of the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development and supporting agricultural research.
These measures will translate into progress on many fronts. More small rural farmers will increase agricultural production and CIDA's partner governments will develop stronger policies, make their institutions more accountable and design better processes to provide stable, local sources of nutritious food.
In terms of food aid and nutrition, it bears remembering that worldwide more deaths are attributable to hunger and malnutrition than HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Nutrition is therefore obviously essential to early childhood development and to building a healthy population for the long run, given that malnourishment leads to serious illness, blindness, mental disorders and death among the world's most vulnerable.
In terms of addressing the food needs of these high risk populations, emergency food aid, social safety nets and nutrition are examples of key interventions that contribute to addressing food insecurity. CIDA's work to improve access to sufficient quantities of nutritious food and enhance the quality and effectiveness of food aid programming will result in more lives saved and better overall health for all developing world citizens, including mothers and children.
The final priority in the food security strategy is research and development. As investments in agriculture research and development have declined over the last 30 years, so too has growth in global agriculture productivity. Based on present estimates the global food production must increase by 70% by 2050. Investments in agriculture research and development are essential if production is to keep pace with increasing demand.
As a significant donor to the Consolidated Group on International Agricultural Research and through contributions from Canadian academia, private sector and non-government organizations, Canada is putting its considerable experience in agricultural research and development to use on a global scale by sharing knowledge and resources with developing countries. In fact, our government also contributed $62 million to the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund. We put our money where our mouth is.
The purpose of this joint initiative between CIDA and the International Development Research Centre is to increase the contribution of Canadian organizations toward solving global challenges regarding food security through applied collaborative efforts and results-orientated research in partnership with developing country based partners.
The work CIDA is doing to facilitate research and development within the developing world will give farmers in partner countries better access to the new technologies and specialized expertise they need in order for their farming operations to keep pace with the growing demand for food and also to withstand the ongoing effects of the changing climate.
The triple challenges of meeting the food needs of tomorrow, of staving off hunger today while doing this sustainably illustrates the enormity of our task and the need for concerted and coordinated action. This is critically important as we keep working to reduce poverty.
While we are here to debate the important issue of women's and children's health, the Liberals continue their history of making inappropriate and disrespectful remarks about the United States and this statement in their motion is just more of the same.
Our government has made much progress in trying to undo some of the damage caused to our relationship with the U.S. by the party opposite when it was in government over the past few years, yet the Liberals continue to undermine and continue to try to damage that relationship.
We are going to ignore the Liberals' provocations and continue to make progress on food security for at risk populations in our world. There is no doubt that food security ties itself closely to our government's objectives on maternal and child health. Without it, we cannot hope to keep mothers and children healthy at the most critical points of their lives.