Mr. Chair, my friends in the NDP seem to be a little confused. They have said many times tonight that Canada closed its diplomatic mission, its embassy, in Niger. We did not do that. Canada did not have an embassy in Niger. It never did have an embassy there. What it had was a CIDA office. Niger is covered from Bamako, Mali. It was then and it is now. There has been no change.
They keep saying that Canada is reducing its contributions to Africa. That is not true. Canada has doubled its contributions to Africa since the levels of 2003-04 under the former Liberal government.
My friend asks what Canada is doing with respect to AFISMA. First, the building that AFISMA is operating out of was built largely with Canadian money. There would not be an AFISMA headquarters if it were not for the support of the Canadian government and the Canadian taxpayer.
The members want to know why Japan is putting in $100 million in and Canada is putting in, most recently, $13 million.
Canada has been contributing to Mali since 1960, not Japan. Canada has been putting in $110 million each and every year for many years. Most of that money, as we have discussed tonight, is continuing. It is only the money that was going directly to the government of Mali, which has been frozen because that government currently is not a democratically-elected government.
Canada is one of the largest donor countries in Mali. It has been before and it continues to be today.