Mr. Speaker, I want to pursue a question that I first asked on June 17 of this year. Looking at the reality that we have not had a budget yet, but will see soon, we have been told that we are going to see massive increases in military spending.
The point of my question was to ask if we were not aware that geopolitical security does not necessarily come from arming ourselves to the teeth but to prepare to wage peace, to be prepared to hold peace in areas that have been conflict zones and, even more importantly, perhaps long term, to ensure we address the climate crisis and that we are prepared to increase our humanitarian spending in the world.
The reason I raised this, and raise it again tonight, is due to the answer I received, of course. It revealed a lot about the new government's commitment to international development. Had I asked this question before the election, there would have been a minister responsible for international development who could have responded, but in this new cabinet, there is no minister responsible for international development. There is the member of Parliament for Surrey Centre, who is the Secretary of State for International Development. Certainly that is a responsibility, but he does not have the same degree of clout around the cabinet table because he is not seated there.
The reality of our current situation globally is that the world is in what the Prime Minister calls a “hinge moment”. It is certainly in crisis. The old order of things that we once thought we could take for granted has certainly been upended by the actions of the U.S. president. He is erratic, unpredictable and withdrawing from multilateralism. He is even withdrawing from the kind of multilateralism of international trade deals respecting the general agreement on tariffs and trade, the GATT from post Second World War. He has withdrawn from numerous global organizations.
That not only cuts into humanitarian assistance but also reorders the world in ways that can be quite dangerous as, for instance, when the United States withdraws from UN agencies, it opens up space for the People's Republic of China to move in. The People's Republic of China already owns much of Africa. When we look at the global south, we want the influence of democratic nations that hold human rights and free speech dear, recognizing that we cannot allow women and girls around the world to go uneducated and expect to have a stable world.
The United States has withdrawn from the World Health Organization. That clearly means the world is going to see more millions of people at risk of tuberculosis, of malaria and of HIV/AIDS. The U.S. has cancelled its entire USAID program. Where is Canada? Can we step up and fill the gap?
I mentioned that we do not have a minister for international development right now. It was Lester B. Pearson who, after he was prime minister, headed up a UN agency and said that we were going to target 0.7% of our GNI all around the world to international development assistance. That target, known as the Pearson target, has been more than met by quite a number of our European allies who have hit more than 1% of their GNI going to overseas development assistance.
Where is Canada? How close are we to our 0.7% target? We are just about halfway. We are at 0.34%. We are laggards in the world of international development assistance. We rate 15th, but that is a better record than where we rate for donating and helping peacekeeping operations.