Mr. Speaker, I am raising a question tonight in Adjournment Proceedings that I first raised on February 5 at the end of our annual International Development Week. I raised a question in great sadness because the Liberal Party platform in the last election committed to something that mattered. It committed to not cut development assistance. That stood in stark contrast to the Conservative Party commitment to cut development assistance. It was one of those issues on which voters could make a pivotal choice. Sometimes, it seemed like they were saying the same thing: Liberals were saying they were going to get rid of the consumer carbon price and Conservatives were saying they were going to get rid of the consumer carbon price.
However, on the issue of development assistance, there was a clear choice to be made because the Liberals said, very clearly, that they would not cut development assistance. This matters, particularly in the world today, where shocking things have happened south of the border. Under the Trump administration, two critical decisions were made that imperil millions and millions of the world's poorest. One was the decision to cut all ties and cut funding. The U.S. was the biggest funder of the World Health Organization, the organization that helps with immunizations against polio, malaria and TB. A lot of us in Parliament and across Canada are Rotarians. We worked with the program to end polio that was supported by Canadians from coast to coast to coast. When Trump cut funding to the World Health Organization, the U.S. cut funding to one of the biggest partners working around the world with Rotarians to end the scourge of polio. At the same time, pretty much, Elon Musk and his DOGE machine, along with his fake but real chainsaw, cut USAID, which was one of the world's biggest donor organizations, from a government state donor to the poorest of the poor.
Again, Canada's role in this is important. We have shown, if not leadership in terms of dollars, leadership in exhorting others to do it. Our former prime minister Lester B. Pearson chaired a UN agency and set a target for industrialized countries, suggesting that if wealthy donor countries would only put 0.7% of our GDP into official development assistance, we could end poverty. The closest we ever got to that target was back in 1992 when the prime minister was Brian Mulroney. At the Rio Earth Summit, Canada had 0.48%.
Now, tragically, the Liberals have broken that promise. We were never as close as we were under Mulroney, but we have dropped quite a bit. Breaking their promise, the Liberals, under our current Prime Minister, cut $2.8 billion from development assistance. At a time when the world looks to us to step up and help repair the damage done by the hole created by the U.S. stepping away from the poorest of the poor, we are doing the same and stepping away instead of stepping up.
In a moment of sadness on February 5, I posed the question and pointed out to the minister that this is the first time in 50 years that Canada has not had a full cabinet minister responsible for development assistance. Rather, we have a secretary of state who I know means well, but a secretary of state for development assistance is not the same thing as having a cabinet minister at the table.
I hope to pursue this matter.