Foreign Affairs committee  It's growing.

Foreign Affairs committee  In Canada, we receive significant funding from CIDA, from the public, and from other Oxfams, globally—though by far, two-thirds of the funding comes from home.

Foreign Affairs committee  The public.

Foreign Affairs committee  Indeed. The president of CIDA gives us the assurance that it's business as usual, but the minister has been quite clear in going out of her way, I would say, to state something different, and that's why we're trying to clarify if Canada's position has shifted, and if new conditionalities will be introduced to our aid programs that never existed before.

Foreign Affairs committee  Our understanding is your understanding, but there are questions arising because the way the government has framed its position is different from the position it took in L'Aquila last year, in Cairo, and in all previous commitments. So we're trying to understand if this is a change or not.

Foreign Affairs committee  It's $25 million at Oxfam Canada, and about $1 billion globally.

Foreign Affairs committee  Certainly that's been our position. When we look at maternal deaths, one woman dies every eight minutes as the result of a botched abortion. Abortions are going to happen, and that's not what is at question. The question is are they going to happen safely as part of a medical system where people's needs are being met?

Foreign Affairs committee  There's no question that if we're dividing too small a pie, we're not going to get the results, we're not going to feed the people who need to be fed, right? So it isn't a question of picking one thing in competition with the others. It is absolutely legitimate to identify priorities, but to the extent we're identifying priorities, we need to ensure there's a concerted global response so critical pieces of this puzzle aren't falling without attention.

Foreign Affairs committee  The points you make are absolutely central. There are millions of people on the move in Africa every day in an ever more desperate search for ever more restricted resources. Water and grazing lands and viable farms are increasingly under pressure. In a country such as Bangladesh you see that literally millions of people spend a portion of their day, every single day, sifting out silt from salt water in order to try to preserve a land base to sustain their families and their communities.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm going to bridge from these presentations to a broader look at the whole question of the millennium development goals and the range of issues that are going to be addressed at the G-8 and need to be addressed globally in tackling the deep poverty that afflicts this planet. In doing that, I think it's really important that we recognize that while the issue of maternal health is the area in which we have had the least progress on the millennium development goals, in fact we are flagging on every single indicator, in every single target that we had sent, and we have slid back from the early progress that was being made in the earlier parts of the century.

Status of Women committee  Well, funding global health care systems certainly is complicated, but we do have the machinery in place to help with that. The World Health Organization and other bodies of the United Nations are there with the explicit mandate to support coherent strategies. The African Union has provided important leadership on this.

Status of Women committee  I think a number of them die. But as disturbing as that is, 30 times more survive but survive with deep disabilities and ongoing health issues. Some of you may have had an opportunity to meet women in countries like Ethiopia, where there's an epidemic of fistula. The number of women whose day-to-day lives is absolutely defined by the fact that they cannot control their own bodies because of the damage that was done to them in these circumstances....

Status of Women committee  I'll try to do this very quickly. The contribution of NGOs and volunteers and church groups is phenomenal, but at the end of the day, given the level of this crisis, you need a health care system. You don't fund ministries of health through charitable dollars. You fund ministries of health through tax dollars, and until those countries in the global south can generate their own resources from taxes, from royalties, or from other sources, we know that they're absolutely dependent on international aid playing a critical role in strengthening the health care systems we need.

Status of Women committee  Canada is putting itself forward as a candidate for the Security Council next year, and I think the whole world is watching our management of this question.

Status of Women committee  There are Oxfams that receive funding from the Gates Foundation. Oxfam Canada is not one of them because it's seen as American-based, so it's Oxfam America that receives funding.