Industry committee  It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. As you know, I'm the executive director of Oxfam Canada. Oxfam is very much involved in the work in southern Africa and around the world on these issues, both on the front lines in working day-to-day with creative, courageous pe

Industry committee  I would say no. That is to say, there are parallel dynamics here. First are the various avenues the Canadian government has and the Canadian people have to provide support to people to access drugs. CIDA has funding. We provide funding to support programs of WHO. We provide fun

Industry committee  Well, before we leave AIDS, I think the point that was made around children's formulas, around the appropriate dosage and treatment for children, around the whole question of second- and third-round treatment, is that these are the sorts of things we're still beginning to underst

Industry committee  I think it's really important that we be really clear that the countries of the south are asking for this every single day. They're not asking Canada persistently, because it's not apparent, until we get one pill out of this country, that it's worth asking for a pill from this co

Status of Women committee  Thank you to the committee for your leadership and your work on this issue, and for the invitation to appear before you today. Among the four of us, I know we're going to be covering off a lot of statistics, and there are some very powerful ones. Circulated in your package is a

Status of Women committee  I would say that what we're looking for from this meeting is to move forward. We need a serious commitment of funding, and we need it to be very clear that it's a multi-year commitment of significant funding. The reality is that in order to deal with this issue from a systemic p

Status of Women committee  My French is awful and so I am going to speak to you in English. It is a concern, given that Canada, through the Paris Declaration, the Accra Agenda for Action, and all the other initiatives we've taken with respect to our approach to international cooperation, where we are ackn

Status of Women committee  I want to emphasize that in many cases we're really talking about midwives. In my personal experience, I was outnumbered 40 to one by health professionals at the birth of my son. Our vision of what birth entails tends to be a little more high-end or high-tech than what we're talk

Status of Women committee  Certainly it is disappointing that the government has indicated there will be a cap on further increases in aid in future years, because this again speaks to our credibility as host this year. We are far from 0.7%, and we've already indicated we will be making further savings int

Status of Women committee  Certainly we do see rights as broad and indivisible. Any situation where you're saying we will respect these rights and those rights we won't gets us into very dangerous ground.

Status of Women committee  We certainly work around the world in conflict situations with literally hundreds of thousands of women who are in those circumstances in Asia, in the Americas, and in Africa most particularly. It is acute, it is criminal, and it requires a systemic response. A woman dies every

Status of Women committee  I'd like to respond to her second question, if I may, or make one comment on it. We're in a situation where it's not yet clear what the consequences are for the other parts of the aid package from the government having identified maternal and child health as a priority. We welco

Status of Women committee  Certainly, what I tried to do, but perhaps not specifically enough, is make very clear that the women on the front line in the story we are telling today are caught in the eye of a storm. It is the global financial crisis, the global food crisis, the global fuel crisis, the globa

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.