Foreign Affairs committee  The people in the Department of Finance would be in a much better position to comment on that. I would not like to say something that I have not verified.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't know.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are some terms, such as “Canadian values”, which are very difficult to define. It may vary from one Canadian to another and from one person to another. When you have a vague term in a statute, the difficulty is that the statute has to be interpreted. You don't find much ass

Foreign Affairs committee  The act is administered by the Department of Finance. It's a statute of Parliament. Those agreements were negotiated after the Second World War. There is a section in that act that imposes an obligation on the Minister of Finance to submit a report. I cannot say more on that, bec

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have the number of countries. We were very interested in that and we researched where we could find information. Of course, sometimes information is available only in a language we cannot read very well. We looked at sixteen OECD countries. Out of that number, ten did no

Foreign Affairs committee  A way to include poverty reduction in the consultation process?

Foreign Affairs committee  This is a good question. Would the consultation process be aimed at taking into account the perspectives of the poor or at reducing poverty? The bill has several criteria. Would it be aimed at making sure that the assistance is consistent with the principles of sustainable develo

Foreign Affairs committee  Do you want to know the differences between the bill and other examples abroad, including the U.K. legislation?

Foreign Affairs committee  The U.K. legislation at first seems similar to this bill because it has this lens of poverty reduction, but there are big differences between what this bill proposes to do and what the U.K. legislation does. It's interesting, because we have a past history with the U.K. on the l

Foreign Affairs committee  I did not say much about the poverty reduction goal. I simply mentioned that it was one of the objectives of the bill. You are talking about the requirement to consult.

Foreign Affairs committee  This is a requirement. A possible interpretation would be that before making a decision -- and God knows hundreds if not thousands are made each year -- to provide development assistance, consultations must take place beforehand. The consultation process can be quite demanding. M

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, to me it seemed redundant. When I look at the wording of the clause, it seems to mention more or less the same thing. I'm trying to find it now.

Foreign Affairs committee  I was looking at clause 10. It referred to “a summary of any representation made by Canadian representatives with respect to the priorities and policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions”. Clause 9 says the same thing, except that instead of “Bretton Woods Institutions”, it says

Foreign Affairs committee  The IMF, the World Bank, and a few other organizations are all part of the Bretton Woods institutions—

Foreign Affairs committee  —so it seemed to me to be the same. Then the Minister of International Cooperation does not have responsibilities for Bretton Woods institutions; the Minister of Finance has. That's why it was mentioned.