Foreign Affairs committee  We've certainly consulted. What's more important is the principle of making sure that people in different regions have access to that communication. I believe in the Kananaskis process there may have been hearings in British Columbia in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, and one in Mon

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, from their members.

Foreign Affairs committee  Are you referring to the Canadian government's draft proposals?

Foreign Affairs committee  We have not seen anything concrete. The dialogue process between the G-8 Sherpas starts quite early, which is why we have submitted this proposal now. But we've had nothing more than informal conversations.

Foreign Affairs committee  No, no, that's okay. I just wanted to respond on building the bridges between the civil society networks. This past conference I referred to in the past three days brought in over 80 representatives from organizations from civil society around the world, and that's growing in mom

Foreign Affairs committee  Many of those listed there are themselves associations. For instance, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation has over 100 members in itself, and the Canadian Food Security Policy Group, which is listed there, has 35 in addition. It's difficult to have the exact tally

Foreign Affairs committee  Rights and Democracy has not participated so far.

Foreign Affairs committee  Many do, yes. The international development organizations do a lot of work with CIDA.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. Each recommendation was signed off by the individual organizations. There have been representatives from each, and then more broadly, other individual organizations are endorsing the whole document, which means it goes through their internal—

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll just add to that. Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said, “Never waste a good crisis”. This is an opportunity, really, to start looking at some of those fundamental systemic issues so that we prevent such things from happening in the future.

Foreign Affairs committee  At this level, it's very, very minimal. We are not familiar with a broad plan on the process for consultations, but we're looking forward to more information. We've had some initial consultations on specific issues with small groups at the officials level only.

Foreign Affairs committee  We have made some important progress in recent years on the accountability mechanisms for the G-8s. There's now a formal institutionalized structure to track what the G-8 commitments are and make further progress. That's also why you'll not see a laundry list of new initiatives i

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. Good morning. I thank you for the opportunity to appear here today, and I'll try to use it wisely to make the best use of your time. My name is Amanda Sussman and I'm here on behalf of the 2010 Canadian G-8 and G-20 Civil Society Co-ordinating Committee, which is an