Foreign Affairs committee  On the bilateral program, I made the case before around responsive programming; I think that's a whole other stream. But if you're looking at the bilateral programming, which is meant to be country to country, there are challenges. The country partner governments actually don't

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't see these as either-or. We already have three themes now, and we have a country-of-focus approach now. They're not mutually exclusive. I don't want us to get into a sort of box whereby it's either this or it's that. I think we can have countries of focus. I see value, h

Foreign Affairs committee  No, we were not consulted. It was very much an internal process. It was as much a mystery to us as to you, and I have never spoken to anyone who was able to give me really good insight into exactly how it happened.

Foreign Affairs committee  I would agree with Fraser here in some sense. No matter what country you chose, you can particularly focus on poverty issues in that country. We're not going to get into whether it's a high income, middle income, low income or that. Some of these countries have very deep pockets,

Foreign Affairs committee  I spend more time talking to the public than I do to members of Parliament here, although I enjoy this very much. One of my jobs is to talk to the public, and they're interested in poverty. Most of them don't know which country is an LDC and which is a middle-income country and a

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I agree with Fraser. I don't think it matters whether it's 15 or 30. We have a list. Stick with what we have right now. Saying 90% of aid resources have to go to that list gives very little flexibility in the bilateral system unless there are significantly more resources the

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for providing this opportunity to appear before this committee and share our perspectives on the effective delivery of Canada's development assistance. Let me begin with a brief introduction. Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a partnership of 30 Canadian church bod

Foreign Affairs committee  You're not wrong to dream it. The potential of South Sudan is enormous, both in terms of its agricultural land and its resources. It's critical. The key thing that we've learned over many years, of course, is that the governance structure has to be put in place and the infrastruc

Foreign Affairs committee  To us, you limit the risk by having a clear mandate for poverty reduction in terms of the aid program, and therefore that becomes a screen through which all sorts of interventions can be assessed.

Foreign Affairs committee  On the humanitarian assistance issue, I don't think reference to the ODA Accountability Act would be helpful, since it's silent on the humanitarian assistance issues. Vincent Rigby, in earlier testimony, made it clear that Canada is committed to delivering humanitarian assistan

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I think I would agree that I wouldn't want us to list all the principles in the act, but some reference to a statement like “commonly accepted principles of aid and development effectiveness” would allow for the constant evolution of those. There are some standards out the

Foreign Affairs committee  Those whom I talked to are very clear that they see the aid program as being about making a difference for the poor. We have many other programs that deal with Canada's interests. That's not to say that the development of the economies in the countries in which we're working does

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I think you've captured the nuance there. As politicians around this table, you'd be well aware that what's written in headlines and what you say are not always the same thing. We have been very clear. We weren't saying we had a strong view on whether the amalgamation was go

Foreign Affairs committee  In a previous incarnation I was, but not currently. That's largely an association of consultants who work in the field, as opposed to organizations.

Foreign Affairs committee  I think anyone involved in this work needs reasonably speedy and clear decision-making processes because it's difficult to plan, if it's unclear, when approvals might be coming forward. So anything that can increase the predictability and speed with which decisions can be made wi