Foreign Affairs committee  I think that it's very difficult for us to understand what's going on with the commitments. Perhaps Mr. Abbott can assist us in providing us with further information about ongoing plans in government.

Foreign Affairs committee  I just want to come back to this issue of private contributions. I don't think that any of us who advocate for an increase in the volume of funding for basic education in the developing world imagine that governments like Canada are going to be able to do all the heavy lifting on this issue.

Foreign Affairs committee  The partners raise a portion of that, and the other portion would be matched.

Foreign Affairs committee  We are a volunteer-based education, really depending on our members.

Foreign Affairs committee  The total budget is $45,000.

Foreign Affairs committee  That is disbursements. Disbursements have gone up. We say so. We say that very explicitly.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't think we mean, in any way, to undermine that record. That record is a sterling record. It's one that we want to be very proud of. At the same time, we want to make sure that this record is not eroded.

Foreign Affairs committee  No, no. It's fine. I think it's a good question.

Foreign Affairs committee  One thing I should add to this is that although the rate of spending on education, or the volume of spending, has gone up, in relative terms education has actually not received the same share of increase as the total aid budget. So we're looking at a situation where education has been downplayed within the total aid budget.

Foreign Affairs committee  We get some part of our funding from our membership, and we have a matching amount of funding from the Canadian International Development Agency.

Foreign Affairs committee  We have an office in Ottawa, but we are a campaign that includes representatives from universities, the Canadian Teachers' Federation, and 18 INGOs, international non-governmental actors, and faith bodies.

Foreign Affairs committee  The source of the...?

Foreign Affairs committee  First of all, we're talking about U.S. dollars in our brief and you're talking about Canadian dollars. That doesn't make very much difference these days, as we all know.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, exactly. Your question is very well warranted. What we say in our brief is that disbursements have gone up every year since 2003. That's a fact and something that Canada can be very proud of. And now we're using the OECD DAC data, the internationally recognized comparable data to what other countries spend.

Foreign Affairs committee  I think we're very clear. We say, “The total volume of aid disbursements to basic education has grown in every years since 2003.” We're very explicit about that. At the same time, we have to say clearly that commitments have fallen over the last two years.