Foreign Affairs committee  As my colleague, Kerry Buck, has pointed out, Canada remains very involved in Africa. Roughly half or slightly more than half of our development assistance will still be going to Africa, even after the deficit reduction action plan to which I believe you are referring. The case in point here as I've mentioned is the Malian program was a significant program beforehand.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. It's a good question and I'll ask Kerry to speak to just how rapidly this came on as a security threat. That has to be a key part of the answer. Other components are that, as I said in my remarks, 90% of the people live in the south. I think all donors have been aware of the situation in the north, but they've been focusing on the good work that could still be done in the south.

Foreign Affairs committee  I want to add a quick comment. That's on the humanitarian side. Our regular development program is continuing to run. Before the suspension of direct aid we were the second largest bilateral donor and the fourth largest overall. We've had to slow down a little bit, but we're ramping back up such that this fiscal year in the bilateral program we will deliver in order of magnitude almost what we were delivering before the coup.

Foreign Affairs committee  On the regular programming, not the humanitarian side, pre-crisis we were in the range of 110%, with 90% of that being the regular development bilateral programming. That dropped a lot last year in the wake of the coup. We've had to shift gears so that now we're delivering it via Canadian NGOs and the multilateral system.

Foreign Affairs committee  I will take the bulk of the question talking about what Canada has been doing and is doing now, and then I'll ask my colleague, Leslie Norton, to talk about the humanitarian response to the Sahel crisis. At CIDA, we do both long-term development helping to build a better future for the people of Mali, as well as responding to short-term crises, and that's what my colleague will talk about.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone. For a number of years, Canada has been one of the major partners in Mali's development. On average, since 2007, Canada has provided over $100 million annually to support Mali's development. Until recently, Mali was moving ahead on the road to development in a number of areas, especially in education and management of public finances, thanks in part to Canada's support.