Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting the Canadian Council for International Co-operation to appear before the committee today. As some of you may know, CCIC is Canada's national coalition of civil society organizations working globally to ac

Foreign Affairs committee  I would add that one of the welcome things to come with the new Liberal government is its focus on continuity with change. We've had 10 years of working around maternal and newborn child health and support for food security for growth, so let's build on that. I think the policy r

Foreign Affairs committee  Christina or Jim can probably add more, but I would say that we're already doing it. All of our members work with local partners. They work with their experience and their expertise.

Foreign Affairs committee  If I may, I will answer in English because I always have trouble with technical terms in French.

Foreign Affairs committee  I want to say I think aid is an essential piece of fighting poverty. Much like you, I would insist or hope that Canada over the next five to 10 years...one of the key outcomes of this review is to establish a timetable for how it's going to increase its ODA, but it's also importa

Foreign Affairs committee  Through its development assistance committee, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development brings together all industrialized donor nations. There are 28 members. Canada is one of them. Over the past several decades they've identified core principles that are key t

Foreign Affairs committee  I believe that in fact most NGOs weren't consulted, and most of the countries that got dropped were also not consulted.

Foreign Affairs committee  Exactly. You may have long-term partners there, and you've just learned that you're not going to be able to renew programs. But I think the surprising thing was the reaction for many of the high commissions and embassies here in Canada when they learned that their countries were

Foreign Affairs committee  Sorry, can I quickly add just one thing? One element that's very important in your aid relationship, and this is as true for civil society organizations as countries, is aid exit, if you want. It's part of our code of ethics for our members. You need to let the partners that you

Foreign Affairs committee  I guess you could say that, yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  As I said in my statement I don't think there's a perfect mix in the number of countries. The real importance is predictability and consistency. Canada changing every four years which countries it's working in is not helpful to the international community. You all know this very

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much to members of the committee for inviting the Canadian Council for International Cooperation to appear before you on this study on countries of focus. As Mr. Nault and Jim have mentioned, the study is very timely, given the launch yesterday of the international