Foreign Affairs committee  Of course, but the issue of overhead is an important one. I might be going out on a limb. I don't know if this has been done in other DFIs—and Francesca and our other colleague can speak to this—but there is something to be said for aligning the goals of our aid portfolio and t

Foreign Affairs committee  Maybe I can start and Francesca can follow. One thing is that we have to look at these investments. If they were highly profitable, the private sector would be investing in them on its own. These need a boost. They need some encouragement, so we're not looking at the same kinds

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll jump in on that. We're thrilled that Canada has decided to take on a women's rights and feminist approach in its international programming. This is great. The private sector has been at this for a long time. They know there are good rates of return from investing in women

Foreign Affairs committee  On the issue of countries of focus, Oxfam has moved from investing only in the poorest countries to looking at the criteria of inequality. In middle-income countries, we have poorer communities than we've seen in the past and we're looking at what is driving that gap. As we see t

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't know whether my colleague understood the question. I don't know whether the interpretation system worked. However, I can give a short answer. In principle, Oxfam is rather sceptical about the idea of this type of investment, simply given the evidence issue. There isn't m

Foreign Affairs committee  Maybe I'll just jump in on a couple of these points. I think the issue of measuring poverty and well-being is an interesting one. For example, something that Francesca touched upon is time-years. We see that women who enter the formal economy might have a marginal gain in income

Finance committee  This is an issue that Oxfam works on internationally, and very interestingly, the work on CRA has been recognized within the confederation and I know other colleagues in other countries are now pointing to Canada's effort in countering tax evasion. That's an interesting piece of

Finance committee  No, that's fine. I think the studies show that a reduction in the corporate tax rate has not helped the economy and it has increased government deficits. That is one thing that—

Finance committee  Well, thank you for listening and thank you for the work on the CRA.

Finance committee  Thank you for your interest in the women's rights work that we do. Obviously, I represent an international development organization, and our number one priority is to see Canada reinvest in international aid. We've seen, relative to other international donors, a moving backwards.

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. Some very interesting studies have been conducted in Quebec and we mention them in the report. I could give it to you at the end of the meeting. We see an effect not only in terms of greater access to employment for women, reduced poverty rates, higher incomes,

Finance committee  In budget 2017 the government should enact legislation to raise the federal minimum wage and work with the provinces to move toward living wages for all workers across Canada. The government should follow through on its commitment to introduce proactive pay equity legislation,

Finance committee  Thank you. I will be giving my presentation in English but would be happy to answer any questions in French. As some of you may know, Oxfam is an international confederation working in 90 countries to support long-term development and to provide humanitarian assistance in time