Finance committee  Yes, there's been some discussion. It seems that actually all parties are basically in favour, but it may be more of a partisan thing. It did almost make it through the Senate once, then when the throne speech started, they had to start again. Now it's....

Finance committee  Certainly the bulk of it will stay in Canada.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I think with the surplus, which will be close to $20 billion, there's enough to go around.

Finance committee  Yes, I agree. And we do, whenever possible. As I said with the Prime Minister last week, we really applaud that initiative. Often it's a step in the right direction, but it's not far enough. As I mentioned, our actual aid as a percentage is declining, so we could be doing a lot

Finance committee  Yes, it's more the start-up funds for the many thousands of other micro-credit organizations that are at an earlier stage; it's seed capital and technical assistance to help things go.

Finance committee  I would say for our aid budget that would be more appropriate, to focus on poverty reduction.

Finance committee  You mean how much of Canada's aid is for micro-credit or--?

Finance committee  Micro-credit is one of the big success stories in poverty reduction really. Bangladesh is probably the most famous example with the Grameen Bank, which has now grown. It's lending out about $7 billion in total now. Millions of borrowers have benefited, and longer-term studies sho

Finance committee  Yes, I agree with the other benefits to aid. Just on the terrorism one, though, I'm a little cautious, in that sometimes aid can be diverted from more direct poverty reduction efforts to terrorism. In fact, the bill I mentioned that's now in the Senate, the better aid bill, I und

Finance committee  Yes, I've heard that. We actually write a lot of letters to the editor, and that makes for a good one, because you can say the reason we're not giving as much is we're getting so rich, basically.

Finance committee  Good afternoon. I'm Blaise Salmon. I'm president of RESULTS Canada. RESULTS is a citizens' advocacy group with chapters across Canada, and we work to generate the political will to end the worst aspects of hunger and extreme global poverty. We are members of both the Canadian Co

Finance committee  I think it's particularly important to maintain the poverty focus. For example, in Afghanistan and Iraq there's a tendency for aid to be diverted into areas that aren't purely poverty reduction. They sometimes have nothing to do with poverty reduction. I think it's very important

Finance committee  In fact, I don't think it's exactly fair to say terrorism is caused by poverty. I think the general instability that comes from poverty might in fact create terrorism, but I'm not aware of any studies. I don't know about anyone else.

Finance committee  Absolutely. I think the World Bank has done a study that shows literacy, especially for girls, and education for girls is probably the single biggest investment that a country can make to fight poverty. In fact, the so-called Asian tiger countries that did this 20 to 30 years ago