Hon. Marie-Françoise Mégie: Thank you for your response, Senator Gold. If I may make a suggestion: In response to the humanitarian emergency in Haiti, the United States has taken a unilateral approach with its H-1B1 visa in order to welcome Haitian nationals.

In light of this humanitarian emergency, what is stopping Canada from taking such an approach?

Hon. Marie-Françoise Mégie: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Senator Gold, lately, a lot of attention has been given to the NATO countries’ commitment to allocate 2% of their GDP to defence spending. However, no one seems to be talking about our humanitarian commitment to the UN to allocate 0.7% of our gross national income to official development assistance.

In 1968, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development proposed that donor countries set an objective to contribute 1% of gross national income for the humanitarian component and 2% of GDP for the defence component.

In 2020, Canada reached 46% of its development assistance objective and 71% of its defence objective.

Given that far too many civilians continue to be, by far, the first casualties in armed conflicts, should Canada not increase its assistance or even seek to achieve parity between its humanitarian and defence spending?

If not, could the government at least fulfill its existing development assistance commitments?