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?