FAIT Committee Report

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION: FOR AN ACCOUNTABLE
SUMMIT FOCUSED ON RESULTS

        The forthcoming summit of the Group of Eight (G8¹) leaders, which will take place in Kananaskis, Alberta over two days, June 26-27, is the fourth such summit to be hosted by Canada since these annual gatherings began in 1975. At the Halifax Summit of 1995, Canada gave particular emphasis on the agenda to reforms to the international financial institutions (IFIs²). This time, while global economic issues will continue to be a priority subject for discussion in Kananaskis, Canada is giving a central focus to Africa’s needs and aspirations — specifically, to elaborating a G8 action plan in collaboration with the promising initiative of African leaders known as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), following up work begun at the Genoa summit in July 2001. Of course, since that last G8 summit there has been a major new development overshadowing all others. The terrible events of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and their aftermath pose daunting challenges to world order. Pursuing a comprehensive international effort against terrorism is therefore also a necessary priority as G8 leaders address critical threats to global security in all of its dimensions.

        The Committee has previously been directly engaged in the preparatory process for a Summit. Seven years ago we tabled a major report on IFI reforms in advance of the Halifax Summit.³ And indeed, many of the issues raised and recommendations put forward in that report are still pertinent, as we have been reminded by testimony in our current hearings renewing the case for international economic reforms. Without the foundation of a sound and sustainable world economy that distributes benefits widely, many other worthy objectives will be difficult to realize. The Committee therefore devotes some attention to these ongoing summit issues in Chapter II of this report.

        A larger focus for the body of the report, dealt with in Chapter III, is leadership in furthering a credible G8 action plan for a new African-led development partnership — a challenge which Canada has been determined to make a centrepiece of the 2002 Summit. Last fall one of the Committee’s members, Mrs. Francine Lalonde, had also put forward the imperative of addressing Africa’s situation, and consensus was quickly reached that it would be timely to do so within the G8 context and in relation to the NEPAD. That resolve was subsequently reinforced by the Prime Minister’s request to the Committee for input on the Summit’s agenda following consultations with Canadians. As the Committee’s former Chair, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham observed during his appearance on April 25, this is a first in terms of the G8 process. Another first, in regard to consideration of a G8 African action plan, was the appearance before the Committee on April 30 of diplomatic representatives from seven African countries represented on the NEPAD’s governing implementation committee and including all of the initiating states.⁴

        The Committee welcomes the undertaking given in testimony on April 23 by Ambassador Robert Fowler, the Prime Minister’s personal representative ("sherpa") for the Summit and for Africa, to share our report’s findings with his G8 counterparts at their final pre-summit preparatory meeting in early June. But this must not be the end of the process. In our view, the inclusion of parliamentary input should become a regular ongoing practice in Canada’s preparation for major international summits. The Committee strongly agrees with the emphasis put on increasing parliamentary and public engagement by Professor John Kirton, director of the University of Toronto’s G8 Research Centre, in his submission in Toronto on May 8. We will have more to say about this in Chapter V of the report on the future of the G8 process.

        Of course the Committee could not do its work without the benefit of Canadians who have taken the time to participate and give us the benefit of their ideas. We have been impressed by the many articulate submissions on G8 matters received from interested Canadians in all parts of the country, and notably on the challenge of a new development partnership with Africa. This is the first time that such a cross-country parliamentary consultation has taken place as part of a G8 preparatory process. In addition to a number of meetings in Ottawa, the Committee held public hearings in a dozen other cities in late February and early May. We believe it has been important to provide an opportunity for Canadians in every region to engage elected representatives directly on the Summit agenda as part of a study which we expect to be taken seriously by the government.

        In a short report of this kind the Committee cannot reflect the full richness of the testimony received.⁵ However we have attempted to draw on it as much as possible to highlight key concerns corresponding to the major Summit themes. Taking into account what Canadians have told us, the Committee’s recommendations indicate our priorities for Canadian leadership on G8 actions coming out of Kananaskis.

        In addition to global economic issues and African development, the fight against terrorism is a preoccupation which we address in Chapter IV of the report. In doing so, the Committee recognizes the need for caution in making hasty leaps or facile linkages. We agree with Ambassador Fowler’s observation that there is no necessary causal link between poverty and terrorism, for example. At the same time, it is clear that the Summit issues do not exist in separate compartments insulated from each other. Globalization as a 21st century reality is multiplying interconnections and potential vulnerabilities through increasingly complex relations among societies. Ultimately, there is little prospect that the security of citizens in G8 countries can be enhanced if human misery, oppression and conflict continue to afflict large parts of the globe.

        A compelling observation to this effect was made during the Committee’s first panel on January 31 by Reid Morden,⁶ when he concluded:

The perpetrators of September 11 have launched an offensive against innocent persons and against the central values and interests of the international community, and the G8 leaders at that time said that we will not allow those who seek to perpetrate hatred and terror to divide the peoples and cultures of the world. Those are very good sentiments … but frankly, the leaders should also be held accountable to them and translate them into concrete action. … I think they have to look at a cure for the problems, not the symptoms, because I think, from the three richest men in the world right down to the citizens of those 48 poorest countries, these issues are going to affect everyone unless globalization is made more sustainable and equitable. [Evidence, January 31, 2002, Meeting No. 54, 10:00]

Another former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and G7 "sherpa", Gordon Smith told the Committee in Vancouver on May 7 that poverty and despair clearly increase the risk of terrorism, even if they do not inevitably lead to it. Moreover, as Professor Joseph Nye, Dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, observed to us on May 2, the potential lethality and non-state controlled nature of contemporary terrorism represent a "totally new dimension in world politics."⁷ These phenomena, and a lack of effective means of global governance to deal with them, are a challenge to the ingenuity and resolve of G8 governments, without whose leadership the needed fundamental reforms to the international system are unlikely to be undertaken.

        Committee Members were in Washington D.C. in March for meetings at the time of the six-month anniversary of September 11 and took note of two lead editorials published in The Washington Post the day after that anniversary. The first argued for stepping up commitments to "addressing the nonmilitary pieces of the terrorism problem." The second, observing global inequities and growing population imbalances, made the point that: "Poverty and terror are not directly linked, to be sure, but poverty does breed the alienation and despair that foster violence. … People in rich nations who think this has no consequences for their security are kidding themselves …". The Post quoted World Bank President James Wolfensohn: "There is no wall. We are linked by trade, investment, finance, by travel and communications, by disease, by crime, by migration, by environmental degradation, by drugs, by financial crises and by terror." The newspaper of record in the U.S. capital concluded: "There is only one world. It is time that policies adapted."⁸

        That message was also an underlying thrust in much of the testimony the Committee received from Canadians. And we must frankly acknowledge that G8 leaders and the G8 process are facing an important test of public scrutiny in that regard. As indicated earlier, Chapter V of this report will deal in more detail with the future of the G8 process, with suggestions for cost-efficient modes of interaction, and with the demands for more inclusive participation in redressing what has been referred to as the "democratic deficit" in the governance of globalization. But we want at the outset to underline the need for the next summit, not only to establish fundamental shared goals, but also to specify concrete means for their implementation through policies that are credible, coherent, and subject to transparent, performance-based accountabilities.

        In short, how can the G8 demonstrate to its own citizens and to the world that the activities associated with summits, which have become so contested and security conscious, really have "value for money" results in terms of measurable benefits to their societies and for the international community at large?

        Supporters as well as critics of holding G8 summits have suggested that they must move away from being media spectacles or producing only statements of rhetorical intent that are not subject to any accountable follow up. The Committee welcomes the Prime Minister’s desire to keep Kananaskis to a pared-down summit that affords G8 leaders an opportunity to grapple seriously with a focused set of issues. But we are frankly concerned by press reports that summit costs could reach or even exceed $300 million. Such numbers begin to approach the amount of $500 million, over several years not days, that was announced in the December 2001 Budget for an African fund. Whatever the merits of face-to-face encounters and executive-style "retreats," given the pattern of expenditures on recent summits, there is surely a strong argument that better ways must be found for the G8 to conduct its business and provide ongoing leadership on the major global public policy challenges.

        Furthermore, as much as African government leaders have indicated their acceptance of a "peer review" process in the implementation of the NEPAD, G8 leaders must also begin to review, in a serious and transparent way, their own performance in living up to their commitments made as a group, and indeed to their international obligations more broadly. From one end of the country to the other, witnesses challenged the G8 summit process to prove its worth in concrete terms. In Halifax, John Hoddinott cautioned about signing wonderful documents with "lots of smiles and excellent photo opportunities," because "leadership requires more than words. It requires real commitment and real resources."⁹ In Vancouver, Joan Russow outlined how G8 countries have fallen short in meeting many previous international commitments and need to take implementation issues seriously if the same fate is not to befall the goals agreed to in the United Nations Millennium Summit Declaration. In Calgary, Catherine Little of Results Canada observed how G8 promises regarding UN public health targets made at the Okinawa summit several years ago remain unfulfilled. Given G8 governments’ calls for good governance and accountability measures in countries receiving international assistance, as she put it, "we must acknowledge that accountability is a two-way street and that the G8 countries need to admit their mistakes and lack of accountability in the past in many areas."¹⁰

        In short, public trust is at stake. Beyond the need for the G8 to do a better job of informing and engaging their publics, John Kirton has suggested:

A further contribution could be the provision of regular compliance reports on how and how well existing commitments are being met, or why they are not and should not be met as circumstances change. Both insiders and outsiders have a similar need, and common democratic obligation, to know and understand how the "soft law" decisions of their democratically elected leaders are being fulfilled. Indeed, the leaders themselves should be the first to want to know if and why their Summit level commitments are not being implemented as they intended.¹¹

Recommendation 1

The Committee believes that, overall, the Kananaskis Summit must acknowledge the urgent need for coherent, broadly based multilateral approaches to global reforms, and for a reform of G8 processes in order to restrain costs and to make them more results oriented and democratically accountable. Canada should take the lead in advocating such directions to its G8 partners. Canada should also lead by example, not only through inviting continuing parliamentary and other public input beyond the June Summit, but also by producing a full public accounting of summit costs and outcomes. One element of that should be a performance "report card" referred to this Committee well in advance of the next G8 summit.