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38th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, May 19, 2005

0905

Ms. Francine Lalonde (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)

Mr. Gerry Barr (President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Council for International Cooperation)

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Francine Lalonde)

Mr. Gerry Barr

0910

0915

0920

The Chair (Mr. Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds—Dollard, Lib.))

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, CPC)

0925

Mr. Gerry Barr

0930

Mr. Kevin Sorenson

Mr. Gerry Barr

The Chair

Mr. Brian Tomlinson (Policy Officer, Development Aid, Canadian Council for International Cooperation)

0935

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

0940

Mr. Gerry Barr

The Chair

Ms. Gauri Sreenivasan (Policy Officer, Trade, Canadian Council for International Cooperation)

The Chair

Mrs. Erin Simpson (Policy Officer, Peace, Security and Development, Canadian Council for International Cooperation)

0945

The Chair

Mr. Brian Tomlinson

The Chair

Hon. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan, Lib.)

0950

Mr. Gerry Barr

0955

Hon. Lawrence MacAulay

Mr. Gerry Barr

Hon. Lawrence MacAulay

Mr. Gerry Barr

Mrs. Erin Simpson

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP)

1000

Mr. Gerry Barr

1005

Ms. Gauri Sreenivasan

The Chair

Mr. Ted Menzies (Macleod, CPC)

1010

Mr. Gerry Barr

The Chair

Mr. Brian Tomlinson

1015

The Chair

Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (Vaughan, Lib.)

Mr. Gerry Barr

Hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua

Mr. Brian Tomlinson

1020

Hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua

Mr. Brian Tomlinson

1025

Hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua

The Chair

Mr. Gerry Barr

The Chair

Mr. Pierre Paquette (Joliette, BQ)

1030

Mr. Gerry Barr

1035

Ms. Gauri Sreenivasan

The Chair

Hon. Dan McTeague (Pickering—Scarborough East, Lib.)

1040

Mr. Gerry Barr

Hon. Dan McTeague

Mr. Gerry Barr

Mr. Brian Tomlinson

1045

The Chair

Hon. Dan McTeague

Mr. Gerry Barr

1050

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough

The Chair

Mr. Gerry Barr

Ms. Alexa McDonough

The Chair

1055

The Chair

Mr. Stockwell Day (Okanagan—Coquihalla, CPC)

The Chair

Hon. Dan McTeague

Mr. Stockwell Day

Hon. Dan McTeague

Mr. Stockwell Day

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough

Mr. Stockwell Day

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

The Chair

Mr. Stockwell Day

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

NUMBER 042

1st SESSION

38th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, May 19, 2005

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

* * *

¿ (0905)

[Translation]

The Vice-Chair Ms. Francine Lalonde (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)): Good morning everyone. Welcome to this meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Our witnesses this morning are from the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, and are here to talk about the International Policy Review, which is the first item on our agenda. Our guests are Mr. Gerry Barr, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Tomlinson, Policy Officer, Development Aid; Ms. Sreenivasan, Policy Officer, Trade; Ms. Erin Simpson, Policy Officer, Peace, Security and Development; and Ms. Anne Buchanan, Coordinator, Organizational Development.

The second item on the agenda is Committee business. We have two notices of motion from Mr. Stockwell Day and one request for an operating budget from the Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development.

Mr. Barr, this is the first time I have seen you from this angle.

Mr. Gerry Barr (President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Council for International Cooperation): Yes, you're absolutely right, Ms. Lalonde.

The Vice-Chair (Ms. Francine Lalonde): I invite you now to talk about the content of your excellent report, which I read with great pleasure.

[English]

Mr. Gerry Barr: Thank you, and good morning to the committee.

The council welcomes the opportunity to discuss with the committee the government's recently released international policy statement. I'll say a word or two about the IPS process, and I will characterize quickly some of the content that, leading up to the launch of the IPS, has marked discussion in the NGO community. Lastly, I'll speak to our assessment of the directions taken in the statement itself.

I'm joined here by members of the policy and organizational development teams of the council who had lead responsibilities in a series of papers that informed NGO discussions about Canada's foreign policy, leading up to the release of the IPS. Brian Tomlinson is the head of the CCIC's policy team and our analyst in matters of international aid and approaches to aid delivery and development. Gauri Screenivasan is a member of the policy team who includes in her files the question of the development implications of globalization and Canada's trade policy. Erin Simpson is a policy analyst working with member-agencies of the council on questions related to peace, conflict, and fragile states. Anne Buchanan, from the organizational development side of the council, is working with member-organizations on issues of public engagement and global citizenship.

The international policy review, now statement, has taken a long time to come out. It was widely anticipated even before Mr. Martin became prime minister, and in its first conception was imagined as a whole-of-government review of foreign policy that would chart the course for Canada for the better part of the next decade.

A lot of interdepartmental thinking has gone into the substance of the report, but there has been nothing yet that could be described as public consultation. That, we hope, will come out as the committee and others take up their responsibilities. There are gaps that need filling, there are ideas that need adding, and there are cautionary considerations that should be highlighted. We know that civil society groups, citizens' organizations, and citizens in their individual right across the country expect and hope that they will be invited into this discussion in a meaningful way before your review of this statement is complete.

The scope and impact of global poverty is staggering; 1.2 billion people live in absolute poverty. Nearly half the world's population live on less than $2 U.S. a day. Every day, 50,000 people die from poverty-related causes—one-third of all deaths.

To quote from a television ad supported by Canada's Make Poverty History campaign, “The thing is, all these deaths are avoidable”. This poverty is a mark of profound social dysfunction and political dysfunction within nation-states and globally. Unaddressed, all thought of sustainable, durable, and stable development worldwide is a will-o'-the-wisp.

Nelson Mandela is plainly and practically right when he says, “Security for a few is insecurity for all”. Our obligations and interests as global citizens and Canadians drive us to address this problem of the eradication of global poverty.

¿ (0910)

It will take assets. It will take the systematic promotion of human rights. It will take clarity of purpose. This clarity of purpose can begin with making the eradication of global poverty a central element in Canada's future foreign policy. That has been the organizing principle of the greater part of the discussion and thinking in the NGO sector as it anticipated the launch of the international policy statement. NGOs are looking for an approach to aid spending that puts ending global poverty as the exclusive goal for Canadian development assistance. This approach should be guided by a legislated mandate to improve accountability in aid spending. It should ensure that aid delivery is informed by Canada's human rights commitments and that it displays a respect for the perspectives of those living in poverty.

Canada needs to join the 11 donor states that have committed to achieving the international donor target of 0.7% of the value of their national economies to help the world's poor and developing economies. Many Canadian NGOs hope to see approaches to military spending that would track in the direction of increased emphasis on protection and peace operations. These approaches should lend support to the emerging international doctrine of the responsibility to protect and should allow for the creation of a special fund that could address issues of conflict resolution and war prevention.

NGOs have hoped to see an emphasis in Canada's foreign policy on a need for more inclusive multilateralism, particularly a G-20 initiative that takes account of democratic principles of representation as well as participation of the poorest countries. A G-20 that takes account of this, that builds towards a leader summit process within a UN framework, and is transparent to civil society would be an important contribution to a new multilateralism, much more than a hot stove league for the emerging and rich economies of the world.

Trade and the private sector have a major impact on the development chances of poor economies. Canada's aid to the private sector and to private sector development should be targeted at poverty reduction. Canada's approach to trade when it comes to the developing world should be informed by the same vision.

Finally, Canadians expect and deserve a say in determining Canada's role in the world. Canada can do a lot in this area to bring Canadians into the picture. It can formulate coherent domestic approaches to encourage active global citizenship in Canada. It can also present regular annual reports to Parliament on Canada's relations, priorities, and initiatives in multilateral arenas. Canada increasingly needs to take account of citizens and civil society groups in policy development. In this regard, Canada should work towards a full implementation of the voluntary sector initiatives accord and the codes of good practice that the accord contains.

How did the international policy statement do relative to these expectations, concerns, and hopes? It was certainly a mixed outcome. Of all the IPS papers, only the development papers substantially addressed issues of global poverty. Overall, the need to address global poverty is seen in the papers as subsidiary and instrumental to the pursuit of Canada's special interests to promote prosperity, reduce terrorist threats, and respond to regional insecurity. It is at least a failure in bringing a whole-of-government strength to this key file.

Even in the development paper, the international policy statement fails to assert a clear poverty reduction mandate for aid. Beyond this, it fails to take account of key opportunities to establish an unambiguous mandate through legislation. That is an idea that has recently been supported by the three opposition party leaders in a letter to the prime minister. The door is still open on this question, but we need to walk through it. For that, we look to this committee to help.

¿ (0915)

The IPS pledges that aid will increase past 2010. It commits to an acceleration in the projected rate of growth for aid. But the Prime Minister has argued that he is not prepared to lock in the target of 0.7% by 2015 until he is certain of Canada's ability to achieve the goal. This needs revisiting. There is now cross-party support on every point of the compass for a time-limited plan to achieve the 0.7% target. Canada's economy is robust and it is growing. The government has a reliable record of surplus finances. Citizens wish the government to act on this file. What is the government waiting for?

The commitment to increased country and sector focus in aid spending, which is apparent in the development paper of the statement, is very welcome. The choice of sectors is largely appropriate for poverty reduction, with the marked omission of agriculture as a key sector. Agriculture is an area that needs focus, given that the vast majority of the world's poor live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Nothing, really, could be more key than this.

The international policy statement signals a Canadian intent to increase support for protection and peace operations. The new $100 million global peace and security fund is an important and welcome step forward. The engine, however, in the paper is more in the area of addressing security threats and less on a positive commitment to the protection of human rights and citizens in danger in complex emergencies. So we look for a rebalancing here.

The IPS underscores the key role of the United Nations for global governance, but generally it is vague about routing Canadian policies within the charter and the principles guiding the UN system. The G-20 remains a key priority for the Martin government. However, on the issue of representation, there is no commitment in the IPS to address either making it open to poor countries or making it open to scrutiny by global civil society groups.

When it comes to the development implications of trade, the statement displays an almost exclusive focus on improved market access for developing economies and helping them to adjust to globalized markets. It neglects key development issues at play in the Doha Round, such as food security, access to medicine, preference erosion, and the liberalization of essential services.

The way in which the statement addresses private sector development and the needs of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, especially in the informal economy, is positive. The statement's acknowledgement in the commerce paper that corporate responsibility is an issue for Canadian policy is very welcome, but the paper does not follow up with specific indications about how the government plans to deal with Canadian responsibilities in this area. In both its development and diplomacy papers, the statement focuses on the key role to be played by citizens. But it is a relatively narrow vision of citizen involvement, with a long way to go before it embraces the active global citizenship that one sees emerging on all sides in Canada today.

¿ (0920)

The government needs to pursue a renewed and more vigorous strategy for public engagement broadly, a strategy that is certainly suggested, but not fully unpacked, in the statement and discussion on the Canada Corps and public diplomacy.

Mr. Chair, I'll leave it there, as my attempt to array a series of issues. As you know, this has been a cross-departmental, whole-of-government effort. There are a range of papers involved, which we have tried to address from the perspective of organizations that have a preoccupation with development, but which also see decisions in foreign policy, defence, and trade as having an impact and importance from the point of view of development cooperation and for the key and driving problem we are trying to address, the eradication of global poverty.

I'd be happy to respond to any questions my presentation might have given rise to, and my colleagues are here to do that if there are drill-down aspects that the members would like to address.

Thank you.

The Chair (Mr. Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds—Dollard, Lib.)): Thank you very much, Mr. Barr. Thank you for your appearance.

Welcome, all of you.

We'll start the questions and answers with Mr. Sorenson, please.

Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, CPC): Good morning.

I did appreciate the opportunity to read your brief in advance, and I thank you for coming and highlighting it and speaking about some of your insights, and maybe also some of your concerns.

In the introduction to your report, you talk about the IPS. You say,

The Statement builds on initiatives already taken by the government to increase Canadian aid, while continuing to focus on sectors and programs that will make vital contributions to poverty reduction in a select number of countries.

This leads me to believe that you would conclude that the targeting of 25 countries is a correct way to go, or that you agree with that targeting of 25 countries. Could you just enlarge a little bit on why you would agree with that? Maybe you can blend that into your response to my second question, because later on in the document you talk about “engaging Canadians” and how important it is to bring Canadians into this whole idea of recognizing the importance of humanitarian and all types of relief around the world.

So I would like a little more expansion perhaps of your comments about this government, because we're moving many of the NGOs away from being a part of government funding. I know that in my own constituency, I have one group called Sahakarini, which targets specific groups and brings in volunteers from the community who give up their time, effort, energy, and money. Many of them travel to India, for example, on their own tickets—yet these groups won't now be part of this funding any more. How can we engage Canadians if some of this appears that we're almost pushing them away?

Maybe I'll ask a third question. You criticize or question the IPS's attention to

...a security-centric world in which threats to Canadian lives, values and prosperity are a driving force behind policy decisions.

And then you go on to say,

Canadian foreign policy should be clear that the complex conflicts raging outside Canada are primarily human catastrophes—not threats to Canada’s security or potential harbours for terrorists.

That quote almost seems to go against what the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness has said in recognizing that Canada is a target. We've had CSIS come here and the director of CSIS say that it's not a question of if Canada is at risk or if will be hit with an attack, but it's a matter of when. So certainly the sense of urgency is there; we know that Canada has been named as a target by al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

My question, or rather more of a comment, is that if Canada is not vigilant in protecting this country and its citizens, and we don't make our sovereignty a priority, terrorists will continue to threaten our economic well-being. Even today, in the National Post, we have people from SIRC saying at a security convention that we need to expand our intelligence-gathering worldwide. In fact, if I can recall correctly, the article said that we live in a day where there is a huge threat, and that perhaps some of our agents abroad may even put their own lives at risk because of the impending threat against western interests.

If you could comment on those three specific questions, I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

¿ (0925)

Mr. Gerry Barr: Thank you. I'll start towards the back and work towards the front.

That there may be real threats, that some of these threats may be from terrorist forces, and that they may be directed to Canada is almost an unarguable proposition. We want to make a case for a full-spectrum approach by government that would take account of the need to combat terrorism, preserve the rights of Canadians, and address the problems of the planet. We want to focus on the problems of the planet in a balanced and appropriate way.

The overarching threat to the world today is less from terrorism than from global poverty. This is a plainly empirical fact, and it is to this fact that we are inclined to speak most directly. This is not to minimize, in any way, the complexity of the current moment. Rather, we believe that, while we must take appropriate measures to address those problems, and to make those risk assessments, we must also take account of the risks that the poor face every day. There is a kind of terrorism that flows not from non-state actors and belligerence, but from the plain absence of food, inaccessible drinking water, social marginalization that reduces millions of children to circumstances in which they have little hope of education, and social arrangements that keep the poor in poverty. We need to address this. It is not a sovereign remedy for insecurity and a terrorist threat. But one thing is absolutely sure—unless we address issues of global poverty, we will not find our way to a secure and viable approach to development on the planet today. It won't be secure for us. It won't be secure for anyone. We're in a common space, and we need to address its most fundamental dysfunctions. This is certainly one of them. It's a necessary condition for progress.

The second question had to do with the role of Canadian citizens and NGOs in the delivery and promotion of development assistance. It is true that CIDA has tracked away from the use of non-governmental organizations in Canada and elsewhere in favour an approach that provides assets to governments and nationally rolled out development programs.

Over the last three years, CIDA's participation with civil society groups has dropped off by about 6%. Bilateral spending, an important area of CIDA spending, has dropped off by about 10%. This is important because it's a decline at a moment when the budget is increasing. So in fact it's more marked than it might seem as a percentage. This is regrettable. There's a lot of important work that needs to be done with civil society groups.

¿ (0930)

Mr. Kevin Sorenson: May I interject for one moment? We aren't questioning whether CIDA has made some cutbacks, or whether they've grown. It's the engaging or disengaging of Canadians that concerns me. My question is specific. Do you believe that by not supporting voluntary NGOs, like the Sahakarini, that we are going to disengage Canadians from the bigger picture of our role around the world?

Mr. Gerry Barr: One of the ways in which Canadians express their global citizenship is through the organization of groups that come to grips with international issues and groups that create bridges of solidarity with other communities around the world. There is no underestimating the importance of these initiatives. Some are large groups. Some are very small indeed. There is a wide range, a real spectrum. But it represents a really important initiative by Canadians, and to the extent that it can be supported, it's a way of reinforcing the warm connection of Canadians to international and global issues. It generates enormous value. It creates a base of support in part. It's not the only thing that creates a base of support for international aid spending, but it is certainly one of the things that buttresses the interest of Canadians in Canada's aid spending, because if Canadians themselves are doing it, they will understand well why the government ought to do it too. So it's terribly important, and we need to take it into account.

Another thing that worries Canadians and erodes confidence in aid spending is the failure of Canada to have a focused framework for its own aid spending. This would take us back to the question of a legislated mandate for aid, a clear focus on poverty eradication, a human rights approach to the delivery of aid, and a model for delivery that takes account of the perspectives of those who are living in poverty. Nothing could be more important for reinforcing the confidence of Canadians--that there are clear purposes, and flowing from that, clear approaches to accountability for aid spending. So both these things need to happen.

Canadians themselves must be involved. I think you articulated the way in which that's important. I think that the other thing is Canadians need to be confident about the focus and direction of aid spending, and they are not. Because of the great gravity of the need, they typically are at the level of about 80% normally, but now post-tsunami almost 90% do support Canada's aid spending abroad as a general matter.

I think Brian wanted to address--

The Chair: Rapidly, please.

Mr. Brian Tomlinson (Policy Officer, Development Aid, Canadian Council for International Cooperation): Very rapidly, on the 25 focused countries, I think first of all we have to be aware that our aid program is multifaceted. This refers directly to bilateral aid spending in two-thirds of bilateral aid spending. So there is a degree of flexibility built into the proposal for other forms of aid spending that relate more broadly to the 25 countries.

The second point to make is that already bilateral spending as a whole is relatively concentrated. In my calculations, about 30 countries make up about 70% of our current aid spending on the bilateral side. So this is a shift, and there's a shift in countries involved here over a period of four or five years. But our estimation is that the countries chosen, for the most part, are those where poverty clearly is an issue. The issue then is how Canada addresses poverty in those countries.

It's also important to remember that, as Gerry has mentioned, we need to have a holistic approach. There are issues that can better be addressed sometimes on a regional basis. So we're hoping that a portion of Canada's aid on the bilateral side, also on the multilateral side, will still be available to take an appropriate approach that moves beyond perhaps the 25 countries specified.

¿ (0935)

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Ms. Lalonde, please.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Thank you. We will have another turn, right? My colleague here specializes in international trade.

The Chair: If you insist. Please proceed.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Mr. Barr, ladies and gentlemen, I want to say that even though I found the introduction to be rather weak, I did note that the rest of the report was both substantial and strong, but diplomatic. I wanted you to know that, because I believe your study will be useful. You go through a number of the criticisms that we made, although you have organized them based on your knowledge in the field, which is important. When Mr. Pettigrew was here, I pointed out the complete lack of a poverty reduction strategy in our foreign policy. You have made the same criticism with respect to the Development section. The Policy Statement is supposed to set out a policy for Canada. Are you not concerned that fragmentation could be harmful? A strong Department of Foreign Affairs would ensure the application, in all areas—in terms of both our trade and our defence relationships—of strong principles on which the government would agree, be that with respect to firm adherence to international law, the fight against poverty, or human rights. I would like you to address that, because it is something that concerns me. Given the kind of work you're doing, that would be very helpful.

I identified one other specific, and thus less general, question—your concern that we may go too far in integrating our action with respect to peace and aid. I know that NGOs worry that aid will be identified with military action and they see that as dangerous. So, I do understand why you have emphasized that.

I would also like you to talk about Haiti. The Prime Minister has said that Canada has a special responsibility towards that country. We have also said that. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is satisfied with the work that has been carried out thus far. Haiti is in our bailiwick. A number of Quebec NGOs that are part of your group are very active there. And these are the kinds of things that can make all the difference for a country that is really struggling and trying to move forward. And yet, there is no real discussion of Haiti in the report, except as regards climate-related issues. There is no discussion of development issues. Haiti is not on the list of 25 countries, and we are told that the reason for that is that it is too poor.

I would also like to hear you talk about China. In fact, I would like to hear you talk about a lot of other things, but particularly China. I wasn't expecting it to be on the list. China is not a poor country—quite the opposite. I understand the Department's intentions in that regard, but it seems to me that the money being spent there is like a drop in the bucket and could be better used elsewhere.

My last question relates to the causes of conflicts. It seems to me there is no analysis of what causes conflicts to become entrenched or even what provokes them. They are related to the fact that there are too many light arms circulating and too many corporations engaged in mining activity that is not consistent with the rules. We all remember Talisman, that was responsible for keeping the war with the rebels going for a very long time, with the royalties it was paying the Sudanese government. But that analysis has not been done. There seems to be a belief that all trade brings an end to poverty, whereas quite often, it is completely the reverse: it simply feeds the conflict and brings about increased poverty.

¿ (0940)

[English]

Mr. Gerry Barr: Madam Lalonde, you have expressed almost perfectly our concern about coherence. It comes out very nicely, I think, and is illustrated very well by the issue of coherence for the poverty eradication file in the context of trade policy. I think I'd like to turn to my colleague Gauri Sreenivasan for a comment or two on that.

My colleague Erin Simpson can address your question about peace operations and in some measure the issue of the private sector operations, particularly in complex emergencies, groups like Talisman.

Brian would probably be best positioned to comment on your aid question.

The Chair: Madam Sreenivasan, please.

[Translation]

Ms. Gauri Sreenivasan (Policy Officer, Trade, Canadian Council for International Cooperation): Thank you very much, Ms. Lalonde.

As Gerry mentioned, coherence must be a key consideration in this document. We are suggesting that Canada develop a more coherent foreign policy, and yet the major theme of this whole paper, and the one on which the notion of coherence is based, is threats against Canada.

So, as far as we are concerned, it is extremely important that the Committee assert that although security-related issues are important, the government must state very clearly that human rights, for example, constitute a key principle that must underlie every component of Canada's foreign policy.

You referred to the problem of fragmentation. That's true. We now have separate departments for trade, for foreign policy, and for development.

If our goal is a more coherent approach, we need to clearly set out the principles that will guide the government's comprehensive approach. We need a document that will set out in much clearer terms Canada's commitment to human rights and state that this theme must be an integral part of our approach to international issues. It's important that the Committee make that suggestion.

There is also the matter of development per se. In the paper, the question of poverty and development is nothing more than a project. We think we can do good things with development aid, but the fact remains that it is a fairly ineffective tool. We have to be thinking of poverty issues when setting our trade agenda and when considering security issues. So, to ensure that coherence, the two principles—poverty eradication and human rights—must come through much more clearly.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Simpson.

Mrs. Erin Simpson (Policy Officer, Peace, Security and Development, Canadian Council for International Cooperation): Thank you, Madame Lalonde. Those are all good questions.

I just want to touch briefly on some points you were making about the root causes of conflicts and also the root causes of state fragility. As you have seen in our document, that's one thing that we felt was very much lacking. There was no analysis of the global causes of state fragility and how Canada and other donor nations actually are complicit in the fragility and in conflicts, as you mentioned, through the proliferation of small arms and Canadian investments.

The IPS does make mention of the need for control of small arms proliferation, but it could go further. It could be more central, and I think that's a role for the committee, to try to bring out pieces there on disarmament. Also, it needs to go further on the role of Canadian companies.

As Gerry mentioned earlier, it does mention corporate social responsibility, but it does not go far enough.

There are suggestions for the type of legislation that could be introduced that could cope with the role of the Canadian government in supporting companies involved in conflict zones and in fragile states.

With regard to some of the points you were making about our role in Haiti and elsewhere, and mainly this 3-D approach that is very much highlighted in the document, a couple of points are key, the first being that the role of local actors is often overlooked when we're talking about 3-D approaches. It's very focused on Canadian actors. There needs to be a clearer link made between what local actors are saying on the ground and how they are resolving their conflicts--local change agents.

Another point is the neutral space for humanitarian action and the extent to which that is under threat by this very close cooperation between military actors, development actors, and diplomatic actors. The IPS goes too far in this regard, using the word “integration” to describe what really should be cooperation, communication, and coordination, which are all fine, but we are very much concerned that development assistance and our role in conflict prevention is starting to become very much a tool in our foreign policy and that therefore people suffering from violent conflict and from poverty are becoming instruments in Canadian foreign policy.

To go back to Mr. Sorenson's comment earlier about our concern about the centrality of threats, it's not that we deny that there are threats to Canada; it's that people suffering from poverty and violent conflict are not threats to Canada and cannot be seen as instruments in our foreign policy. That really addresses the way we approach dealing with what we perceive as threats to Canada. Does it involve a very militaristic aggressive approach, or does it involve an approach that really puts human rights at the centre and works with people to resolve violent conflicts and poverty?

¿ (0945)

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Tomlinson, please.

Mr. Brian Tomlinson: Thank you. This will be very short.

To address the first point, about our concerns relating to the notion of what aid should be about, as has been made clear here, we obviously believe aid should be entirely focused on poverty eradication. That's a broad mandate in and of itself, but our concern around this debate relating to military assistance, which is taking place at the development assistance committee of the OECD, is that some countries, not necessarily Canada, have been promoting an extension of that definition to include aspects of peacekeeping that are valuable in themselves to be counted as development assistance. We would strongly resist that, even though we strongly support a peacekeeping role for Canada.

On China, it is appropriate that over time Canada reduce its aid program to China, recognizing also, though, that there are many poor people still living in China. Probably a good proportion of people living under a dollar a day still live in China, and there's a lot of controversy about the degree to which poverty is actually being reduced in China.

Saying that, I think there may be aspects of an aid relationship there that can tackle from a rights point of view strengthening Chinese people who are living in poverty to be more in a position to claim their rights within a very complex situation.

The Chair: Mr. MacAulay.

Hon. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan, Lib.): Thank you very much.

China comes up very often and the issue of whether we should be funding or sending aid to China. Of course we are not sending aid to the government; we're sending aid to individuals and groups, and making sure that the human rights and dignity of human beings are addressed, and in fact giving them the chance to live a better life. You could expand a bit further on that, I think.

On human rights in the conflict area, I fully believe that you think we should be involved in peacekeeping. Peacekeeping sometimes becomes peacemaking, and it's a big job to define which is which.

Also, you touched before on the threat for Canada after 9/11 and what can be spent. I don't believe we can ever put a dollar value on it. There's not enough money for what you want to do in protecting the country and there's not enough money to take care of what we should do in foreign affairs either, because what is enough to take care of what took place on 9/11?

That's just more or less a point, but I think it's a point that you deal with as far as foreign involvement or taking care of our own people.

In your statement you indicated that the public should be involved more to fill the gaps in the IPS, and I'd like you to expand a bit on that.

I know that in your view, and in all of our views, I suspect, there's a lack of money--not enough money, not enough commitment. But is there also a problem, in your view, as to how the money is spent? With the tsunami, for instance, we do hear that sometimes the people who truly needed the aid.... Some people agree and some don't agree, but there are areas that did not receive the assistance they should get.

In essence, on the dollars that are spent in our foreign aid, whether it's collected in that fashion or whatever, is it spent in an appropriate fashion, or should there be more cooperation, or should there be changes made in how we deal with the total picture? I know we need more money. Is that the only problem we have?

And the NGOs of course have always been a concern of mine. I do believe that our NGOs should be involved in the foreign aid package. I do believe it's a massive asset, no doubt, for the countries we're involved in, but it also is an asset, I believe--and you could expand on this--in that over the years when we have been involved in countries with our NGOs, then we have a bridge to that country when they do become much more secure in their own state.

That's good for now.

¿ (0950)

Mr. Gerry Barr: Mr. MacAulay, thank you. There are a lot of things that you've mentioned. I'd like to start on the question of effective aid spending.

It makes no sense to speak about more aid if we're not also talking about better aid. Plainly, a simple focus on increasing aid dollars alone will do very little to eradicate poverty globally. It is not because of an absence of aid that we have global poverty, and the presence of aid by itself alone is not going to eradicate global poverty.

What we need--and this is the great merit of the idea of a whole-of-government approach--is coherence through the whole piece, as Madame Lalonde has said. As my colleague Gauri Sreenivasan said, we need to have ways in which issues of global poverty are in mind when we take trade policy decisions, not so that those considerations drive the whole range of our decisions in each of those areas, but so that they are clearly and always present and that we're informed by that concern and consideration when we take these policy decisions.

On the accountability of aid spending and better aid spending, there is no more effective tool to address that than the idea of a legislated mandate for aid spending, which sets out very clearly the purposes of aid spending, and creates, because of that clarity, a framework in which accountability becomes truly possible.

Canada has been spending aid money for 40 years without a legislative framework. It subjects aid to vagaries. Structurally it's a weak way to go, because, while it creates flexibility, it opens aid to trends in donor preference and enthusiasms, and aid is a long-term business. We need to have decades-long programs with great constancy of purpose.

¿ (0955)

Hon. Lawrence MacAulay: I don't want to dwell on it, but I think that recently we all saw something of a turf war. There were different groups coming into different areas to do the aid, and there were some problems. That's one of the things I'm concerned about. We need to make sure that it's done in a coordinated fashion, rather than having three or four groups trying to dominate one another. I don't want to condemn these people, or imply that it wasn't done properly, but Canadians question why this would happen. I think we all saw it take place.

Mr. Gerry Barr: In the field, you're talking about?

Hon. Lawrence MacAulay: Yes, in the field.

Mr. Gerry Barr: You'll get no argument from me that there needs to be organization and coherence and a sharing out of roles. One of our colleagues, Ian Smilie, has written a remarkable book called The Charity of Nations, which addresses how the work of humanitarian responders can be improved—made more constant, more rational. I would recommend that the committee have Mr. Smilie before them on this question.

Mrs. Erin Simpson: With respect to humanitarian assistance, Canada has been a proponent of the principles and practice of good humanitarian donorship. One of the main GHD principles is timely and flexible funding. They explain how official donors like Canada can help organizations avoid turf wars. They recommend setting up funding arrangements that allow organizations to be prepared within 24 hours of an emergency. Our colleagues at CIDA are looking into arranging these types of funding arrangements with some of the major humanitarian organizations. In the IPS, which is very positive, there is mention of these good humanitarian donorship principles. I think the committee should promote the GHD principles themselves, especially timely and flexible funding.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. McDonough.

Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank CCIC for the incredible work you've done in being that steady, substantive voice and champion for coherent, progressive, more robust foreign policy.

I'm going to ask you to comment on the significance that you were among the first off the mark, when there was discussion about an international policy review, in setting out a series of policy papers for discussion and consideration. Your early work was done under the label of international policy review. Now I see that you're using “statement”, because that's what has come back from the government.

My question around that arises out of the long parade of international leaders and bureaucrats and esteemed academics who have come before the committee in the last couple of years, starting in April of 2003, when Stephen Lewis came to the committee and pleaded the case for Canada to deliver on its ODA commitments, right up until a week ago today, when Derek Burney, who might not be thought to be among the descriptions I've just given of the international leaders, pleaded the case for Canada to stop talking and start acting—in other words, “just do it”—and talked about Canada's dwindling, shrinking reputation in the world because of the gap between what we parade around saying and what we actually do.

My question is whether at this point—and I ask this question from the point of view of the committee—we should be accepting the notion that this is a done deal, this is a statement, this is the government's position, and that our efforts should really go into the political mobilization around getting the government to do what's needed, or whether we spend another year or so hearing from a whole lot more people to talk more about tweaking this paragraph and changing that section and so on. So it's partly a process question, but I guess it's, frankly, a political strategy question that we all face.

Secondly, I wonder if you could comment on the implications of splitting or not splitting foreign affairs and international trade, and specifically the implications for Canada really developing the coherence that I think you have quite rightly pressed for with the government.

Thirdly, I don't know what the precise relationship is between the umbrella efforts of CCIC, at a national and international level, and the very excellent work being done in my community and in many others around the “Make Poverty History” campaign, but when I, as the local MP, attended one of the early meetings in Halifax of the Make Poverty History campaign group, I was struck at how perverse it is to think that these groups, which are absolutely overburdened and under-resourced and truly engage on the ground in communities as well as globally trying to address poverty issues, are now having to take on the fight to persuade the government that they should actually do something about this.

I'm just wondering if you can comment—again, from the point of view of this committee trying to decide what our actual priorities are going to be and our workplan—how you'd like to see this committee fitting in with what you see as the priorities to make sure we end up with both a more robust and a more urgent commitment to the foreign policy objectives that you've outlined.

À (1000)

Mr. Gerry Barr: Once again going from back to front, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation is one of the facilitating organizations for the “Make Poverty History” campaign--Abolissons la pauvreté. In Quebec there is a campaign in its own right, Un monde sans pauvreté : Agissons! It's a sister campaign to our own.

One Canadian every two minutes joins the website of the “Make Poverty History” campaign in order to work as an electronic campaigner, to communicate with the Prime Minister and political leaders--parliamentarians, their own members of Parliament--about these key issues: more and better aid; cancellation of the debt to the poorest countries; fair trade arrangements, which give the developing world a fighting chance; and bringing an end to child poverty in Canada, where of course we have the shameful situation of one in six Canadian children living in poverty.

We're very hopeful with this mobilization of organizations, not just NGOs working in development but broader groups--the Assembly of First Nations, the Canadian Federation of Students, and many other groups--that are involved in this very interesting campaign between now and the end of December on all of these issues, focusing of course on the Gleneagles summit, on the meeting of leaders in New York around the millennium development goals, and the trade ministerial in Hong Kong in December.

Canadians are mobilizing. Thank goodness for that. We hope that the messages will get through to parliamentary leaders. We're encouraged about the campaign.

You've asked a very difficult question about process versus action. This has not been a process based on consultation so far, to date. We think it is urgent that the committee take up its responsibilities to engage Canadians in these important questions. They are enormously consequential. Canadians need to be in the picture.

I would urge you to not stay your hand with respect to some of the most obvious imperatives, and I would name among them the 0.7% target, a legislated mandate for aid spending. One can put through legislation in the right circumstances, like that. I see no reason on earth why something that costs nothing--a legislated mandate for aid spending--could not be put through the House as an all-party initiative. There is enormous support for this in the caucuses of all parties on the Hill--all of them. And we would urge you to do that.

On the question of the split of the department, perhaps Gauri could speak to that, since trade is one of her files.

À (1005)

Ms. Gauri Sreenivasan: The split of the two departments was a controversial move for many within the departments and a concerning move for those of us outside who monitor, in a sense, both and care about both--Canada's trade policy and foreign affairs policy. If the split is done, for the moment, I think the key issue is the one coming back that we addressed earlier, which is the coherence agenda. To what extent is the splitting of the trade ministry a green light for it to operate independently? That would be the danger.

For it to have the staff split.... I think, actually, one of the key places where the issue hits the road most importantly is in the embassies on the ground. An ambassador has a certain number of staff to deploy to address the range of Canada's foreign policy concerns, and depending on the nature of the conjuncture in the country and the urgent priorities, he or she can move staff back and forth because they have both files.

If you have dedicated staff who are only on the commerce agenda, I think the concern is that the ability for Canada to respond on the other range of foreign policies may be diminished. We have a lot of instances when our members are running into difficulties because in fact Canada's pursuit of its commercial agenda in particular countries on the ground with respect to the promotion of a Canadian corporate activity, for example, is coming into conflict with our actually stated objectives in foreign policy for that country. So the more the staff is split, the more the worry would be about the difficulty for coherence.

I think the way to come back to it is just on the insistence about the need for trade policy to be informed by these overarching principles for human rights for development. It's even more imperative now in this split.

The Chair: We'll go to Mr. Menzies, please.

Mr. Ted Menzies (Macleod, CPC): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for your most insightful comments.

I guess there are a few things that I would like to discuss. I know that this 0.7% almost seems to get beaten to death, but I guess if we talk about it enough, maybe it will actually happen. I look at how Canadians stepped forward after the tsunami; it's obvious that people want to give.

I'm hearing some comments that it is more than just money that's needed. There's almost too much money to be spent wisely right now; there's the argument about whether it has actually gotten to the people, which you'll hear different debates about. Do we need to be concerned about that? We saw some new organizations, NGOs, grow out of nothing to be part of this. The organizations who were on the ground were concerned that they had the expertise and the people, and yet the money was bled off into new NGOs. I would like a comment on that.

Also, how do we get to that 0.7%? As I said, the hearts of everybody in this country went out to those people in the tsunami, and we are a giving people. How do we get there without just having the government deliver the money, taking our tax dollars and delivering it? Give me some ideas. I'm bouncing around the idea in my mind, and have done so with other people I've talked to, whether there is a way to tax-incentivize this, so that the 0.7% could actually be met by making an incentive, or having a tax-deductible way for Canadians to give. We can give a lot of money to political parties with a great tax deduction; why shouldn't we be able to do that to help people in other countries? Is that a feasible option? I'd just like your comment on that.

Could you also comment on multilateral versus bilateral aid, please? I'm concerned that far too much money from CIDA is going into multilateral organizations, where we don't have a say over where it's spent or how it's delivered. I go back to Kevin's comments about the NGOs: to me, they are a far more effective way to deliver it. We've been discussing back and forth with our researchers the definitions of bilateral aid; the OECD seems to have a different definition of bilateral aid from what CIDA does.

So whoever would like to comment on those questions....

À (1010)

Mr. Gerry Barr: Mr. Menzies, there are three broad things that I take from your commentary. One is on how we can get accountable and effective spending, both in the field and in the aid program. There, I would just briefly say there is no better way than a legislated mandate for creating clarity of purpose; we know it so well, as we've had these discussions before. Indeed, some of those ideas were informed by the work that you have done. So I would say that you should press on with that, and you should take it up one step with respect to global catastrophes and effective aid spending, where there needs to be similar organization for aid initiatives at an international level.

At the end of the day, $7 billion was raised in the tsunami response, which was an appropriate amount, you might say, but relative to the whole amount that flows into international aid annually—about $57 billion—it was an enormous bite out of the apple. You might legitimately worry that there is a kind of inappropriate scaling of these things: because they're in front of us, because they're compelling, the planet responds, yet it fails to respond in other circumstances. What about the Congo and the three million people dead there over the last ten years? So there needs to be some appropriateness and balance, and that can be brought to bear with approaches to order the humanitarian response internationally. Once again, I refer back to Mr. Smillie's very important book on this, The Charity of Nations. He'd be well worth having in front of the committee.

You talked about how we get to the 0.7% and whether we should tax-incentivize it. Certainly you could encourage Canadians with tax incentives to contribute more generously to international development--that's an imaginable strategy--but I don't think it should be a substitute for the donor-state obligation to achieve the 0.7% target. There is a way of getting there without going into deficit; my colleague Brian Tomlinson knows how, and I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you about it.

Also, with respect to this multilateral versus bilateral trend, Brian would be the man to give you a word or two on that.

The Chair: Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. Brian Tomlinson: On the 0.7%, as you know, this is an international target, a measure of donor performance, and therefore speaks directly to what governments contribute to international aid efforts. In Canada we've been particularly fortunate, because over the years our government has used a portion of that aid to create greater synergy with the work of civil society organizations like our members. So there is a spinoff in that direction, but the rules of the development assistance committee are fairly strict about what is allowed to be counted with respect to the targeted 0.7%.

In terms of achieving it, our best calculations, which in fact are more or less confirmed by officials in the Department of Finance, are that about 15% increases over the next 10 years would bring us to 0.7% by 2015. That's not unimaginable, because in the last four years the average increase has been in the order of 13%. So it is entirely feasible.

On the question of multilateral and bilateral aid, this can be a very complicated discussion. I'll try to just raise a couple of points. One is that, quite positively, donors have moved their own discussion to what they call harmonization. No longer can we afford to have individual donors supporting literally thousands of projects with individual missions in countries that are poor and that by definition don't have the infrastructure to properly service that approach. So that is a positive move, and to a degree that brings into harmony bilateral aid approaches and multilateral aid approaches in the countries involved, in support of government efforts, usually in the areas of health, education, and agriculture, so in the social sectors.

What concerns us about that approach, and entirely possible to fix, in our view, are a couple of things. One is that it is overly focused on government. Governments must be the ones to deliver social service; they have the international human rights obligation to do so. But in doing so, we have to strengthen accountability with citizens in the countries involved so that they themselves can hold governments accountable to the delivery of those services. Right now, many of these governments are more accountable to the donors than they are to their own citizens, because of some of the structures that they're forced to respond to in order to receive the aid. So this gets at some of the questions around aid conditionality, and that in the past donors have imposed a great number of conditions on countries to do what they would like to see done. I think with some correct motive they've done this, but it also takes away accountability to citizens, who ultimately are the ones who will sustain the commitment of their governments to perform in the areas of delivering basic education, primary health, and so on.

I think we have to look at our own aid policies from these two points of view. The role of civil society in the development process is fundamental. That's something that we would say our policies around aid effectiveness have not properly addressed yet.

Secondly, I think we need, as the British government has done, to look at our policies around aid conditionality. So as we get more and more involved in relationships with the bank and with other donors, we're taking on conditions that are not even our own, because they're a part of these packages.

À (1015)

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Bevilacqua.

Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (Vaughan, Lib.): Thank you very much.

I was just reading your recommendations, and there are quite a few. When I see a lot of recommendations and many items on an agenda, I often wonder whether we're trying to do too much. So I just wonder, what is the most important thing, in your view, when it comes to aid? What is it that we really should be looking at as the priority?

I'm not going to read these recommendations, because these are yours. You know what they are. But there seem to be quite a few.

How do you handle that?

Mr. Gerry Barr: The most important thing is to put the issue of poverty eradication at the centre of our foreign policy. This issue should be a regularly referred to concern and consideration. We should take it into account in all our policies as we develop them—in trade, foreign policy, defence. We should always consider how these policies are going to bear on the eradication of global poverty. That is the most important thing.

In doing this, how do we equip ourselves to address this problem in real terms? For this we go to the 0.7%, the legislated mandate, the question of building competencies in our responsibility to protect, and the need to generate competencies at the United Nations for its responsibilities in that area. But the most important thing is the focus, and it's not yet there.

Hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua: I would imagine that if I were to review some of these strategies outlined by other countries, I would see a menu like we have here today, a long list of things to do. There's no question in my mind that you believe in a multilateral approach

I'm wondering whether we need to specialize as a nation. Could we be the country that specializes in education, local economic development, or constitutional frameworks? Is that the way to go? There are many countries involved, and I think there's a lot of duplication. It's the sort of thing we find here in government domestically—a lot of duplication and a lack of the focus required to address key issues.

Mr. Brian Tomlinson: It's a complicated question. It sounds as if this would be a reasonable approach. Canada's not the largest donor in the world. We have modest resources relative to other donors. So there is a strong argument to be made for focus, and I would agree with that.

However, in this country we don't separate issues around health or education from other parts of people's lives when it comes to improving their capacity to take advantage of their rights in those areas. Similarly, in many developed countries, people in poverty live their lives as farmers, as women marketers, as people needing health service or education to advance their own livelihoods and their children's. So while we need focus, we also need to have a comprehensive picture of the underlying causes of poverty. We need to work with others, but we must also consider our own analyses of our interventions, whether they're in health, education, or whatever. We need to take into account what people need to be able to take advantage of the help we're trying to offer.

For example, we are concerned—the minister addressed this a few days ago—that agriculture played no part in the discussions on the international policy statement. Agriculture is fundamental to the livelihoods of many poor people. We cannot succeed in promoting, say, health and education unless we consider the things that enable people to take advantage of these opportunities, like their livelihood as rural workers or their access to land or credit. So we need focus, but we also need a comprehensive picture of where poverty lies.

À (1020)

Hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua: I'm not arguing that point. The point I'm making is that I can't believe that there are so many countries involved in the eradication of poverty. Everybody wants to do a little bit of everything. Why don't we develop an international tool kit that would help countries specialize in key areas? This way, all countries wouldn't need to worry about education, agriculture, or whatever the case may be. They could specialize. There would be special responses to various needs by Canada, America, Italy, France, and others.

My sense is that in international affairs nations want to be involved in all sorts of things. I'm not sure we have used our resources as wisely as we could have. We could use more international focus, more international agreement. We have the same thing in the area of defence here in Canada. How many things can we do? Should we be specializing? In a world like ours, where globalization has brought people together, I think the time has come to enter into this type of debate.

Mr. Brian Tomlinson: There are a couple of examples where that is actually happening more. In Tanzania, for example, the donors in Tanzania have set up a structure for collaboration and for sharing information about what their priorities are. Because it is rooted in Tanzania, it is a structure that allows Tanzanians to also engage with it.

That's one of the concerns, as I mentioned a minute ago, around harmonization. Often some of the discussions among donors happen in Paris, which developing countries have little access to. I think there is room to move in the direction you're talking about. In Tanzania it's happened. In Mozambique to a degree it's happened. It's very difficult because of some of the things you just mentioned. Donors, because of their own constituencies, their own pressures as donors, need to have a profile in a certain way in a country. They need to emphasize certain aspects of the development program. It takes an awful lot of negotiation to happen, to actually have greater coordination.

It also needs to take place in a country context. It's not just the governments involved that need to participate to a degree in that coordination; it's also citizens, because we're really talking about citizens' access to some of their basic rights. If that discussion only takes place between donors themselves, or just with a few government officials, then as I mentioned a minute ago, I think we undermine democracy to a degree. So we have to be careful how we construct coordination.

À (1025)

Hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua: Thank you.

But there are certain absolutes, aren't there? When you're trying to help a country, you know that health care is important. You know that for a fact. You know that the wealth of a nation is going to be largely determined by its education level. You agree with that, don't you? So there are certain absolutes that we, as a world community, agree to. We don't have to debate the issues ad nauseam.

I can give you an example of the debate that we had in this country back in the early 1990s when we were faced with a fiscal situation. Everybody at the end of the day agreed that deficits were not a good thing for a nation. We also believe in liberating markets. These are things we came to a conclusion about. I think the world community needs to just say look, there are items one, two, and three; there's no further debate: we have to address these issues, and these have to be the priorities.

As for this notion that we have to be involved in all sorts of things at the same time and still debate, I fail to understand why at this point in the development of a global village we're still debating these issues.

The Chair: Mr. Barr, rapidly.

Mr. Gerry Barr: There's a lot of tire-spinning going on, as you point out, and it should stop. These are enormously serious problems, as you rightly say. There are certain grandes lignes that are clear, clear, clear. The donor states have not picked up their responsibilities as they should, either from the point of view of coordination or from the point of view of resourcing. It's got to stop.

The reason you see so much confusion in the field, so much overlapping, is because the business of addressing global poverty is hopelessly marginalized and undersubscribed. It has to end. We will never make progress until we get at it in a serious way. For Canada that means we must hit the 0.7% target, create legislation-accountable aid spending, work seriously and consciously with multilateral organizations, and order the humanitarian response globally more effectively--point final, bonjour.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Barr.

Mr. Paquette, please.

Mr. Pierre Paquette (Joliette, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today. Indeed, you provide us with regular analysis. From time to time, we don't have to get together as a committee.

I have four questions for you. I want to put all four of them to you one after the other, and then I will give you an opportunity to respond.

You talked about coherence. We see this as very important. That is why we are battling the splitting of Foreign Affairs and International Trade into two separate departments. We believe that the two should be closely linked, and that international trade should be a vehicle through which to implement our foreign policy.

When we met, you floated the idea of creating a Department of International Cooperation. It seems to me you were the ones who talked about that. For reasons of coherence, I would be opposed to the creation of a Department of International Cooperation, because it seems to me all of these components need to be closely linked.

You are now making a somewhat softer proposal, but one that I support. You are asking that the Minister of International Cooperation be a senior minister within Cabinet. There is a department, but it is overseen by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. How could that minister play an influential role? Of course, we all hope that the current Minister of International Cooperation will be able to play a more significant role than she currently does. That is my first question.

My second question relates to the role of agriculture in relation to the development priorities set out in the International Policy Statement. In the Statement, it talks about basic education, health care, and especially the fight against HIV/AIDS, good governance, private sector development, sustainable development and the environment, but no mention is made of agriculture. It seems to me that if we're talking about poverty eradication in developing countries, agriculture must be a central concern. Do you think that we should be going after the government to once again urge it to make agriculture a central concern? The Minister has told us that it is cross-cutting, but nowhere is it mentioned as a priority.

In fact, in La Terre de chez nous, the journal of the Union des producteurs agricoles, the headline in big block letters was: “Federal Government Abandons Agriculture in its International Cooperation Policy”. That is the way our farmers see it. This is really quite something. I would be interested in hearing your views on that.

Third, you know that the logjam was broken at the WTO some days ago, as regards the calculation of ad valorem equivalents in agriculture. We are expecting there to be sufficiently intense negotiations for an agreement to be reached, possibly even in December. That is extremely worrisome given that, for the time being, the government's priorities are market access, reducing domestic support measures and the abolition of export subsidies. In your opinion, what mandate should be given to Canadian negotiators with a view to ensuring that the interests of farmers in developing countries are considered directly, and not just through the liberalization of trade in agricultural products?

Finally, I would like to come back to Ms. Lalonde's question about Haiti, which you did not have time to answer. Do you have any recommendations to make with respect to the current situation in Haiti?

I will leave you with those four questions. How much time do our friends have to respond? Will that be enough? The Chairman is extremely generous. He is a follower of Einstein.

À (1030)

[English]

Mr. Gerry Barr: Very briefly about Haiti, when we questioned CIDA about its absence from the country list, their response was that the country list was relevant to two-thirds of bilateral commitments, that ample room was there to take account of concerns in Haiti, and that they were thinking of Haiti. It was missing from the list not because of its priority or importance, but because it fell more in the category of fragile states from the CIDA point of view; therefore, it would be responded to in the context of the optional space that is available for bilateral spending.

Secondly, I think I should say that on the question of Haiti and the development challenges emerging from Haiti, two of our colleague organizations, Development and Peace and the North-South Institute, have a lot of good analysis and information. If the committee would like to have them before it, they would be very useful witnesses.

On the question of having a senior minister and a standing committee to take account of Canada's development cooperation policies, to be plain and frank, we have not been able to get much mileage out of the idea of a standing committee. To the MPs we've been speaking to over recent months, it seemed a pretty solid challenge to create a new committee out of whole cloth for that purpose, so our optimism about the possibility of such a committee has diminished significantly. However, we've been incredibly encouraged by the positive response on issues like the parliamentary accountability that could flow from a legislated mandate and a good, clear system of reporting to committees such as this one.

As for a senior minister for CIDA, it is true that just as CIDA's policies have been plagued by the absence of a legislative mandate and a framework for clear aid spending, CIDA itself has been plagued by the fact that it is chronically a junior ministry; ministers come and go very quickly. The agency is therefore subject to trends and enthusiasms, and there are certain problems from the absence of institutional memory that go along with that. In order to remedy this and to ensure that the question of poverty eradication is not marginalized in foreign policy consideration, we've said that the government needs to name the minister of international cooperation as a senior minister. The way to do that is through the Prime Minister; he has to do it and name the minister as one of his key and senior ministers. Until that happens, we won't get the outcome we're looking for.

On the question of agriculture and trade, I think I'd like to turn to Gauri for some comment on that.

À (1035)

[Translation]

Ms. Gauri Sreenivasan: Mr. Paquette, you are right. Canada's priorities with respect to trade and agriculture are also a concern for us.

For the time being, the objectives are the ones you listed: access to other countries' markets and reduced subsidies. Canada also wants to keep certain protections in place for some of its key sectors, and particularly supply management.

The problem with this agenda is that there is an inconsistency in saying that you want every other country to open up its markets, and yet you want to maintain certain protections for yourself. In reality, Canada's agricultural model—indeed, Canada's economy—is a mixed model: there are some goods that we want to export, and other goods, in key sectors, that we want to keep here to supply local markets.

This is what Canada's agenda at the WTO should be: the country needs balance; it needs flexibility to determine in which sectors it wants to be an aggressive exporter and in which sectors it wants to have more flexibility to manage its border and imports.

A few days ago, a meeting of key producer spokespersons from Brazil, India and Africa came to a close. We can clearly see that Canadian producers and producers in other countries have a common interest in pursuing that kind of agenda at the WTO. Market openness doesn't always work in agriculture. Countries need to have the necessary flexibility to decide when and why they want to open up their markets.

We want Canada's agenda to include such items as international trade, problem activities, dumping and illegal subsidies. We need trade rules that can correct these problems with respect to the trade between countries.

However, in other areas, WTO rules must not prevent countries from developing policies to support their farmers, as long as those projects and programs do not cause problems for other countries. I'm thinking primarily of supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board. It is quite clear that those Canadian programs are not causing problems for other countries. So, we need to ensure that trade rules do not deal with domestic matters. We believe Canada can find allies to support a more balanced agenda such as this. A Canadian agenda that is quite aggressive towards those countries that want to open up their markets, but shows no flexibility in that regard, would not work. So, we are seeking a more balanced agenda. Canada will need to find allies to support it.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. McTeague.

Hon. Dan McTeague (Pickering—Scarborough East, Lib.): Thank you very much for appearing here.

There've been some very fascinating exchanges between colleagues on all sides.

First of all, I want to ask a simple question for clarification. I understand that your earlier briefing notes have changed to the document that you've given us, but one of your earlier briefing notes also dealt with recommendations under the international policy review, a new deal for developing countries. In the recommendations in section 3, it said “focus Canadian aid initiatives on selected development challenges in 15 to 20 of the poorest developing countries within a holistic approach to poverty eradication”. It then said, “there is little evidence to support the idea that concentrating resources in fewer countries, or individual sectors will necessarily produce better results”. That seems to be in contrast with point 4 in the document you sent to us, where you say in section 4, “Increased country and sector focus for Canadian bilateral aid is welcome”. I just want to know if you haven't updated your original notes. I don't mean to put you on the spot on this, because my concern is just to make sure I understand where CCIC is coming from.

I notice in some of what you're saying here that you accept as correct what we said with respect to the role of focusing. You seem to give a lot of support to the idea of the G-20, and the L-20 initiative led by the Prime Minister, and of course go beyond the doctrine of the responsibility to protect and of course his own stated views on this. Could you perhaps give us a better understanding of your comments with respect to security? I think you've made some comments here that I thought were very interesting, though I'm not so sure I share them. In referring to the threat of terrorism, you state in section 9 that “While there are legitimate measures to be taken by countries to prevent attacks on civilians, the Government’s statement is inflammatory in its description of the terrorist threat”.

Our greatest economic well-being, whether we like it or not, lies in our trade with the United States. As much as we've tried to diversify and work with other nations.... I worked for Toyota Canada as a public relations specialist for many years, which is an example of the kind of trade we are trying to get beyond our own borders. But if we do not take into consideration the oppressive fact of our trade relationship with the United States, and we somehow engender the decline of that relationship economically, how would you propose to be able to help Canada pay for the kinds of programs that we so clearly want and that would assist in your goal of eradicating global poverty? How do we get around that? I understand it's important not to use the poor or poverty as a pawn or scapegoat, but I think there are some inescapable realities here that we have to take into consideration. I certainly wouldn't characterize them as inflammatory; I would characterize them as a reality check.

Do you have any comments?

À (1040)

Mr. Gerry Barr: I'll start off quickly on this last one, and then we can perhaps go more generally to the security question with my colleague Erin Simpson. On the focus question, Brian will be able to provide context for your interesting question about country policies.

Hon. Dan McTeague: I just want to make the last fifteen minutes exciting.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Gerry Barr: I also would agree with your general observation that Canada is fundamentally linked in a North American economy and our interests are fundamentally linked to where things head and move in the United States. You can't be in government without taking this into account, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Yet it is more than clear that in Canada's response to post-9/11 circumstances, partly for reasons of the need to cosmetically appear to take up U.S. concerns and worries about the encroaching terrorist threat in a serious way, Canada rolled into post-9/11 legislation in Bill C-36 that was corrosive of Canadians' human rights, that was not balanced, and that instead of creating temporary restraints threatens to create permanent restraints on the liberties of Canadians.

There are grave concerns here, and they flow largely from the fact that Canada unrealistically assessed a terrorist threat. That is not to say that there are no terrorist threats, but to observe also that in the realm of imagining possible threats there is an open-ended set. There is literally no end to possible threats. If we are to bring concrete responses to all possible threats in and around one subject--that is, the subject of global terrorism--we are almost certainly going to end up in a very disproportionate approach to governing and to issues, certainly issues like those of global poverty.

The other thing is that to approach the problem of global poverty as a fundamental of the security question, to reduce it to a security question, is to begin to treat those who are poor as terrorist threats, which is, of course, not true at all. It's a fundamental category mistake, and it's a way of thinking that we need to escape if we're going to move forward usefully.

I'll ask Brian to talk about focus.

Mr. Brian Tomlinson: Just quickly on the focus question, the paper you refer to was written obviously about a year ago. It was our input into the review process. At that time, we were concerned that the discussion of focus was becoming too narrow and that in our view it was not an effective way to deploy all of Canadian aid resources into a narrow number of countries or sectors.

In the event of the statement, as I commented earlier, there's a more balanced approach to that, with focus on 25 countries in the bilateral program, in a portion of the bilateral program, but leaving a greater degree of flexibility with respect to partnership programs, for example, where many of our members are working in a diverse number of countries and have been doing so for many years with a variety of partners. So we were concerned that the discussion of country focus not reinforce the notion that, for example, there were only nine countries in the world, as we'd had in our aid effectiveness statement, where we should be involved. We're relatively pleased that the government, in its statement, has moved to 25 countries.

À (1045)

The Chair: Mr. McTeague.

Hon. Dan McTeague: Mr. Barr, I agree with your last comments, that poverty is not a conduit to insecurity. I'm simply trying to provide focus for the fact that up to now we've spent over $10 billion. The amount of money we've spent on border security, as an example, is certainly not--and I would disagree with you--cosmetic.

I also have difficulty with Bill C-36 on a completely different matter, notwithstanding the decision of the Supreme Court with respect to its validity.

I want to ask, if I could, about one of the recurring problems, and I'm referring to what Mr. Sorenson said a little earlier. He has an NGO in his riding; I happen to have a very good one in my riding as well. There is a question of optics, in that aid or assistance is given disproportionately through CIDA and other organizations. You'll see, for instance, my NGO will complain bitterly that it's impossible for them to involve themselves in microcredits; they don't have the kind of scale or they don't have the kind of prestige, and this was well before the issue on the tsunami. They will see, for instance, officers of other organizations driving around in brand-new trucks and living in wonderful homes, and they're not necessarily sure that is the kind of symbol they want to give. Meanwhile, they are trying to do it, I would say, on the cheap, but they're of course trying to achieve very much the same objective as I saw people trying to achieve in the dumps in Guatemala, where they're actually trying to provide opportunities to give people food.

How do you, within your own organization, balance this stark contrast between them and some NGOs that seem to be doing extremely well? Although they're very successful in delivering the aid, there's also at least a perception that some of this is going towards bettering themselves as well.

Mr. Gerry Barr: Well, you've pointed to an important feature of NGO life but also a feature of lots of other lives. That is, there's a wide spectrum of non-governmental groups. Some international families are enormous in scale and very efficacious in some particular areas; they're closely and tightly linked with great competencies. Other non-governmental groups work more in the terrain of solidarity and accompaniment, walking with small groups on the ground.

I would just argue that while there are tensions, certainly, that emerge in the relationships between and among those NGOs, there's also a kind of division of task that is tacitly involved in all this too. There's some very high-quality, enormously important work done by very small NGOs that are extraordinarily innovative, and it's part of the richness of the community--not that it doesn't generate some complaint.

I think one of the problems we have with CIDA, for example, is that CIDA hasn't figured out the role of civil society organizations relative to its overall aid delivery. We have been arguing, for example, for the emergence in CIDA of a civil society framework. We have a policy on agriculture. We have a policy on private sector development. We have policies on lots of other things, but there is no policy--that is to say a perspective, a set-out perspective--on what the role of citizens is in development. It is urgently needed, because, as Brian I think very clearly pointed out, the role of citizens, both north and south, is a kind of royal jelly of development. When it's added, development works. When it's missing, development fails.

À (1050)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Barr.

I will allow one very short question from Mrs. McDonough and one from Mr. Sorenson. We have six minutes left altogether.

Ms. Alexa McDonough: Mr. Chair, I don't want to use up the time arguing against the decision, but I don't know how I ended up with less than three minutes and no time for the answer.

The Chair: You had fourteen minutes in the first round.

Thank you.

Go ahead, please.

Ms. Alexa McDonough: Now that Robert Greenhill's appointment has been announced as president of CIDA, I want to raise a question that arises out of his testimony before this committee on April 14. On that occasion, I said--it's on the record--it felt to me, since he was catapulted over a number of other people waiting to speak, that it was part of the government strategy that they were rolling out and where they're actually going with foreign policy, as opposed to this whole process we're all involved in.

I want to get right to the heart of the matter. I would say your efforts around ODA might just finally begin to pay off, if you look at the transcript, because he said absolutely that Canada should commit to the targets and timetable, do so in company with the coalition of the willing--Germany, France, and the U.K.--and not join the coalition of the unwilling that are dragging their heels on this. So congratulations to you. But I don't recall his having committed around the civil society engagement, so I guess I would mostly direct you to that testimony, if I could. It's not a question, just to point your attention to that.

On Darfur, very quickly, we've been trying to push the government to go further, with all due sensitivity to the diplomacy required in dealing with the AU and with Sudan, to do two things: one, to absolutely guarantee the safety of both civilians and humanitarian workers there on the ground, particularly women subjected to rape on an alarming level; and two, to get in essential supplies, food aid particularly, but also other supplies, in advance of the rainy season, given what the threat is to human life, literally, there. I think that requires armed personnel carriers, by the way, to guarantee that safety.

I'm wondering if you can comment on that from the perspective of your work and your knowledge of Darfur.

The Chair: Mr. Barr, you have one minute.

Mr. Gerry Barr: Those people to whom we talk who are knowledgeable about Darfur are very insistent, and we agree with them, that the work of the African Union ought to be supported and fully subscribed. It is undersubscribed. It's one of the reasons why the African Union has contributed less than the committed number of troops to the area.

Rather than put 1,000 Canadian boots on the ground, if I can make reference to an earlier suggestion, we think that Canada ought to make a cashable commitment to the African Union in support of its initiative and ought to undertake to convene other donor states to substantially support African Union efforts and undertake simultaneously a major diplomatic campaign on the African continent to ensure that there is a fast and appropriate response.

Ms. Alexa McDonough: And on armoured personnel carriers?

The Chair: If you have any other comments, Mr. Barr, I would like you and your group to provide them to the clerk of the committee.

We don't have the time, Mr. Sorenson, because there is another committee in five minutes. It's up to you if you want to pass Mr. Day's motions.

Thank you very much to all the witnesses.

We have committee business that we need to deal with.

First, colleagues, we received a resolution from the subcommittee on human rights. The subcommittee would like to get approval from the main committee concerning its operational budget request. The amount is for $11,100. I need a motion on this. It's primarily to support the subcommittee's studies on the activities of a mining company, TVI Pacific, in the Philippines, and some other studies--denial of human rights in Cuba; evaluation of NGO project facility found in mining in developing countries, also corporate responsibility; possibly looking at also Canadian development assistance in the IPS. I need a motion concerning this.

An hon. member: So moved.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

À (1055)

The Chair: Fine.

Now we have motions by Mr. Day.

The first motion by Mr. Day was concerning Israel. I understand that you want to defer it.

You have a second motion. Go ahead, Mr. Day.

Mr. Stockwell Day (Okanagan—Coquihalla, CPC): I would ask for consideration of the committee. The motion is there. It's straightforward.

I move that we would empower the Minister of Foreign Affairs to obtain a full report on the United Nations oil-for-food scandal investigation and provide a copy of the said report to the committee in order to prove or disprove any implication of Canadians or Canadian companies. I think it's straightforward.

The Chair: Any comments concerning the motion by Mr. Day?

Mr. McTeague.

Hon. Dan McTeague: I would like to urge you to have the clerk get the documents. The UN investigation has issued two lengthy reports on the progress of its work. We suspect that the final report will be made public. The date of issue of the final report has not yet been announced. The reports and other associated material are available on the website. I'm wondering if you can get this. We think the committee should have all the available information before reaching any conclusion, as suggested in the last part of Mr. Day's motion, in proving or disproving the implication of Canadians or Canadian companies. It's hard to do this if we don't have the evidence. I think we should look before we leap.

Mr. Stockwell Day: There is no talk about leaping. All the information is available now. There will be a report. But as with the Gomery report, who knows how long it will take? Any information that's available would be helpful. So unless there's further debate, I call for the question.

Hon. Dan McTeague: We don't believe in “judge, jury, and executioner”. We like to make sure that we have all the evidence before we come to any conclusions. This motion is in fact misleading, as evidenced by what Mr. Day has just said.

Mr. Stockwell Day: I want to make this plain: there's no suggestion here of judges, executioners, or anything. I would simply like all the information that's available to us now. There are many columns being written now, not just in Canada but in the United States and in other jurisdictions, about possible Canadian involvement. As the foreign affairs committee, we should act responsibly and at least know what is being said. That's why I've called for the question on this. There is no suggestion of “judge, jury, and executioner”.

The Chair: Okay, you called for the question.

Madam McDonough.

Ms. Alexa McDonough: To address the concern of the parliamentary secretary, which I share, I think we could put forward a friendly amendment that would remove any doubt about our intentions simply by dropping from the motion the words “in order to prove or disprove any implication of Canadians and Canadian companies”. It would be unbelievable for us to take the position that the report proves or disproves the guilt or innocence of anybody.

Could I suggest this friendly amendment?

Mr. Stockwell Day: I respect what Madam McDonough is saying and the intent of what she is saying. However, it wouldn't technically be a friendly amendment, since it radically changes the intent. The intent is to zero right in on things that are being said about Canadians. That's why I'd like it left as it is.

The Chair: Okay. Now I've got an amendment from Ms. McDonough. We're going to vote on the amendment--

An hon. member: Point of order.

[Translation]

The Chair: Ms. Lalonde.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: I realize that we need to have information, but certainly if we were to drop… It seems to me we would have everything we need to do that if we have the necessary information. This would allow us to get the information, and when we come back in the next session, we could continue.

[English]

The Chair: Fine, I agree.

Final point.

Mr. Stockwell Day: Mr. Chairman, don't I have to agree that it's a friendly amendment?

The Chair: No, she can move any amendment she wishes. It could still be friendly.

Ms. McDonough so moves an amendment to delete “in order to prove or disprove any implication of Canadians and Canadian companies”.

(Amendment agreed to)

(Motion as amended agreed to)

The Chair: Do you want me to report this to the House?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Thank you.

The meeting is over.