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Good morning. I would like to begin by thanking the Chair, Mr. Sorenson, as well as the other members of this committee for inviting Rights and Democracy to appear today.
For nearly 20 years, Rights and Democracy has been dedicated to bringing to reality the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its binding covenants and other international human rights instruments.
We promote and defend human rights and democratic freedoms around the world. We support human rights defenders and democracy activists striving to achieve better lives for themselves and their communities. We assist societies in the building of democratic institutions and processes that give effect to universal human rights.
I am pleased to represent the board of directors of Rights and Democracy at this important meeting. I would like to offer the regrets of the Chair of the Board, Aurel Braun, who could not be with us today due to a family emergency.
The act that created Rights and Democracy gave it a board of directors that includes 10 Canadian members from across the country as well as three international members to ensure that developing countries are represented.
My colleague Payam Akhavan, who is here today, as well as our members from La Paz, Regina, Kabul, Calgary, Bamako, Toronto and Ottawa will no doubt agree with me when I state that the entire board of directors thanks Parliament for its support to Rights and Democracy over the last 20 years and looks forward to building on our important relationship over the next 20 years.
The five-year review of our organization, which was completed by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and tabled in Parliament by Minister Cannon, is an important element of the act that established Rights and Democracy.
In 1988, when Canada's Parliament gave Rights and Democracy the mandate to strengthen democratic institutions and programs that give effect to the International Bill of Human Rights, it ensured that our work would be carried out on behalf of Canadians.
By appearing before you today, we are reporting back to Canadians, through their representatives in Parliament, on our important accomplishments over the last five years. We are proud of these accomplishments. As you will see from the evaluation report and from the presentation by our President, Rémy Beauregard, Rights and Democracy is implementing its mandate in some of the most difficult and dangerous countries in the world, where human rights remain unfulfilled and where democracy seems a long way from taking root.
Notwithstanding the challenges inherent in our line of work, the programs and activities of Rights and Democracy are, in the words of the evaluators, making “a positive contribution to Canada's role in the area of human rights and democratic development on the international stage.” Nowhere is this more true than in Canada's two largest recipients of official development assistance.
In Afghanistan, Rights and Democracy supports the participation of women in the transformation of Afghan society. We are working with women's rights groups and traditional leaders to halt the discriminatory practices toward women, especially in marriage. We contributed to building a democratic culture based on human rights through a number of local partnerships throughout the country. Rights and Democracy's efforts lead to the approval by the Supreme Court of Afghanistan of a new marriage contract that respects women's rights.
We are currently working with an Afghan law-drafting committee that is facing enormous challenges to re-write the country's family law. Our office in Kabul, which employs 18 people, is staffed entirely by Afghan nationals. Our programs touch thousands of people throughout Afghanistan.
In Haiti, Rights and Democracy contributed to the establishment of the Office of the Ombudsman, and organized human rights tribunals after the fall of the dictatorship in 1994. Through our office in Port-au-Prince, we trained over 350 civil society activists throughout the country in advocacy techniques, leading to greater citizen participation in the democratic process.
With funding from CIDA, we are currently working with political parties and politically-active youth to promote multi-party dialogue, encourage the political participation of women and foster greater State-society relations on important human rights issues such as access to food and civil registration.
These examples point to the high quality of our programs in Canada's priority countries. Our work in Haiti and Afghanistan also points to another important factor in the success of our endeavours: sustainable long-term financing. These two country programs benefit from long-term funding arrangements with CIDA, which allow us to operate through offices in the field. Rights and Democracy, as an executing agency, has consistently delivered on results.
However, most of the work we do, whether it is supporting the pro-democracy movement in Burma or documenting human rights violations in Zimbabwe, is funded through an annual parliamentary allocation. This committee's support was instrumental in securing a significant increase in Rights and Democracy's parliamentary allocation five years ago to approximately $9.2 million. The five-year review demonstrates that we have generated positive results with this allocation, and it recommends a series of steps to improve our programs and operations.
Mr. Beauregard will outline what has been done, with the support of the board of directors, to implement these recommendations. He will also explain why the future success of Rights and Democracy depends on a multi-year, single-source funding agreement with the Government of Canada for its parliamentary allocation. As we prepare to finalize our strategic plan for 2010 to 2015, your knowledge and expertise, and indeed your support, will be crucial.
Before I conclude, I would be remiss if I did not recognize the important contribution of Rights and Democracy's staff, represented today by its union's president, Maxime Longangué, and our partners across the globe. As you have seen on several occasions in the past when Rights and Democracy experts have come before this committee, our staff is dedicated to the cause of human rights and democracy, and pursue the mission of the institution with unparalleled professionalism and determination; our employees are the guardians of our mandate in the field.
Parliamentarians, you can rest assured that Rights and Democracy will, with your support, continue executing its mandate of promoting and defending human rights and democratic development throughout the world—that is to say, promoting and defending values dear to all Canadians.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to join Mr. Guilbeault in thanking you for inviting our organization to today's meeting. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the presence in this room of two other members of our board of directors: Brad Farquhar, from Regina, and Professor Elliot Tepper, from Ottawa.
[English]
Rights and Democracy is often called upon to present to this committee. We were here last week to discuss the human rights impact of foreign investments. This important special relationship with Parliament is unique. Few countries in the world have sought to create by law an institution such as ours. To my knowledge, no other country has one whose mandate links both human rights and democratic development. In this respect Rights and Democracy was created not only to promote universal human rights and democratic freedoms, and those who support their realization, but also to foster democratic institutions, structures, and processes that individuals require to give effect to human rights.
In staying true to this mandate and pursuing these intrinsically linked objectives, Rights and Democracy has worked closely with civil society organizations and governments, including the Government of Canada, and has engaged in places and situations where the need is most acute.
Our extensive experience in the field has led us to conclude, as we did in the original report preceding its creation, that democratic development is about reforming the way decisions are made in a society by ensuring that citizens participate in the decision-making process that affects their lives.
Rights and Democracy has applied this unique approach to democratic development in over 30 countries since its creation. Currently we work on four thematic lines, which include democratic development, women's rights, economic and social rights, and indigenous peoples' rights. We operate in 13 core countries.
Rights and Democracy's extensive underground contacts and long-term country expertise, its ability to bring together various actors from state and civil society, and its solid reputation allow it to react and deploy innovative programs rapidly.
The purpose of my presentation today is to present the main conclusions and recommendations of the five-year review. I will describe how Rights and Democracy has implemented these recommendations.
The statutory five-year review that you have before you was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General of DFAIT and covers the period between March 2003 to March 2008. The review included data review and analysis of our programs and activities to determine the relevance of our work and the strategy and governance system deployed by the institution. Six case studies were chosen by the evaluators to provide a cross-section of programs.
I am pleased to state that the Office of the Inspector General concluded that the overall results of this review were positive. The data gathered and interviews held with various stakeholders in Canada and in partner countries have confirmed the effectiveness and relevance of Rights and Democracy's activities in the field as well as their compliance with Rights and Democracy's mission.
As with all evaluations, there were a number of areas for improvement. This is healthy for an organization, especially one that is operating in different contexts with an overall objective fixed in the long term.
Of the five recommendations, four are directed at Rights and Democracy. The first recommendation directed to us is to increase our effort to engage Canadians in the work that we do, as mandated by paragraph 4(3)(c) of Rights and Democracy's act. The act calls on us to foster research and debate in Canada on human rights and democracy issues. We completely agree with this recommendation and we have already made significant progress in reaching out to Canadians to raise awareness. In 2008 we created a communication directorate to better manage the various components of our strategy. We developed a new Canadian engagement strategy, which we have already begun to implement. The central part of this strategy is the new cross-Canada dialogue series. We have already been to Winnipeg and Ottawa, and we will hold a series of dialogues in each province and every territory over the next five years. While our headquarters are in Montreal, we are opening an office in Ottawa to better engage the foreign-policy community concentrated in the national capital.
Over 20 Rights and Democracy student delegations are active on university campuses across the country, from Nanaimo to Moncton. Every year these delegations act directly in their communities to “put the world to rights” in their own way.
Recommendation number 3, which is number 2 addressed to us, but number 3 in the report, is for Rights and Democracy to maintain its program focus in the coming year while improving its management approach and strategy. We welcome this recommendation, as we believe the teams and countries in which we work and the partners with whom we work require long-term engagement. Since January of this year, we have been mobilized in the preparation of our strategic plan as recommended in the report. The 2015 strategic plan recognizes that the institution has a potential that must be maintained. The strategic planning process, approved by the board, was led by Rights and Democracy staff and included efforts to learn from past experience as well as to look forward into the future environmental factors that will influence our work. Consultations were held with board members as well as with 150 stakeholders in Canada and abroad, including the Government of Canada and partner organizations. The draft of the strategic plan has been presented to the board for approval very soon.
Many of our programs will evolve into new and innovative areas of work. Rights and Democracy has been supporting the democratic movement in Burma, and will continue to do so through the democratic voice of Burma and by supporting the Burmese Parliament in exile. Rights and Democracy is working to end impunity for human rights violation in Zimbabwe and to train journalists on how to report in a repressive environment on democracy issues. Thanks to Rights and Democracy, Chinese non-governmental organizations are advocating for democratic change within China by using laws to improve their respective human rights. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, Rights and Democracy is working with civil society in order to foster dialogue around the issue of security sector reform. In Colombia, where I will undertake a mission next week, we are strengthening the political participation and peace-building effort of women and indigenous people through citizen participation initiatives at the municipal level. In Bolivia, Rights and Democracy is supporting the political participation of women at the local level. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we are supporting efforts by local women to stop sexual violence in eastern Congo and to bring to justice the perpetrators of these crimes. In Morocco and Jordan, Rights and Democracy works to enhance civic participation of youth at the municipal level.
[Translation]
Recommendation number four calls on Rights and Democracy to improve the exchange of information and synergies between its programs. To respond to this recommendation and ensure that the institution operate with a more efficient structure, capable of generating collaboration and knowledge sharing, Rights and Democracy underwent a reorganization in the spring of 2008.
Working groups around priority initiatives and countries were created, as well as a policy team designed to provide research and policy expertise to all programs and initiatives.
[English]
Finally, the last recommendation calls on us to improve our financial monitoring and analysis tool. Detailed budgets accompany projects submitted for approval, and vigorous accounting procedures and reporting guidelines are followed by all staff members. Our financial management experts have even travelled to priority countries to provide training sessions to our partners on budget management, an important yet often overlooked result in our capacity-building effort.
As stated by the Inspector General, despite increased funding, CIDA's grand disbursement procedures, based on annual allocation, considerably limit Rights and Democracy's ability to perform its strategic planning.
[Translation]
However, I would like to indicate that CIDA has informed us a few days ago that our budget allocation for the next year had been approved, which will allow us to continue our operations despite the issues that we listed earlier.
Democratic development and the promotion of human rights are necessarily long-term endeavours, with sustainable results possible only with sustained long-term engagement. Rights and Democracy has remained an efficient organization following the increase in funding, and maintains a low percentage of administrative costs compared to the total budget.
As we embark on a new strategic plan for the coming five years, our operations, planning and accountability would benefit tremendously from a consolidated, single-source funding system administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, as recommended by the Office of the Inspector General in recommendation number one.
We will continue to diversify and increase our sources of funding in the coming years to expand our capacity to support democratic development and human rights internationally. The Government of Canada—on the recommendation of this committee—would benefit from implementing recommendation number one, and in so doing strengthen Rights and Democracy.
Thank you.
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We have a separate budget for Afghanistan, over and above our $9.2 million operating budget. CIDA has given us approximately $1 million a year to undertake a specific project, namely to strengthen the rights of women in Afghanistan. Ours is the only agency to deal with that issue.
You have no doubt been following the family law reform for both the Shi'ite and Sunni communities. As indicated by Mr. Guilbeault, we worked with a committee of experts to support the government and civil society organizations throughout the process, in order to help them shape the public policies that will be based on the legislation. That is our program. We are working in six provinces with a number of women's and civil-society organizations. We have conducted training and produced radio programs to talk with women about their rights. We have often had to deal with the Department of Justice and the department responsible for the Status of Women.
Those are our current activities, but we will have to ensure follow-up. I have discussed these matters with the Afghan minister responsible for the Status of Women during my visit there. Once the legislation is implemented, there will be a family code. We have to establish a mechanism to inform Afghans of the existence of those laws and their meaning. Following that, it will be important to set up family courts or institutions to which people can turn to resolve their problems.
There is currently only one family court in Afghanistan, located in Kabul. In the rest of the country, the normal process is through traditional courts. Women must also have access to legal services. In the six provinces where we have a presence, we are currently supporting legal clinics that specialize in the rights of women and children. There is a lot of ground to cover, and those efforts are not enough. If we are to continue beyond 2011, we will have to build on the experience we have acquired and the contacts we have established on the ground, and continue to work along the same lines. Simply put, this is unfinished business.
You are no doubt aware that it is a great privilege for us to have as a member of our board of directors Ms. Sima Samar, the president of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. She has long been an active human rights defender. Recently, the Governor General informed Ms. Samar that she had been awarded the Order of Canada, and she will travel to Canada to receive it in the next few weeks. She is a real asset, and we have developed very close ties with her country.
It is important to recognize that the work we do is long-term. We cannot go into a developing country that is experiencing difficulties and think that we can solve all its problems within a year by making a few investments.
The long-term funding that you refer to has an impact on our strategic planning and decision-making. People often ask us why we are not involved in certain countries. Working in a country where we have no prior experience requires between one and a half and three years of preparation. We have to establish contacts, understand the environment and make sure that our future partners are reliable. An entire network has to be established before we can become involved.
Having done work of that kind over a number of years on the continent of Africa, I am increasingly wary of sporadic interventions. You cannot simply sprinkle a series of measures over a problem and think that the work has been done. That is why it is important that we receive long-term funding of this kind.
My colleague is asking me to give an example. The best example that I can give is that of Haiti. Over the last 40 years, each time there was a crisis there, we would allocate a few resources and, as soon as the situation seemed to return to normal, we would move elsewhere and wait for the next crisis.
Ms. Francine Lalonde: And there have been many.
Mr. Rémy M. Beauregard: Yes, and we moved from one crisis to the next. Each subsequent intervention cost more than the previous one. In my conversations with the Prime Minister during my last two missions, she said that she hoped that Canada would be there for the long term because their problems could only be resolved over an extended period of time. This is not only a question of money, but also of time and effort. That has to be taken into account when we design our involvement.
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Thank you very much for inviting us to appear before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development to discuss issues related to next year's what is now both a G-8 and a G-20 meeting, which will be coming to Canada in June.
As Mr. Sorenson said, my name is Fraser Reilly-King and I am the coordinator of the Halifax Initiative, which is a coalition of development, environment, faith-based, human rights, and labour organizations. We have 19 members. We were founded 15 years ago, actually, when the G-7 summit came to Halifax in 1995.
Our activities since that point have focused on the policies and practice of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and export credit agencies. We endeavour to fill the shortfalls in their policies and their practice and make suggestions for filling those gaps.
Our organization is also a member of the 2010 Canadian G-8 Civil Society Coordinating Committee, which is responsible for developing the policy platform that all of you should have seen prior. And my colleague Amanda will be talking about that in a little more detail following me.
Before we get into discussing the chapeau document or the policy platform, I did want to provide a little bit of context for next year's summits, both the G-8 and the G-20 meetings, particularly with respect to the structures for governing the global economy.
As many of you are aware, over the past two years countries the world over have been battered by a series of interconnected and unrelenting crises of food, fuel, finance, and climate. No nation has gone unaffected, and the scale of each crisis is certainly one that no one could have anticipated, let alone imagined.
In response, global leaders, through the Group of 20 or G-20, have now met in Washington, in London, and just last month in Pittsburgh, to address many of these crises. Parallel to this, the United Nations has also initiated a process, pulling together a commission of experts made up of finance ministers, former finance ministers, central bank governors, and academics to put together a series of recommendations to inform a conference that took place last June in New York on the global economic and financial crisis.
Last month, as you would have seen in the news, leaders in Pittsburgh announced that the G-20 would become the premier forum for discussing global economic and financial issues. And importantly for Canada, at the time Prime Minister Harper also announced that next year when the G-8 comes to Canada, Canada would also be co-chairing with South Korea a G-20 summit that will take place at the same time as the G-8 meetings. For many, this development is seen as a positive and more inclusive step forward.
As you would have also heard, the countries of the G-20 boast 65% of the world's population and represent over 85% of global gross national product. A positive step forward from the G-8 is that the G-20 now brings to the table such emerging economies as South Africa, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, and a number of countries in the developing world.
But also importantly, the G-20 excludes 173 countries. There is not a single low-income or least-developed country in the pack, and not a single fragile state. The African Union is essentially shut out. And from that perspective we believe it's not entirely inclusive, nor legitimate or credible. Furthermore, the G-20, just like its predecessor the G-8, remains largely untransparent and unaccountable.
Therefore, at this tremendous moment of transition and change, we need to be extremely careful not to freeze this new institution and its membership into an historical moment in time. What I mean by this is that what works right now in 2009 we need to make sure works also in 2029 or 2059.
If you want an example of how things have fallen short on this front, just think of the UN Security Council. It spoke to a moment in time in 1945, but 60 or 65 years later the global economy has changed, and the world has changed.
What then? We come to next year's G-20. Canada, I feel, could play an incredibly important role, one of tremendous leadership, by initiating a process with other countries to transform the current structure of the G-20 into a forum that models democratic and transparent policy and decision-making and kickstarts a new era of multilateral cooperation.
We can get into more detail, if you want, on what this might look like. But what we really wanted to frame here were some of the principles that could guide the composition of that structure. To be pragmatic, we propose that it still be limited in size, but it should be representative in composition.
As I've hinted, a G-20 in principle isn't a bad idea. In past years, various entities have underscored the need for a council to help govern the global economy. The 1995 Commission on Global Governance, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, French President Jacques Chirac, and then more recently the UN Commission of Experts, which I referenced earlier, have all flagged such an idea. A forum of leaders, we would suggest, hand-picked by the powerful, who have no global or public credibility, is not sustainable. Such a forum should include possibly 20 to 29 countries and have representatives nominated by the members of regional multilateral bodies. The spokesperson would rotate on a periodic basis.
A second principle is that it would be inclusive of the poorest countries in the world. As I mentioned, it is positive that Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Turkey, and Indonesia are now at the table. But South Africa can't be expected, nor entrusted, to speak on behalf of 50 other countries in Africa, particularly since these countries it's representing have very different realities and needs from those of South Africa. They have very high debt loss, a narrower range of exports, weaker industrial bases, a larger rural population, greater dependence on external resources, such as aid, and weak governance and regulatory systems. Including these countries at the table necessarily informs the agenda and the broader solutions that need to be addressed.
By implementing the more representative forum outlined above, Canada would set the stage for addressing a more comprehensive agenda on global, economic, and social issues.
It's also important to provide voices for civil society at this new platform. Non-state actors in the past several decades have proven to be increasingly important players in multilateral organizations. Civil society analysis, proposals, and protests have positively impacted governments' understanding of the issues, methods of work, and policy agendas. Engaging civil society is key to the democratic process and has become a central element of a range of discussions within different fora. Formalizing a process for engaging civil society within the G-20 would be an important step forward. This can take the form of expert working groups, involving a range of stakeholders, that could make formal submissions to the G-20 for consideration. Or it could involve opening up Canadian consultation and parliamentary debate ahead of next year's meeting.
Transparency of process and accountability for decisions is the fourth principle we think should guide this new body. Ironically, the financial crisis, a crisis whose origins can be linked, in part, to a lack of transparency in financial institutions, has given birth to a new set of institutions that lack any transparency or accountability.
A leaders G-20 should publish agenda and background documents on public websites ahead of their meetings. It should also be a first step towards an effective and representative leaders summit process within the framework of the UN. It would strengthen the broader multilateral system and contribute its reports from G-20 discussions to the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council.
Without such changes, the G-20 rapidly risks losing credibility and legitimacy, just as it has found a renewed need for its existence. Strong Canadian leadership during this important period of transition could go a long way toward addressing that.
Thank you.
Good morning. I thank you for the opportunity to appear here today, and I'll try to use it wisely to make the best use of your time.
My name is Amanda Sussman and I'm here on behalf of the 2010 Canadian G-8 and G-20 Civil Society Co-ordinating Committee, which is an initiative involving more than 100 Canadian organizations and associations of organizations who themselves are supported by thousands of Canadians across the country. I'm also an advisor to Plan Canada, one of the world's oldest and largest international development agencies, operating in more than 66 countries.
Today I'd like to brief you on a major initiative of the committee that began last February in preparation for the Canadian presidency of the G-8. Essentially we began with what worked and what didn't work in Kananaskis when Canada last hosted the G-8 in 2002. One of the things that became clear was that, while there were dozens of organizations engaged in public campaigning using a variety of methods—from constructive engagement with the government all the way to street action outside the alternative summit in Calgary—there was no clearly articulated set of recommendations that could be communicated both to the government and to the public as to what it was that civil society organizations were actually looking for.
It was also unclear where there was broad consensus upon which political leaders could base their actions. So this time around, organizations are taking quite a different approach. The document you have before you entitled “An Agenda for Global Development” is a result of an in-depth process whereby a broad and diverse grouping of organizations agreed upon three critical and interlocking themes that should be at the centre of the 2010 agenda: combatting poverty, transforming the global economic and financial system, and making real progress on climate change. Within those themes, dozens of organizations have produced a clear set of policy recommendations to government that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and actionable from the government's point of view.
For instance, the recommendations on child and maternal health reflect the collective expertise of Canada's five largest international development organizations: UNICEF, World Vision, Plan Canada, CARE, and Save the Children, who themselves have decades of experience working on these issues first-hand around the world. Similarly, the recommendations on food security reflect the work of the Food Security Policy Group, an association of 35 agricultural and development organizations from across the country who work together to share their collective expertise as front line organizations working on food security. These are just two of the many associations who participated in the process to produce each of the recommendations you have before you.
I want to emphasize that the recommendations are not just supported by Canadian organizations alone. Over the past three days in Ottawa, the committee has hosted a global gathering of citizens organizations working on the G-8 and G-20 around the world. From our discussions, it became clear that the recommendations outlined in this document reflect a broader and wider international consensus, which will also be communicated to other G-8 and G-20 leaders in their respective countries.
On poverty, the committee began with a very straightforward question. What could the G-8 realistically accomplish to advance each particular issue in 2010, given that it is a short-term political body without institutional capacity to implement initiatives in the long term? The recommendations are mainly directed at what Canada can do as host of the G-8 to put the millennium development goals back on track. For those not familiar with them, the millennium development goals are an agreed-upon set of international goals set by world leaders at a series of summits throughout the 1990s. There are eight goals covering the world's most pressing issues, from poverty and hunger to HIV/AIDS and education, with specific targets to be reached by the year 2015.
Clearly, 2010 will be a decisive year for Canada and for the world, and our decisions on economic reform and climate change will determine the success of the world's efforts to reduce poverty and address global warming for the next generation and beyond. As host of the next G-8 summit, Canada can make the difference between two choices: relegating these aspirations to no more than a distant hope, or confirming a serious possibility that many of these goals can be a reality in our lifetime.
I also want to emphasize that we have made important progress in many cases and money has been well spent. Past investments in these issues are producing some remarkable results on HIV and AIDS, on education, and on immunization, just to mention a few. In Africa alone, citizens have used ODA flows to provide AIDS treatment to nearly three million people, dramatically reduce the deaths due to malaria, and help put more than 34 million children back in school.
What is unique about 2010 is that with many of the challenges discussed in this paper the causes are now well understood and the solutions are well known. Rather than large elusive goals that remain too difficult to tackle, this paper focuses on realistic steps that Canada can take to catalyze progress on many of the world's most pressing issues and promote a new model of globalization that is socially responsible, economically sustainable, and environmentally just.
What we are looking for here today is to initiate a constructive and effective dialogue between the Government of Canada and citizens groups based on best practices of G-8 summits in the past. We feel it would be essential to have this committee play an important role as a vehicle for Canadian stakeholders from many different sectors—for profit, not-for-profit—by holding a distinct set of hearings on the G-8 and G-20 agendas.
The process does not have to be too onerous to be effective. For example, it could be four to six hearings, with two in Ottawa and four distributed across key regions in the country, culminating in a concise report with clear recommendations to government. These hearings could be one of several things that parliamentarians do to engage their citizens on these key issues as world leaders come to Canada next year.
Beyond this committee, best practices from previous G-8 meetings include a wider dialogue between government and civil society globally, known as the Civil G-8.
We hope this committee will play an active role in facilitating this wider conversation, and we look forward to working with you on this initiative.