Bill C-293 (Historical)

Official Development Assistance Accountability Act

An Act respecting the provision of official development assistance abroad

This enactment sets out criteria respecting resource allocation to international development agencies and enhances transparency and monitoring of Canada’s international development efforts.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

This proposes that Bill C-293 in clause 3 be amended by deleting lines 4 to 7 on page 2. It's simply removing the old definition because we've already replaced it with a new definition.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Just as you said, Mr. Chair, the amendment is that Bill C-293 in clause 3 be amended by deleting lines 14 to 19 on page 2. This simply deletes the definition of “non-governmental organization” and replaces it with a new amendment that defines “civil society”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good afternoon, committee. It's good to see each one of you on perhaps this final day of the 39th session.

This is the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, meeting 37. Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, September 20, 2006, we have Bill C-293, an act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad. We are going to continue in the exercise of clause-by-clause in the hopes that we will finish this afternoon.

Welcome.

We will proceed to amendment NDP-7 on clause 3, and I will ask Madam McDonough to begin. Basically, amendment NDP-7 is the deletion of lines 14 to 19 on page 2, the definition of “non-governmental organization”.

Madam McDonough, would you like to explain that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I see a couple of problems with this. First of all, we've already passed clause 2 with an amendment that included democratic development or democracy promotion, and we've already included that. Now we're going to define it later.

My question, Madame Bourgeois, is whether this is defined in the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This has never been referenced in testimony as we've studied this bill. So do you have the definition? Before we adopt this definition, I think it would be important that we hear the definition as defined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, because it's never been referenced in a meeting that we've had in studying Bill C-293 . So do you have that definition here? Do we have that definition?

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question for Ms. Bourgeois.

I do not know where you found this definition of democracy, but that is not my question. I would just like to know why you're adding a definition of democracy. Is there a reference to democracy in Mr. McKay's bill, C-203?

If there is a reference to it, there could be a definition, but I would like to know where the word democracy is used in this bill. Should we be providing official development assistance as such? If so, should this assistance be linked to democracy? I'm not exactly sure where the word "democracy" appears in the bill.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

So we have the friendly amendment that Bill C-293, in clause 3, be amended by adding, after the definition of civil society organization, which we've just put in, that Canadian values will mean values of global citizenship, equity, and environmental sustainability--period.

Mr. Menzies.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

All Keith's says is to deal with Bill C-293 on Tuesday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. I call this meeting number 33 to order.

We gather here this afternoon to go through Bill C-293, An Act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad, pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, September 20, 2006. Today we are here to go through the clause-by-clause process.

We welcome Mr. McKay in his capacity as the one who has brought forward this bill.

I guess the process now is to go directly into the clause-by-clause examination. A number of amendments have come forward from the opposition. Again, I'll remind you that we will take amendments off the floor. There would perhaps be some negotiations even on friendly amendments, wordsmithing, as there normally is.

If you have your bill at hand, we'll begin as quickly as possible. The intention today is to end right at 5:30 p.m. I know a number of people have planes to catch to a certain event that's going on in Montreal. Everyone else wants to get home, where the real action is, so we'll try to get done here as quickly as possible.

If you have your amendments and bill in hand, we'll postpone clause 1 pursuant to Standing Order 75. We'll come back to the short title later on, after the bill is completed, in case there is a need for change.

On clause 2--Purpose

We go to clause 2, NDP amendment number 1. Madam McDonough, perhaps you would speak to your amendment, please.

[Graham Flack]

Thank you for the invitation to come here. I'm hoping to provide information, and I know there were some questions in the previous committee meetings about the Department of Finance's role in the Bretton Woods institutions in particular and in development assistance.

As you're aware, most of the activities of the Department of Finance don't deal with development assistance. We're responsible or draw authority from over 143 statutes, one of which is the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act, which is clearly the most relevant in terms of development assistance, and I understand that's reflected in clauses 9 and 10 of the bill.

The Bretton Woods act lays out the minister's authority with respect to contributions to the World Bank and to the IMF. There are three main development assistance payments made by the Minister of Finance: first, contributions to the interest-free lending window of the World Bank, called the International Development Association; second, contributions to the low-interest lending window of the International Monetary Fund, called the poverty reduction and growth facility; and third, payments under the multilateral debt relief initiative, under which donors are financing 100% relief for eligible countries from their debt with the IMF, the World Bank's IDA, and the African Development Fund. This year, the department will make payments totalling $367 million for those three items. This is out of a total international assistance budget for Canada of about $3.8 billion.

Along with the authority to make payments, the Bretton Woods act also sets out reporting requirements for the Minister of Finance that are statutory and require us to report to Parliament on an annual basis. I've quoted section 13 of our act, and I believe that was distributed to you along with the report that the Department of Finance submits each year in this area. Section 13 requires us to submit

a report containing a general summary of operations under this Act and details of all those operations that directly affect Canada, including the resources and lending of the World Bank Group, the funds subscribed or contributed by Canada, borrowings in Canada and procurement of Canadian goods and services.

I note that this particular language in section 13 is echoed in clause 10 of the bill.

Finally, the Bretton Woods act also sets out the Minister of Finance's role as Canada's representative on the board of governors of the World Bank and the IMF. As governor, the Minister of Finance exerts his influence through exchanges of views at the annual meetings of the board of governors of these institutions.

So these are the discussions that deal with the World Bank and IMF's broad policy agendas. The day-to-day decisions are actually delegated to a 24-member executive or board. These executive directors on the board are nominated by the governors of the constituencies they represent, but I'd point out that they're employees of the bank and fund. They're not employees of their home governments.

Another important point is that our executive directors at those two institutions don't represent Canada alone. There is not a Canadian executive director. The executive director represents Canada, Ireland, and a number of the Caribbean constituencies. So there's not a uniquely Canadian individual who just represents Canada at those institutions—and that's relevant, as you're going to see later.

I'll move on with some comments on Bill C-293. There are three areas I'd like to highlight. The first is the potential impact on the Minister of Finance's legal powers in non-development-related areas. I assume from the testimony I heard earlier and the comments of committee members that this is unintended, but our legal counsel raises serious concerns that this may be an unintended effect of the legislation, the way it's currently worded. The second is the potential blurring of accountabilities set out under the Bretton Woods act with regard to reporting. The third is the disclosure limitations due to the confidentiality rules imposed on the World Bank and IMF executive boards.

In terms of the Minister of Finance's powers, I'll divide it into two layers. This discussion already began in the earlier hearings. It's a question of the scope of the definition of “development assistance”, as contrasted with what can be spent under clause 4. I'll give three examples of how it's potentially problematic.

The contribution Canada makes to reduce money laundering in a developing country would likely fall under the development assistance definition Mr. McKay has put forward to the committee. They would be funds provided to a developing country that advance the economic development of that country by having a better banking system. But one could make a strong argument that the primary focus of anti-money-laundering funds is not poverty reduction. The concern about how the bill is written right now, and any activity that falls under that definition of development assistance, is that the government would be stopped from spending money in any of those areas of that broad definition of development assistance that don't have poverty reduction as the primary goal. It's not that we couldn't just count it as ODA; we actually couldn't spend money in that area.

That's the primary concern we're putting forward--areas of spending of the Department of Finance like anti-money-laundering. Another area is unilateral tariff relief. It may have a positive impact on the economic development of developing countries, but its primary objective is not poverty reduction.

I don't think that was the intention of the bill, but counsel are very concerned that this is the effect of the existing legislation. Activities that would fall under a broad definition of development assistance, including anti-money-laundering, unilateral tariff relief, and even bilateral debt relief in countries like the former Yugoslavia, would be subjected to the test of poverty reduction. If they failed that test, the government would not be allowed to provide funds in that area.

On bilateral debt relief, for example, you will recall that the government provided such relief in the former Yugoslavia following the Balkan conflicts. This type of assistance easily fits under the definition of development assistance; however, the driver for providing the relief was not the underlying prevalence of poverty in those countries. It was a recognition of the financial reality that in light of the particular challenging economic and financial situation, the country did not have the capacity to make its debt service payments over the coming years. Had Bill C-293 been in place, the minister might not have been able to deliver this type of assistance, as it would have been difficult to establish a direct causal link between the debt cancellation and poverty reduction, as required under clause 4.

Even within the Bretton Woods institutions, and particularly the World Bank, there are areas where we would potentially not be able to provide funding because it would fall under the broad definition of development assistance but not meet the poverty test.

If I could cite one example here of the World Bank private sector development agencies--the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency--the primary vehicle through which they provide assistance is funding to private sector organizations in those countries. Over the long term, the hope is that funding will eventually improve the state of the economy in those countries, which will help all citizens, including the most poor.

But when payments are made at the front end, it's difficult to make a direct link between a grant or risk insurance provided to a small company and poverty reduction. The concern is that with the broad definition of development assistance and the limiting factor that only those things that reduce poverty are allowed to be funded, the government would be prevented from contributing to these important World Bank agencies, to which most other countries in the world contribute.

The second point is around blurred accountabilities. As I mentioned earlier, the reporting requirements of Bretton Woods make it clear that the Minister of Finance is accountable for operations under the act. Indeed, it sets out a clear reporting requirement for the Minister of Finance that results in an annual report to Parliament.

Clauses 9 and 10, as I read them, will now create three reports on development assistance: one by the CIDA minister, and a second report for the Minister of Finance in clause 10, which is largely duplicative of a third report we do right now and which I believe you have; it is the Bretton Woods Act report that the Department of Finance already submits. So there's a danger here of some blurring of accountability in terms of who's accountable to Parliament to report on what. Under Bretton Woods, it's clearly the Minister of Finance who's accountable.

Perhaps I could address one particular concern, and it's a high one that is shared by the representatives of Canada at the World Bank and at IMF institutions. That regards the confidentiality rules in those institutions.

Paragraph 10(b) of the legislation, and it's echoed in paragraph 9(1)(d) of the legislation as well, requires that the minister present to Parliament:

a summary of any representation made by Canadian representatives with respect to the priorities and policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions;

The World Bank's policy on disclosure of information and the IMF's transparency policy both require that certain items discussed by the executive director and the board of governors be confidential. To provide an analogy, the executive director meetings are not unlike cabinet. In order to encourage a full and frank exchange of members, the information that is shared between members at those meetings is kept confidential. That's enshrined in the articles of the IMF and the World Bank, which provide, in perpetuity, archival immunity for this sort of information.

As I mentioned, there's a second problem. If you're trying to decipher “Canada's position” at these agencies, the representative of Canada is not uniquely the representative of Canada. They're also the representative, in our two constituencies, of Ireland and the major Caribbean countries. So deciphering the position they ultimately took at a committee...even if we could get over the confidentiality hurdle, determining which part of that position was exactly Canada's position is just not possible given the way the institution is structured.

I'd point out that this sort of protection is also identified in our own Canadian legislation, in the Access to Information Act, which provides specific exemptions for information given in confidence from foreign governments or international organizations like the IMF and World Bank and where the disclosure of information could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs.

Given the frank nature of exchange in the meetings, were Canada to publish a detailed summary of the position it took, let's say, vis-à-vis the performance of another country's economy in the IMF proceedings, that could have a market impact in terms of what we're saying and where we think the country should go, but it could clearly have a state-to-state impact that's a potential concern.

This doesn't mean we can't report on any of the representations made by Canada. For example, as a matter of practice, though it's not required in law, we do, as part of the Department of Finance report on the Bretton Woods institutions, provide the positions adopted by the board of governors and the Canadian positions on all those resolutions taken. We're just highlighting for the committee the challenge around trying to push this to a point where our executive directors would be put in an impossible position of providing us information that would be in breach of their confidentiality requirements.

In summary, there are three essential concerns that we'd like to raise before the committee.

The first is in regard to the definition of development assistance in clause 4. If there's a broad definition of development assistance, it risks capturing activities like anti-money-laundering, which, under clause 4, we would not be allowed to fund because they don't have poverty reduction as their primary goal.

So we're raising that particularly from the Department of Finance perspective because the Minister of Finance is responsible, has ultimately the residual authority under the Financial Administration Act to spend in any area. If you restrict the Minister of Finance so that he cannot spend in a particular area, that is, development assistance that does not have poverty reduction as a goal, we're in effect preventing the Government of Canada anywhere from operating in that area. We think that's problematic.

The second is on the reporting requirements. We have an existing report on the Bretton Woods institutions. Indeed, paragraph 10(d) replicates the language of our report. I'd point out that only 12 of 185 member countries actually provide such a report. When Ireland recently added themselves to this list, they used Canada's report as a model, so we think it's a good report. We're worried that clause 10 simply duplicates that.

While I too am a friend of the pulp and paper industry in Canada, I think we should avoid anything that simply replicates the reporting so that we have the identical text in two reports.

Finally, on confidentiality, the new element in that reporting requirement, we're highlighting the difficult position we'd be putting Canada's representatives at the institutions in, to the extent that they were called upon to breach their confidentiality requirements. We would reveal, in effect, what are the equivalent of cabinet confidences.

Thank you.

[Michael Small, Assistant Deputy Minister, Global Issues, Department of Foreign Affairs]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you for inviting me to appear before your committee. It is an honour for me to provide you with some of our observations on Bill C-293.

There are four basic points I would like to make today about the potential implications of draft Bill C-293. Under each point I will try to highlight for you the complications that could arise, depending on the final version of the bill, and complications that members may not have intended or have not yet had a chance to discuss or consider among yourselves.

First of all, in speaking about the “competent minister,” the bill needs to be sensitive to the diverse accountabilities involved in spending Canada's official development assistance—ODA, the shorthand term I'll use. The term “ODA” is a policy tool, negotiated among members of the OECD's development assistance committee to assist them in determining what kinds of international assistance should be counted as aid, and to give them, therefore, a basis for comparison of country-by-country aid statistics. It is not a definition that is established by legal statute.

For more than twenty years, and under different Governments, at least three different ministerial portfolios have been accountable for expenditure of Canadian ODA: the Minister of International Co-operation, who is responsible for the majority but not the totality of Canadian aid, through the Canadian International Development Agency; the Minister of Finance, who is responsible for Canada’s participation in the Bretton Woods institutions, the world’s largest providers of multilateral ODA; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is responsible for payment of most of Canada’s assessed contributions to international organizations, a percentage of which is counted as ODA; and increasingly various kinds of peace- and security-related development assistance, some of which also count as ODA.

While the amounts of ODA allocated to each of these three portfolios that I've just referred to will vary over time, this basic division of labour between ministers is likely to endure. Thus, there is no one minister at present, or likely to be in the future, with an overarching responsibility for the management of all Canadian official development assistance.

In addition, a significant percentage of Canada’s ODA flows, currently about 3% or $130 million, are disbursed by the International Development Research Centre, or IDRC. While IDRC reports to Parliament through the Minister of Foreign Affairs, it is an autonomous decision-making body accountable to its independent board, as constituted by the IDRC Act. As IDRC has pointed out in its own written submission to this committee, there is a risk that Bill C-293 may conflict with these important provisions of the IDRC Act.

My second point is that committee members may wish to examine more carefully the implications of the language relating to human rights in the draft bill in paragraph 4(1)(c), specifically the call for Canadian ODA to be “consistent with Canada's international human rights obligations”. I specifically wish to focus your attention on the implications of the word “obligations” in this context.

Canada's human rights obligations derive from the international human rights treaties and conventions we have signed and ratified. These treaty obligations relate to the promotion and protection of human rights by the Government of Canada within the jurisdiction of Canada. Thus, the current reference to Canada's human rights obligations would have the effect of focusing the draft bill on the human rights of Canadians. It does not underline the role of ODA in promoting and protecting human rights internationally. Language to the effect that ODA activities should be “consistent with international human rights standards” would be in line with Canada's policy to promote and protect human rights internationally. Canada uses various review mechanisms, as specified by the human rights conventions that we have signed, to hold other governments accountable for their obligations for the human rights of their citizens. There is a risk that the reference to “Canada’s human rights obligations” in the bill might go beyond current state-to-state obligations that exist in international human rights law. It could also implicitly reduce the emphasis on recipient countries’ obligations towards their own citizens.

Thirdly, and turning to the specific responsibilities of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, it's important to point out that the poverty reduction test proposed in the act could affect the government's ability to fund core activities of a number of international organizations. That is because Canada's assessed contributions to different international organizations can, in varying degree, be counted as ODA, ranging from--and I'll give you a few examples--3% of our contribution for the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, to 18% for the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, to 80% for the World Health Organization, and 100% for the Organization of American States, OAS.

I picked those to give you a sense of the range of the organizations. Those percentages, by the way, apply to all donor countries that claim official development assistance as part of their contributions.

The objectives of these organizations are varied, hence the different percentages of the contributions that can be counted as ODA. Canada is, of course, only one country among many that belongs to each of these organizations, and the programs and priorities of these international organizations are determined by their entire membership. Thus, the committee may wish to avoid asking the minister responsible for these contributions to certify that each of these international organizations observe a Canadian-legislated standard for how it spends the ODA portion of its budget.

My final and most important point reflects on how tightly and how precisely the committee, and in future a government bound by the act, would wish to hold Canadian ODA expenditures to the goal of reducing poverty. This is a narrower focus for Canadian ODA than the OECD definition, which defines the goal of ODA as “promoting the economic development and welfare of developing countries”.

Much of Canadian development assistance contributes to the goal of poverty reduction in developing countries, but some of it does so only indirectly and over a longer period of time, through such means as increasing citizen security, encouraging better governance, improving policies and policy-making capacity, and promoting respect for human rights.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, in particular through the human security program and the global peace and security fund, spends ODA for all the purposes I have mentioned.

I'll give you some examples from the last fiscal year of program spending, which has counted as official development assistance spent by the Department of Foreign Affairs. This could include mine action and education programs, or mine awareness programs; the deployment of corrections training officers to Côte d'Ivoire; the purchase and transfer of a secure e-mail system to improve international criminal justice cooperation in the Americas; witness protection training in Brazil; seminars on crime scene investigations in Central America; assistance in border management for the Palestinian Authority; human rights training in Indonesia; and support for the Colombian peace process.

Examples of potential funding for this current fiscal year from the Department of Foreign Affairs include financial support for the peace talks in south Sudan; support for prison reforms; gang member rehabilitation; the deployment of corrections officers and anti-money laundering activities in Haiti; and support for civilian peacekeeping missions via the RCMP.

While an indirect connection can be drawn between each of these activities and poverty reduction, a direct connection cannot be made in each and every case. If these kinds of programs and projects continue to be deemed worthwhile by Parliament, it would be unfortunate if they had to be terminated in order to comply with a strict interpretation of a poverty focus for Canadian development assistance.

Depending on how strictly the poverty focus for Canadian development assistance is interpreted, the government could be placed in the awkward position of, on the one hand, being expected to report these expenditures to the OECD as official development assistance, while on the other hand not being able to report them to Parliament as development assistance because they do not meet all the legal requirements of this act.

To conclude, I'd like to repeat what all G-8 leaders highlighted at their summit this past July in St. Petersburg, and I'm quoting now from the declaration:

Multilateral and regional organizations and states have focused significant resources on developing new tools for S&R in recent years. Individual states are trying to make better use of their national resources by integrating defense, development and diplomatic capabilities in support of joint planning and strategy for stabilization and reconstruction.

This approach has been welcomed and encouraged by the development assistance committee of the OECD, to which Canada belongs. The OECD currently has important programs under way to harmonize donor best practices in fragile states, to better understand and integrate security system reforms into development programs and to clarify how ODA in these contexts is both defined and applied by donors.

We're proud to say that Canada has been at the forefront of these activities designed to increase the coherence and transparency of donor activities in support of international peace and security.

Thank you for your time and your patience.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call this meeting to order.

This is the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. At this meeting, number 32, we are here to discuss Bill C-293, An Act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad, pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, September 20, 2006.

We'll hear in the first hour from the Department of Foreign Affairs, from which we have today, Michael Small, assistant deputy minister for global issues, and Alain Tellier, deputy director of the criminal, security and privileges and immunities law section.

We welcome you. Thank you for submitting text of the remarks you're going to make this afternoon. After your remarks, we'll go into the first round and proceed from there.

Do we have a question from Mr. McKay?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

And that the government witnesses, on Tuesday, have prepared written texts relevant to Bill C-293 that will be submitted to the committee members prior to Monday, the 27th.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

In order to get a timeline on this, I would suggest that the foreign affairs committee address Bill C-293, clause by clause, and schedule it for Tuesday, November 28. In other words, with 48 hours notice, you'll have to vote on Thursday. We would deal with it on Tuesday. In the meantime, going through the blues, certainly these technical changes can be addressed and before us for the 28th.

[Stephen Wallace, Vice-President, Policy Branch, Canadian International Development Agency]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Sorenson.

It really is an honour to be here.

It’s a privilege for us to appear before the committee.

We're very pleased to continue to support the work of the committee. We've been following closely the progress of Bill C-293 and have been studying its possible implications. We've also undertaken background analysis of legislative mandates across OECD member countries, and we'd be happy to discuss the results of this international analysis if you would like and are interested in it.

As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has put it most recently:

A well-developed legislative basis has the advantages of transparency and of clarifying responsibilities among the various government entities that may be involved, as well as establishing development objectives.... On the other hand, countries with a less formalised legal basis may have more flexibility to act and this could be an advantage when trying to build coalitions between development agencies and other government entities whose policies and actions have an impact on development prospects in developing countries.

That's from the OECD earlier this year. Legislation is indeed featured quite prominently in several other countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, although it is quite specific to the legal and political circumstances in each particular case. There's not a lot of comparability when you walk across the international system; these are fitted very much to local circumstances.

A key objective of development assistance legislation is establishing a clear and efficient legal basis for the aid program in a way that can stand the test of time and remain relevant in a changing world.

This challenge is, of course, even greater from a legal perspective when you consider the range of government departments here in Canada, including the Departments of Finance, Foreign Affairs, and line ministries that help to deliver on Canada's aid program and that will be affected by this bill.

From an operational perspective, Bill C-293 needs to achieve a result—and I think committee members have been working towards that objective—that is clear and simple, easy to understand, understandable in its application, and with relevant and efficient reporting requirements.

On the easy-to-understand question, my colleague would like to raise a number of points that we hope will be of use to the committee in its detailed review of the bill.

It's important to state at the outset that the underlying objectives of Bill C-293—i.e., achieving greater clarity of purpose, strengthening accountability, and setting new standards of transparency—are consistent with the guidance we have received from the government. These are core elements of better aid. They are objectives that lie at the heart of the aid effectiveness agenda that the Minister of International Cooperation had the opportunity to discuss with you less than three weeks ago.

For the past six months, CIDA has been implementing a four-part program to make aid more efficient, through a more strategic focusing of Canadian cooperation, a systematic improvement of program delivery, a more effective and efficient use of our resources and a clear accountability for results. These issues can also be found in several provisions of this bill.

In terms of the objective that it must be understandable in its application, I want to identify a number of potential problem areas for consideration, taking into account as well any amendments the sponsor of Bill C-293 has put to the committee.

The first has to do with the petitions system. Measures to increase the responsiveness of the aid program to those for whom aid is intended are indeed important, but we have questions about its value-added, the management requirements, and overhead implications for the aid program.

A second question relates to how we would apply the mandatory requirement, as we see it, to consult international agencies and Canadian civil society organizations on any decision involving the use of aid. This could cover literally thousands of decisions every year, around the world, for which specific consultative arrangements would need to be established and where Canadian civil society organizations may not even be present.

We're very much engaged on an ongoing basis with consultative processes. These are essential to our effectiveness, be they on partner relations, country strategies, or sectoral and operational issues, for example. But we are concerned about the administrative implications of doing so, as formulated in this proposed bill, on an indiscriminate basis.

We see a related problem in how we would interpret in law the otherwise critically important principle of taking into account the perspectives of the poor. CIDA and its more than 700 Canadian partners currently do so through a variety of formal processes--for example, project steering committees, country strategy exercises, consultations on different themes and sectors--and a lot of informal meetings, through site visits, through discussions, through background research. This is what we do right now in taking account of perspectives of the poor. In law it is unclear what would be the test of performance in this particular area. We raise that as an issue.

Moving on, we've had good experience with advisory committees. We believe they can add real value and transparency to Canada's international cooperation program. We wonder, however, whether limiting advice to ministers to a single advisory committee is preferable to special purpose committees that can provide specialized advice on particular issues. In three weeks, for example, an expert panel is being established under the minister's authority to examine issues related to Canadian partnership programming in civil society. The composition of this committee has been designed specifically in relation to its particular mandate.

More can be done to strengthen reporting for accountability and results. Bill C-293 contains several provisions in this regard. The requirement to report on any activity or initiative taken under the bill is very broad, and in our view unprecedented. Other reporting provisions are the responsibility of various ministers, and we expect that the committee will want to ensure that there is no blurring of the accountability relationship that specific ministers might have to Parliament.

These are some of the operational questions, Mr. Chair and committee members, raised as we go through some of the specifics of Bill C-293. We'd be very pleased to discuss them and other areas of interest. We hope our perspectives will serve the needs of the committee.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

This is the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, meeting number 29. We are here this afternoon to continue our study of Bill C-293, an Act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad.

We have already heard from the sponsor, Mr. McKay, of this private member's bill. I believe that is probably the most recent work we have done on this bill. Many of the members of this committee have suggested witnesses to come forward to testify on the bill. We're going to be hearing from CIDA officials, Department of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and numerous research and policy centres from around the country who wish to contribute to our study on the bill.

Today we have as witnesses from CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, Christiane Verdon, senior general counsel, legal services division; and Stephen Wallace, vice-president of the policy branch.

We welcome you here today. We look forward to what you have for us. We'll then go into the first round of questions.

In the second hour today we will be discussing our draft report concerning the committee's study and recommendations on Haiti. In this first hour we welcome you here. We look forward to what you have to say on this all-important bill.

The time is yours. Thank you.