Foreign Affairs Committee on June 21st, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Right.

Mr. Martin, very quickly, and then to Madame Bourgeois.

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

Mr. Wallace and Monsieur Pétillon, thank you very much for being here today.

Monsieur Roy, who was here just prior to you, gave us a very gripping commentary. Part of that involved the fact that up to 40% of children in Haiti have never gone to school. The fact that we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Haiti and yet 40% of the children have not gone to school is, to me, utterly staggering. It's incomprehensible that a society whose children have never gone to school could ever develop and move forward.

I also know CIDA is moving away from bricks and mortar. I would submit that we have to do both. Without a shadow of a doubt, we have to deal with governance issues, but I would also implore you to move back toward doing some bricks and mortar. In my view, we cannot meet the millennium development goals unless developed countries invest in bricks and mortar for primary health care and primary education.

Perhaps you could let us know if CIDA has any desire to change and move forward to investing some money into bricks and mortar for primary health care and education for Haiti.

Merci beaucoup.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, I've been hearing you talk for the past little while, and I see you're talking bafflegab, which is quite hard to understand. We know what planning is, but when you speak quickly, we have trouble understanding your remarks because we don't have the documents and we haven't read them yet.

Second, you often used the words "for us donors". I admit that disappoints me on the part of CIDA. I know that CIDA is investing $99 million for aid in Haiti. I expected your work to be more related to aid for the population than as a donor, but that's a perception.

My questions are for the CIDA representatives. When you're in the field, do you work with the NGOs, or solely with the donors? What are you doing about security? Are your donors aware of the fact that, if there's no security in the country, it's impossible to do development there? Are they aware of that?

Lastly, what are the prospects for the future? Does CIDA have a plan to enable Haiti to pull through? I would have liked to see that plan this evening.

Those are my three questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Wallace.

[Stephen Wallace]

These are really important questions. I think there's some background information the committee is not getting yet. Being able to take the interim cooperation framework and say, here's the status report, and make the correlation on the figures is going to be absolutely essential. Canada plays a leadership role in Haiti, and if we don't see an international community doing it adequately, we will do some work on that one and we'll get you additional information. That's one thing.

Second, with respect to health and education—

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

You'll have to come back to explain to us what you're doing because we don't understand at all. We get the impression you're headed in one direction and the others in the opposite direction.

[Stephen Wallace]

Yes. We may have inundated you with documents. We tabled a large number of documents, but we only talked about one of them. I agree that it's necessary for you to understand the broader context.

As regards education and health,

and this is a question for Mr. Martin, I think it is absolutely correct to say we have failed when we go in with microprojects that only deal in health and education, with the institution building or school fees or one aspect, and we leave behind such things as infrastructure. What we've found in Haiti, within the context of a lot of other fragile states, is that unless we deal in a joined-up way with all the component parts to be able to deliver effective schooling, particularly basic education, we don't work very well on that one. So this idea of moving from individual projects to a collective program approach where infrastructure plays a role in both areas has been, I think, a real trend line we've followed on that one, but absolutely clear.

On the indicators, I'll let Monsieur Pétillon answer.

With respect to the partnership with the NGOs, I believe we have a very broad range in Haiti. Yves Pétillon can tell you about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Please respond very briefly, Mr. Pétillon.

[Yves Pétillon]

I'm very sorry you feel I'm speaking bafflegab. In fact, I rather thought I was really telling you what I had on my mind in explaining that there was hope in Haiti. I even gave you examples of that.

The expression "donors" is a general expression. I don't think anyone should think we're only doing that. You have to consider the commitment of our people there, whether it be CIDA people, the people from private companies or the NGO people. All CIDA-funded projects are implemented by Canadian partners.

There are currently about 30 or 40 Canadian partners in Haiti. They're on the front, with other Canadians and Haitians. They're part of teams that consist of people of both nationalities. I can't report on that, but that's the fact of the matter.

Now the documents are one thing, and we can distribute many others to you. We can give you a list of all our projects, since that's in the public domain. They're also published on our Web site. The document we distributed to you is an overview of the Canadian Cooperation Program in Haiti. It's a summary that outlines the signs of change in the country and the allocation of funds by sector.

Now, if the committee wishes, I can send you a full list of all programs, by major sector and partner.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I know our researchers would certainly all appreciate that document. And by the sound of things, Madame St-Hilaire reads that when she's at the lake. So we would take as many documents as you could prepare for us; we would appreciate it.

Mr. Van Loan, go ahead, please, very quickly.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I did want to say I was encouraged to hear that document is finally taking some form. I am very tempted by it sitting there in draft form. I should say I'm disappointed that we don't have it yet, because I made it pretty clear to the CIDA officials at that Brasilia conference that it was exactly the kind of thing we wanted to have at our committee. We didn't get it initially--we had a recall of CIDA so that we could again see it--and we still don't have it.

In fact, looking at the document that I think was prepared for today, about the only thing you can measure here is money going out. That's in the numbers on page 2.

So that leads me to another question: what is the normal CIDA practice for all these projects that are undertaken and so on? Do you actually have measurements and criteria? You say some outcomes are hard to measure. You can look at crime rates and decide whether you have rule of law or not. But certainly, at the very least, you can measure what you do to institutions, how many police officers you train, how many judges you train, and so on. I haven't seen that anywhere in all the stuff that we're getting here. Is that normal practice for how CIDA measures stuff, or are the words in these various reports kind of like the opinions and ideas expressed by an undergraduate student who doesn't want to work too hard on getting numbers? Do you ever measure things? Is that the way you review it? And why don't we see that more often?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Van Loan.

Who wants to field that question?

[Stephen Wallace]

Let me, because in fact we spent a lot of time and attention on this particular one, and it actually started in Parliament. The management reporting and results structure that we have goes right down from a sector, to a country, to a project level. And we can actually roll up results—the outputs, the outcomes, and the impacts as related to millennium development goals. We've actually have a structure for that. It is part and parcel of the very process that deals with the main estimates process.

So we would actually very much welcome a more considered discussion about the results side with the committee. We could lay this one out and talk about results, whether they be by institution, sector, or project.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Why, after 10 years of work and after two appearances by CIDA people, do we now have nothing in front of us?

[Stephen Wallace]

I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about a specific document that the committee was interested in, and that was our OECD report on lessons learned in fragile states, so we came with that purpose in mind. Frankly, we would have been far better off to get into a direct discussion on results. We would have been prepared to do so and very pleased to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Madam McDonough, I sense you have a very short one.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Yes, I guess it's partly a question, but this committee actually voted unanimously to say it would be very helpful if we had an actual legislative framework for our international aid obligations, which perhaps could shape somewhat that whole reporting mechanism, starting with transparency, and so on. I'm wondering if you have any comments on that in relation to what I think you sense is a desire to have a better understanding of what we are really doing, with what results, or of the measurability of the results, and so on. You would see the adoption of a legislative framework and then what else would flow from that as being potentially a constructive contribution to this whole business of measuring, reporting, or revealing our activities and our results?

[Stephen Wallace]

Whether you do this through policy or through legislative design, you need a clear, transparent, sophisticated, accountable result structure. That's the absolute core of it.

I think that taking a look at what is an effective, accountable results structure allows you to make decisions about what it is you want from a policy point of view, and what it is you might want from a legislative point of view. I have to tell you that if you take a look at this worldwide, they deal with this through a whole mix of things—sometimes policy, sometimes legislative.

I think the core is that you need a transparent, sophisticated, results-oriented accountability structure. That's the core of the requirement, to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We want to thank CIDA for being here. There are a number of documents that we and you have referenced today, which we would invite you to forward to our committee.

In a working dinner tonight, we'll work through our committee business.

We'll suspend for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call back to order meeting 14, dealing with committee business.

We have a number of notices of motion that have been brought forward by Mr. Martin.

Is there any specific order, Keith?

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

Yes, there is, Mr. Chair. I'd like to start with the one on the Congo. The second one will be on Zimbabwe, and the third on Darfur.

To facilitate this, you have the original motion, and then after consultation, proposed amendments were agreed upon by the opposition parties--I'm not sure about the government.

I can read the original motion, and if you'd like, I can move to the amended motion, or we can just start with the amended motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

No, I'd like you to read the two motions.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Have you circulated the amended motion?

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

No, but I have the motion, and they can be brought up to amendment.