Evidence of meeting #39 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was africa.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:30 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
The idea of results-based programming and focusing on outcomes rather than inputs and outputs came to the Government of Canada more widely I think in the early nineties. I think it came from the United States. It was one of the first initiatives of the Clinton administration in the United States: let's talk about what the impact is of our work, not the inputs; let's evaluate the results.
I said that this has become a kind of tyranny, because everybody who is putting forward a project proposal has to be able to say what the results will be in advance and then is going to be held accountable for the results, when in fact, as I said before, often we don't know. There are so many things that happen between the time a project begins—or between the time when an intervention in general begins—and when it ends that you can't predict what the results are going to be. Often the results are unintended. Often the results can't actually be attributed to what you're doing.
Social development is very complicated. It takes time. Let me just give you an example of the problem. If you're going to have a program to improve education in the school system.... Let's say you decide that the project is going to be improved teachers, that you're going to do a teacher training project. The input is a teacher training project; the output is trained teachers. In the old days, what we would have evaluated was how good the training program was: what did they learn? If you were thinking more about outcomes, you might actually measure whether or not the teachers are applying what they've learned in the school. If you're thinking about long-term results, it's all about the children. It isn't about the teachers or the project; it's about the children.
How would you measure the impact of your teacher training program on children, and how soon could you measure it? You obviously couldn't measure it within the life of the project. The project might have been for one year, and you might not be able to measure it for two or three years, and there would be other things that would impinge on it.
One of the problems is that in our need to get results we've actually forgotten about those kinds of results and focusing back again on the outputs and short-term outcomes of a particular project.
Development is experimental. This development business that we've been in for 40 or 50 years remains an experiment. What we have to do is learn from what works, and we have to make sure that we learn from what doesn't work—as I say, not cover up the mistakes, but learn from them. The fear of making mistakes, the aversion to risk, the fear that there's going to be an announcement that the Auditor General has discovered some failure, has made a lot of people, including CIDA and many NGOs, very risk-averse, in a business that is full of risk.
10:30 a.m.
Bloc
10:35 a.m.
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
You are absolutely right in saying that we are obsessed with results. This morning, an extraordinary young woman came to tell us that she had been educated in a Canadian university. I don't think that could have ever been assessed by CIDA. However, the fact that this individual appeared before us made us aware of how important the work happening over there is. What you are saying is of great interest to us.
Furthermore, you spoke about democratic development and about how both those who provide the aid and those who receive it have to learn. I would like you to tell us to what extent you think this sharing of understanding and of what actually happens in reality has occurred. Do you think that it happens enough?
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
It is a big question for a short answer.
People talk about how bad the situation is in many African countries 45 years after independence. I sometimes remind people that 85 years after independence in the United States they had one of the world's worst civil wars, genocidal wars against Indians, and slavery. So 45 years isn't very long in the general scheme of things.
As I say, I think it is very important that we work on things that we know work: the expansion of space for civil society, voice for citizens, free and open media, working on the judiciary—working on things like this. And CIDA and the Department of Foreign Affairs do these things.
I think it is very important for us to learn from them, and to learn what works and stay with things that work. We often abandon projects because we think they've failed. In fact, they often fail because we've abandoned them. I think it is very important to stay and learn and stick with it, to continue with it.
10:35 a.m.
Conservative
Bill Casey Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
Thank you very much. I find this discussion very interesting, and I want to just drift off a little bit.
You mentioned Sierra Leone. A few years ago, I visited Sierra Leone. I went with the parliamentary group. We got on a bus in Freetown, and when we were going up the street, the tour lady said, “That's a Nova Scotia house.” I thought I had misunderstood her. I'm from Nova Scotia. We have three members here from Nova Scotia. When we went a little further, she said, “That's a Nova Scotia house.”
I asked here what she was talking about. She said that in 1792, fifteen boatloads of black Canadians and former slaves left Alexa McDonough's harbour and sailed to establish Sierra Leone. I didn't know anything about that. It's not in our history books. There's nothing about it there, but I think it's a tremendous bind between Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.
Some of the other members and I also went to the amputee camp there. There were 250 young people with their hands chopped off because of the blood diamond conflict you were talking about.
Anyway, it really did bring back thoughts when you brought that up.
We just came back from Kenya as well, and accountability is a big issue in all of these countries. One of the issues that came up was that a lot of funding partners delay funding if there's a question about accountability. Almost all of the recipients that Ms. McDonough and I and our group met with said that when money is held up for accountability reasons, people suffer and people die. I just wonder what your thought on that is. When there is an accountability issue or a concern, how should a government react? Should they delay money, stop money, or just keep on going?
10:35 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
I listened to a group of Sierra Leonean NGOs ten years ago talking about the problem they had in getting money. I talked first to a group of international NGOs who said the problem with the Sierra Leonean NGOs was that they lacked capacity and there were problems about accountability. Ten years ago, the Sierra Leonean NGOs asked me why it was that after all those years of so-called partnership between northern and southern NGOs, the international NGOs hadn't figured out a way to build Sierra Leonean capacity or help them build their capacity. Why hadn't they figured out a way to make sure they got the kind of accountability they wanted?
After forty years of development assistance, surely we know how to get accountability and how to make sure it's there. If we don't, it's because we don't know the country well enough. Maybe we shouldn't be there.
I had the same discussion two years ago in Sierra Leone. Nothing had changed. The international NGOs said the locals didn't have capacity and that there were accountability problems, and the locals were asking what the matter was because ten more years had passed and they were still no further ahead on this.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Bill Casey Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
We heard the same thing in Kenya. We met with a whole group of NGOs and they said they want to be accountable but they don't know the standards; they don't know how to do it. Maybe that's an area we could help with, in training NGOs and organizations to be accountable.
10:40 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
Part of the issue has to do with relationships. We talk about partnerships all the time, but what we have are not partnerships; they're contractual arrangements between people with money and people who don't have money. Often, these partnerships are not very solid, they're not very old, and they don't last very long. It really is a contractual arrangement.
One of the advantages NGOs have is that the relationships are deeper and do last longer, but often they are of the same sort. Over time, if you really spend time getting to know a country and really getting to work very closely with people, I think you begin to understand how the system works, who can be trusted, who shouldn't be trusted, how to protect yourself if there is a risk, and how to minimize risk.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Bill Casey Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
This came up in a couple of different areas about organizations. In fact, Canada's was one, but there were other organizations that held back money or delayed it. A lot of suffering was caused because of those decisions, because there was a question of accountability. Should donor countries or organizations hold back money if there's an accountability question once they start the process, or should they stop it?
10:40 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
Development delayed is development denied.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Bill Casey Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
Exactly. That's what we heard.
10:40 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
You shouldn't start a project if you don't have the accountability nailed down in advance. There shouldn't be cause after one or two years. Unless something is going seriously wrong, there shouldn't really be a need to hold up the project for accountability reasons. You should have sorted that out at the beginning.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Bernard Patry
Thank you.
Sorry, Mr. Casey.
We'll go to Ms. McDonough, very briefly.
10:40 a.m.
NDP
Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS
I'd like to continue on exactly the same line that Bill Casey has raised.
It's quite literally true that, on the ground, grassroots organizations that have almost no resources but are working in various networks, coalitions, empowerment groups, and so on, were pleading the case that they want to be accountable and try to be as much as they can be. But there are two problems. One is that it's not asked of them until the money is half spent sometimes, and then they don't have the systems in place. Secondly, they don't necessarily have the knowhow and the capacity.
A specific question about that is whether you have suggestions about how groups in that situation might be appropriately responded to when there is some Canadian money in some of those projects.
Secondly, I really want to thank you for your comments about a little humility and caution being in order as we take on democratizing the world. I'll ask you quite specifically about what now is this new structure that has been set up, the Office for Democratic Governance.
Do you have some indication of whether or not there has been a collaborative process with the NGOs that have had the experience on the ground, literally for forty or fifty years in your case and that of others, to have confidence? Should there be a round of collaboration now to in fact inform and make sure we know what we're doing here? I think a lot of people are worried that some of this is about regime change by another name and a velvet glove.
10:40 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
On the first one, accountability is not brain surgery, and it doesn't have to be. The basic ideas of accountability don't have to be reinvented. Accountability to Canadian donors, whether they're Canadian NGOs, CIDA, Foreign Affairs, or IDRC, shouldn't be vastly different from accountability to anybody else or to local governments.
Part of the difficulty recipients have is that they have to deal with so many donors. They all have different rules, different forums, different timeframes, different budgets, and things that they will and won't include. It's extremely difficult, whether you're an NGO or a government, to put together a program out of the patchwork of donors and to remember what kinds of accountabilities they all want.
It wouldn't hurt for donors to get together and have a serious joint discussion about what they mean by accountability—what it means for NGOs, what it means for governments, and so on. Let's get some common standards here so that you don't have to jump through a Danish hoop today and a German hoop tomorrow.
10:40 a.m.
NDP
Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS
What is the appropriate process for doing that? I agree with you, but how do you—
10:45 a.m.
Research Coordinator, Partnership Africa Canada
It could be the OECD. It could be a United Nations agency. There are any number of.... Canada could lead on it. Different countries could take the initiative in particular countries. Canada could do it in Mozambique and Britain could do it somewhere else. But this idea that we're all different and all unique and that our answer is best only confuses people.
On the other issue, the Office for Democratic Governance, I'm sorry, but I don't know the answer. I wasn't aware until fairly recently that it had been created. I think it has only happened since the end of October, and I don't know where it is, so I don't have an answer.
I do notice, though, that democratic governance, which in the 2005-06 estimates for CIDA was $565 million is $900 million today, according to a CIDA document that I picked up the other day. That's a 60% increase, which might be heartening in some ways, but it's probably a coding issue. It's probably the way the issue was coded before. If it's not a coding issue, if it really is a 60% increase in funding, then that means significant decreases in other areas in a very short space of time, and an indication that, again, we're not staying the course on some of the things we had in place.
