Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 4th, 2010

[Larissa Bezo]

Both for future and existing civil servants.

[Kristina Wittfooth]

Yes, both.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

For example, unions have been cooperative in ensuring that for the next 10 or 20 years.... With your civil service being professionalized, those jobs have to be protected for people who are trained to do the job, not only for those who curry political favour or who get a little gift from someone in government, but to make sure it is a separate and distinct service. Is that something the unions have collaborated on and participated in?

[Larissa Bezo]

There are unions that exist in Ukraine, and there is a civil service union that represents public employees. However, the current legal framework does not provide guarantees for public servants in terms of their job status, their tenure. That's something they're moving toward.

In fact, our project has provided advisory input to the main department of civil service for the new draft law in the civil service, to articulate protection for employees and create room for unions to come in and provide that kind of support and stability.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Pearson, you have a couple of minutes left.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Certainly.

You talked about how it used to be supply-driven. Once again, I'll go back to the international development model. I very much understand that, and the complications. Now you say it's more demand-driven. I would like to know how you do these assessments, both in the beginning, when you first get involved, and also as you go through it and you near the end of the time.

What I have discovered is that on the supply side it was always the people who were the donors who were manipulating the information. On the demand side, it's often the people who are receiving information who manipulate it in order to make it look like it's working.

Could I ask you how you do that assessment? Also, near the end, do you have a third-party group that does the assessment, or is it basically the main two groups together doing that?

I'm not trying to make it complicated; it's just that I know that in the field of international development it can get very tricky.

[Kristina Wittfooth]

On how we do it--and of course it's more or less the same, I would say, for CIDA, although CIDA uses a third party—we rely on our presence in the field. We engage with partners who are appropriate for us. Together with them we analyze the needs, the scope of the needs, and the modalities of any kind of engagement. We do some sort of feasibility analysis before we engage in any kind of programming ourselves. As far as I understand it, CIDA sometimes sends out experts, consultants, to do feasibility studies before the programming shapes up and takes project form.

In the beginning in any country you need to have consultations with the government, depending sometimes on the centralized nature of the government. Then as a donor country—not only in terms of money but in terms of the expertise you provide—your expertise must make sense for the country and not overlap. It must be in harmony with the other initiatives. That has been one of the problems in the past, before donor communities made it clear that they either collaborate and coordinate their efforts on the ground, or there are donor meetings that do it. So when we cooperate with other donors, like in Ukraine, we go to these meetings and try to make sure that any initiatives are in harmony with or in collaboration with other initiatives.

I would like to emphasize one thing here that's very important. The beneficiary country's people—human resources—are usually very much in short supply. Those people who can engage with you and with whom you can work are in high demand from other donor communities. So you really have to make sure you don't waste that very valuable human resource by pulling them in different directions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pearson.

Mr. Lunney.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you both for a very informative presentation. I think it was very well organized, and you've contributed greatly to our understanding of the matter we're discussing.

My first question is on the new draft law you mentioned on the civil service in Ukraine. Has it just been introduced? Where is it in the legislative process, and how likely is it to become a reality in the near future?

[Larissa Bezo]

Thank you for the question.

The draft law itself has been a work in progress for the last four to five years. It has been approved by four separate cabinets and been submitted to Parliament three times. Given those 16 changes in government that we mentioned in our initial presentation, unfortunately it has always made it into Parliament just as it has been dissolved and an election is called.

The main department has continued in its efforts to campaign within the public service for that civil service law. It is expected to be re-submitted to the new cabinet, and we're hopeful that it will appear in the Verkhovna Rada in its upcoming session. But it's work that will continue.

It's interesting to note that regardless of the fact that the legal framework has yet to be adopted, a lot of the foundational elements from a policy perspective that need to be in place to support future implementation of the law are already being put in as building blocks.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

We know that with democracy we have our own challenges with minority Parliaments and too many elections recently. I think most of us would probably agree, but that's the nature of democracy; it's very inconvenient at times, especially for the politicians. I think most of my colleagues would agree with that. Nevertheless, we recognize the practical realities, and thank you so much for helping us with that comment.

I appreciate the way you've framed some of these discussions about the importance of continuity. This is not a short-term project; it's a long-term project. I don't know how this can effectively be done without a relationship and people on the ground who have some understanding and relationships between the people staying and those coming and going. You made a remark here about the quality and rigour of the orientation provided to volunteers and visiting experts. I would think volunteers coming in would have to be prepared about the context they're coming into. Every nation is different.

Can you flesh out or describe what you mean by this quality and rigour of orientation and what that looks like on the ground?

[Larissa Bezo]

Sure.

I'll speak from a very practical standpoint in terms of our current project. When we have individual experts or institutional experts such as experts from the Public Service Commission what we as an organization and as a project implementer do is basically prepare an extensive briefing for those individuals before they are deployed into the beneficiary country. Elements of that briefing touch on working in that specific culture so that they're informed in terms of protocol, etiquette, and all the rules of engagement. More specifically, they get a very comprehensive briefing in terms of the content of what's happening, politically what's happening from a policy perspective, and how to position adviser support that's been provided in a way that it can be digested by the Ukrainian beneficiary so that it's received in a way that is as relevant to the Ukrainian needs as possible. That happens before they've been deployed. We have a very broad project team in the field that also does an up-to-the-minute briefing once they've arrived in the field, and then they're plugged into the institutional partner.

What's very interesting in terms of the briefing aspect for our project, and even in terms of the relationship-building that's so important to the success of these kinds of partnerships--and it speaks to the other member's question with respect to engagement--is that we have a very unique model in our particular project where our beneficiary, our partner in Ukraine, as a sign of commitment and engagement in terms of the priority and need of this partnership with Canada in fact committed some of their best human resources to work with the project. What this has meant is that they actually seconded some of their senior staff to work in the project implementation team. It's beautiful from a relationship and an institution-building standpoint in the sense that these individuals are extracted from the workplace, but they have that wealth of knowledge that no other local individual could possess in the way that they do. They work on the project team and then are reintegrated at the end of project implementation. Briefing also takes on a very unique flavour by virtue of their participation in these kinds of processes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just finish up the comment there.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I think what I hear you saying, though, is that not only do we have to prepare people on the ground here so they know what they're going to get, but prepare people on the other end to understand who's coming in and what their role will be. Not only do people have to be sent, they have to be received if it's going to be an effective team.

[Larissa Bezo]

That's exactly it, connecting.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

It's really an important role.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Mr. Lunney.

We'll go now to Madame Deschamps.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have talked at some length about your project and your partnership with the Ukraine. I imagine there must also be other projects conducted by the Canadian Bureau for International Education. Where are these projects being conducted? I would like you to answer me a little more substantively, because you speak rather vaguely of the links, and the way in which you work with the beneficiaries and the partners.

You have been present in the Ukraine since 1992. Concretely, who decides that you will still be there for the next century? Is it the beneficiary? Do you maintain a partnership as long as you have a request from a given country?

You mentioned in your presentation that for more than 40 years, you have been working in various parts of the world, among others in the Americas. Have you received any partnership requests from Haiti, for instance, at this time? If I understood your objectives and the mission correctly, I would like to gain a more concrete understanding of the relationship you have with an applicant country.

[Kristina Wittfooth]

This is an important question.

It is common, among NGOs in the NGO community, for every NGO to sort of specialize. There might be some particular opportunity that then leads that NGO to become more engaged in a particular sector or a particular country.

Ukraine became a significant part of CBIE's involvement in international development simply because when the country became independent, the Canadian government was looking for Canadian partners that could help the Canadian government forge new relationships at different levels--academic levels, government levels--and in different networks. It wanted to work with them to help the newly independent countries, Ukraine among them, to be part of the western community.

Before that, CBIE, our organization, had, a little bit here and there, educational programs. When the Soviet Union fell apart, it was simply a matter of pragmatism that we then became heavily involved. We were heavily involved in two streams, public administration reform and civil society development, which CIDA wanted to fund. So we were driven by CIDA's funding priorities, but we also had our own values and our own expertise, which were growing.

I have to mention one critical thing here, if I may. We are talking about Ukraine, but CBIE has had a very successful program in Georgia in the south Caucasus, which was an offspring of our success in Ukraine. That success told us that you can transport, in very many ways, what we are now experiencing in Ukraine to any post-Soviet country, because there are so many lingering legacies, structures, attitudes, and practices that are still common. Every country has been on its own path since independence, but there are so many similarities that there are very low thresholds to work with the same experience and at least understand the problems in these countries from the long experience with the evolution in Ukraine.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I would like you to answer the other question, Ms. Bezo.

Where are you conducting other partnerships at this time? Must a country submit a request... Who chooses? This is not done at random, I expect.

[Larissa Bezo]

To answer your question, we have been active on different continents in different countries, depending on a particular mandate. As Ms. Wittfooth has mentioned, some of it has been driven by technical assistance initiatives, funded by CIDA. Public sector reform is an example. We have been active in the former Soviet Union states, such as Ukraine, and also in parts of central and eastern Europe and in some of the new EU member states. We've also been active in the south Caucasus--Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan. We've had projects in....

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

And are you still there?

[Larissa Bezo]

Yes, there we've maintained relationships. We've also had projects in Africa: Mali, Senegal, and so on.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Do you have one in Africa, currently? A little earlier, I referred to Haiti. Is that a possibility?