Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 4th, 2010

[Kristina Wittfooth]

We have had several projects funded by CIDA. So our first project that CIDA funded—or it was actually DFAIT that funded it in the beginning, in 1992 in Ukraine. After that, when the responsibility of the Ukraine task and desk moved over to CIDA, we have had, from 1992, a continuing presence in Ukraine through CIDA-funded projects.

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

Through CIDA funding. So there are no other departments of the government that are collaborating on this?

[Larissa Bezo]

I was just going to add, Kristina, we also have worked with other multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, other development banks—

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

No, I'm talking about in Canada. Is the Public Service Commission—

[Larissa Bezo]

That's right. On other types of projects CBIE has worked with DFAIT, international scholarships and the like, but on the development side CIDA is the primary, yes.

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

CIDA is the one. Okay. And the Public Service Commission is not involved in any way.

[Larissa Bezo]

Not as a funder.

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

Just as a provider of resources, I imagine, human resources.

[Larissa Bezo]

Correct.

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

Thank you very much. I'll come back.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you, Ms. Mendes.

Ms. Deschamps, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies, you have your earphones. You are going to need the interpretation service.

Thank you very much for your testimony and for sharing your experience with us. I have a few brief questions for you. I will give you time to answer and then we can broach other topics.

Last week, the committee heard the President of the Public Service Commission of Canada. Have you had any dealings with the commission?

[Kristina Wittfooth]

Yes. I was actually here last week also and listened to Madame Barrados' testimony. The Public Service Commission has provided their expert services to this Ukraine program that we have mentioned today, the civil service reform project. So both Madame Barrados herself and her staff have helped to share their experience in what the Public Service Commission is doing in Canada and have triggered a lot of interest from a Ukrainian party to follow and to look at the models and the systems and the institution, actually, that is in place in Canada.

Larissa, would you like to add to that?

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

I'm going to give you another bit of information. You stated, Ms. Wittfooth, that you had been working on projects in Ukraine since 1992. I don't know if all of these projects were funded by CIDA, but Ms. Barrados, last week, was telling us about one of the projects led by the Public Service Commission of Canada and funded by CIDA that worked less well. It was a project in the Ukraine.

It was mentioned in a summary of the 2006 study prepared by the Public Service Commission of Canada for CIDA. That summary contained the following conclusion:

Perhaps the key lesson from this project is the following: if a clear commitment to human resources management reform is not in place and a country does not have sufficient stability in its political, institutional and public service environment, the chances of achieving sustainable impact through the transfer of individual tools or institutional models are significantly reduced.

And so, I am a little concerned by what has come out of this study by the Public Service Commission of Canada and what you told us about your experiences, Ms. Wittfooth. Have you had problems of that kind? Were corrective measures taken? In light of the fact that your organization is also funded by CIDA, you probably had to produce reports and assessments of your projects. I suppose you must have encountered similar problems.

[Kristina Wittfooth]

That of course is a very relevant question. In every project—and lessons learned, of course—in recent times, when we have adopted the lessons learned and our experience has told us, we are incorporating in each project design a monitoring and evaluation mechanism. So that means the projects are monitored and every need for a corrective measure is taken during the course of the project. And of course there are three levels where you try to measure the project impact, whether the project has the intended impact on the reforms. You have the immediate level, which is very easy to measure; that is outputs. You have an input and then an output, and the output usually is the trained people. And you have a number of advisers. You have a number you can quantify.

But then you measure it on the outcome level—that is when you have to see and look into, through the monitoring mechanism, if those skills and the knowledge that the participants and the partner have acquired translate into new legislation, new systems, new processes, new, improved ways of doing business.

Then the long-term impact the project can have is something that usually is beyond the lifetime of the project. You cannot see immediately if that has really profoundly changed how the government works, for instance.

So over this, we have been able to observe, because of our pure presence in Ukraine for so long, that there has been clearly a huge improvement on so many levels in Ukraine. But regularly their projects are of a shorter period, so that the last level—the long-term impact—is usually something that there is no mechanism available to measure, unless one then goes back and asks later.

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

You talked about evolution. The bureau has been in existence for 40 or 60 years, has it not?

[Larissa Bezo]

It has been in existence since 1966.

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

I suppose that your philosophy must evolve, and that you must also rely heavily on the values to be found in the foreign affairs policies of successive governments. You must be quite sensitive to those policies.

In your presentation, you say that for a long time, CIDA subsidized partnership projects which proved to be ephemeral. You stated that CIDA had put an end to those programs.

Could you tell me in what year CIDA put an end to those projects?

[Kristina Wittfooth]

I would not have the exact date, but I have observed a trend.

In the very beginning, CIDA's capacity to program was perhaps not, therefore, in every country. And certainly we saw in the Ukraine that in the beginning the Ukrainian diaspora was very much involved in the programming of different initiatives in Ukraine. Different NGOs wanted to be involved and had their own contacts and then did come up with their own project ideas, which then were approved by CIDA because they made sense and they were good ideas and good project design. But that was coming from outside.

Over time, CIDA's own capacity to develop its own Canadian government programming in the Ukraine improved, improved significantly, and that then led to CIDA's own programming efforts in Ukraine.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you, Ms. Wittfooth.

Now we're going to pass to Mr. Abbott.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to the witnesses.

Ms. Bezo, you have been back in Canada how long?

[Larissa Bezo]

About 12 hours.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

About 12 hours. Okay. You came to us from the Ukraine.

For clarity, I'm going to say something here, and I need your confirmation. This is my understanding, and I want the whole committee to understand this. My understanding is that, Ms. Bezo, you're—I don't know what the correct word is—engaged with the Canadian Bureau for International Education in the delivery of this service in the Ukraine. So the testimony here today is of highest value in your ability to help us understand the ways in which Canadians can interface with people in Mongolia, people in the Ukraine, people where they desire to have this service. So that is the value of your testimony.

I think what we're looking at with the committee is, in addition to this model, which is funded by CIDA—in addition to, not in competition with—I believe it is the desire of the committee to take a look at other ways where we may be able to engage retired civil servants on a voluntary basis. I would really encourage you to help us with this. And for the benefit of the committee members, CESO, the Canadian executive services overseas, which has a model not at all related to what we're talking about here but one of retired people being able to deliver their services, are going to be witnesses at our meeting next Tuesday. So you represent to us the ideas or the best practices, our experience of the delivery of the service, and what we're going to get from CESO on Tuesday is an additional vehicle by which those services could be delivered.

Within that context, then, I wonder if you could help us understand, for example, how an organization would, whatever this new organization is that will be created under the memorandum of understanding that our Prime Minister and the Mongolian Prime Minister signed.... What can you take from what you're presently doing? What would it look like? What do we need to take from that to this new model, a CESO kind of a model?

[Larissa Bezo]

Let's take the Ukraine civil service project as an example. From our experience, CBIE's role has been to serve as a facilitator of these types of public service partnerships. We are there to identify needs, to understand the local context, to bring those needs together, and to connect them to potential Canadian partners. In this context, those would be public sector institutions such as the Public Service Commission of Canada or the Canada School of Public Service, given the subject matter of the project.

What's very important in this context is that we serve as the interlocutor. We've managed to bring the value-added aspect through our very long-term relationship in the country and our very in-depth understanding of the context, which allow us to work with the Ukrainian beneficiary, or the partner, to articulate needs in a way that allows us to identify Canadian partners--Canadian institutions or individuals--with the required expertise and connect the two.

Although we've noticed a significant improvement in the Ukrainian context, from our experience that's probably the biggest challenge, in that often the beneficiary has a general sense of the need or particular issue they're grappling with, but it's often very difficult for them to articulate what that need means in a Canadian context and for us to identify that the Public Service Commission, for instance, could provide assistance in this area. I think that's a very important element to consider in any future modality in which you would want to engage recently retired public servants or parliamentarians and the like.

In our project we too have many senior-level, fairly recently retired public servants, and the important thing to highlight is that their experience is invaluable and has proven very impactful in the Ukrainian context. This is not solely as individuals who have a breadth of professional experience, but as individuals who come from particular institutions that represent particular values and represent a certain level of expertise and acknowledged professionalism. Those are very important elements. Even if those individuals have departed from a given institution, from the beneficiary side there's a remaining association.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Help me understand this. If we have to have somebody take a look at this in an expert capacity and then say that this is what we need to do, in your judgment--and perhaps, Ms. Wittfooth, this would be directed more to you as being retired--is it responsible and reasonable to expect that retired civil servants would have the time and interest to devote themselves to doing something in the depth that I'm taking from what Ms. Bezo is talking about, or in fact would it not work? Would we actually have to have somebody employed on salary in order to do that?