Foreign Affairs Committee on March 23rd, 2011

[A/Commr Mike Cabana]

They seem to be. I'm not aware of any issues that have surfaced.

The training approach and the policing approach have not changed since the earthquake, and it was accepted before. It actually seems to be making small steps, which seem to be making some difference.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Of course our government is committed to building a police training facility in Haiti, and I know the negotiations for a contract are under way, so it is in the future. I'm sure that's going to be of assistance to you in the work you're doing.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Mr. Pearson.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Briefly, I have one major question, but I appreciated what Mr. Goldring and Mr. Dewar said in our expression of sympathy to you. I thought they were quite eloquent in what they said, and I hope you realize that, as a committee, we mean that. We thank you very much for all the work you've done.

My question is about the camps. I think you said there were about 70.

[A/Commr Mike Cabana]

There are in excess of 70 camps.

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

Right. In my own experience, often in the camps there is a problem with gangs. Then if it goes on for any lengthy period of time, those gangs become somewhat connected with larger institutes of crime that have been around for much longer.

It creates real difficulty for women, especially in the camps. I wonder if you have seen that. Has there been a problem with that, or are those connections there?

[A/Commr Mike Cabana]

I can't speak to whether we've seen an increase specifically attributable to gangs. Clearly, following the creation of the camps there was a significant increase in crime. Now whether the crime can be attributed to gangs or not, I don't know. I can't speak to that.

But as part of the community policing there were initiatives that were implemented to increase the policing presence and to try to mitigate, as much as possible, the presence of criminals or any criminal groups within those camps.

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

Okay, that's all I need.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank our witnesses for taking time to be here today.

In terms of what's going on, apparently we have a vote at 4:52.

Mr. Reid is back.

They had a quick motion. I've had a number of members come to me on the subcommittee who wanted us to pass—this is a different motion than we've talked about. I'd like to bring Mr. Reid up to speed for five minutes so we can pass this motion, a recommendation to the House, and then we should head over there.

Thanks, again, to our witnesses.

Mr. Reid, you have a motion from your committee that you want us to bring forward in the House, so would you talk to it very quickly?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'll be very brief, given the time constraints. I think this is very non-controversial. There's a really extraordinary tragedy under way in Tanzania. The subcommittee voted unanimously to deal with this after hearing testimony about this.

In Tanzania, albinos—actually the preferred term nowadays is “persons with albinism”. There are two things. Number one, for reasons that I actually can't explain—it would be interesting to find out what they are—there is a higher proportion of people who suffer from albinism in Tanzania than in most other parts of the world. For other reasons that are cultural, albinism has come to be associated with certain kinds of magical powers, and if one is a witch doctor, one achieves use of this is by taking the body parts of a person who has albinism and using them for magic-related purposes. As a result, people who suffer from albinism are murdered, sometimes merely dismembered—an arm will be chopped off a living person, that sort of thing. Sometimes they're actually killed, and their body parts are distributed. There's a fairly well-developed network for distributing body parts. This is an attempt to draw this to greater public attention.

The man from our country who has led the attempt to draw attention to this has been very effective, and I think Canada can play a meaningful role in assisting in bringing this to world attention. I should mention the Tanzanian government is not involved in oppression; they are appalled by this and embarrassed by it and want to do what they can to stop it, but they have limited resources. Canada's intervention, or Canada's signalling its views on the subject, would be, I think, very useful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Do we have approval, then, to bring this motion...?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'll make sure it gets read in the House tomorrow.

Thank you, Mr. Reid. Thank you very much.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We have bells here. Can we hear from our ambassador for five minutes?

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

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're moving fast today. We're going to get five minutes from the ambassador and then we'll head over.

Just so we understand, I do not believe we are going to make it back because of where the votes are, but we should hear the testimony anyway and then move on from there.

We'll get the witnesses to the table. We're only going to have about five minutes, and I apologize for that, but I figure that five minutes is better than none at all.

Ambassador, I apologize. We do not have a lot of time. We have votes. If you could take just five minutes, just to get some things on the record, then we are going to have to go to our votes. We're probably not going to able to make it back. Since you are here, we thought we should at least try to do that, but we have to head over to the House. I'm just going to turn it over to you right away.

I apologize for the short timeframe that you have, but as I said, five to seven minutes would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, and thank you for working with us.

[His Excellency Elsadig Almagly, Ambassador of the Republic of Sudan to Canada, Embassy of the Republic of Sudan to Canada]

Thank you.

Can I speak in French or English no problem? Both of them?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

French or English, whatever you choose. Most definitely.

[Elsadig Almagly]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, at the outset, I would like to thank you very much for having provided me with this opportunity to brief you on the recent developments in Sudan, especially on the recently held referendum on the self-determination for Southern Sudan, and to discuss the future relations between Canada and Sudan.

I also want to express my appreciation and gratitude for the importance your esteemed committee is attaching to the recent political developments in Sudan, in light of the recent referendum.

May I make reference to the positive, balanced, concrete, and constructive outcome of the deliberations of your committee last December on the conduct of the referendum process and on future relations between Canada and Sudan in the post-referendum era.

I also would like to put special emphasis on the recommendation made at the conclusion of your deliberations, in particular your recommendation that “there must be a continuing role for Canada to assist Sudan in the post-referendum period, particularly with respect to development aid and humanitarian assistance and capacity-building initiatives”. That is a long-term and whole-of-government strategy for Sudan, which includes support for North and South Sudan.

Reference should also be made to the committee's recommendations concerning the visit of the high-level delegation, and we look forward to the visit taking place in the coming few months, before the end of the interim period.

The international observers expressed their satisfaction and described the process as credible, free, fair, and transparent. On February 7, 2011, the final results were announced. The Sudanese president issued a decree accepting the results of the referendum. Not only did he endorse the results of the referendum, he also expressed the commitment of Sudan to be the first to recognize, as of July 9, 2011, the newly born state in South Sudan. He also pledged to render all possible technical and logistical assistance to the independent South Sudan. As to the outstanding contentious post-referendum issues, the president said they are resolved to reach an agreement on them before the end of the interim period.

The President of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir, paid special tribute to President Al Bashir for his acceptance of the outcome. He said that President Al Bashir and the National Congress Party deserve a reward. He stressed that the independence of the South was not the end of the road because we cannot be enemies. President Salva Kiir called on the Southerners to pardon the Northerners for the war victims.

He promised to allow free movement of goods and people between the two countries and to cooperate with the Sudanese government in resolving post-referendum legal disputes. He also promised to campaign for the cancellation of Sudan's external debt and to convince Washington to lift the economic sanctions imposed on Sudan.

Mr. Chair, as you know, the American sanctions constitute an impediment to Canadian companies that wish to invest in Sudan. We would like Canada to do its best to encourage the United States to keep its promise and to lift the sanctions as soon as possible.

Officials from the South and from the North must also agree on other sensitive issues, such as the Nile water, security, national assets, foreign debt, citizenship, and border crossings located in the Abyei region. Both parties must agree on the status of hundreds of thousands of Southerners living in the North and vice versa. President Al Bashir promised that the South Sudanese settled in the North will be protected and that their property will not be confiscated or their lives threatened.

Following a meeting with the Sudanese president on March 6, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who heads the high-level group charged with the implementation of the CPA, stated that the president assured him that they would resume the dialogue with the leader of the SPLM without prior conditions, with a view to ironing out the outstanding post-referendum issues, including Abyei.

On the other hand, the Sudanese president met on March 7, 2011, with South Sudan President Salva Kiir in the presence of Thabo Mbeki. They agreed to resume the dialogue on the Abyei dispute before the end of March and that a joint military force be deployed in Abyei following the immediate withdrawal from the area of the armies of the Government of Sudan and also the SPLM forces. They also agreed to implement the Kadugli agreement on Abyei and to resume Addis Ababa negotiations aimed at resolving the post-referendum issues.

I also would like to convey the appreciation of Sudan for the outstanding contribution Canada has been extending to assist all parts of Sudan to fully implement the CPA. We also would like to express our satisfaction vis-à-vis the statement issued by the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, on the result of the referendum in Sudan, with special emphasis on his pledge to assist both parties in Sudan in charting their post-referendum future.

Notwithstanding this colossal achievement, the Government of Canada, instead of rewarding the Government of Sudan for its commitment to fully implement the CPA, which has brought to a halt the longest-running war in Africa, decided, unfortunately and to our surprise, to downgrade unilaterally the diplomatic representation with the Sudan, from ambassadorial level to chargé d'affaires, e.p. level.

The Government of Sudan looks forward to witnessing a further enhancement of the existing bilateral relations between Sudan and Canada, and in particular looks forward to reviewing the upgrading of our diplomatic representation to the ambassadorial level in the very near future, as well as our hope that Canada will help Sudan in overcoming the post-referendum pending issues, to the benefit of both parties in Sudan and to further enhance our bilateral cooperation.

The Government of Sudan calls upon the international community, including Canada, to assist South Sudan in the post-war reconstruction. North Sudan will spare no effort to see to it that a strong, prosperous, stable, and viable state will be established in the south. Needless to say, the more prosperous and viable that South Sudan will be, the more sustainable and comprehensive the peace that will prevail in the whole of Sudan, and the people will no longer have fears about the reigniting of the conflict in the country.

I wish I could give you an elaborate historical background of the Sudanese conflict, but time constraints have made that impossible.

However, I would say that the majority of the conflicts and civil wars in Africa are a colonial legacy. That is why we are very happy that Canada does not have any colonial background in Africa or elsewhere in the third world.

We are talking about a time bomb that was planted during the colonial era. Not only did the colonial rule turn a number of African countries into scapegoats of a malicious policy, it also turned them into victims of organized and systematic pillaging of their natural resources and raw materials.

The civil war in Sudan is just one of the conflicts that have devastated the continent during the post-colonial period. I would mention, among others: civil wars in Eritrea, Biafra, Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire; apartheid and the minority rule in South Africa; the Ogaden War. The list goes on.

The contemporary history of Africa tells us that, between the Berlin conference of 1885, which was marked by the scramble for and the partitioning of African territories, and the fall of the Berlin wall at the end of the 1980s, Africa went through three “plagues.” First, there was colonialism and everything that went with it, such as apartheid, the slave trade and the pillaging of natural resources. Next, there was neo-colonialism, and I will explain.

From the end of the Second World War and all through the Cold War, the third world, and especially Africa, were the preferred battle ground for the East-West confrontation. With the build-up of the nuclear threat, the two world superpowers chose to carry out their rivalry by proxy.

Therefore, from the end of World War II, in 1945, until the end of the Cold War, in the late 1990s, the conflicts and civil wars that took place in the third world were fueled by the East-West rivalry.

All the conflicts that the world witnessed between 1945 and 1990 took place in the third world as a result of the polarization policy and the rivalry between the West and the East, with the exception of a few conflicts, such as: the Suez War; the tripartite aggression against Egypt; the Soviet invasion of Budapest in the late 1950s; the Prague Spring and the Czech revolt in the 1960s; the Vietnam war, from 1959 to 1975; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s; and the U.S. invasion of Burma in the late 1980s.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall and the breaking up of the Eastern Bloc, Africa has been emancipated from a bi-polar grip to find itself hostage to a monopolar or unipolar grip, that of the United States.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

I apologize once again for the timing. We have to go for a vote. We're already over time, but thank you. We have your remarks on the record.

The meeting is adjourned.