Foreign Affairs Committee on March 25th, 2010

[Dr. Kevin Watkins]

That's a really good point. The Haiti example really demonstrates that in the extraordinary outpouring of generosity you've had in Canada and other countries across the world in response to that crisis.

Unfortunately, the limitation of this data is that it captures what is officially reported to the OECD as development assistance by OECD countries. This is essentially bilateral aid and support from multilateral agencies, whether its the World Bank, an international development association, or humanitarian initiatives. They don't capture what you'd describe as personal donations.

What we tried to do in the report this year is look at other sources. I can send you the relevant material. There's actually quite a lot of other sources. There's large-scale philanthropic donations, small-scale personal contributions, and a whole lot of things not captured in these numbers. If you could redo the numbers for every OECD country, capturing these private contributions and philanthropic donations, the picture would look different. Precisely what it would look like, I couldn't tell you, so I can't give you a full answer to that question.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

It's known full well that it's not just what they contribute for disasters and straight assistance, but also, many of the diaspora contribute money on an ongoing basis to families in the other countries. A very substantial amount of Haitians' national input comes from the diaspora, not for the disaster assistance relief, but on an ongoing basis.

[Dr. Kevin Watkins]

Those numbers would be captured on a different basis, as remittances, which we don't capture here.

But you're right, and I'm not disagreeing with your central point. Indeed, if you look at flows of remittance income across borders, it heavily outstrips what happens through official development assistance. So you're absolutely right to draw attention to that.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

I would carry that to the other extension that, you know, every country on earth is represented in Canada, so the diasporas are really worldwide. It's rather unique. Many European countries wouldn't necessarily be so. Many of them have larger levels of immigration, of diaspora from various countries around the world, and I would say that kind of distinguishes Canada rather uniquely. That contribution being sent all over the world to countries certainly does aid the health and well-being of children, parents, and families. It would be interesting if we could put a number to that somehow, just to get the real perspective. If you factor in all of the contributions made worldwide, I have a feeling it may very well be much higher than that 0.7%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, thank you very much.

That's all the time we have here.

We're going to move over to finish with Mr. Pearson.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much for coming in.

I think what Mr. Goldring has brought up is interesting. If, for instance, you compare Canada with the United States as far as private giving, Canada is way down compared to what the United States has done, even per capita. I don't think we should get these things mixed up. There are certain standards we should be talking about. That's what we should stick with.

Ms. Mundy, I really appreciated what you said about the difference between commitments and disbursements. Any NGO on the ground understands that. It seems to be as commitments come, instead of being 10 years, they're now five years, or they're now three years. As they go through that, even though they might go and increase this year on the basis of programming, they're looking at the back to see how much money will be coming in that's been committed, and they realize those numbers have gone down. That has a direct impact on the ability or the robustness of an NGO to be able to operate on the ground, because it does not know. It's going to be less than it was before.

I think what you're saying is very valuable. I'm not trying to be political with it. I realize that other countries have the same difficulty with Canada on this.

I would like to ask you, specifically, what is, do you think, the one particular reason why the commitment side of things has gone down the way it has?

Mr. Watkins, I was very interested in what you were saying about how we could take the Afghan idea about education, the whole-of-government approach, and apply it someplace else. One of the places you talked about was the Congo. So for my friend, Mr. Dewar, who is very interested in that area, can you just tell me briefly what that would look like? How would we do that?

[Dr. Karen Mundy]

I think that it's very difficult for us to understand what's going on with the commitments.

Perhaps Mr. Abbott can assist us in providing us with further information about ongoing plans in government.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

[Inaudible--Editor]...a cheque. He's got the money.

[Dr. Karen Mundy]

I just want to come back to this issue of private contributions. I don't think that any of us who advocate for an increase in the volume of funding for basic education in the developing world imagine that governments like Canada are going to be able to do all the heavy lifting on this issue.

One area where we do feel that Canada may play a very important role is to help to set up a framework to leverage innovative forms of finance. So let's think outside of the box. I think this is an area where we can harness Canadian contributions. We can leverage government funding and perhaps move toward bridging this gap.

I hope we would have a chance to come back to this committee and talk about these commitments in the coming year. We are expecting to receive information from CIDA on disbursements, and we have to unpack that and look at what's going on in terms of forward planning. When we have that, I hope we'll be able to come back to you and share with you what's going on.

[Dr. Kevin Watkins]

Just to echo that, it's not just NGOs that need that certainty and stability. If you are recruiting teachers, you need to be able to pay them in three, four, five years' time. That's why you keep a very close eye on what's happening on the commitment side of the ledger.

Also, this issue about remittances is a really important one, because it draws attention to potential other sources of financing. We know it's not going to be possible to close a $16-billion financing gap at the next G8 summit. We know at the same time the G20 is already looking at a whole range of innovative financing options to mobilize additional resources.

Again, I think this is an area where there ought to be a far more active and robust G8/G20 dialogue looking at potential avenues, at whether these ideas are being explored around financial transactions, levies, and this sort of thing, but making sure that education figures are a potential beneficiary from those sorts of approaches.

The reason I mention the Afghan example is that what you often hear when you speak to donors about providing aid to conflict-affected countries is essentially that the risks are too high to get involved; the reporting structures are too weak so they don't know what's going to happen to the money; they're not going to have to report properly to legislative assemblies and so on; and we can't afford to get it wrong.

Afghanistan has demonstrated that when donors pool their resources, they reduce their shared risk to some degree. They are pooling risk. That is essentially what they are doing, and they are pooling risk in an environment where they are looking both at the security side of the agenda and how to create a secure environment for development to happen, and how to pool risk, and how to recognize that these governments aren't going to be able to report in the same way as a far more developed, secure, stable country.

If you look at a context like the DRC, you have this combination of insecurity on the ground, very large IDP camps with appalling levels of provision for education and highly variable levels of provision for education, and the collective donor response tends to be that they can't do business with the government because of all the weaknesses I have described. This is a classic example where donors could be pooling their resources far more actively. They could be looking to the type of arrangement they put in place in Sierra Leone or Liberia, a multi-donor pooled fund type of arrangement, and I think they'd be willing to take a little more risk. These are high-risk environments. You're recognizing it may not deliver the same results in the short term, but as a long-term investment in peace and security it could do a very great deal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Watkins, thank you very much for being here and taking time.

Ms. Mundy, we dragged you in here midway. Thank you very much.

That's all for today. We'll see everybody on Tuesday.

The meeting is adjourned.