Evidence of meeting #53 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nutrition.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Caroline Marrs  Director, Centre for Gender Justice, Oxfam Canada
Joel Spicer  President, Micronutrient Initiative
Helen Scott  Executive Director, Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health
Mark Fryars  Vice-President, Programs and Technical Services, Micronutrient Initiative

12:45 p.m.

Conservative

Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you so much for being here. It's good to see our partners here working with us.

It was our government that put these initiatives on the table in 2010, and I'm glad we are seeing such incredible success in moving forward the issues that relate to maternal, newborn, and child health.

Perhaps Micronutrient Initiative could answer a question for me.

I encounter company after company or organization after organization that want to get nutrition particularly into Africa. One of the products that we see over and over again is peanuts. I keep asking myself why we have to send peanuts to Africa. I'm glad to hear that you're working with governments as well to increase knowledge on nutrition.

There are products in Africa that could be used in Africa for nutrition. How acceptable is the knowledge of the need for good nutrition within their country, and how responsive have they been?

12:50 p.m.

Vice-President, Programs and Technical Services, Micronutrient Initiative

Mark Fryars

There are a couple of things in your question, and I'll take the last one first.

I think just as in Canada, people are confused by the multitude of signals they get about nutrition, so there is sometimes difficulty in sorting the wheat from the chaff. But if we go right down to those poor villager levels, they don't have the same choices you do when you go to the grocery store here in Canada and have a cornucopia of things to choose from. There's just those grains and that's it, so how do you make good nutrition when you don't have all the ingredients?

I think a holistic and intersectoral effort is needed to look at diversity in agriculture, to look at educating people about how you put good products together, even at the community levels, certainly at the small business level. Those micro-enterprises often serve people in rural areas and poor people in urban areas as well, in developing countries. I think that's the first thing; quite a lot of effort is needed to make the markets work for the poor, because that doesn't work terribly well right now.

The second point is on peanuts, and why we would send peanuts back to Africa. Peanuts are highly nutritious, but they also have a tendency to attract aflatoxins. Those of you who are scientifically minded will know these are poisonous chemicals. What's very important there is that the processing capacity, if you are going to use peanuts, is very well developed with proper quality controls and safety controls, if possible. That does limit what can be made at the very local level. So you have to get up a level to the small to medium enterprise.

I think there's great promise there for using local ingredients to manufacture more things, but again the market has to be there in terms of cash availability for people to buy such products. I think there's a lot of promise, and we started to make a lot of significant progress, I would say, along that ladder, but it's still quite a ladder to climb.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON

You'll be interested to know that last Thursday we had a visit from the Egg Farmers of Canada, who are starting some projects in Africa to ensure that, first of all, healthy pullets are being raised, and second, that eggs, one of nature's miracles as far as nutrition is concerned, are made available, first of all for school feeding programs, and also to get to some of the most vulnerable. We're seeing the growth of business there that the Egg Farmers of Canada have become involved with. I think that's really exciting.

Helen, I would like to direct a question to you, and perhaps Oxfam, if we have time, you could respond.

Lots of wonderful projects have been going on in MNCH, and we're seeing great success with them. Are there projects there that we can scale up that are going to be most effective in child protection?

12:50 p.m.

Executive Director, Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

Helen Scott

Absolutely, and I think that's why we exist. Back when the network was a dream, we looked at our partners and thought, we have this organization doing this exceptional work. It's been rigorously evaluated so we know it could be taken out of this context and put into that context, and we're going to see similar value.

An example would be something that DFATD invests in, which is community case management. We know that community case management is an excellent arsenal in the tools to improve women and children's health.

Similarly, women's groups are not high tech, not something you have to invest a lot of scientific knowledge in, but women gathering to be empowered has shown to have unbelievable impact on breastfeeding rates, which then translates to healthier children, or using appropriate treatment methodologies if an umbilical cord gets infected. What's the best way to make that happen? Have women empowered to gather so they share their own knowledge.

There are a lot of opportunities to look at: what are the most effective programs and how do we scale them up? There are many models in Canada we're looking to scale up and where that happens. I think a good example would be one of our partners, Grand Challenges Canada, so a rigorous evaluation of pilot projects and then they look to scale up the ones they invest in that are shown to be effective,.

We know what works. We have the science. We have the technology. Now we need to get out on the ground and get the job done.

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Thank you.

That's all the time we have.

Do you have a quick response, Ms. Marrs?

March 31st, 2015 / 12:55 p.m.

Director, Centre for Gender Justice, Oxfam Canada

Caroline Marrs

I'm just going to echo Helen's comment about funding for women's organizations. I`d also like to come back to the issue at hand today, youth, with the demographics that we know are there. I was just talking with my colleague behind me about a visit he made to Benin where I worked a long time ago.

All the new organizations of young people have tremendous energy and want to do more. They want to help. Couple that with women's rights organizations that have been doing it for years and I think it's very easy. They're not funded very much now so a little will go a long way. I do think there's huge potential for scaling up in that regard.

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Thank you very much.

To our witnesses, thank you very much for your time here today. I know we're familiar with most of you. To the people from Micronutrient Initiative, it's nice to have you here to explain some of the things that you do, because I think you pack a powerful punch, and not all Canadians really understand what you do. All the work that you guys are doing on this file is very important.

Thank you very much.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.