Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone.
It's an honour and a privilege for me to address you on this motion calling on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs to undertake a comprehensive study of the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women globally.
These rights in question do not represent the governments nor the citizens of African countries, except for four countries. It is pressure groups pursuing special interests without being mindful of the impact this can have. As one who has represented my government as a delegate of the United Nations in New York for four years and one who has worked closely with the African Group, I can say that we have been deeply concerned by the paternalism that interferes in another person's affairs coercively or through incentives motivated by claims that the person will be better off. This hand-out approach is what continues to perpetrate beggary, hunger, illnesses, oppression and modern-day slavery in Africa.
Support for the African woman should not be one that strips her of a right to family stability, a right to raise her intellectual tone and moral compass, or a right to economic empowerment and social inclusivity, a.k.a. equity and proper health care. These rights are largely ignored and are substituted with unsolicited rights to abortion, safe abortion—whatever that means—contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education, to mention a few
I am aware that Canada has committed to increase funding to an average of $1.4 billion per year by 2023-24. Canada has also committed to maintain this level of funding until 2030. Of this total funding, $700 million is to promote global sexual and reproductive health and rights, which includes contraception, abortion and comprehensive sexuality education.
I was shocked and scandalized by the language used by members of the committee, representatives of Global Affairs Canada and other witnesses, who have demonstrated an imperialistic approach to helping underdeveloped nations. Advocacy to liberalize laws in countries that oppose abortion amounts to undermining the legislative and democratic processes of sovereign states and to subverting the deep values and good cultural traditions of these nations.
It is increasingly clear that foreign funding and the feminist international assistance policy are becoming less about aid, empowerment, health care and poverty reduction, and more about ideological colonization.
If this is about rights, then I'm wondering if any government has a right to impose its belief in abortion on other nations that continue to reject it. The majority of African countries continue to protect life in all its stages and prefer to prioritize genuine health care that achieves best outcomes for women, mothers, their children and families. I sincerely hope we can all agree that these are the priorities we should be focusing on.
By way of conclusion, please note the following four points. There is no international right to abortion and comprehensive sexuality education, which is a key component of SRHR, because too many United Nations member states are strongly opposed to establishing such rights. On the contrary, United Nations consensus language indicates that member states have agreed to help women avoid abortion. Even the United Nations agencies are prohibited from promoting abortion as a method of family planning.
In Africa, the reproductive health care is maternal health care. It's suicidal to import practices and lifestyles that are alien to Africa. In 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development's outcomes document instructed that “Governments should take appropriate steps to help women avoid abortion, which in no case should be promoted as a method of family planning”.
Let me say, with your permission, Mr. Chair, that I am aware that many African countries are overflowing with condoms and contraception from the west sent to us to fulfill a fictitious, unmet need for contraception, when what we really need is water, food, housing, employment and quality education that can break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and employability, that can make education an equal playing field, regardless of the circumstances surrounding one's birth. The true unmet needs are in the maternal health care provision, which should set up blood banks to provide blood to prevent death caused by bleeding, which contributes a whopping 33.9% to maternal mortality.
Another unmet need is the hygienic—