National Defence Committee on June 15th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 21 ^st meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are going to continue our study of the role of Canadian soldiers in international peace operations after 2011.

We have the pleasure of having with us three witnesses today. We will start with Mr. Hampson, who is

Chancellor's Professor and Director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

Welcome.

We also welcome Ernie Regehr, co-founder of Project Ploughshares; Adjunct Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo and Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. We also welcome Paul Samson, Director General of the Strategic Policy Directorate at the Canadian International Development Agency.

Thank you, gentlemen. I am going to give each of you from five to seven minutes to make your presentations.

After that, the members will have time to ask you questions.

The floor is yours, Mr. Hampson.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson, Chancellor's Professor and Director, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you.

In my remarks I would like to address three questions that were put to me. The first is, what is the changing nature of the international environment in which Canadian Forces can expect to operate in the future; secondly, what will be the role of the United Nations in NATO in such future peace operations; and thirdly, what is likely to be the Canadian role in such operations.

First, Canadian Forces are going to confront an increasingly complex international environment in which there is going to be a wide range of diverse threats and security challenges. Many of these threats emanate from within individual societies and states, but as we've seen, they have a habit of spreading across their borders into the surrounding environment, and at many times become impacted by an unhealthy regional dynamic. To further complicate the picture, today's security threats encompass a whole series of other factors, such as piracy, narco-trafficking, transnational crime, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism.

The Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, near Washington, which tracks global trends in armed conflict, points out that although there was a steady decline in the number of active conflicts around the globe immediately following the Cold War, the trend in the past four to five years now appears to be reversing itself, with a resurgence of armed conflict and violence in many countries. Furthermore, many of the peace agreements that were concluded in the 1980s and 1990s to end violent sectarian strife in many parts of the globe are failing. Since 1982 the number of significant terrorist attacks that have involved loss of life, serious injury, or major property damage has also risen steadily.

Many countries continue to suffer problems of chronic instability. The third wave of democracy has witnessed the emergence of democratically elected, populist, authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, regimes that are distinctly illiberal in the practice of governance and that in some cases pose a direct threat to their neighbours. We see this with Venezuela and the antics of its unpredictable leader Hugo Chávez. We also see it with countries like Iran, which not only have unpredictable leaders but are also acquiring nuclear capabilities.

The annual failed states index, developed by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine, identifies some 60 countries as being on the verge of political and economic collapse. The fact that so many countries are susceptible to internal conflict and social disintegration suggests that there is enormous potential for instability in the international system. However, today's globalized world is not flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman would have us believe, but lumpy. Some regions of the world are much more unstable than others. The most troubling regional subsystems in the globalization era are the areas constituted by sub-Saharan African countries and predominantly Muslim countries, which stretch from Morocco and Senegal in the west to Malaysia and Indonesia in the east. sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most conflict-ridden regions of the globe, and many Muslim countries have experienced an increase in armed conflict and violence in recent years. Pivotal states that are relatively stable in Africa and the Muslim world, like Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, are also coming under growing political pressure because of their sluggish economic performance, growing internal divisions, and inability to provide economic opportunity for the majority of their citizens. So the world, as we look to the future, is going to be marked by continuing, and perhaps increasing, instability.

Let me turn to the second question that I put to you: what is the role of the United Nations and NATO in this changing global order? Major international security bodies, such as the UN and NATO, have been scrambling for politically sustainable and doctrinely coherent strategies. Their search for answers has produced familiar policy catchphrases aimed at generating political will for action: failed states, cooperative security, loose nukes, post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction, the responsibility to protect, genocide prevention, and the war on terrorism. In a world where threats to international security can be global, transnational, or local, and at times can operate at all levels, there's little sign of an emerging global consensus on which powers our institution should be responsible for managing these threats. For example, with the attention of major global powers focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, many other conflicts in the world, as we know, have been either forgotten--Mindanao in the Philippines, Western Sahara in sub-Saharan Africa--or simply excluded from international treatment or consideration.

With the proliferation in the number of global, regional, and sub-regional entities since the “second” Cold War, there has also been continuing confusion about role-sharing among different institutions, which in turn has led to unequal burden-sharing, as we all know. Some countries like Canada are perhaps carrying more than their fair share of the security burden.

The traditional institutional hierarchy between regional institutions and organizations and the United Nations, as envisaged in the UN charter, is also evolving. It is becoming at once both more flat, with the erosion of traditional political hierarchies, and also more deeply interconnected.

There is also more than a haphazard quality to those instances where the international community has intervened, which is compounded by continuing moral and legal double standards in selecting cases for intervention, including the fact that very few, if any, cases where intervention has actually occurred have been prompted by, for example, the responsibility to protect doctrine or other human security precepts and norms.

The appetite and political will for wider engagement also differs from one region to another. In some regions such as the Caribbean, Africa, and central Asia, there is a receptivity to capacity-building initiatives by powerful global actors, including the United Nations. But we also have to recognize that in other regions--Southeast Asia and the Middle East, for example--there's either resistance or ambivalence about this prospect, and many states continue to worry about intrusions into their sovereignty.

Security cooperation in today's world is increasingly based on patterns of limited consensus. When cooperation occurs, it is generally because there are a number of countries that are willing to set the agenda and bear a larger share of the economic and political costs of cooperation. In some, the UN and NATO will not always be at the centre of global security operations and conflict management.

Let me turn to my third question. What is the likely future role of the Canadian Forces? I would argue that the Canadian Forces will increasingly find themselves having to adapt to a complex series of different security roles, where they will be asked to do many different things and in coalitions with an increasingly diverse set of international and regional organizations and players. Collective conflict management describes an emerging phenomenon in international relations in which countries, international, regional, and sub-regional organizations, non-official institutions, or private actors are working together to address potential or actual security threats.

Such CCM ventures are directed at controlling, diminishing, or ending violence through combined military operations in concert with non-kinetic means, such as joint diplomacy, peacekeeping, mediation, and conflict prevention. You might call this “three-D plus plus”. In the paper that I've given the clerk, there are a number of examples of these kinds of ventures, and my favourite example, a recent one in which Canadian naval forces have been involved, is the effort to deal with escalating attacks by pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa, where you see joint operations of an ad hoc nature, involving NATO, EU, and coalition maritime forces, and a major parallel role by the private sector, especially among those companies that transit in those waters and local actors in the region.

What this means, very quickly, to come to the end of my remarks—

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Hampson, you still have one minute, if you can conclude.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I'm coming to the end of my remarks.

What this means as we look to the future is that there is going to be a growing variety of different actors and institutions in conflict management and security operations. The challenges of effective coordination are going to grow exponentially. As more and more players take the stage, it is going to become increasingly difficult to orchestrate what will surely be an ad hoc process. It will be difficult to maintain coherence and ensure that different security actors, including our own armed forces, are not working at cross-purposes. Multi-party conflict management, or collective conflict management—CCM—is a growing reality of the present era. It requires not just robust forces but a special brand of leadership—military, diplomatic—and development skill sets that are going to pose their own unique challenges to Canada. It's also fair to say that conflict and security management arrangements will increasingly be task and situation determined, improvised with less formal mandates or rules, and developed spontaneously in response to the needs and interests of those who participate.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Regehr, please.

[Ernie Regehr, Co-Founder, Project Ploughshares; Adjunct Associate Professor, Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo; Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I add my thanks to the committee for the opportunity to be here.

I have provided the committee with a paper that's been distributed this morning. I want to make three additional points just now.

Approaches to post-2011 roles for Canadian Forces outside North America will clearly be influenced by the Afghanistan experience. When the Prime Minister told CNN in March 2009, “My own judgment is, quite frankly, that we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency,” we should understand that he was not only stating an Afghan-specific truth, but was reflecting a broader reality.

Complex human conflicts are not amenable to purely military solutions. That's how the UN Security Council put it in its most recent resolution on Afghanistan.

The focus on multi-dimensional or whole-of-government approaches by earlier witnesses before this committee speaks to the same reality. National or intra-state armed conflicts are largely ended through negotiations and high-level political settlements. The latter is the phrase used by General McChrystal in his 2009 report.

The point is simply to note that if insurgencies are not defeated but end through political negotiations, then such processes should be built into peace support operations from the start. That's a point the Department of Foreign Affairs has made in setting out considerations for deciding whether to participate in a particular peacekeeping mission; it says it asks whether “the peacekeeping operation will take place alongside a process aimed at a political settlement to the conflict”.

The Security Council's February 2010 session on peacekeeping emphasized that “an advanced peace process is an important factor in achieving successful transition from a peacekeeping operation to other configurations of United Nations presence”. But such a process cannot credibly be left to a national or host government alone. It requires international diplomacy that engages the conflict and the search for political solutions from local to national to regional contexts.

My second point is that while Canada must be part of future peace operations, we have to understand that there is no guarantee that other efforts will be much easier or more obviously successful than has been the intervention in Afghanistan thus far. Peace operations after all are by definition mounted in extraordinarily difficult circumstances; even after peace agreements are signed, state governance remains dangerously fragile, economies are shattered, security forces are seriously compromised, and political loyalties are complex and frayed.

Remember, in 2002, when the International Security Assistance Force was established in Afghanistan through the Bonn peace accords, our forces were there in a consent-based security assistance mission anchored by a peace agreement. In 2003, ISAF became increasingly focused on extending the authority of the government further out into the country—a prominent feature of operations these days. Throughout that period, there were plenty of spoilers to be dealt with through what was most certainly a robust peacekeeping operation. But the strategic-level consent of the early years of ISAF steadily eroded, and by 2005 it had essentially been lost. ISAF had morphed into an enforcement mission in much of the country, but without a persistent process aimed at political settlement.

In other words, peace support operations lead to the unexpected, with no guarantees. It is the constant updating of the lessons of experience that can shift the odds toward success.

Finally, and briefly, the fact that Canada does not face imminent or foreseeable military challenges to its sovereignty, territorial integrity, or internal order means it enjoys considerable flexibility in determining the best ways and means of addressing security challenges beyond our borders. In other words, because Canada is not burdened by the need to maintain high levels of military forces for security at home, our international peace and security toolkit need not be dominated by a military capacity.

We have options. In the future we can decide on the most effective ways to deploy resources abroad in response to contemporary security threats. Canada is thus in an excellent position to make the kinds of multi-dimensional contributions to international peace and security that a succession of witnesses before the committee have said are essential.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Samson.

[Paul Samson, Director General, Strategic Policy Directorate, Strategic Policy and Performance Branch, Canadian International Development Agency]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for seeking CIDA's perspectives on this important topic today.

In my statement, I will briefly discuss the nature of the international environment, CIDA's engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states, and the comprehensive, whole-of-government approach we are adopting.

The first area is the international environment, and quite a bit has already been said on that, so I will be very brief. The current international environment can be characterized by a set of frequent, complex, and interdependent challenges generating humanitarian crises with multiple dimensions. Contributing factors include the lingering impacts of the food, energy, and economic crises, the effects of climate change and the effects of environmental degradation, and the persistence of civil conflict undermining security and the rule of law.

The interplay of factors makes achievement of the millennium development goals, which is a major international framework for development issues, by 2015 a real challenge.

We have a list of the millennium development goals available to the committee as part of this statement.

As a development agency, we work with a wide range of governments and non-governmental organizations. These partnerships are central to our operations. Today's responses to complex humanitarian emergencies, often in the context of peace and stability operations, involve more partnerships with diverse organizations. This set of key humanitarian partners continues to seek the preservation of neutral “humanitarian space“ within peace operations.

The second point is CIDA's engagement.

CIDA engages in a limited number of fragile and conflict-affected states. In the fiscal year 2008-09, CIDA's assistance to Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, and the West Bank Gaza totalled over $545 million, about one quarter of which, or $135 million, was emergency humanitarian assistance.

CIDA's humanitarian assistance saves lives and alleviates suffering. It is provided on the basis of identified needs, and these efforts are guided by the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Canada is a consistent, generous, and reliable contributor to humanitarian appeals and to the related coordinating bodies, including the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

With the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, CIDA has contributed to the evolution of international principles and norms that guide all of our operations in fragile and conflicted states, including those of the military. We'd like to draw the attention of the committee to the OECD principles and good practice of humanitarian donorship and other norms that we are providing here today.

In the aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti, Canada quickly organized a ministerial preparatory conference in Montreal where participants agreed on the principles of ownership, coordination, sustainability, effectiveness, inclusiveness and accountability in alignment with the OECD and other international norms. Recognizing the Government of Haiti's leadership in setting the strategic direction for reconstruction and longer-term development, Canada is now working to align its programming with the action plan for national recovery and development for Haiti. This plan proposes actions to be taken over the next 18 months to rebuild Haiti but also to create the conditions to tackle the structural causes of Haiti's under-development.

The third point is a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach.

In terms of the origin of the whole-of-government approach, CIDA views our engagement in the humanitarian and political crisis of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s as very significant. We learned a great deal about the critical importance of accountable and competent national government institutions that guarantee citizens safety and foster social, political, and economic development.

In Afghanistan, CIDA works with the Government of Canada task force that integrates Canada's response on the largest development and humanitarian assistance program we have ever undertaken. We are learning that helping to create a viable state requires sophisticated levels of international coordination and unwavering commitment to reinforce the connection between government and citizens. We are learning that hope for a better future requires broad-based, tangible, and visible results on the ground.

At the operational level, similar machinery exists to coordinate our programs in other fragile and conflict-affected countries.

In Sudan, CIDA support focuses on food security, children and youth, and governance, which contributes to Canada's whole-of-government effort to reduce vulnerability, save lives, and build longer-term stability. The comprehensive approach is delivering a more coordinated and strategic response to a rapidly changing context in Sudan.

In the West Bank and Gaza, CIDA is concentrating its programming on justice sector reform, private sector development and humanitarian assistance. There we have learned the importance of placing state-building at the centre of the development agenda and forming synergies between Government of Canada departments.

Reflecting on these experiences and drawing upon lessons learned through recent studies by the UN, the OECD, and other international organizations, we are focusing on strategic results that improve local capacity for basic services delivery: increased legitimate and private sector activity, handling grievances through political dialogue and negotiation, and reinforcing core government functions. Also, the importance of gender equality considerations are being integrated throughout as fundamental.

In closing, I would like to highlight the importance of ongoing civil-military planning coordination as well as shared analysis and assessment of the local context for future integrated peacekeeping and peace support operations. To improve interoperability, these capabilities of departments in joint missions need to be better understood and integrated, perhaps through cross-training and career paths that increase exposure to several departments in such operations.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Mr. Samson.

Mr. Martin now has the floor for seven minutes.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président.

Thank you, Professor Hampson, Dr. Regehr, and Mr. Samson for being here today.

If we have a responsibility to protect, I would argue we don't have an obligation to act in the face of conflict. We have a judicial framework, but unfortunately we don't have an enforcement mechanism.

My first question is in terms of the execution of what we could do to prevent deadly conflict. I know you are all experts in this. Is the Standby High Readiness Brigade dead in the water? If it is, how can we resurrect it, if that's appropriate? If it isn't, how can we make sure we have a functional brigade that can be inserted into an area when we know a conflict is pending?

[Ernie Regehr]

I can start. My understanding is that SHIRBRIG hasn't turned out to be an efficient and effective measure there.

I agree with the implication that there needs to be some kind of collective readiness to deploy that is available, but I'm not sure as to the extent to which that's going to solve the problem of obligation. Through the UN resolution, states have accepted responsibility to act under chapter 6 and declare a readiness to act under chapter 7, but there have been comments about the unevenness of our response in various parts of the world, and that's a long way from an obligation.

I think in one sense we're down to the national interest, and the national interest is not a reliable guide for responding to conflict. There is some need for political leadership there and indicating the extent to which Canada does have an interest in constructive contributions to inner conflict, wherever it occurs internationally.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'm separating out the standby high-readiness brigade from ad hoc contributions that we've seen up until now to be able to prevent conflict.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Just to build on Dr. Regehr's remarks, first, I think we have to recognize that a SHIRBRIG kind of mechanism that's placed in the United Nations will continue to run into all the kinds of difficulties that we've seen when it comes to getting the Security Council to act in a conflict-preventive capacity.

We've been talking about conflict prevention in the United Nations since the early 1990s, and yet when one looks at the amount of progress that has been made, it has been extremely modest.

Secondly, I think we also have to recognize that when it comes to intervening actors, and this is stated perhaps a little more clearly in my paper--which is going to be distributed to the members of the committee--what we often see is that sub-regional organizations or regional organizations are increasingly the first actors to intervene, and this is certainly true in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is greater will, there is greater political capacity, certainly on the part of the African Union, on the part of sub-regional organizations like ECOWAS, to actually do something. In fact, what has happened in a number of cases--Liberia, in Darfur, Sudan--is that regional organizations have sent troops, and then subsequent to that, there's been a double-hatting arrangement, where the UN gives its blessing to the mission and other international actors provide logistics and support.

But to come back to the notion of conflict prevention, I think a lot more has to be done to work with regional and sub-regional organizations to strengthen their capacities for conflict prevention. There has been an ongoing dialogue between the UN and the AU on this. It's been intermittent. It was much stronger under the previous Secretary General than it is under the current Secretary General, but I think there's a lot more that can be done there to recognize what is clearly the changing reality, that regional organizations are often the first line of defence when it comes to mobilizing forces for peace operations.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

You're an expert, which is a nice segue into my next question, which is really to do with lessons learned from the ECOWAS experience in West Africa, the MONUC's experience in the DRC, and two other parts. Do you see the African Union in sub-Saharan Africa as being an agent to do exactly what you said? Are there lessons learned from failures in MONUC and the DRC, successes in ECOWAS in West Africa, and the intriguing example of Great Britain, of what happened in Sierra Leone when they dropped 862 troops in there and stopped a horrific situation. So in that milieu of different options, where do you see a possible route to move forward, recognizing that each conflict is unique in itself.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I will just answer very briefly, and then the other members of the committee may wish to offer their observations.

There is a conflict prevention unit within the framework of the evolving African Union machinery. I think it's fair to say that groups like the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre have been working to strengthen training, to develop and promote greater awareness around conflict prevention within the African Union. Clearly, a lot more can be done to reinforce those efforts I think, and also in the area of diplomacy, since that was mentioned, to support efforts by regional leaders, who are often the first mediators and negotiators who go into these kinds of situations to try to prevent an escalation of conflict. It's not simply a matter of putting forces into place, which has been very much the discussion around conflict prevention. It's also about strengthening the role of diplomacy. A point to bear in mind in the case of Rwanda is that it began with the classic and colossal failure of diplomacy before UN peacekeeping forces were left to deal with the problem.

So I think around the three Ds, more emphasis on preventative diplomacy, mediation, negotiations, those kinds of activities...

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bachand, you have seven minutes.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to welcome you all. You made very good presentations and provided us with quite impressive documentation that we are going to have to consider.

At the moment, my concern is with the whole question of the UN and NATO. Would you not agree that a major reform of the UN is absolutely needed? My impression is that the organization had some merit. We know the circumstances under which it was created. The wish was for the clash of weapons to be replaced by diplomacy. But, after a number of years, and because of the complexity of the conflicts, I feel that the UN no longer has what it takes to react adequately. I would like to hear your comments about that.

In terms of operational theatres like Afghanistan, I often ask UN people, such as the Secretary General's representative in theatre, whether he or General McChrystal is in charge. There seems to be no coordination and the UN looks very weak. When there are problems, the Security Council accommodates the various views of the countries around the table. This makes it hard to reach agreement and consensus. What do you think of the idea of a major reform of the UN?

Mr. Samson, I could ask you questions about CIDA's accountability, which seems to be greatly lacking at the moment. You have been to Afghanistan, but do you ask people to be accountable to you? I have seen road builders charging $90 per tonne for stone that normally sells for $10 per tonne. They said that the international forces were going to pay. When CIDA is paying, they ask for an outrageous price. Why is that?

The question about the major reform of the UN goes to Mr. Hampson and Mr. Regehr.

[Paul Samson]

Thank you, sir.

I will start with the second question. I think that, clearly, accountability is fundamental, especially in fragile and conflict-affected countries, as you mentioned. We have all kinds of checks and balances in those situations. As I mentioned, we often work with partners. Food aid, for example is run by another organization, which puts strict controls and checks in place. When a problem arises, we react immediately. So we feel sure that the system is working efficiently. That said, it is true that, in a very fragile state, things are more intense and more difficult.

[Ernie Regehr]

Thank you.

I agree that the United Nations certainly needs to be made much more effective. I don't know whether that means reform. I'm not sure whether you're using the term “reform” in a formal sense of institutional reform, which is a very difficult and long-tried but long-failed exercise. But effectiveness is critical, because the United Nations really remains the preeminent source of legitimacy for collective international operations, so it's essential.

One of the things we have to reconsider in Canada and other western countries is the degree to which we have tended to disengage from active involvement in UN-based peacekeeping operations. We need to re-engage there. There can be some sense of division of labour--some countries can provide troops and boots on the ground at less expense than western countries can--but there also need to be some actual troops on the ground from western countries to demonstrate it as a shared activity in which all countries have a stake.

If we continue to disengage from international collective operations led by the UN, we undermine the institution and implicitly look for an alternative. But it's the central institution that needs to be reinforced, and that means re-engagement with it.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Just to add to that point, there is a wealth of empirical research that shows that when it comes to complex peace-building operations, going right back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, the UN has had a much better track record than has any other actor or international institution, and there is a wealth of experience in the specialized agencies of the United Nations. Bear in mind that Mozambique, El Salvador, Namibia, and Cambodia are all UN operations, and they are, for the most part, relatively successful. I think it's probably also fair to say that if you were to rewrite the Afghan peace-building story and it had taken place under UN auspices as opposed to NATO auspices, we might have seen a very different outcome from the one we see now. There are a lot of people who believe that, including me.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

You still have a minute.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

You were mentioning NATO. Do you not have the impression that, in Afghanistan, the UN seems to want to subcontract NATO, thereby forcing NATO countries into conflicts they would rather avoid? For Afghanistan, it is another story. I think that Canada said that it was prepared to go there as part of the UN. But the Americans, the Canadians, the British arrived first, then NATO took over.

In your opinion, is this a major trend that is going to last into the future?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Can you give a short answer?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

A short answer is probably not. I think there is a great deal of internal division in NATO; we're seeing that right now. There are some who carry the freight and others who don't. I think post-Afghanistan, if there is a post-Afghanistan, there isn't going to be a great appetite among NATO members to engage in the kind of out-of-area operations that they have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Mr. Harris pour sept minutes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much. As usual, with such eminent witnesses and detailed presentations, it's difficult to cover everything in a short period of time. I was interested, Professor Hampson, in your analysis regarding the alternative conduct of the Afghan process with or without NATO. Perhaps that's in your paper and it will elaborate.

Professor Regehr, Project Ploughshares, as you pointed out in your paper, initially engaged in disarmament and challenging the international arms trade. We see in Afghanistan fairly low-level arms being used, thankfully, certainly, for Canadian soldiers and others.

Are there any particular areas--outside of nuclear disarmament, which I think is a case of its own--or concerns that you still harbour with respect to the international arms trade? Are there any active files that your organization is working on in that regard, and can you tell us about those?

[Ernie Regehr]

Thank you.

The international arms trade is something on which there's been some reasonably positive news in the sense of international collective attention to it. As you know, through the UN now, there is actually negotiation towards an arms trade treaty, which would set some limits on it. I think the prominent concern is that in regions of conflict there is really no capacity to put clear restraints on the delivery of small arms and the circulation of small arms. In Afghanistan, the old northern alliance groups have been very active in refurbishing their arsenal, so there's a very active rearmament there, and that adds to big concerns about pull-down of international forces and what that would lead to. I've just been talking with a colleague about the fact that in southern Sudan, some of the militia groups are actively involved in rearming. I think within the context of these complex emergencies, it is extremely difficult to put any constraints on the accumulation of weapons by those who still like to look to them as being their fallback position if the political process doesn't go well.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

This is for you, Dr. Regehr, and for Dr. Hampson. We're focusing, of course, on what kind of role Canada would play internationally, and, in my view, hopefully in re-engaging in the UN process.

Can either of you tell us what particular expertise or attributes we have here in Canada that could be brought to bear, first of all, on the international peacekeeping process in terms of capacity building, perhaps through the UN, but also in terms of the kind of potentially unique contribution that Canada could make in operations?

I know that we have a particular type of combat operation in Afghanistan that is unusual for Canada in international matters, and controversial, but is that the way you see us going in the future? Or is there a role for Canada that's more in keeping with its traditional kind of contribution, but recognizing that we live in a different world than we did 25 or 30 years ago?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

There is obviously a wide range of things that we can do. A lot of it is going to come down to what the political will or appetite is to do certain kinds of things.

I gave a brief example in terms of how we're using some of our naval assets in joint operations in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean to deal with the problem of piracy. That problem is not going to go away. Arguably, it's going to become a bigger problem, particularly if you see more states failing in the African subcontinent, but also in other parts of the world.

Secondly, I think Canada has a wealth of experience when it comes to combined operations. We don't have three-D just right, but we're probably better at it than some other countries.

As we look to the future--and I stress this in my remarks--international security management is increasingly going to be a pickup game, an ad hoc game involving a combination of perhaps international organizations, regional organizations, and sub-regional organizations, and coalitions of state actors. There are huge problems of coordination and leadership in those kinds of situations. Again, given our track record, I think we clearly have experience in mounting and helping with those kinds of combined operations.

When it comes to the old question about putting troops on the ground in classic peacekeeping kinds of ventures, I think we've moved a long way from that kind of world. In part, it is because the environments that we're going into or will be going into will be failed states, where social, sectarian, ethnic strife is spilling across borders, if things get that bad. That will require interventions with muscle.

In some parts of the world, the regional actors, the regional organizations, will be putting troops on the ground. That certainly seems to be the trend in sub-Saharan Africa. But when the AU does it or ECOWAS does it, that's not to say that they don't need all kinds of pretty sophisticated logistical support and backup, and that again is something we can do.

I also want to stress that there are multiple threats and multiple security challenges. It's very hard to predict. That creates a huge problem when it comes to where you invest scarce resources in terms of re-equipping our armed forces. I think that argues for a diverse approach, for not putting all of your eggs in one basket. And certainly, in today's world and with the kinds of instabilities we're seeing, it argues for not being wedded to what I would call a very old-fashioned view of how we do international peacekeeping.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

And thank you all for being here.

I've probably got three questions. I hope I can get them in.

First of all, Professor Hampson, you talked about the UN using NATO and others. You talked about the international divisions of NATO, which are clear. I would suggest there are huge international divisions, obviously, in the United Nations.

You talked about the success of UN operations. How much of that is attributable to who the UN has turned to, to carry out the UN mandate, people like NATO, as an organization, or the countries of NATO? Who else would the UN turn to? There is no UN capacity to do anything unless they turn to NATO or other organizations or groups of countries.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

The fact is the UN is more than just the Security Council and the General Assembly. A large number of specialized agencies take the lead, for example, in electoral assistance management, in development planning, in humanitarian assistance and relief, in refugee relocation, and in drug interdiction, control, and management. There is a wealth of expertise. The UN is doing it. The UN has done it and it has done it successfully.

Our challenge, quite frankly, is to wrap our heads around that fact and recognize that there is a track record and there is a set of institutions that are worth investing in and that we can work with.

NATO is not in what I would call the state-building, reconstruction, peace-building business. It's a collective defence organization that has evolved into a security intervenor, and it can do it well, provided it sticks to that mission. But the problem in a place like Afghanistan is that this mission has changed; it has evolved. It's right now rather unclear exactly what the mission is. Our armed forces have been asked to do all kinds of things, and NATO has been asked to do all kinds of things, for which it, quite frankly, doesn't have a mandate or the capacity.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I would respectfully suggest that it's been said to me, and others, I think, that the best tool we have in Afghanistan is the Canadian corporal with his hand out talking to a village elder. I'd suggest maybe particularly Canadian troops, but also Americans and Brits and others, do have a capacity for doing the development and capacity building and so on. In places like Afghanistan, obviously, they're doing it in a very difficult security environment. Acknowledging the good work they do in some of those organizations of the UN, it does take a number of soldiers with that additional capacity of the hand out and the smile and asking what they can do to help build your local capacity.

Would you agree or disagree with that?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I wouldn't disagree with the way you've characterized it if we're talking about the broader challenges of social, economic, and political reconstruction that takes you into areas, functions, responsibilities. With all due respect, our Canadian Forces are very effective in security management broadly defined, but to come back to something I said earlier, it's not an either/or proposition. We're increasingly going to have to look to regional organizations, international organizations, the specialized agencies of the United Nations system to operate in these very complex environments.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes, and I guess I would agree with that, it's not either/or, and the Canadian Forces, for one organization, do a good job of both.

Mr. Regehr, General Vance said recently that insurgencies aren't defeated, they dissolve, and they dissolve over time, I guess, by bringing together government and the people. And it's becoming more and more clear that what we are doing in Afghanistan is trying to bring together the government and the people. And it's changed from purely, obviously, kinetic operations or more of an emphasis on kinetic operations to governance training and development, that sort of thing.

What do you see as a longer-term role for Canada in Afghanistan in that training development, capacity building, and so on? From your point of view, what should the Canadian Forces look like for peace operations down the road post-Afghanistan?

[Ernie Regehr]

If I could just take up the first point about insurgencies dissolving, I'd have to say that it's not a rapid dissolution process in Afghanistan. One of the difficulties there is that it won't be dissolved by a general appeal to a population. There is an insurgency that has a political base, a political organization, in fact, multiple organizations. I think one of the lessons is that those organizations need to be engaged.

One of the experiences of engagement with insurgencies is that the more they are engaged at a diplomatic level, the more they modify their demands and move from the fringes into the mainstream. When diplomats first made contact with RENAMO in Mozambique, to use an example of an old conflict, those forces were heinous in the extreme and were understood to be that. There were no redeeming features of a political program on their part, but as we know, that force was ultimately engaged, fought an election, didn't win the election, and abided by the results of the election.

Obviously no two conditions are the same. But I think it reinforces the point made, including by General McChrystal, about a high-level settlement. This is not about a corporal making a deal with a village elder; this is about leadership making high-level political settlements, and I think that's one of the areas in which we've failed in Afghanistan.

In the future, when we talk about Canadian engagement in other theatres, I think that's a fundamental thing that we have to understand. We're not going into military operations primarily or into peace-building operations primarily, but we're going into a whole-of-government or three-D effort, the whole thing across. As Foreign Affairs has said, we should not be entering on a conflict prevention basis or an actual intervention basis without a very clear commitment to the high-level political engagement of our diplomats in the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Martin.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président.

In the nearly 17 years I've been here, I think we share collectively a massive frustration about conflict prevention. Sometimes one wonders if we've learned anything from Rwanda at all.

Our ongoing challenge is how we move from this ad hoc approach you mentioned, Professor Hampson, to one that is organized and coordinated between diplomacy, development, and defence.

One of my questions is, do you think Canada has a role to play with, or is there an appetite for developing on the diplomatic side, a rapid reaction development team at a regional or sub-regional level? Is there an appetite to do that, and should Canada play a role in achieving that objective?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I think perhaps the term “rapid reaction development” is probably an oxymoron in that the sense that development is usually a long-term—

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I meant diplomatic.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Oh, diplomatic. Okay.

Canada has been doing a lot of diplomacy, both on an ad hoc and an individual basis. General John de Chastelain, in an individual capacity, for example, has played a critical role in the ongoing Northern Ireland peace process. That has gone well beyond his mandate, the decommissioning of weapons, which has really been the bugbear of that conflict.

We have also been engaged in border management diplomacy through the Dubai process between Afghanistan and Pakistan, working very quietly behind the scenes. One can think of various Canadians in the past who have served as UN special representatives to various conflict zones, where they were playing an important mediation/conflict prevention role.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

This would be sub-regional diplomacy, though—for example, ECOWAS or the African Union. They would have their own sub-regional—

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

They have their own actors or institutional mechanisms and capacities as well, but often they're looking for help. They're looking for outside assistance, and sometimes it's impossible to identify an individual at the regional level who can play the independent, impartial mediation-brokering role. In terms of conflict prevention, what you're really talking about is robust diplomacy. You're also talking about mediation and negotiation skills.

We do a terrific job as trade negotiators, as mediators in the WTO, and I think we could perhaps be doing a lot more on the diplomacy side if there was an appetite for it.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

What would you need to do to strengthen Foreign Affairs to achieve that goal?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

You put resources into it. You create self-identified mediation and conflict prevention units within the department. When we have done it, it's usually on a very ad hoc basis. It's improvised and it's not well resourced.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Should we have a database of that in advance, to be able to identify people with those linguistic and cultural skill sets?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Absolutely, and more than just a database; also identifying capacities within the federal government, the provincial government, and even at the municipal level, because often when you're dealing with these very complex situations, if you're dealing, for example, with a border management problem, as we are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, one of the things the parties themselves look to is better mechanisms and instruments for customs and border management.

We have a huge amount of expertise with that in this country.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Are you tapping into the diaspora that lives in Canada?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Diasporas can be a double-edged sword. You may recall that Canada was asked to be the mediator of choice in the Sri Lankan conflict back in the late 1990s. One of the reasons we didn't become involved was because the government at the time felt it was too contentious domestically to be engaged, even though we were then the largest development donor of assistance to Sri Lanka, which is why they turned to us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Braid for five minutes.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all our witnesses for being here.

Today we've had such a wealth of information and testimony has been of such high calibre, it's hard to know where to start. So thank you.

Dr. Regehr, thank you very much for coming from Waterloo, the centre of innovation in our country.

[Ernie Regehr]

Mr. Chair, where's he from?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you as well for your more than 30 years of very thoughtful contributions to issues relating to global peace and security.

Dr. Regehr, you mentioned in your presentation that we should find a way to create capacity for political negotiation or political solution to be built into peace operations. Could you elaborate a little bit on that and explain how we might create or build that capacity?

[Ernie Regehr]

I think part of it is political leadership. It takes a certain amount of audacity to insert yourself into conflicts where the immediate interests of Canada are not so apparent. There's a generalized interest that we have.

The Norwegians have done that. They've become involved. You might ask, why should the Norwegians get involved in some of the places they have?

So I think we really need to understand that it requires strong leadership at the top to get involved in diplomacy that has the potential of becoming a high-profile activity.

It means working in a catalytic fashion, more often than not, rather than in a direct mediating role, for example, in the sub-Saharan conflicts, such as in Zimbabwe.

Somalia is hardly a conflict-prevention situation, but it is devoid of any credible attempt at diplomacy to resolve that conflict currently. Canada has a diaspora of a large Somali community here, which creates some of the problems that Fen has been talking about. But I think if you understand your role as being catalytic and facilitative in getting the regional actors involved, getting representatives of the diverse communities within Somalia involved, and creating tables to which people can come, I think that's the kind of activity we're talking about.

Of course, Fen just made a number of points about the more detailed and skills-based kinds of activities we can undertake.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

I'm changing gears a little bit for my second question.

Dr. Regehr, in what situations or scenarios would you envision the Canadian Forces and NGOs working in partnership, hand in hand on the ground, within the context of a peace operation?

[Ernie Regehr]

I think the distinction there is between coordination and integration. In a whole-of-government approach, you certainly need to have NGOs and the military and diplomats all working in concourse towards an identified common strategic goal, a national goal. So I think the coordination of NGO activities with those of other elements of government and the international community is a very important thing.

But I make the distinction between that and the integration of those activities. I don't think you want direct participation of one with the other on the ground in projects. That creates confusion or the implication that the development activity is really a part of advancing the war or military effort. As NGOs have pointed out many times, that creates a problem. Mr. Samson made the point about civil-military issues. He might want to elaborate on that.

I think that's how I would make the distinction: it's about coordination in a common effort, but not integration of roles.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I have to give the floor to Mr. Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I would like to continue the debate on coordination. The classic example is Afghanistan; some members of this committee got back from there two weeks ago.

At the moment, I feel that coordination in Afghanistan has completely fallen apart. It is like a nightmare. If things are going so badly in Afghanistan, it is precisely for that reason. Imagine: the UN asked NATO to get involved. A representative of the UN Secretary General is on the ground in Afghanistan, but there is also NATO and all its member countries, with 150,000 troops. When I ask whether the UN Secretary General's representative or General McChrystal is in charge, I have a lot of difficulty getting an answer.

General McChrystal is a brilliant man. He commands 150,000 soldiers. That is quite a strike force, with a wide range of capabilities. If can do almost anything. There are also 48 countries, all with different national interests. Diplomats and their staff in one embassy are pursuing a national interest that is completely different from the embassy next door.

Among those 48 nations, people doing development work may conceive their activities on the basis of a completely different philosophy from their neighbours. Then there is defence, including the troops on the ground. They all have rules of non-engagement. To get even deeper into the nightmare, there are hundreds of NGOs that do not wish to be associated either with the soldiers or with national interests that they do not approve of.

Do you agree that what is happening in Afghanistan is the perfect recipe for failure? I think that could happen in a number of theatres. We need guidelines and we need to know who is giving the orders. I always thought that a civilian authority directed the military. I feel that the UN should take the initiative to get people around a table to coordinate the action plan. At the moment, that is not happening.

Is there a way out of this nightmare? If not, are we going to let it continue till death do us all part?

[Paul Samson]

I am going to answer that question by highlighting the progress that has been made in development, in the context of various statements of principle, including the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. That highlights your exact question about coordination between donors specifically in the area of development.

But I feel that the lesson is much wider, as you explained. There is an even more fundamental request for, and need for, coordination. I feel that progress has been made in this area, but, as you said, it remains very difficult because of the number of parties involved. This is still a work in progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

I now give the floor…

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Are my five minutes up, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

I will give the floor to Mrs. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm wondering if the witnesses would state the number of years and/or months each has spent in conflict zones.

[Ernie Regehr]

I've spent a fair bit of time in East Africa conflict zones, in Sudan, and in Ethiopia at the Eritrea border. I've visited Afghanistan three times, and Uganda. Familiarity doesn't make one an expert in any of those places, I'm afraid.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

The former deputy special representative in Afghanistan, who spent six years there, recently told a Senate committee:

The Taliban doesn't want peace. They don't want a piece of the pie. They want to blow up the pie.

Mr. Regehr has stated that all conflicts can be resolved through diplomacy. Can you explain how to negotiate with players with a mindset such as this?

[Ernie Regehr]

My point wasn't that all conflicts can be negotiated; it's that all conflicts are. That's the way conflicts end. That doesn't mean the military process hasn't influenced enormously how the negotiations go and all that sort of thing. That's one point. That's what happens.

Secondly, it is also part of the pattern that the adversary is viewed as being the unique one that can't be negotiated with, that in other places it may be possible, but in this case it's not possible.

I used the example of Mozambique. That was an extreme case. It's the same with the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. These are people of no redeeming virtue, who don't want to deal but who we sit down at the table with.

In Afghanistan, that may be a perception, but I have met with people in Afghanistan who, though not identifying themselves as Taliban, are highly sympathetic to the Taliban, who think they can negotiate strongly but who also realize that riding into Kabul and taking over the government is not something that's going to happen. So they realize that there's going to have to be some negotiating there.

I think the pattern in Afghanistan isn't so totally different from everywhere else. Ultimately it's going to come to that process.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

I think it's an excellent question and I'd like to give an academic answer.

In the past 25 years, 40% of civil and regional conflicts have ended through a process of negotiation. The others have either kept going—the so-called intractable conflicts—or ended simply because one side won and beat the other side. The problem is that the most stable outcomes, politically, have not been the negotiated ones. That presents a huge challenge.

As I indicated in my introductory remarks, we're seeing a high rate of recidivism in some of the negotiated peace settlements of the 1980s and 1990s. That presents a huge challenge—to come back to something that Mr. Martin said about conflict prevention. Part of the challenge of prevention is to prevent that recidivism with those conflicts that ended through a negotiated peace process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm actually very interested in a question similar to the one asked by my colleague, Ms. Gallant. One of the difficulties I see and hear, particularly in Afghanistan—and this is probably happening in other places—when I read information or watch the news, is that the Taliban are in fact killing their own people. For me, it is really difficult to understand how we can actually negotiate with them when they don't appear to have any remorse and kill their own civilians. I just have a bit of a challenge in seeing how we can do that.

That's basically a follow-up question to my colleague's.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

A lot of the people you have to negotiate with—and there's a long history, as I alluded to, of negotiated outcomes—are people who have blood on their hands. That's just the reality. They're often not very nice people, and sometimes those people, if there is a negotiated resolution, form the next government. We've seen that in Central America and we've seen that in sub-Saharan Africa in some of the negotiated conflicts. So we shouldn't be shy of negotiation.

The real question is, why do parties come to the table? They come to the table when the costs of a political settlement appear to be lower than the costs of continued fighting. I would submit that the challenge with the Taliban—which is a very amorphous entity and there are many factions and interests, and there's low-hanging fruit that, yes, can be co-opted by President Karzai and others, but there are others who can't—for those who are really intent on waging the struggle, the real question is, what's in it for them if they see NATO heading for the exit, if they see countries like Canada heading for the exit, if they think if they just hang on for long enough they'll be able to pursue their goals through military means and through insurgency because Karzai is weak? What's the incentive structure there for them to change that fundamental political calculus?

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you. That leads into the next question.

However, I would like to ask Mr. Samson a question. In terms of CIDA, you talked about the amount of funds that Canada has put forth—$545 million—and how some of that was going into Afghanistan and Haiti. Could you enlighten us as to some of the projects that have been put forth and where we see successes?

[Paul Samson]

Sure. Thank you very much for the question.

Do you mean specific to Afghanistan?

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Yes, and Haiti.

[Paul Samson]

The most recent final numbers, if you will, are from 2008-09. They've actually increased a little since then. In Afghanistan, the total funding provided was $226 million. In Haiti, it was $158 million before the earthquake, so that number has gone up.

In Afghanistan, $46 million was in the health sector. That's quite a successful area. Polio eradication and other work have very concrete results. There was also basic education. Another $32 million was for emergency assistance of different kinds, including food aid, shelter, and things like that. That's very short-term. The results are more immediate.

In peace and security, which is the topic here today, we have put in almost $27 million in Afghanistan. That relates to some of the issues that were related here about creating the kind of environment... Private sector development has been important as well, and microfinance is another area where there are very concrete results.

In Haiti, it's fairly similar: we provided $158 million, as I mentioned, across private sector development, health, democratic governance, emergency assistance, and basic education. It's a fairly broad area, but it's in areas where you get very concrete results that are relatively short-term and have the intention to be sustainable, which is essential. It's essential for them to last more than a decade.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Professor Hampson, I want to pick up on what you just said about countries like Canada heading for the exits. What, in your view, should Canada be doing in Afghanistan, and for how long?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

Well, the decision has already been made, and we've been told that by the Prime Minister. He's told us that we're headed for the exits.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes, but I'm asking for your view.

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

My view is that if this is going to be a successful operation in a counter-insurgency context, then we and others have to be prepared to stay for longer than we're prepared to stay.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

You talked about recidivism in negotiated settlements being a historical situation. Why, in your view, has that happened? Have we not been tough enough during that process? Have we allowed too much to folks who said they were going to be good guys and who turned out to be not such good guys? Have we been naive in reaching some of those settlements?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

It's all of the above and then some. Some of the settlements were poorly crafted. There was bad statecraft. We've seen a number of cases--quite a few cases, in fact--in which that has been true.

We've also seen settlements that required large infusions of development assistance, external support, and the like, which did not flow in the way they were promised because new conflicts emerged and international donors' attentions were diverted to other regions and settings. There was also simply bad governance. Spoilers who were enticed either to become part of the political coalition or to form political parties have been thwarted because of corruption on the part of political elites.

There's the problem of state failure. These are often very poor countries in hostile neighbourhoods; sometimes you may have a peace agreement in one country, but there's instability next door, and that tends to spill across the border and undermine the very fragile peace process that was set in motion earlier on.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

How much of a problem is the west's short attention span? You talked about priorities coming, moving on, and forgetting about them. Can you give us some examples of places where we thought we had settled something, we stopped paying attention for political reasons, or whatever, our attention span seemed to be limited, and that caused problems?

[Dr. Fen Osler Hampson]

If we focus on the western hemisphere, a number of peace processes were put in place in Central America in the 1990s. We were important actors, either directly, or indirectly through support for the UN or the OAS. We're seeing recurring instability in some countries of Central America, and a lot of violence is threatening the stability of governments.

It's certainly true in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. I think it's also fair to say that even in a country like Cambodia there are continuing problems, in spite of the billions that were spent on the peace processes there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all our witnesses for being with us this morning.

[Proceedings continue in camera]