Foreign Affairs committee  Here's what I can say. I'm not trying to avoid the question.

Foreign Affairs committee  We take transparency and openness very seriously, and that's one of the reasons we have a report that Ireland considered as the best model to go with and that pushes the limits of transparency and accountability. That's why we try every year to improve that report in terms of the information it provides to Canadians, not only to educate them about the institutions, but also to provide as much understanding as we can of what's actually happening within the institutions.

Foreign Affairs committee  As the honourable member knows, I'm not authorized to provide a suggestion on an amendment. I know this puts me in an uncomfortable position.

Foreign Affairs committee  Maybe I can try to do this at a level of principle that I hope gets us to the same place but doesn't cause me to get in trouble back at the office. In terms of the confidentiality requirement and the black box, the point would be that Canada signed up to this institution, and we signed up under a set of rules.

Foreign Affairs committee  There's an existing case of that in legislation, the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act, section 13 of which obliges the Department of Finance to present a report annually on the Bretton Woods institutions, and that's the report you have in front of you. As I indicated, we're one of very few countries that actually do this.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. Paragraph 10(d) is actually almost word for word the same language as in section 13 of the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act. So we have two pieces of legislation mandating the Minister of Finance to provide two reports, the bulk of which would be absolutely identical.

Foreign Affairs committee  I guess there's a question here of how many times we want the same information to appear in how many reports. So we have an existing report that's comprehensive. Do we want an addition to that, a second report by the Department of Finance that's duplicative, and, in addition to that, as part of the new minister of CIDA's report, a section in that report that duplicates significant elements of this report as well?

Foreign Affairs committee  At the level of a governor, which is the Minister of Finance who participates at the governors' meetings, all the decisions that are taken are public decisions, and we release summaries of those public decisions. Other countries can as well. The way the IMF and the World Bank operate, though, at the executive director level--about which the closest analogy I can draw is the cabinet level--it was set up with a view to ensuring a full and frank exchange of views among members.

Foreign Affairs committee  Indeed, we might consider making expenditures that are not designed to reduce poverty and we hope that the act does not inhibit our ability to make this sort of expenditure. If we want to calculate them differently, that’s another question, but as the bill is drafted at present, our lawyers fear that we might arrive at a broad definition of development that does not include all sorts of initiatives, for example, by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Finance, that are not necessarily aimed at reducing poverty.

Foreign Affairs committee  I want to be careful about not suggesting an amendment to the committee, because it's only through ministers or on the advice of ministers of the committee that amendments can come forward. I guess what I'm identifying is the challenge, which is that I didn't think it was the committee's intention to say that if an activity fell under a broad definition of development assistance--like anti-money-laundering--that didn't have poverty reduction as its focus, we should cease spending any money in that area.

Foreign Affairs committee  Counsel advises me that we could be taken to court by an intervenor arguing that because we're spending on anti-money-laundering, because it's part of this broad definition of development assistance, and because it is not having as its primary goal poverty reduction, we are not allowed to spend that money anymore because everything that's within development assistance is now limited by this filter of poverty reduction.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm a lawyer too, by training, and I assure you the questions I asked were not questions in the realm of speculation on a remotely theoretical case. I pushed hard with counsel to understand if this was a real risk. And I must say, based on a textual interpretation of the law as it is currently written, it strikes me as very reasonable to believe that if in an act you define development assistance in a specific way that includes a whole range of activities, and you then say of that box you've just defined that you are only allowed to provide that assistance if it contributes to poverty reduction--which is the effect of clause 4--by definition you have excluded part of the activities that were in that broad definition of what you can no longer fund.

Foreign Affairs committee  That’s a very good question. Without the authorization of a minister, I cannot present an amendment as such. However, I could raise the question, and this might help you find a solution. With regard to what we would like to include in the definition of what in English is called ODA, or Official Development Assistance, what we are going to consider, in terms of figures, is one thing.

Foreign Affairs committee  I guess, sir, the concern is with the language you have, which is not a summary in general, but a summary of any representation made by a Canadian representative with respect to the policies and priorities of the World Bank. Those representations are confidential, as they are for all other members, so providing a summary of each and every one of those representations would put our executive directors in a breach of confidence position.

Foreign Affairs committee  Bill C-293 says we'd need to provide a summary of any representation made. It doesn't say a summary of any representation consistent with the confidentiality requirements of board members or consistent with the Access to Information Act. It says that of any representation we make, we need to provide a summary.