Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss Chapter 8 of the 2009 Fall Report of the Auditor General of Canada as it relates to the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA. Aid effectiveness is a priority of the Government of Canada, and CI

Public Accounts committee  Just to answer your first question, I was appointed the president of CIDA on July 1, 2008, so I've been there for 16 months. David joined me in May 2009. As the Auditor General's report notes, CIDA's work that they reviewed--and they did field visits--was highly regarded. We hav

Public Accounts committee  I can't speak for all of the different moments, and this goes back through, as you would of course remember, a number of governments. Governments have a policy decision where they can decide what it is they wish to focus on. I believe that at all times the agency has been transpa

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. On the basis of specific initiatives, each CIDA initiative--a project or a program-based approach--would have a clear statement of objectives it's trying to achieve. It would have a results framework, and it would be designed to achieve those results. There would be

Public Accounts committee  The government has just announced 20 countries of focus, and there were three criteria used to select them. The first one, as you would expect, is need and whether or not there was significant need in a country, from a poverty reduction point of view, in terms of both absolute po

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I'll answer it in a couple of ways, Chair. In terms of setting our priorities, in terms of setting what we are going to do in a country, we would have consultations. For example, we had extensive consultations last summer before we developed our thematic priorities. We con

Public Accounts committee  I believe CIDA actually does consult very adequately and well in the field. In fact, I would take in part from what the Auditor General's report says that CIDA is well thought of in the field. That means we work well with the partner countries, with groups in the countries, and w

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I can distinguish a couple of different issues. As the Auditor General has said, and as the audit says, a policy decision on what priorities a government wants to bring to its development assistance is a decision of the government. This government chose to focus its assis

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I can just put a little context around the issue you're asking, sir. The Auditor General's report and the audit period that was undertaken was during a period when all donor agencies were undergoing quite a shift in terms of how they were going to do their work. That really

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, sir, I personally feel—and it shows with other donor agencies—that if you're able to focus on fewer things, you can have much more clarity around the results you're trying to achieve. It just concentrates the effort inside the age

Public Accounts committee  There have been a number of steps, starting with geographic focus, as we just discussed. There has also been a thematic focus, which are the three thematic priorities Minister Oda has laid out. Beyond those thematics, which are understandably fairly broad, we have zeroed in on so

Public Accounts committee  One of the findings by the Auditor General was that the agency had a strong understanding of aid effectiveness principles, but they didn't see concrete direction from the leadership of the organization so there would be clear and consistent and coherent guidance to staff. We ha

Public Accounts committee  Sorry, could you repeat that?

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure. I mean, it's—

Public Accounts committee  How are they effective? Well, they are basically built into our country's strategy. If we know clearly what results and what aid effectiveness principles we're trying to achieve, we have embedded those into the strategies we're developing in our partner countries. We have gone fu