Official Development Assistance Accountability Act

An Act respecting the provision of official development assistance abroad

This bill was last introduced in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in October 2007.

Sponsor

John McKay  Liberal

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Not active, as of May 29, 2007
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment sets out criteria respecting resource allocation to international development agencies and enhances transparency and monitoring of Canada’s international development efforts.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Votes

March 28, 2007 Passed That the Bill be now read a third time and do pass.
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, An Act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad, as amended, be concurred in at report stage with further amendments.
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 9, be amended by replacing lines 30 to 35 on page 4 with the following: “to preparing the report required under section 13 of the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act, contribute the following to the report submitted to Parliament under subsection (1): ( a) the position taken by Canada on any resolution that is adopted by the Board of”
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing line 25 on page 3 with the following: “official development assistance as defined by this Act”
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing, in the French version, line 22 on page 3 with the following: “et des organismes de la société civile”
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing lines 26 and 27 on page 3 with the following: “that meets the criteria in subsections (1) and (1.1).”
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 4, be amended by adding after line 16 on page 3 the following: “(1.1) Notwithstanding subsection (1), official development assistance may be provided for the purposes of alleviating the effects of a natural or artificial disaster or other emergency occurring outside Canada.”
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing, in the French version, line 6 on page 3 with the following: “les organisations de défense des droits de la”
March 28, 2007 Passed That Bill C-293, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing, in the English version, line 4 on page 3 with the following: “or”
Sept. 20, 2006 Passed That the Bill be now read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

November 8th, 2006 / 5:25 p.m.
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Liberal

Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

On the 29th you say we will finish Bill C-293. That is if there are no witnesses.

November 8th, 2006 / 5:25 p.m.
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Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

We are agreed. That's consensus. That's passed.

We also have a budget. Where did that budget go?

On the 28th and 29th, I think we should be able to finish up with witnesses on whatever there is on Bill C-293. If we can finish the report on the.... I don't want to go right back to the beginning on this report, again. Let's finish this thing once and for all in that one hour we have.

October 26th, 2006 / 11:35 a.m.
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Liberal

John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON

Thank you, sir.

Sorry to be so brief about this, but Mr. Toycen, thank you for the endorsement on Bill C-293. We were before the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, and it was well supported by that committee. So again, thank you for your hard work.

Mr. Bradley, I'm glad to see that the Martin-McGuinty agreement on corporate tax collections has been fulfilled by this government. Let me ask you a particular question.

As you know, the TTC is a pretty important mover of people around here, and its capital stock leaves something to be desired at times. The government's proposal is that transit passes somehow or another will solve all those problems. So if your choice was between capital improvements for the TTC--be it buses, subways, whatever--versus a transit pass, and you had to choose, what would you choose?

October 26th, 2006 / 9:50 a.m.
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Liberal

Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Mr. Polanyi, while we're chatting with you, we've heard from a number of KAIROS organizations across Canada. They're always very good presentations, but I think you're the first one who has actually mentioned the 0.7% of GNI and the necessity of reaffirming poverty reduction as a primary objective. Considering that Development and Peace and the Primate's World Relief Fund are part of the organization, that makes sense. I'm also sure you'd agree with me that my colleague John McKay's private member's bill, Bill C-293, which reaffirmed that, is a step forward in the right direction. So I'm glad you mentioned that.

I'd like to ask both you and Elizabeth, if I could, a question on child care again. I don't believe in universal child care benefits. I don't think they're the way to go. I think we were on the right track last year, building the infrastructure of child care across the country.

In my own community, a lot of people were excited about it, especially parents of children with special needs, parents of francophone or minority-language children. They were finally going to have an opportunity to provide child care to their kids. That $1,200 does nothing for them. But the real problem with the $1,200 is the way it was handed out and then taxed back in such a way that lowest-income Canadians aren't necessarily the beneficiaries of it at all. At the very least, if it was going to be done, perhaps doing it through the low-income supplement of the child tax benefit might have been a better way to direct the payments to those who need the assistance the most.

I'd like your thoughts on that, Michael and Elizabeth, if you have any.

October 24th, 2006 / 5:30 p.m.
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Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Again, we talked about this before. One of the concerns I have is that we keep focus. We have our steering committee meetings and we decide where we're going. The motion is absolutely in order, but if we're going to now start allocating regular committee time to bring in Mr. Roche—he's a great spokesman, and everyone here knows his involvement on nuclear disarmament—then we're talking about diverting from what we've laid out as the direction in which the committee is going.

In good faith, I think we want to continue with the democratic development. We have a busy fall. We want to finish Bill C-293 whenever it gets done. So if you're suggesting this for a committee day, then I would say to our committee that we should stay focused on the direction that we've laid out in the steering committee and in this committee.

October 24th, 2006 / 5 p.m.
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Conservative

Ted Menzies Conservative Macleod, AB

And indeed she may, but it would be in a city other than Ottawa. But I would doubt that she would be dancing because of that.

To your comment about the fact that we've had lots of time to get it right, I must comment. We've had less than ten months. In the thirteen years the Liberal government had, they didn't quite take this as seriously as they are now. So I applaud your reawakening to this cause.

Going back to what we were dealing with in Bill C-293, which indeed is what we're discussing here, I'm very concerned--and I think I raised this in my speech--about the obligation of the minister to report back, to answer back to petitioners about why they haven't received aid, why they haven't received enough, why they've received the wrong thing, and that sort of thing. That's not the minister's job. I still fear that whoever the minister may be, it's not a good use of his or her time to be responding to every potential recipient of Canadian aid.

October 24th, 2006 / 4:33 p.m.
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Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

All right, committee. We'll call this meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade back to order.

We're pleased to have with us the Honourable John McKay, member of Parliament from Scarborough—Guildwood. Mr. McKay is the drafter of a private member's bill, Bill C-293. He is with us today to talk about his bill and perhaps some potential changes. I see he has brought some changes that he may want to table later on.

Mr. McKay, you are well aware of how this committee works. We welcome you, and we'll let you speak for as long as you want--ten minutes usually--and then we'll go into the first round of questioning.

The first round will be a seven-minute round, followed by a five-minute round.

Mr. McKay.

October 17th, 2006 / 5:35 p.m.
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Liberal

Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

I just want to be fair to the government side. They agreed this morning and we agreed this afternoon to start with Bill C-293, even before we passed the motion. They agreed on this. That's a step. Now we say we agree that we start the day after. You say it's next week we're going to start this. We will know. One thing we're going to be sure of is that we have a slot in November and we have the majority on this side, and if the government doesn't want to do it we're going to force the government to do it by having some other meetings.

To me, this motion is irrelevant in the sense that you ask if it's a necessity, but we don't know if it's going to be a necessity. We could fit in our slots. To me, it's irrelevant to have such a motion. We are already going to start it next week. That means the government's intention is to go along with this. We have done it and we agree on this. To me, there's no way to have such a motion.

October 17th, 2006 / 5:30 p.m.
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NDP

Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS

In the third line from the bottom after “meetings” to insert “if necessary, in addition to regularly scheduled meetings, to study Bill C-293, An Act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad.” In other words, strike the last line “beginning the week of October 23”.

October 17th, 2006 / 5:30 p.m.
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NDP

Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS

Let me take 30 seconds to propose the following amendment to the end: “the committee hold meetings if necessary, in addition to regularly scheduled meetings, to study Bill C-293, An Act respecting the provision of development assistance abroad.” Delete “beginning the week of October 23”, because we already made that decision today.

October 17th, 2006 / 5:30 p.m.
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NDP

Alexa McDonough NDP Halifax, NS

We went partway there in the schedule of meetings that we adopted this afternoon, coming from the steering committee recommendations, which is that on the twenty-third, we've agreed to spend one hour hearing from John McKay on Bill C-293.

My intent in putting this motion forward is to reflect, I think, the important consensus. I know the parliamentary secretary, Deepak Obhrai, earlier referred to the fact that in matters of all-party consensus there is some real weight assigned to it and some real sense that we're serious about dealing with these matters. It's in that spirit that I am putting forward an urgent proposal that we really get on with dealing with Bill C-293.

I accept that this sense of urgency is reflected in the decision we made earlier to proceed, but I guess I'd like to propose a small amendment to expedite the matter. It may seem strange, but since I originally submitted this, we've actually taken a step in that direction. Can I make a friendly amendment to my own motion?

I think it's in the spirit of what we learned in the U.K. and in the Nordic countries. We have some real homework to do here to pull ourselves out of the embarrassment of being at—where are we?—0.34%. We know all of those countries are way ahead of where we are.

Anyway, I don't want to spend the time, so let me very briefly propose this.

October 16th, 2006 / 3:50 p.m.
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Dina Epale Public Affairs Officer, Action Canada for Population and Development

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. My name is Dina Epale, and I'm the public affairs officer at ACPD.

We work to ensure the full implementation of the UN International Conference on Population and Development, which was held in Cairo in 1994. There were 179 countries, including Canada, that agreed to fund programs addressing the sexual and reproductive health needs of women and their families throughout the world.

ACPD works to advance reproductive and sexual rights and health at the international level, and we encourage Canada to incorporate reproductive and sexual rights and health into its foreign aid policies and programs. We also have an emerging focus on international migration and development.

I am here today to ask you to make strong recommendations to the government concerning its official development assistance and to take particular care to meet the needs of women, men, and children around the world by funding the sexual and reproductive health programs promised at the Cairo conference.

ACPD wants to commend the new government for its announcement with respect to the allocation of an additional $320 million for international aid in 2005-2006 and possible additional funding totalling $425 million over five years. We particularly want to voice our support for the announcement made by the government with respect to funding of $15.5 million over three years for the UNFPA's project to combat sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in response to an appeal in The State of World Population 2005.

We at ACPD are very encouraged by these funding announcements and the government's apparent commitment to an increase in international aid. However, despite its efforts, Canada lags behind other countries with respect to official development assistance, or ODA. Canada is among the 22 donors countries which have repeatedly promised to devote 0.7% of their gross national product to ODA by 2015. And yet, based on the OECD's preliminary analysis, Canada's net contribution for 2005 represents some 0.3% of its gross national income, or $3.7 billion US, placing it in 14th position among the 22 donor countries.

We certainly can do much better to achieve our ODA commitments and be a real leader in this competitive world, for a number of reasons. First, Canada continues to be the only G-7 country with a record surplus in 2003, 2004, and 2005 and a forecasted surplus of $8 billion in 2006. Second, the recently tabled 2006-07 government report on plans and priorities shows that the international assistance envelope is expected to be $3.8 billion in 2006-07 and $4.1 billion in the 2007-08 budget. Third, five countries today have exceeded the UN target of 0.7% GNI to ODA.

Canada can also position itself as a real leader in the world by supporting the very recent UN General Assembly's endorsement of a new target under goal five of the MDGs, which is to achieve universal access to reproductive health care by 2015. We have the opportunity to do this by using the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty MDG rally, which happens to be tomorrow, October 17, to address concrete measures and strategies to achieve our ODA targets and MDG goals.

In conclusion, the message from ACPD is simple and consistent with most of our past recommendations to this very committee. This committee is in a position to make strong recommendations to the Canadian government to: one, stand up and keep its promise to do its fair share to meet the millennium development goals; two, stand up and make its long-standing pledge to reach 0.7% of GNI to ODA a reality; and three, stand up and build on the resolution that was adopted in Parliament in 2005 calling on the federal government to set a plan to reach 0.5% of GNI to ODA by 2010, a baseline target of reaching a goal of 0.7% GNI to ODA by 2015.

We ask members of Parliament to stand up and support the development assistance bills, Bill C-204, Bill C-243, and Bill C-293.

I thank you for your time.

October 5th, 2006 / 10:45 a.m.
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Hamid Javed Chair, Board of Directors, Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson.

Members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here talking on behalf of the SCIC, the Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation.

In your finance committee's recent document “Canada's Place in a Competitive World”, you refer to the fact that Canada, as a small open economy, depends significantly on other countries for our economic health and prosperity. This recognition of the need for cooperation and working with other countries is commendable; however, we also understand that we depend on one another not only for economic prosperity, but also for global peace, global public health, and the protection of the global environment. Without these things, no country can prosper and no country is safe.

Because of our prosperity depending on others and also on the basis of cooperation within our own country, we need to invest in health, education, and infrastructure for Canadians, but not only for Canadians, but also the rest of the world if we want to live in peace. Right now, it is our belief that poverty now affects 3 billion people, half of the total human population. It's not only morally intolerable to Canadians, it's also a threat to the peace, health, and stability of the world in which Canadians must go about their business—in other words, our own self-interest.

During his election campaign, the Prime Minister promised that we will match the average OECD donor performance of 0.42%. We recommend that we should exceed the average of the OECD and should aim for 0.7%, which was a goal set by one of our own prime ministers a few decades back and was taken up by the world as a goal to reach. In order to do that by 2015, we recommend that Canadian aid be increased by 18% annually and that the government commit to a plan to meet the target of 0.7% of our gross national income. It's very important that we take the rest of the world along with us.

More aid by itself is not enough. We also need better aid, that is why we support Bill C-293, the Development Assistance Accountability Act. We urge the government and members of Parliament from all parties to support speedy passage of this bill.

Of course, we recognize that the Government of Canada is also directly concerned with the well-being of Canadians, their health, education, and standard of living, as your brief discusses. On this topic, we would like to point out that far from being able to adopt new technologies and seize market opportunities, many Canadians currently live in poverty, affected by poor nutrition, illiteracy, and institutional racism. Statistics tells us that one in six Canadian children are poor. Every month, 700,000 people in Canada use food banks. In Saskatchewan, the unemployment rate for aboriginal people is more than double the rate of non-aboriginals, and working aboriginal people have an average income almost 50% lower than the average income of non-aboriginal people.

In order to ensure that our citizens are healthy and have the right skills for their own benefit and for the benefit of their employers, the government must take action against poverty in Canada. A big step toward this goal would be increasing the national child tax benefit. The government also needs to get serious about developing a poverty reduction strategy for Canada that includes positive initiatives in housing, population health, and labour force development. Investment in poverty reduction will yield many economic and social benefits for us and everybody else.

I would like to draw your attention to the pitfalls of recent failed government cutbacks to the programs of literacy, court challenges, the Law Commission, Status of Women, reducing smoking among the aboriginal communities, and other programs. The negative impact on skills development, health, and protection of rights is fairly obvious.

Mr. Chairman, the document “Canada's Place in a Competitive World” recognizes that we face an uncertain, rapidly changing future, for which we must be prepared and proactive. SCIC would go one step further and say that in many ways the world is poised at the edge of environmental, social, and political disaster. Focusing solely on improving the competitiveness of Canadian business will not avert this disaster. In fact, shifting social and environmental costs away from business might make them more competitive today—

October 3rd, 2006 / 2:15 p.m.
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Liberal

John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON

Thank you, Alan.

To Blaise Salmon and to Michael Loo, first of all, thank you for the endorsement of Bill C-293. We're out of the House and into committee and hope to encourage the government members to see the light. We'll see.

I picked up on your point with respect to microcredit. I was kind of surprised to see, and in fact I'm shocked by, the reduction in microcredit funding. So I take it that it would be a specific recommendation of yours that it not only be restored to original levels, but actually enhanced. I see that as probably one of the leading tools for a reduction of poverty. Is that fair?

October 3rd, 2006 / 1:30 p.m.
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Blaise Salmon President, Results Canada

Thank you.

Results Canada is a citizens' advocacy group with chapters across the country. We work to generate the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of global poverty.

We are a member of both the Canadian Council for International Co-operation and the Make Poverty History campaign, which my colleague Michael just mentioned and which has the support of almost a quarter of a million Canadians pressing the government to take more action against global poverty.

Canada's foreign aid is currently about 0.3% of gross national income, far below the 0.7% that is needed to reach the millennium development goals. These goals are intended to cut extreme poverty by 50% by the year 2015.

As Michael mentioned, during the election Prime Minister Harper promised to bring Canada's aid up to at least the average of other donor countries. However, this will require increases beyond those currently planned, so it seems that Canada, despite a long string of budget surpluses, will not reach even the average level of generosity promised by Mr. Harper. Clearly, we must do more.

In addition to more aid, of course, we must provide better aid. We also welcome the initiative of Mr. McKay with Bill C-293, the Development Assistance Accountability Act, which will bring Canada closer to better and more poverty-focused international aid.

In addition, we believe Canada should focus aid on those actions that have the greatest impact. I'd like to focus on two today: disease and microcredit.

Together, the three diseases malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS kill six million people a year. This is a holocaust of preventable death each year. Malaria and tuberculosis in particular need additional funding from both CIDA and the World Bank. Canada has made important contributions to the global fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria, but more is needed to reach our fair share. More details and numbers are in the brief.

For the rest of my time, I'd just like to speak about microfinance, a topic that I hope will be of special interest to this committee.

As we sit here today, over 1.2 billion people struggle to survive on less than one U.S. dollar per day, a massive tragedy of human suffering and lost potential. Microcredit is probably the single most important solution to this problem. Microcredit provides the very poor with a no-collateral loan from as little as $3 to no more than a few hundred dollars to start or expand small self-employment businesses, such as selling clothes, making food to sell, operating bicycle rickshaws, or renting out cell phones. Repayment rates are typically over 98%.

In the harsh conditions of the informal economy that employs millions around the world, microcredit has proven to be a powerful tool to help people lift themselves out of poverty and improve their nutrition, their housing, and their education. Experiences from countries as diverse as Bangladesh and Bolivia show that extreme poverty among microcredit borrowers can be reduced by 70% within five years of entering a loan program.

In contrast to charity, which becomes more expensive with every person helped, microfinance becomes self-sustaining once it reaches a large scale. This is one of the unique strengths of microcredit as a force for ending extreme poverty. However, start-up funding is required.

Both CIDA and the World Bank give far too little to microcredit, well under 1% of their respective budgets. In CIDA's case, microcredit spending has actually declined 25% over the past five years, to about $30 million per year.

To raise the profile of microcredit, our group has organized the Global Microcredit Summit, to be held next month in Halifax, from November 12 to 15. The microcredit summit campaign was originally launched in 1997, and so far it has resulted in a tenfold increase in the number of poor people with access to microcredit around the world, from seven million people in 1996 to over 92 million people by 2005. Over 2,000 microfinance practitioners and borrowers from over 100 countries will attend the Global Microcredit Summit next month, which will be convened to share best practices and set a new goal for 2015, the target date for the millennium development goals.

I'd like to extend an invitation to the members of this committee to join me in Halifax to learn more. Microcredit is short-term aid that becomes self-sustaining after a start-up period of donor support. As such, it's one of the best examples of effective aid and must receive much more attention from Canada's aid program.

Thank you.