Evidence of meeting #11 for Afghanistan in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was officials.
A video is available from Parliament.
8:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Madam Findlay.
I have a question about agriculture. I think it's safe to say that the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today is in Afghanistan. Mr. Baker was talking about the impact of the war in Ukraine, one of the world's great breadbaskets, on global food production and on the situation in Afghanistan.
Canada is one of the great food or breadbaskets of the world. Half of our global food production, many argue, comes from natural gas through the Haber-Bosch process, which produces the synthetic nitrogen that has allowed for significant increase in crop yields in recent decades.
A lot of the fertilizer we use in Ontario is Russian fertilizer produced through natural gas. The department is responsible for the tariffs that were recently announced, the sanctions on Russian fertilizer, of 35%. This is causing a lot of Ontario's farmers to raise alarm bells about the spring crop going into the ground. Many of these farmers purchased the fertilizer last year before the war in Ukraine broke out and they are asking the Canadian government to waive the implementation of the tariff on nitrogen fertilizers that were purchased before March of this year in particular.
I have two questions. First, are there plans by the department to waive the tariffs on fertilizer purchased before March of this year? That is an urgent question considering that spring planting is taking place as we speak. Secondly, what is the government doing to ensure that going forward, we have a replacement for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer from sources other than Russia?
8:20 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Mr. Chair, I'm afraid that this is probably more in the purview of the Minister of Agriculture. This is not my area of expertise.
I apologize. I don't have the answers to those questions.
8:20 p.m.
Liberal
8:20 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to flag this as a concern. We seem to be seized, at the top line, about the potential food shortages that we could be looking at this fall, but we don't seem to be reacting to farmers on the ground in this country, who, through provincial and national organizations, are raising alarm bells about the huge tariffs being imposed on nitrogen fertilizer.
This is directly impacting farmers as we speak. The land is drying out. Wheat, soybean and corn crops are going in. Farmers are making decisions, as we speak, about what to do. The price of fertilizer, if it's 35% higher, particularly for purchases they made before the war started, will have a direct impact on how much they apply and how much yield they're going to get. Compound that with the fact that only about 20% of the corn crop in northern Ukraine has been planted and we could be looking at an intersection of a number of issues here that could have pretty devastating consequences for the people of Afghanistan and for people in other developing countries later on this year.
I have two questions concerning the process under the special immigration measures, or SIM. What is the process for someone to receive a referral from Global Affairs for the SIM program? Perhaps you could quickly describe that. What are the criteria for the referral to the SIM program? How are applications for referral assessed?
8:20 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Asia Pacific, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Thank you, Chair.
I believe I may have responded to that earlier, whereby we're trying to be very much consistent, given that significant volume, as I had articulated earlier, of over one million inquiries. They're not all the same. The challenge is to go through the duplicates, but then go through trying to track what are individual bona fides and what are linked to others in terms of a family dynamic.
Then we go through the identification through records that we may have, based on what we have available at HQ and what may have come back from our mission in Kabul, and then, from DND's perspective, what records they have in terms of former military interpreters. From our perspective, for the GAC ones, we then ensure that we do that check related to the criteria reference. Do they pass the test of the significant or enduring relationship to the Government of Canada—employee, former employee, contractors or so on?
Once we have enough information to validate that...that's only when we go over. It's a very methodical one. We're being very consistent. The challenge is that it does take time. It's very manual.
8:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much, MP Chong. Your time is up.
Now we'll go to the last honourable member.
Mr. El-Khoury, go ahead, please, for five minutes.
8:25 p.m.
Liberal
Fayçal El-Khoury Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses. We're very pleased to have them here.
Ms. Hulan, an analysis of past situations published by the International Peace Institute shows that sanctions can have unintended consequences. For instance, transactions may be delayed or curtailed because of administrative and legal complexities, or because financial institutions and companies want to avoid taking risks in the context of a sanctions regime.
What details can you share with us on this subject?
8:25 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Political Director, International Security and Political Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Thank you very much.
Could I just clarify that the honourable member is referring to the sanctions that are currently ongoing in Afghanistan?
8:25 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Political Director, International Security and Political Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Okay. Thank you. Ukraine was mentioned earlier.
Mr. Chair, we are always concerned about unintended consequences of sanctions. I think that is fair to say. There is no doubt that in Afghanistan, sanctions on the Taliban, which remains a listed entity under the Canadian Criminal Code and also under UN sanctions, two sets of sanctions that are applied by Canada but that relate to one another as well, are having an impact on not only on business but also individuals and the ability to travel into the country and to deliver humanitarian assistance.
That is why we are working so hard with the organizations that we are supporting, as my colleague Peter MacDougall would have spoken about, in terms of our ongoing humanitarian assistance, to find mitigation measures to make sure that our support can continue to get into that country. Those mitigation measures can include contractual provisions and various forms of assurances and operational arrangements. In some cases, Canada's funding can support ongoing activities of those organizations outside of Afghanistan to free up extra money for them to use inside Afghanistan. Those are some of the mitigation measures that we have put in place.
Mr. Chairman, the reality is that although sanctions in Afghanistan are having a very serious effect, the Taliban has taken over as the de facto government of the country. It remains a terrorist group under Canadian legislation. Those sanctions remain in place and remain very important.
Thank you.
8:25 p.m.
Liberal
Fayçal El-Khoury Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
My second question is for Ms. Termorshuizen as well as Ms. Sunday.
In our humanitarian efforts, what do you see as the main challenges in getting funding to Afghan beneficiaries?
In your opinion, what more can you or Canada do to improve the status of women in that country?
8:25 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Mr. Chair, it's a very good question.
We are certainly working very hard to ensure that the funds that do go into Afghanistan from Canada through other organizations get to the people who need them. As we have spoken about before, the organizations that we work with—UN organizations, the WFP, UNICEF—are organizations that have a lot of experience working in difficult areas like Afghanistan. They are very practised at ensuring that those funds get to where they need to go. They also have very important relationships on the ground that enable them to get to the right people.
I should also say that even though the security situation is not good in Afghanistan, some of our UN partners actually have easier access in some parts of the country than they did prior to the August takeover of Kabul by the Taliban. So there is access to some of these places, and we continue to work very hard to ensure that our funding and our humanitarian assistance go to the most vulnerable.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you very much, Mr. El-Khoury. Your time is up.
On behalf of the committee members, I would like to thank the respected officials who have been here today for their input to this committee. I won't mention your names again because of the time constraints, but we do appreciate your work for Canada. The very best to all of you.
On behalf of the committee, I would also like to thank the support staff, the interpreters, the analysts and, of course, the clerk of the committee.
We can go back to our voting.
The meeting is adjourned.