Afghanistan Committee on May 14th, 2008

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So what do you think he was discussing or thinking about?

[David Mulroney]

We're waiting. We are obviously waiting for the deployment of a U.S. battle group into Kandahar, as per Bucharest, and I can't and I won't try to interpret Mr. Gates' comments.

I will say, though—and this is very genuine—that when I travel in Afghanistan, when I meet with the like-minded in Europe or in the States or in other places, one of the things I hear is that the Canadian PRT model is a pretty good one and what we're doing in Kandahar is actually of interest. We have more civilians in our PRT in Kandahar, which is a pretty tough neighbourhood, than almost any other PRT.

One of the challenges we face in Afghanistan as a whole, though—and I think this was present in the Manley report, and it was part of the NATO discussions—is that we've been kind of provincialized. The Dutch work their way in Uruzgan. The British work in Helmand. So there's a need to compare notes, but I'm confident that in any sharing of best practices, Canada would do quite well.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Just one last—

[The Chair, Conservative, Pierre Lemieux]

Sorry, we're over time.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing with Mr. MacKenzie.

Mr. Mulroney, thank you for being here.

First of all, I have to say I think there's some mischaracterization of the remarks or the musings of Secretary Gates. He did not suggest they would do a better job than us. He was suggesting they might perhaps put in more troops in the south to help us. I agree with you; anybody I talk to has nothing but respect for what our folks are doing over there.

One thing that wasn't covered in the Manley report that surprised me and surprised others was any reference to the strategic advisory team. From my observation in two short visits there, but also from a lot of talk and reading, they are doing an outstanding job of teaching the Afghan government how to govern, teaching the bureaucracy how to be a bureaucracy, and so on. I think if anything, that needs to be expanded. I'd like your views on that, as to how you see the role of the strategic advisory team going forward, the makeup and leadership of that, the impact that will have, and the combination of folks you would see in there.

[David Mulroney]

The committee under Minister Emerson is really looking at all aspects of our engagement in Afghanistan, and that includes the strategic advisory team. They have played an important role. As we focus on some core priorities, what I think we have to look at now is, are we aligning all our resources, including the SAT, against those priorities? Some ministries will be more important to our national and Kandahar objectives than others, so we want to focus there.

I think there's also a natural evolution over time, from a military-led organization to one that includes more civilians, because while we have the SAT, we have quite a few civilians working in Afghanistan, some of them in Kabul, but perhaps under the media radar screen. So we want to network them more efficiently.

The final question is, do we want to put our effort in Kabul or do we need to increasingly put our effort in Kandahar, because one of the challenges--and I think this was evident in the Manley report--is that we haven't made the progress on basic governance in Kandahar that we need to make. Kandaharis need to feel the reach of government, whether it's in water supply or education or policing, that anybody would expect to find. It's still early days, but I think some mechanisms are coming together in Kabul that are moving in the right direction.

At the very micro level of the community development councils and the shuras, that's being brought back to life, because they were devastated during the years of war. What's missing is the piece in the middle, and that's provincial government. Sometimes people say governors are mainly guys--there's one woman, the governor of Bamiyan--with cellphones, and they sit there and they get on their cellphones and they fix problems all day long. But that's not a very sustainable form of governance. What we need to do in Kandahar is build out that level, connected to the shuras and the councils and connected better to Kabul.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I would agree with that. Would you see the function of the SAT staying in Kabul but being expanded and adding another SAT in Kandahar? If that's true, and obviously there needs to be a bigger civilian component to that, how much challenge do we have in getting civilians, whether they be DFAIT, CIDA, whoever, to do those kinds of jobs and be outside the wire where things are obviously not quite as secure?

[David Mulroney]

In Kabul they're as outside the wire as the SAT is and in Kandahar they are outside the wire. Karen Foss, who was just acknowledged in one of the public service employee publications, is someone who travels out on a weekly basis and stays out at Patrol Base Wilson and at places like Ma'sum Ghar. So I'm quite confident they can do that.

The other thing is that the byword of the coming months and years will be “focus” and where we can really make a difference, particularly between now and 2011, because we will be held accountable with our quarterly reports as we report to Canadians. Are we aligning our resources in those key areas? We're looking at our CIDA funding, we're looking at our DFAIT funding, and we're looking at the SAT from that same point of view. But I agree, they've set a very good example.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

I'll pass to Mr. MacKenzie now.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney, for being here.

Just carrying on a little bit from Mr. Hawn, as we increase that Canadian component of civilians in the area to meet the Manley report requirements and also the parliamentary motion, how do you see us properly training and equipping our civilians who are going in there to do that job, and are you confident we can do that?

[David Mulroney]

I think Canadians are sometimes surprised by the range of things that foreign service officers do.

I remember when I was giving a talk in Victoria, I mentioned the same officer, Karen Foss. She worked for me when I ran the Asia Pacific branch. She worked in Aceh, in Indonesia, on post-conflict situations, helping to knit together communities, and she volunteered for Kandahar. I talked about her work. Some people came up afterwards and said they didn't know we had people who did that. We do. We have a good core of people in DFAIT, CIDA, the RCMP, and now with Correctional Services, who have worked in Bosnia, in post-conflict situations in a number of places.

Where we really have to learn from the forces—and the state department and the foreign office in the U.K. are doing the same thing—is that we have to deploy people even earlier. We're used to three-year, four-year posting cycles, where you can assign someone with relatively little notice. They go through their training and off they go. The challenge for us now, as we have a one-year rotation, is that you put your best and brightest out in one year. You have to recruit another 50 for the next year, and then another 50, and you have to recruit them quickly. We have a bunch of people who were in Wainwright, Alberta, with the forces last week getting ready. We have to do this on a regular basis.

There's a revolution in HR management in DFAIT and CIDA, which we're encouraging in our task force function at PCO. We're encouraging them to move that along. I think it will be increasingly the face of international work in the coming decades.

It's a challenge, but it's an absolutely necessary thing to do. If you're going to deploy a PRT—a provincial reconstruction team—you really have to have those people working together before they leave Canada. That's a leaf from the forces' book, which we're trying to learn from.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pierre Lemieux]

Thank you very much, Mr. MacKenzie and Mr. Mulroney.

We now move to Monsieur Patry.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I will share my time with Monsieur Dosanjh. He will start. We're going to ask our questions together.

Monsieur Dosanjh.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney. I have a couple of questions.

In 2001, I understand there was about $25 billion worth of aid promised to Afghanistan. About $15 billion has been delivered. About 40% of that is reported to have ended up back in the donor countries as corporate profits. I would like to know whether that's true. I ask that question because now I understand they're going to be asking for $50 billion more over the next number of years, at the Paris conference.

One of the things that concerns me, obviously, is the corruption. I understand that a significant amount of this money ends up being siphoned off by corruption. Do you have any sense of how much money ever gets on the ground? Are there discussions to make that more effective? You know, 40% of $15 billion that has so far flowed and ends up back in the donor countries as corporate profits--one would say that 40% profit, if it is profit, is huge.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney.

I would like to go back to Afghanistan. The new government is currently negotiating with the rebels. It has virtually succeeded in negotiating cease-fires in the north, the south and in the northwestern territories.

As part of those negotiations, they are even talking about releasing certain prisoners, including one of the alleged murderers of Benazir Bhutto. Can the fact that Pakistan is setting up these negotiations have an effect? What effect will it have on the Taliban attacks on our troops? Is the effect of those negotiations positive or negative?

In the slides that you presented to us, we see that our troops very frequently meet with the leaders of the various villages, the shuras, to establish contact, which is excellent. I don't know how many districts there are in Kandahar province, probably about 15.

In how many districts and villages are our troops present? What is your plan so that we can have KPRTs and carry out various projects in all those regions? Will we start around Kandahar province and then go further? Do you have a plan?

Thank you.

[David Mulroney]

If I can just address the first question, I'm not sure which study you're referring to. There was one by ACBAR, an NGO, that mentioned performance and pointed out that some countries have pledged money that they haven't delivered. They provided a list, and you'll note that Canada and Japan are at the top of the list in terms of having delivered on the funds they pledged.

I can also tell you that we work very carefully, both in Canada and in Afghanistan, to track the funds we spend and to ensure they are actually going to the projects and the objectives we've set out for them. Corruption is a big problem in Afghanistan. It's a corrosive problem because it undermines people's respect for government, it encourages the creation of shadow governments, and it threatens to undermine the international effort.

I think right now there's a pretty concerted approach on this subject by the countries that are engaged in Afghanistan. There were pretty clear messages delivered in Bucharest. The Government of Afghanistan is coming to terms with it in a number of ways. One of them is in the creation of an organization or an entity called the Independent Directorate on Local Governance, which looks province by province at the key officials and has had some success in rooting out people who have been found to be corrupt.

We work at it from the diplomatic end in terms of our interventions, and also at the grassroots end in terms of training local officials. It's a problem in every developing country, and unless we focus on it, the Government of Afghanistan and the friends of Afghanistan, it will continue to be a problem there. But it's something we take very seriously.

We don't have all the details on the negotiations or the dialogue between Pakistan and the Taliban, but I think an effective policy must put respect for the constitution and human rights first. In Islamabad, the Taliban jeopardize Pakistan's future, and that of Afghanistan. The idea isn't to negotiate with the Taliban, but to enable people to accept the law and constitution of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

With regard to organizations like the shuras, we have supported all the local councils around Kandahar. I believe there are 30 to 40 of them. The provincial reconstruction team is central to our activities, and we are able to work directly with the councils. Even more important, we are reinforcing the capability of provincial officers to work with their own councils.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pierre Lemieux]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mulroney.

I'll now move to Mr. Obhrai. I just want to remind colleagues that we're on a five-minute round. If you ask too many questions, it doesn't leave enough time for answers.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Sylvie, so I'm going to go for a quick one.

Thank you, David, for coming. It's good to see you again. I have two quick questions.

My colleague on the other side talked about Pakistan. Perhaps you can tell us about the other regional players, Iran and China, in the context of providing security in the region.

The other question is this. You are the DM for this new committee, the cabinet committee, and this is a parliamentary committee. How do you see these two committees working hand in hand together, and where do you see the coordination, the effort, and ultimately the achievement of that objective? Perhaps you can tell us where you think this committee is going as well.

Sylvie, you can ask your question now.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

People often talk to us about things that don't work or don't work well, but very little about things that have been done there. I would like you to tell us about things that Canada has achieved. Did you see any developments on your last trip? Is Canada on the right track to assist Afghanistan?

[David Mulroney]

With reference to the region, as we were developing our strategy towards Afghanistan back in 2001, one of the things that struck us was the obvious comparison with the Balkans, but the great advantage the Balkans had--and it didn't have an overabundance of advantages--was the neighbourhood: ultimately, countries in that region could aspire to membership in the EU; there was a carrot just up the road that was actually accessible.

One of the problems Afghanistan faced is that traditionally almost all of its neighbours have seen Afghanistan as a place for what they may call strategic depth--some form of mischief, some form of staging either against Afghanistan or against other neighbours. Nobody has seen Afghanistan as an economic partner or, not for a long time, as a place through which you could reach other markets.

The long-term strategy for security and peace in the region has got to be to encourage the countries that border Afghanistan to think about trade, to think about pipelines, and to think about highways and transportation links. That's not quite there yet. Iran and Afghanistan have a long and complicated relationship that is linked to things like differences in religion, Shia versus Sunni. It's linked to history, and I think it's almost certainly linked to the fact that ISAF's presence in Afghanistan offers unfortunate opportunities for many neighbours to try to undermine the stability of Afghanistan.

All these things are of concern. The long-term future really requires a much higher degree of coordination.

Our efforts have produced results in a number of areas in Afghanistan. We have developed projects with the department of education, and we are building a number of schools in several regions of the country. Efforts to ensure security are being directed by the Canadian armed forces in Kandahar. We are trying to establish governance systems at the federal level, and that is starting in Kandahar. We are also carrying out projects in the areas of health, economic development and the development of traditional governance systems like the shuras.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

What about coordination between the two committees?

[David Mulroney]

One of the messages of the Manley panel was that Afghanistan is a national priority and requires the highest level of coordination and oversight. That means the government needs to play an increasingly active role in the oversight and direction of the mission.

We haven't had a mission like this ever. We've had aspects of it at different parts of our history, but a mission that involves the Canadian Forces in the field, an unprecedented development effort, and a foreign policy issue that engages us not just in Afghanistan but in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan, in Washington, in London, in Brussels, and in New York is something entirely new, and I think it requires and demands a level of oversight, not just because of its complexity but because Canadians demand it.

Your role in calling together the people in government who direct the mission, people in Afghanistan who are part of the mission, and people who are knowledgeable about part of the mission, and making it as public as you're doing, is absolutely essential. In a way it mirrors and complements what the cabinet committee is doing, so I think it's timely and I think it's important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pierre Lemieux]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Bachand.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to welcome Mr. Mulroney.

You seem to be saying that we must wind up the cabinet committee's discussions on Afghanistan. Can we go further than that? Can you give us the minutes of the meetings that are held in cabinet? Wouldn't that ultimately be the best way to inform us about what's going on there? These people know what is happening on our side because they can see us on television in the evenings, but the reverse isn't true. Is it possible for you to convince the cabinet committee to give us the minutes of their meetings?

[David Mulroney]

Recently, Mr. Emerson took part in an information session in which he talked about the committee's work. As I said at the outset, these people are establishing key priorities and orienting progress with regard to our contribution in order to ensure that it is consistent with priorities. They are also directing the process for developing reference points to target our performance in Afghanistan. I believe the Prime Minister, Mr. Emerson and the other ministers have often talked about their work on the committee.