Afghanistan Committee on Nov. 24th, 2010

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'll take that as a yes--

[Gordon Venner]

The other thing I would note is that in October of 2009 Canada signed a $1.5 million grant with the United Nations Development Programme to support accountability and transparency in Afghanistan's Ministry of Education. That was another initiative.

I'll turn to my colleagues for your specific question on the signature projects and the Dahla Dam.

[Françoise Ducros, Vice-President, Afghanistan Task Force, Canadian International Development Agency]

Just on the issue of building capacity, as well, with a view that we can't provide budgetary support, which is indeed the case--we do not provide direct budgetary support--we have provided, though, several technical advisers to build capacity in various ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Finance.

On the issue of honouring the Afghan priorities and the building of that capacity, we've worked through the World Bank Trust Fund, the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, so we have recognized the fact that you can only build capacity if you're working with the Afghan government and meeting the priorities, and we do that. Unfortunately, it is still the case that the financial oversight mechanisms are not in place, so we work through the trust fund very closely with the Afghans in the various ministries.

On the issue of the signature projects, we're well on our way, and we have no reason to believe that we won't finish the Dahla Dam project, including the reconstruction of the irrigation system, the building of capacity in local water usage and water usage organisms, and the building of community ownership in that project. As well, we've done a lot of capacity building on just the whole agricultural side of things, including experimental farming and the changing of crops, and we have no reason to believe we won't meet that target by December 2011.

On the specific signature project of the building of schools, again, we believe we're well on our way to completing the 50 schools. We have 27 completed. Others are well advanced. Then there are commitments around that signature project, including the training of teachers, the building of curriculum, and again, as I said, the building of capacity in the Ministry of Education. We're on our way to do that.

On the signature project with regard to eradicating polio, we will not be eradicating polio by the timeline, but there are many reasons for that. We've increased coverage of the vaccination--7.2 million kids are immunized--and we have an ongoing program, and it has been stated that we would continue to do that through partners. We won't meet that target of eradicating polio, but we will continue to work on that. Part of the reason for that is actually the transmigratory infection of the virus coming up from Pakistan. CIDA has been working with other donors to elicit their support for addressing the polio issues in Pakistan.

That's the update on the signature projects.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I understand, Mr. Chairman and Ms. Ducros, the rationale on the third one, but on the first one dealing with the Dahla Dam, can we get something in writing that says this is what we've completed at this point?

[Françoise Ducros]

Absolutely. I can provide that.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I would appreciate that.

As a final comment, Mr. Chairman, I just find it amazing that we have no financial oversight yet we are pouring in money left, right, and centre. It's important, and I want you to understand that I believe that development is absolutely critical, and I believe that taxpayers need to get value for the dollar, but if we don't have the kinds of benchmarks, measurements, or oversights there.... In this case, the Prime Minister said there's a lot of corruption and he's not going to give another dime. Well, he's not going to give another dime, yet no wonder he wouldn't give a dime. If you don't have these frameworks in place, that bothers me. That's what I'm concerned about.

I do appreciate that you're going to bring back some written information. That would certainly be helpful to this committee, Mr. Chairman.

[Françoise Ducros]

Sorry, Mr. Chair. We do have oversight on the moneys that we spend. There's an accounting system. On a lot of the education and capacity-building projects, we work largely through the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, where we can account for all of our funding. On other projects, including the polio eradication, we can account and provide accountings for the funding that goes to those projects as well.

The issue, as I understood it, is how you ensure that moneys are properly spent with the Afghanistan government. We are clearly uncomfortable with doing that, so no money goes directly to the Afghanistan government. The oversight mechanism is provided through the World Bank and the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund or other mechanisms through other partners. I'm glad to provide the written documentation behind it.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

The Afghan government doesn't have the capacity to deal with it anyway.

[Françoise Ducros]

Which is why we're building the capacity--

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes, but--

[Françoise Ducros]

--and channelling the money through other sources.

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could just add on both of those.

The next quarterly report, as all of the quarterly reports do, provides updates on all of the priorities and the signature projects. The next quarterly report will provide an update on the status of all the signature projects: what has been accomplished and also what the challenges are.

Just in terms of the accountability, as Ms. Ducros said, there are robust mechanisms in place, whether they be internal and external audits, or whether they be oversight mechanisms for the aid that Canada provides. I'd be happy to provide more of those details.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to the Bloc Québécois.

Monsieur Bachand, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm a bit disappointed by the report presented to us today. I recognize the colleague from the Privy Council Office who was here last time. If I remember correctly, we asked for more explanations; we wanted this to be more explicit. However, I see they've regurgitated the quarterly reports. We're reminded of Kabul and Lisbon.

I believe the Privy Council Office insists on wearing rose-coloured glasses. We see the same terms that we've been hearing for years. They talk about little girls going back to school; that's really great. There's talk about soldiers and police officers who protect the Afghan community; they write that governance is very well established and that essential services have been set up; they mention agricultural production.

I've had access to other information that tells us the contrary of what we see in this report. This comes from a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It contains tables that come from NATO and the UN. I didn't make them up. They were presented to the major-generals of the Afghan forces.

It can be seen from this that the war is completely escalating; the curve is rising. All that's in colour. We can read the words, Time is running out, which means that we're short of time. If I look at the maps of Afghanistan in 2005, 2007 and 2009, I see that the yellow indicating Taliban control is expanding. We're regressing; we're losing this war. And yet we read only good things in the report.

The same is true with regard to combat locations. In one of the tables, we see that all combat locations in Afghanistan are constantly expanding. There's also all of Afghanistan and the ability to control the Taliban and insurgents that are expanding as well.

I also have the number of incidents or attacks per month, in recent years. For example, that number increased from 630 in 2008 to 1,369 incidents or attacks this year. Numbers are similar for improvised explosive devices. We can see a peak, with a vertically rising curve, in one of the tables.

I have another NATO report. I went to Warsaw. Here are the programs noted by NATO. This organization uses the following expressions: insufficient quality of leadership, high illiteracy and attrition rates, limited facilities and forward operating bases, incomplete ability to provide combat or maintenance support, a lack of developed institutions, inadequate logistics capabilities, a lack of accountability for funds, equipment and personnel actions, and a historical under-resourcing of the training mission.

I draw your attention to the high illiteracy rate. And there have been some fiascos over there. For example, we sent an Afghan section to conduct an operation and they were caught so unprepared that they had to call in air support. So it took air strikes to get them out of where they were. Everyone had a map, but no one was able to read it. It didn't go well.

In addition, corruption in the Afghan security forces is appalling. Fuel and weapons disappear. The Americans deliver weapons to the Afghan armed forces and those arms are then found in the hands of the Taliban when they are captured. Some are even found in bazaars in Pakistan. It's not going well. The same is true of equipment. There's also a very high rate of substance abuse.

I don't feel like asking any questions. I previously questioned a general who came to talk to us about a subject and I said that what he was telling us was false. I prefer not to ask questions; I can only deplore the fact that no consideration was given to what we asked for last time. They're still not specific enough and they're still wearing rose-coloured glasses.

I'm going to ask my colleague whether he wants to ask a question on a subject that is important to him.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

My question is for Ms. Bossenmaier.

Women's rights, the promotion of women and so on are generally cited as reasons justifying this mission. That is a factor that has very often been cited.

What strikes me in the copy of the statement you submitted to us is that the subject is almost entirely avoided. And yet it states on page 3 that there are more children, particularly girls, in schools. At the end of this six-page report, there are two brief lines stating: "Moreover, the rights of women and girls will be a particular cross-cutting focus of all these programs." These are the only references. There are no figures or statistics; there's nothing.

How do you explain why the issue of women's rights is virtually missing from a report designed to justify extending the Canadian mission in Afghanistan? Is this attributable to the observation that is gradually being made, that the Karzai government's views on these matters are approaching those of the Taliban? In fact, the situation of women has probably deteriorated in the country.

That's my question, Mr. Chairman.

[Greta Bossenmaier]

Mr. Chairman, I have a few comments to make.

My colleagues may also have comments to add.

The rights of women and dealing with women's issues in Afghanistan have run through I would say all of our initiatives, if not most of our initiatives that we have to date in Afghanistan, through all of the priorities, whether it's the security situation increasing and trying to improve the security situation in Afghanistan, so that it will have a positive impact on the lives of Afghans, but also and in particular on the lives of women.

On the education work we have done, you've heard around this table before the statistics that deal with the number of young girls in school in 2001 compared to the number of girls in school today. Our education efforts--again, improving the education opportunities for all Afghans--have had significant impact on women.

In terms of our focus and the efforts we've had in health, and in maternal health in particular, again, it's affecting and improving the opportunities for all Afghans, but again for women there are significant advances.

Micro-financing is something that we've reported on in our quarterly reports in regard to the number of micro-finance loans that have been provided to Afghans. Again, a majority, or a large proportion of those, have gone to women so they can have increased opportunities from an economic perspective.

So I would say that a wide range of various initiatives and of programs there have been focused on women and have actually produced results for women. My colleague from CIDA might want to provide some additional commentary, because CIDA has done a lot of work in terms of programming for women.

[Françoise Ducros]

I think Ms. Bossenmaier has covered it well, but the numbers are fairly staggering. On the micro-credit loans, 66% of those have been provided to women. We've been forwarded results as to what impact that has had.

On issues of education in particular,

one-third of the six million students are girls and now have access to education, whereas they had none in 2001. It's not just a matter of giving girls access to education, but also of targeting all teacher training for women. Now 30% of teachers are women, and that enables girls to go to school.

We've also provided transportation. We always talk about girls' safety: we've ensured transportation for girls so that they can go to school.

On the issues of health, it has been targeted to things like obstetric care in the Mirwais hospital. The stats on the issues of literacy and health care for women are quite staggering. What we can say is that we've decreased those stats with regard to childhood mortality.

I'm quite comfortable in saying that when you can establish not only the 50 schools and the training of the teachers, but the 4,000 community learning centres, the literacy programs, and the vocational programs, we have in fact left Kandahar province and the rest of the country a little bit better off with regard to the state of women.

Moving forward, we have said that in our approach to all of our programming, which will be focused largely on children and youth, education, and humanitarian assistance, there will be a specific focus on the fate of women. I would be remiss not to add that with much of the $35 million that was provided by Canada on preparation for the elections and the building of institutions, we provided training to female candidates that reached 70% of the female candidates who ran for Parliament.

We've also provided female parliamentarians with the tools that we take for granted here, including offices, phones, and the ability to actually participate in the parliamentary process. We have been fairly stalwart in targeting our programming largely to women, from economic development to education to health, and we will continue to do that as we move forward--and I'm glad to provide details.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go over to the government side.

Mr. Hawn, go ahead, please.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

I'll share my time with Mr. Kerr.

My friend across the way has a filter, apparently, through which he listens to the bad news and cherry-picks that, but he filters out any of the good news. Clearly, there's a lot of bad news in Afghanistan--there's no doubt about that--but it is not all bad news.

I direct this to Admiral Davidson.

We've talked about the increase in IED incidents and contact with the Taliban and so on. Isn't that a natural byproduct of putting about 100,000 extra boots on the ground? Of course there are going to be more incidents and more activities; it's part of the surge and part of getting a grip on the situation. Is that a fair statement?

[RAdm Robert Davidson, Director of Staff, Strategic Joint Staff, Department of National Defence]

Yes, sir, I would say that's a fair statement. There's been roughly a 40% increase in the last year in the number of troops on the ground. That includes both NATO troops and Afghan security forces. That 40% increase has meant that we're now getting into areas that we were not able to get into. In fact, that was the point behind the whole surge: the need to get into areas in which we had not had an enduring presence. For a counter-insurgency strategy to be successful, you have to not just take the ground but hold it for a long-term period, in order for the population to gain the confidence that you're actually going to be there in the long term to protect them.

The initiatives that we have started to see over the last year have meant that the troops are actually getting out into the field. They're living amongst the people, both Afghans and NATO forces, and that's starting to have an impact, but of course the violence level was bound to go up because we've gone into areas that we hadn't been in before.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

So it's a pretty simplistic approach to take a raw statistic without understanding what that statistic means and throw out a statement like that.

I'd go back to another comment that was made about resources for training. Obviously, we are going to be transitioning from a combat role to a training role. Can you comment on the kind of capacity building that we will be able to do with our trainers in and around Kabul and that will address the issue of resources for training, and what impact that might have on the Afghans' ability to conduct operations?

[RAdm Robert Davidson]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

We received government direction last week, so we're now in the process of consulting with our allies in terms of exactly where and in what capacity we can contribute towards the training. But the objective behind the increase in the training mission is to contribute across a broad range of areas. We're not talking just about training troops in issues of how to do combat; we're also talking about training the institution in how it needs to conduct its business. There will be training required in areas of staffing and in areas of how to plan and conduct operations. There are “asks” out there for signals, logistics, and medical training areas.

There's a broad range of areas in which we could contribute. I don't know exactly which areas we will contribute to yet, because, as I say, we need to do some more detailed planning. But there's a broad range of areas that we can contribute to, and I would say that our soldiers, sailors, and aviators definitely have the expertise and capacity to do that.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

But we will be providing a pretty significant resource for training.

Just quickly on recent election, people pointed to a million spoiled ballots or disallowed ballots as being the bad news. I would suggest that's probably good news, because it means that the election complaints commission actually works and actually has done their job, and that even with those million spoiled ballots, their turnout was 42%.

Ms. Bossenmaier, is this good news or bad news?

[Greta Bossenmaier]

On the parliamentary elections, this is definitely an issue that the international community has paid a lot of attention to, and as Ms. Ducros said, it's one that we've also tried to contribute to in helping with the electoral process. The Independent Election Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission are two really important bodies that have played important roles throughout this exercise. The fact that they have been able to exercise their responsibilities, that they identified fraud, and that they took action...those are important steps forward in terms of the electoral process. Results were just announced this afternoon from that process, and I think folks are now looking forward to being able to form the new Parliament and get back down to business.

As Ms. Ducros also mentioned, we've tried to support that process from the women's perspective as well in terms of helping Afghan women candidates participate in the electoral process. Turnout is an issue that has been examined and probably will be examined in the coming days, but the facts are that millions of Afghans voted and hundreds of Afghans participated in the process,and these are important steps forward in the democratic process taking ground.

I'm not sure, Mr. Venner, if you'd like to add anything else in terms of the electoral process and Canada's contributions.