Afghanistan Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Can you give us a range of what will be for humanitarian assistance?

[Françoise Ducros]

No, I can't. I can tell you what we've put in humanitarian assistance up until now.

What has been the allocation for humanitarian assistance over the last three years?

[Melanie Boyd]

It varies from year to year, but it can be $25 million per year, $30 million per year, on that order of magnitude.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Do we expect that it will be more, since now the mission will stop being focused so much on the military?

[Françoise Ducros]

I don't want to start guessing at how we're—

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

But it's the logical shift of the mission.

[Françoise Ducros]

The logic of the mission is that we are doing much development work in two places. We're doing development work that will continue to draw down in the various regions but will be focused on a national program. We have had a long term of being a principal donor on humanitarian assistance, particularly with regard to food security. We believe we will continue to do that. But to break it down further would be disingenuous of me.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

In terms of construction capacity, your document shows how hard CIDA is working. But Canadians certainly want to learn what knowledge and know-how we are transferring to the Afghans themselves.

In response to Mr. Dechert's question about the three signature projects, you said you were confident because the Americans are there to take over. But are the Afghans themselves capable today of vaccinating their population against polio? Are they capable of building schools and training their teachers? And when it comes to water management and dam management, have we helped to train engineers and skilled workers or have we instead done everything by ourselves and made little effort to be sure they take over in their own country, which is the purpose of our presence there?

[Françoise Ducros]

That is my favourite question. I hope I didn't give the impression that we were trying to turn our projects over to the Americans.

There is the issue of capacity-building in all of the projects we raised. So on the issue of teacher training, we not only taught teachers, but we worked with the Ministry of Education to develop curricula and teacher training programs, including to train the trainer. On water resourcing and governance structures, for the Dahla Dam we developed a water usage council. So everything we've done has been designed to turn that over to the capacity and the local governance of Afghans.

I want to correct an impression I may have given about the projects with regard to Kandahar, the building of teacher training schools, and curriculum-building. Given the fact that Afghanistan is a 50-year or longer project, in every project we've done, to the best of our knowledge, we are ensuring that Afghans will have that local ownership, local capacity, and sustainability to take it over.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You're over time. Sorry.

We'll go over to Mr. Obhrai next, please.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you for coming and giving us an update.

Post-2011 it will become one of CIDA's major involvements after the military mission is gone. Then, of course, we have the Department of Foreign Affairs and all the other ones coming in to form the larger picture of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

We have been there with signature projects and everything. Can you give us an idea of the level we have reached compared to the past, and the money we've spent? The opposition was talking about the money going now, but we seem to have forgotten about all the investment we have made already. So talk about the investment that has been made to date, and then what in the larger picture or scheme we have accomplished in Afghanistan.

Let me add a little caveat here. Every time we talk about a military mission we seem to hear about setbacks. In the development mission, the idea of course was that Kandahar.... I met with CIDA, and as Bob said, I was highly impressed. But if you were to leave us with an impression, what have you achieved for all the money? What are we going to do there for the next three years? And in the overall objective, where does Canada stand?

[Françoise Ducros]

I'll leave aside the signature projects, as you said.

On indicators and successes, according to the minister herself, on where we've come from, today 66% of the population has access to primary health care within two hours' walking distance of their homes, up from 9% in 2000; 1,450 doctors, nurses, midwives, and community health workers have received training from Canada; and seven million children have received polio vaccinations. That's an immunization project almost entirely funded by Canada.

There are 4,000 community-based schools and learning centres that have been established in areas of the country that were critically under-served in the past, and where some of schools didn't exist. In Afghanistan there are 158,000 trained teachers, up from 21,000 in 2002, and 29% of them are women. Six million children are in school and a third of them are girls, up from 400,000, of whom virtually none were girls.

There have been 500 square kilometres of land cleared of land mines, and more than 500,000 Afghans have received education on the risk of land mines. That's outside of the three signature projects.

In addition to that, on the capacity-building issue, we've worked in close consultation with the Ministry of Education there in developing curricula and working with community processes to develop school boards. We've worked on legislative drafting. We've worked with institutions that have become fairly independent and renowned, including the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

I think we have achieved great ends in a country that had virtually nothing and was seized with 30 years of war. Where that happens, it would be disingenuous of me not to point out that all of the human development indicators are still very low for Afghanistan, from literacy rates to health care indicators, so there's a lot to do.

We would continue to do that by building, taking into account other comments that have been put on those successes. We would continue to focus on education; use the polio initiative and deal with that; and contribute wherever we could on the capacity-building side, while not losing the role we've played as a good donor on the humanitarian front.

So I think the investment has been well served. On the issue of magnitude, it's fine to say it's from $200 million to $100 million, but it's still one of Canada's biggest development initiatives ever, and will be one of the top five development recipients of Canada's development aid.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

In reference to our other partners there, where do we stand?

[Françoise Ducros]

It's difficult to tell where we stand post-2011. We were about the third or fourth donor until 2011. Because the pledging is still happening post-Kabul, we'll probably be sixth or seventh in terms of bilateral donors, including the very large donors, but below the large donors like the Americans and the Europeans.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Is the $100 million for three years over and above the new initiative announced by the Prime Minister on child mortality? Afghanistan is a focus country for that.

[Françoise Ducros]

Afghanistan is a focus country.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Is there additional money going in now, or is it part of your $100 million?

[Françoise Ducros]

On MNCH, Afghanistan is one of the eight focus countries. That money is in addition to what was announced on November 16.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Yes. So this will be over and above what we allocated for over there.

[Françoise Ducros]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I'm sorry, we have to wrap it up. When you have good news, five minutes goes by so quickly.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Why do you give them an extra minute and not me?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You actually went over time quite a bit. That's why I said that when you're hearing good news, time goes by quickly.

Monsieur Dorion, please.

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

Thank you for being here with us, Ms. Ducros, Ms. Boyd, Mr. Melanson.

Ms. Ducros, are the other donor countries that are active in Afghanistan at present tending to keep their projects going, or are they pulling out? That was felt to be the case on the military side. On the development side, are they keeping their projects going?

[Françoise Ducros]

It is hard to know what they are going to do. Certain commitments were made at the Kabul conference. The ones who were already there continue to be there. In terms of the ones who have pulled out, like the Dutch...

I don't know if the Dutch pulled out their aid.

I will send you that information, but certainly the ones who have pulled out militarily still have some initiatives. Other donors who are not there militarily, in particular the Japanese, have made significant donations on the development side. We can easily provide you with those figures.