Finance Committee on Nov. 20th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

There are no amendments from clause 515 to clause 653. We had better go to clause 625, I think, as that will carry us through to the end of division 15.

Is there discussion on any of those points with the officials?

(Clauses 515 to 625 inclusive agreed to on division)

Thank you.

From clause 626 to clause 653 there are no amendments. Have you any discussion or questions for the officials on division 16, Wage Earner Protection Program Act?

(Clauses 626 to 653 inclusive agreed to on division)

With regard to division 17, international financial assistance, we have officials here from Global Affairs Canada and Finance Canada.

There are no amendments on clauses 654, 655 and 656.

(Clauses 654 to 656 inclusive agreed to on division)

(On clause 657)

We have an amendment proposed by the Liberals, LIB-7.

Who's up?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

In this amendment, by replacing line 20 on page 570 with the following, we are going to add:

“development assistance”, in which case, the Governor in Council must take into account, among other things, the most recent definition of “official development assistance” formulated by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This is a bit of housecleaning. For that reason we have proposed this amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I'll ask our officials, what is the current definition of “official development assistance”? That's my first question.

The second question is, do you foresee any changes to that definition of “official development assistance” in the next year or two?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Who wants to go?

Ms. Kent.

[Deirdre Kent, Director General, International Assistance Policy, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With respect to the current definition of “official development assistance”, it is the definition set out and agreed to by the OECD DAC. It has changed recently, and that is the reason to call for the regulation approach to changing the definition.

The definition is quite long. We shared it with the committee previously when there were discussions of this. I can read it out. It is quite detailed.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

If it's less than one page....

[Deirdre Kent]

Yes. I'm happy to.

It has three segments. It says:

The ODA grant equivalent is a measure of donor effort. Grants, loans and other flows entering the calculation of the ODA grant equivalent measure are referred to as ODA flows.

Official development assistance flows are defined as those flows to countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients and to multilateral development institutions which are:

(i) provided by official agencies, including state and local governments, or by their executive agencies; and

(ii) each transaction of which:

(a) is administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective; and

(b) is concessional in character. In DAC statistics, this implies a grant element of at least

45 per cent in the case of bilateral loans to the official sector of LDCs and other [low-income countries]...

15 per cent in the case of bilateral loans to the official sector of LMICs...

10 per cent in the case of bilateral loans to the official sector of UMICs....

10 per cent in the case of loans to multilateral institutions.....

Loans whose terms are not consistent with the IMF Debt Limits Policy and/or the World Bank's Non-Concessional Borrowing Policy are not reportable as ODA.

Thank you for your patience.

In terms of whether we foresee any other changes, there are current ongoing discussions in the context of the OECD DAC on how to modernize and best report private sector instruments, those instruments that would support development and poverty alleviation in collaboration with the private sector. That is still evolving and is expected to be, we hope, resolved in the coming months, but it is not yet resolved.

The current definition stands.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

The current definition would be subject to regulation, but if there are any changes, we would be able to make that shift through regulation to keep up to date with the definition of development assistance.

[Deirdre Kent]

Yes, that is correct.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

How is the bill currently worded that would not permit that?

[Deirdre Kent]

In the current bill, the ODAAA, the definition of official development assistance is right in the legislation. It states that:

official development assistance means international assistance

(a) that is administered with the principal objective of promoting the economic development and welfare of developing countries, that is concessional in character, that conveys a grant element of at least 25%, and that meets the requirements set out in section 4; or

(b) that is provided for the purpose of alleviating the effects of a natural or artificial disaster or other emergency occurring outside Canada.

That is the current definition. That is currently out of date, based on the discussions in the OECD DAC. In particular, it references a grant element of at least 25%, whereas what I read out from the DAC has a tiered approach with different levels of concessionality, in order to incentivize loans to lower-income countries.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Yes, and so the threshold, as I understand it from your reading of the new OECD development assistance definition, is basically a spectrum starting at 10% and running to 45%. Is that correct?

[Deirdre Kent]

That's correct.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Okay.

I gather that in the initial drafting of the bill, Mr. Chair, this was a flaw—an error that was created and that we're endeavouring to fix. That is a good thing.

I would make the point that, for example, with pay equity, similar flaws—even greater flaws—were not addressed at all, so I'm happy that Mr. Fergus has offered this amendment. It just sheds light on all of the other amendments that have been rejected by the government over the course of the last few hours. Those flaws could have been addressed, but the government chose not to. What we come out of this process with is deeply flawed legislation.

We've improved some components, but we're coming out with deeply flawed legislation that will be subject to court challenge. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the government has been so obstinate in not accepting improvements that needed to be done on the bill. In this particular case, with Mr. Fergus, I think it's offered in good faith and, again, I think the opposition members reach across to the government and say, yes, we want to improve this bill.

I certainly will be supporting this amendment, but we should have spent the whole day reaching across the aisle and adopting a whole range of amendments that would have improved the bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. I take it we're ready to vote on this Liberal-7 amendment.

(Amendment agreed to)

(Clause 657 as amended agreed to on division)

(On clause 658)

On NDP-35, we'll hear from Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have two amendments left of the dozens of amendments that we put forward and I want to say, prior to our discussion of NDP-36, which is the final amendment, that the process today has been very difficult, as I referenced just a few minutes ago.

I'm really surprised at what we're refusing to bring back to the House of Commons. As the time ticks down, everything that we haven't considered gets thrown to the House of Commons whether or not it's been amended, and whether or not there's been any discussion on the clauses. This is absolutely not the way to do legislation. We still have a number of amendments to consider, so I will be withdrawing NDP-35.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

NDP-35 is withdrawn.

[Kim Rudd]

Can I just get a point of clarification?

Mr. Julian keeps talking about having so many things, and he's pulling back amendments because of time. As I look at the clock, I think we still have four and a half hours to go and only half a dozen amendments, so unless Mr. Julian's proposing more omnibus amendments that we don't know about, I think we have lots of time.

If he'd like to put those amendments back on the table, I'd be happy to deal with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

This may open up a discussion that's going to take time.

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

It sure does, absolutely.

First off, since Ms. Rudd opened that Pandora's box, let me speak to that. We have had a process that forced legislative drafters to draft night and day to try to meet the artificial requirements that were put in place around this bill. We have closure on this day. We have votes coming up. It's simply incorrect to say that there are many hours left.

We have votes, as you know, coming up within about an hour, and those votes will continue on for some time. We also have consideration of elements that have been set aside that we need to come back to. Therefore, for any member of this committee to say we have plenty of time, they would simply be wrong.

The biggest problem is that we are trying to get some consideration of these amendments. The reality is that we don't have plenty of time, because at that drop-dead time, everything is passed on to committee, so opposition members have been doing the best we can to try to move things along so there is at least some consideration of things such as the parental leave considerations that we have just talked about and set aside.

If I hadn't chosen to withdraw the amendments that had less importance, we would not have gotten to the discussion on parental leave. We wouldn't have gotten to the discussion that we had from a guest member of Parliament who came forward and offered an amendment. Most disturbingly, on pay equity, a period of time where we should have taken the three or four hours to work through and improve the provisions of the pay equity act so that the legislation actually reflected what it was purported to do, we saw from the government side absolutely no offerings of amendments to improve very flawed legislation and nothing to improve the bill. For any government member to say that we have ample time simply flies in the face of reality.

We have been seeing the bulldozer pushing this bill along. It is deeply flawed. It will be subject to court challenge, there is no doubt. We have witnesses saying that unless the flaws in the bill are addressed, we're tragically going to see women back in court, just on the pay equity provisions alone, so we have been endeavouring to bring forward the best improvements we can for the legislation.

The NDP offered dozens of amendments. The government has refused to adopt any of them. The Conservative Party put forward many amendments. The government is now considering one. That's it. The government offered scant improvement, even in areas that witnesses had already explained were problematic in the bill.

I simply disagree with Ms. Rudd that somehow this process has been good, that somehow we should all say “Kumbaya” and be proud of this work. There were some nuggets of very important things in this legislation that I support, and I find it tragic that we end up with such deeply flawed legislation that will not be able to do what the government said it wanted to do in the first place.

I've been a member of Parliament for 15 years. I lived under the Stephen Harper years. I have not seen bulldozing to this extent ever before, and I just find the whole thing tragic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay, then you have withdrawn amendment NDP-35.

Shall clause 658 be agreed to...?

[An hon. member]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Do you want to debate the clause?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Yes.