Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 21st, 2006

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

It's not the government's, it's the committee's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We have a point of order from Mr. Patry.

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

It's a committee privilege, it's not the government's, to add amendments. This time you can't do it. You're not the government.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

No, we are addressing this—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Let's go through the chair.

That's not a point of order. I think you're both just debating process here.

Mr. Obhrai, please continue with your question.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I'm doing that. This is my floor, my time, right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes. Go ahead.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Let me finish my time. You stay out of this.

Let me say this. The Conservative Party said before that we would like to have legislation. Even when we were in the opposition, it was our intention that the development assistance be followed by legislation, which it wasn't. We tried very many times to do it with the Liberals, but they never did that, like I said.

I'm quite interested in knowing something. There is legislation in other countries in the world. There's legislation in Britain. At the time when I was foreign affairs and international development critic, I called for looking at that bill to see how and what we could do to have something similar done here.

In comparison with what the other countries have done on this thing here—and I'm not going down the road of legislation, I'm going down the road of the bill that has been presented here, Bill C-293—what are the major differences between the bill that was accepted by that parliament and by that government, while we are having difficulties, as you have indicated, with this bill? Do you want to tell us that?

[Christiane Verdon]

Do you want to know the differences between the bill and other examples abroad, including the U.K. legislation?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I'm interested in looking at the legislation that is in the U.K. and at this legislation. You have highlighted what is wrong with this private member's bill, with all these things.

[Christiane Verdon]

The U.K. legislation at first seems similar to this bill because it has this lens of poverty reduction, but there are big differences between what this bill proposes to do and what the U.K. legislation does.

It's interesting, because we have a past history with the U.K. on the legal front, but there are quite a lot of differences between Canada and the U.K., particularly in the organization of government. Here in Canada, we have statutes that establish departments. In the U.K., that's not what they do. They have the statute that gives, in this case, powers to one minister. That statute doesn't have any impact on other statutes, because there are no other statutes creating other departments. In this case, in the case of the bill here in Canada, this bill does have an impact on other statutes that I've mentioned exist.

Also, another big difference in the U.K. legislation is that the legislation, this focus on poverty reduction, applies only to one minister, whereas under this proposed legislation here, there is a definition of “competent minister”. We assume there could be more than one competent minister, so it may apply to many, like two or three or I don't know how many ministers. So that's another difference.

I understand there was a lot of preparation work before the U.K. legislation was enacted. There was a white paper that had been published by the government at the time.

There's no petition system, no consultative committee in the U.K. legislation. It's a simpler mandate. It's clear that humanitarian assistance is separate from development assistance, because of course the situation is very different. When you deal with humanitarian assistance, you focus on saving lives, period, first.

The U.K. legislation also has its own definition of “development assistance”. It did not include the OECD one.

I hear there was a lot of debate in their House of Commons about whether or not they should refer to international human rights or human rights in the legislation, and the government decided that, no, they did not want that.

So there are differences, the main one being that it applies only to one minister and not to the whole U.K. government.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Do you know how many countries have legislation directing their ODA under a legislative mandate, as opposed to what we have in Canada, which is a policy mandate and a statutory mandate?

[Christiane Verdon]

I don't have the number of countries. We were very interested in that and we researched where we could find information. Of course, sometimes information is available only in a language we cannot read very well.

We looked at sixteen OECD countries. Out of that number, ten did not have legislation. Six had legislation, and two of those had a poverty reduction focus. One was the U.K., and Belgium also has a reference to poverty reduction.

There is the interesting case of Sweden. Some authors are referring to that situation as a case of Sweden having enacted comprehensive legislation on ODA, with poverty reduction and other criteria, but it looks more like their parliament has approved a government policy. It's a very wide-ranging, thick document discussing all sorts of aspects of ODA. So I would not put Sweden in the group of countries that have enacted legislation on ODA. It doesn't seem to be one anyway.

So you have ten out of sixteen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Verdon.

Mr. Wallace, I think you were going to answer the question on the number of countries.

[Stephen Wallace]

Because I don't have the advantage of a legal background, I can just give you a very general answer. The very general answer is that about half of the OECD countries have different bits and pieces of legislation that look at aspects of a mandate or enabling legislation for development assistance. The reason why you have to unpack a little bit is that very few actually have comprehensive pieces of legislation. They'll deal with accountability or with payments or with mandate, but very seldom do they put things in combination together. You have to go to various acts to pull together a picture at a national level, but about half of them have features of legislation that I think would be relevant to the work of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

Madame McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The parliamentary secretary's expression of frustration perhaps calls upon all of us to reflect a little bit on the context in which this bill was brought forward in the first instance. I think it's fair to say that it was a context fraught with frustrations and problems. Over a period of more than two years, we had been hearing from a series of many, many international witnesses before this committee about how disappointed and horrified—I think some people went to the point of saying that—they were at the level of Canada's official overseas development assistance.

Secondly, there was something of a vacuum at the time, because we were waiting and waiting for an international policy review paper. You referred to it being helpful to have had a white paper in the U.K., as the broader context in which their legislation was developed. We waited for that. When it finally came, it was stillborn after about two years' gestation. It actually didn't create the opportunity for a broader discussion, because it was quickly transformed from what was supposed to be a review into a statement, end of discussion.

In that context, there was a genuine attempt, across party lines and in the best tradition at this committee level, to say that we want the government to address this question of a legislative framework, one that clearly makes poverty reduction the principal purpose of our overseas development assistance and so on.

The frustration that I'm now feeling—I don't presume to speak for anyone else—is that it seems to me that we have now heard from two governments in a row that there actually is legislation in the works. It's like, “Hold your horses here. There's legislation in the works.” Meanwhile, we have had representation after representation from NGOs, from academics, from researchers, domestically and internationally, telling Canada to clean up our act here.

We've just come back from travelling in four Nordic countries and in the U.K., where it was actually quite humiliating. I think we shared the humiliation of Canada's ODA being at 0.32% at the moment. Actually, Finland, which is probably the worst off of the five countries we visited, was at 0.98%.

So I'm going to ask the broader question. You're here representing CIDA. Is there legislation forthcoming from the minister? In that case, it doesn't make sense for us not to at least have some kind of notion about that if we're going to proceed in good faith. Secondly, if that's not the case, if you're not in a position to speak to that—and perhaps the parliamentary secretary is right that it's the government's responsibility—at the very least, can we ask you for a written analysis of what we have before us?

I have to say it's very difficult to deal with quite a lot of wandering comments but not what you could consider to be a detailed analysis that would allow us to move forward to the next step of drafting. Certainly, some of your criticisms are very sound. On further reflection, I would think we would be saying that, yes, we see a problem here, but I think there is a genuine all-party commitment here to move forward. Four parties agreed to go to look at some of these questions abroad, and now we're trying to figure out where to go from here. Any concrete suggestions that you could make to help us with that would be much appreciated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam McDonough.

Maybe you want to respond to that, Mr. Wallace. She has basically asked—and we can get it out of the blues—for a written report or recommendations.

[Stephen Wallace]

First of all, thank you very much for some very relevant questions and comments.

We would be very pleased to provide a written analysis. I must say, in the process of trying to go through the due diligence and rigour you try to apply to legal analysis, that sometimes sounds like a lot. Sometimes, it can crowd out the underlying principles and intent behind legislation. We would not want to do that. We have really come to focus very much on the technical analysis of Bill C-293. But the underlying principles of strengthened accountability, achieving a new standard on transparency, and achieving greater clarity of purpose are value statements that we very much did not want to challenge. That speaks to a couple of questions from members as well.

We'd be very pleased to provide a written analysis.

We do not have a specific proposal to put on the table. That is the work of the members of the committee, as has been already stated. But we have been exploring options with respect to how to deal with the question of legislation. That's the point I was making. That's the kind of background work we've been undertaking on this matter.

I'm sure the minister would be very pleased to comment further on exactly where that process will be going.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

Mr. Goldring, for a couple of quick questions, and then over to Mr. Wilfert.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Ms. Verdon, could you advise whether DFAIT is going to be appearing on this bill?

[Christiane Verdon]

I don't know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I'm certain that if we ask them, they would come.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Ms. Verdon, it was mentioned by Ms. St-Hilaire about your responses perhaps being vague. I thought they were pretty clear. You were talking about the bill being vague in some of the terminology. I certainly have the impression that would be problematic. Perhaps you could expand a bit on that. How would some of these poorly defined terminologies manifest into problems in trying to implement it?

[Christiane Verdon]

There are some terms, such as “Canadian values”, which are very difficult to define. It may vary from one Canadian to another and from one person to another. When you have a vague term in a statute, the difficulty is that the statute has to be interpreted. You don't find much assistance to help in interpreting words like that.

Another thing I mentioned a few times in my remarks, and I'm sure something can be done about it, is that sometimes words are used, and suddenly, in the same section, you have the same term but with a different word. Words like that raise problems of interpretation. Problems of interpretation can raise the risk of litigation, of judicial review of decisions.