Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Sorenson.
It really is an honour to be here.
It’s a privilege for us to appear before the committee.
We're very pleased to continue to support the work of the committee. We've been following closely the progress of Bill C-293 and have been studying its possible implications. We've also undertaken background analysis of legislative mandates across OECD member countries, and we'd be happy to discuss the results of this international analysis if you would like and are interested in it.
As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has put it most recently:
A well-developed legislative basis has the advantages of transparency and of clarifying responsibilities among the various government entities that may be involved, as well as establishing development objectives.... On the other hand, countries with a less formalised legal basis may have more flexibility to act and this could be an advantage when trying to build coalitions between development agencies and other government entities whose policies and actions have an impact on development prospects in developing countries.
That's from the OECD earlier this year. Legislation is indeed featured quite prominently in several other countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, although it is quite specific to the legal and political circumstances in each particular case. There's not a lot of comparability when you walk across the international system; these are fitted very much to local circumstances.
A key objective of development assistance legislation is establishing a clear and efficient legal basis for the aid program in a way that can stand the test of time and remain relevant in a changing world.
This challenge is, of course, even greater from a legal perspective when you consider the range of government departments here in Canada, including the Departments of Finance, Foreign Affairs, and line ministries that help to deliver on Canada's aid program and that will be affected by this bill.
From an operational perspective, Bill C-293 needs to achieve a result—and I think committee members have been working towards that objective—that is clear and simple, easy to understand, understandable in its application, and with relevant and efficient reporting requirements.
On the easy-to-understand question, my colleague would like to raise a number of points that we hope will be of use to the committee in its detailed review of the bill.
It's important to state at the outset that the underlying objectives of Bill C-293—i.e., achieving greater clarity of purpose, strengthening accountability, and setting new standards of transparency—are consistent with the guidance we have received from the government. These are core elements of better aid. They are objectives that lie at the heart of the aid effectiveness agenda that the Minister of International Cooperation had the opportunity to discuss with you less than three weeks ago.
For the past six months, CIDA has been implementing a four-part program to make aid more efficient, through a more strategic focusing of Canadian cooperation, a systematic improvement of program delivery, a more effective and efficient use of our resources and a clear accountability for results. These issues can also be found in several provisions of this bill.
In terms of the objective that it must be understandable in its application, I want to identify a number of potential problem areas for consideration, taking into account as well any amendments the sponsor of Bill C-293 has put to the committee.
The first has to do with the petitions system. Measures to increase the responsiveness of the aid program to those for whom aid is intended are indeed important, but we have questions about its value-added, the management requirements, and overhead implications for the aid program.
A second question relates to how we would apply the mandatory requirement, as we see it, to consult international agencies and Canadian civil society organizations on any decision involving the use of aid. This could cover literally thousands of decisions every year, around the world, for which specific consultative arrangements would need to be established and where Canadian civil society organizations may not even be present.
We're very much engaged on an ongoing basis with consultative processes. These are essential to our effectiveness, be they on partner relations, country strategies, or sectoral and operational issues, for example. But we are concerned about the administrative implications of doing so, as formulated in this proposed bill, on an indiscriminate basis.
We see a related problem in how we would interpret in law the otherwise critically important principle of taking into account the perspectives of the poor. CIDA and its more than 700 Canadian partners currently do so through a variety of formal processes--for example, project steering committees, country strategy exercises, consultations on different themes and sectors--and a lot of informal meetings, through site visits, through discussions, through background research. This is what we do right now in taking account of perspectives of the poor. In law it is unclear what would be the test of performance in this particular area. We raise that as an issue.
Moving on, we've had good experience with advisory committees. We believe they can add real value and transparency to Canada's international cooperation program. We wonder, however, whether limiting advice to ministers to a single advisory committee is preferable to special purpose committees that can provide specialized advice on particular issues. In three weeks, for example, an expert panel is being established under the minister's authority to examine issues related to Canadian partnership programming in civil society. The composition of this committee has been designed specifically in relation to its particular mandate.
More can be done to strengthen reporting for accountability and results. Bill C-293 contains several provisions in this regard. The requirement to report on any activity or initiative taken under the bill is very broad, and in our view unprecedented. Other reporting provisions are the responsibility of various ministers, and we expect that the committee will want to ensure that there is no blurring of the accountability relationship that specific ministers might have to Parliament.
These are some of the operational questions, Mr. Chair and committee members, raised as we go through some of the specifics of Bill C-293. We'd be very pleased to discuss them and other areas of interest. We hope our perspectives will serve the needs of the committee.
Thank you very much.