Foreign Affairs Committee on Jan. 30th, 2007

[John Hoyles]

If I could add, Mr. Chair, I think our experience has shown that if you want to have development be robust in developing countries, if you do not have that underlying good governance, of which the key portion is rule of law, so that when you're doing the work, when you want things to actually function—You need to know that the rules are in place, that everybody plays by the same rules, that no matter whether you're very poor or moving towards middle class in any of these countries, you have the ability to know that the infrastructure is there.

We just take it for granted that when a policeman stops you and gives you a speeding ticket, there's a process if you don't agree. But in developing countries, those processes aren't there. You need to have those processes in place so that not only will you have the aid that countries are giving to developing countries, but you'll also encourage the private sector to go into those countries and invest because they'll know that the rules of the game are going to be the same and not changing on a whim.

[Robin L. Sully]

I guess I would add that if you were going to put a priority, I think it would be good to put it on rule of law, for the reasons that John has suggested. And if you go around and you're travelling and talking to your colleagues who are working in this, and talking to the World Bank, I think you're going to find that this is something new on the agenda that everybody is struggling with. And Canada has a leg up. We're good at it. We have a lot more experience than a lot of other countries in this area. It's an area that we seemingly can work well in. We have strong institutions.

So perhaps this is an area.... Not to sound self-interested, but it's been proved that rule of law, good governance, is the biggest index for the reduction of poverty. We're experienced. We're talented in that area. Canada should be putting a focus on this. There are a lot of tools, and there are a lot of organizations out there that can help you, that are keen and want to be engaged. I think we should take advantage of this.

Justice is fundamental to empowerment, and people want it. We see the results of not investing in this.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Ms. Barbot, for two minutes.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Thank you for joining us. You stated that Canada seems to engage more at a higher level, that is with justice officials and the Supreme Court, and that more effort needs to be directed at civil society groups.

Bearing this in mind, to what extent do you encourage Canadian NGOs to engage in activities aimed at educating the public? You didn't mention this aspect of their work and I'm curious to hear your views on this subject.

[William H. Goodridge]

I am strongly supportive. When you ask what I think about it, we would certainly agree with that, if we could empower or develop some resources for NGOs to assist public education on access to the lower courts, and for the courts themselves on developing the capacity to process litigants before them.

[Robin L. Sully]

You know, there's a challenge because most of our money goes bilaterally, so it goes into governments. And often in the countries we're working in, governments are not necessarily open to the engagement of civil society, because those are the voices that are often critical of government. The bar happens to be one of those, but of course there are other NGOs also. By funnelling money through the government, it's unlikely that you're going to be able to empower NGOs or people who normally have a voice against the government. So we have to think of more imaginative vehicles in terms of funding and engaging a broad range of stakeholders.

I don't think we'd ever say that you shouldn't engage a supreme court. We should. But we should be engaging at every level, including civil society, including engaging the public, so they understand their rights and they know that those rights are enforceable. It's not enough to tell people they have rights. If those rights are not enforceable and they don't see that they're enforceable, then you have a much larger problem than you had when they didn't even understand they had rights.

[John Hoyles]

I would simply say, to add to that, what we find when we're working in these countries is that they want to engage with the bar association and other NGOs that are not connected to government because they feel more comfortable in that they're not being pushed into a position. And the All China Lawyers Association comes back as an example of where we've been able to develop that relationship because we are not government.

One of the funny little experiences we had was in Kenya. When we started, one of the things was that the judges weren't talking to the lawyers at all. How we got them together was that we got some used computers. It's a common law system in Kenya, and they had for a number of years not been writing down the decisions. So how do you argue on a precedent basis when you have no decision? You say to the judge, “Well, Your Honour, do you remember that case a few years ago that you decided that's not written down? You decided this.” So using the computers, we were able to get them to start recording cases and decisions so there would be a record. We were told the judges would never meet and talk to the lawyers in an informal setting. But by bringing them in and training them on these computers, we did bring them together.

But then you talk about measurement. It's a very small example, but you have dialogue going on between the bench and the bar, which in western countries is automatic. But it wasn't there. It's that kind of thing. It's because it was the CBA. It wasn't the Canadian government or the Department of Justice—it was an NGO—and I think that had a particular impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to the government side. Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you. I'll share my time with my colleague Bill.

I have two questions here. You're right that Canadians do have excellent reputation and expertise overseas in this issue. At the same time, you talked about local engagement. The new area coming out is these tribunals that have been set up, like the Rwanda genocide tribunal and all these things. I was there in Arusha, looking at the tribunal. There is a huge amount of expertise sitting in the tribunal—local expertise, not outside expertise.

The Rwanda tribunal is coming to an end very soon—by this year, I think it is. There is a big potential of losing all of this expertise that was gained in the law. Is there any way in which your area is pushing to see, say, that you are engaged with the governments of east Africa? There's a best opportunity right there to see how you can move to retain their expertise before it is lost.

This is a new area coming up. You have been all concentrating on helping the bar society and everything out there, but United Nations tribunals sitting around the world are something new that has come out. I think they're an area that we should look at to see that the expertise is not lost.

I have another question related to this. You were talking about federal spending on the rule of law and everything that you request of this. The committee has just passed Bill C-293, which says that aid should be focused on poverty reduction. What would happen to this? This would not be classified as aid, so how would we then be able to transfer money over there? What are your thoughts on that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Madam Sully.

[Robin L. Sully]

Perhaps I can start with the tribunals.

On the tribunals, it's very interesting in Arusha, because there are millions and millions of dollars being spent on the tribunal, but if you go down to the local court in Arusha, you can't get decisions because there's no paper. The lawyers have to take in their own paper to get a decision.

The discrepancy between the resources available to international tribunals and their connection with the local environment is a huge question. Most of the people working in the international tribunals are coming from around the world, so there's not a huge focus. Of course, there are some people coming from the whole east African area, but they're coming from all over Africa and some of the defence lawyers are also coming from Canada, as a matter of fact.

So there are absolutely resources there, and there's training there. There are some library resources that I think could be very useful. We should certainly capture those if we can.

But we would say that what's more important is to focus. There has also been a problem with those courts and how they relate to the domestic jurisdictions. There are some problems in Arusha and its relationship to the domestic jurisdiction of Rwanda.

Having said that, I think what we're focusing on broadly is capacity-building, and not just with lawyers, but with judges and with every segment in the country itself. While there are certain lessons to be learned from that, the impact will be useful, but I think a better approach is to continue to work domestically and build those institutions and give them the necessary resources to develop internally. Rwanda is a good example. A justice system that works is probably going to have a much bigger impact in Rwanda than the Rwanda tribunal.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

What about my second question?

[William H. Goodridge]

I'll try to tackle the second question.

I'm strongly of the view that if you put dollars into the rule of law, you have the greatest prospect of reducing poverty. The idea is that unless you create a system in which the poor and the vulnerable in society are able to assert their rights, you don't have much chance of eliminating poverty. Elimination of poverty is a legal and political process, not a process where you throw food at a situation of poverty. You have to create a structure to allow people to stand up for their rights.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

So Bill C-293, in your view, would allow you to get aid money? Is that what you think?

[William H. Goodridge]

I don't know all the details. Right now, I know there's a focus on poverty reduction. I know that about 30% of CIDA funding actually goes to grass roots organizations or civil society organizations that are directed at poverty reduction and that the Canadian Bar Association has been the beneficiary of some of that money. I'm not exactly sure of the legislation of which you're speaking.

[Robin L. Sully]

I think the World Bank has said they've done an index on all the efforts that they've had over time. They've said that the one index that made the most impact on the reduction of poverty was improving good governance. That's the one they can measure, of all the things they've done.

If you're looking at the millennium goals, I think we're saying it's understood that if all those specific interventions that are geared toward reducing poverty and empowering people are not funded or founded on good governance, they're bound to fail. If they don't have rule of law—Rule of law gives the poor a voice. The rich can abort the rules because they don't care about the rules. It's the poor who can rely on the rules and have something to exercise so that they have a voice. That's why it's so important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam Sully.

Mr. Casey, you have two and a half minutes.

[Bill Casey, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you very much.

I find this really interesting. I wasn't aware of this effort that the Bar Association has, and I applaud you for it. I'm sorry we didn't have this presentation about two weeks ago, because some of us, Alexa McDonough and I and two others, just came back from Kenya. We were there for a week, and it was a very educational experience. But most of the focus there is on health care, governance, and education. I don't think we heard anything about the justice system. Now, after hearing your presentation, it was obviously an omission on our part not to spend some time on it. I do agree absolutely that one of the key parts of democracy is a justice system that works, and also a free press and an elected government.

We met with the World Bank representative there, Colin Bruce, and we had a long chat with him. But again, there was a lot of discussion about governance and a lot of discussion about corruption. There were cases where governments or donor countries have either withheld money for NGOs and for good work or delayed the money or found a way around the government. I find your presentation fascinating. I applaud what you're doing, and I hope that we can help you do it.

In the case of education, it was fascinating to me that Canada, Britain, and some other countries have created a bank account in 18,500 elementary schools into which we put money directly into the bank accounts of the schools. It is run by the trustees of the school, the parents of the students, not the school executive, not the government. We've actually found a way to go around everything and go directly to the schools to make sure they buy books and instruction materials. I don't know if you can follow that model or not, but it's an interesting model, a way to make sure you get good value for the money.

Mr. Wilfert asked you how you judge your accomplishments. I'd like to start at the beginning. Where do you start? If you're working in a country—and I'm not referring to Kenya—where there is a lot of corruption in the government, how do you start your process?

[Robin L. Sully]

I guess we try to look at everything, and we find champions. Bill had mentioned champions. We look for champions. We look for people who want to make change. Then we look at the institution they represent. That's where we start. We look at how they fit into the broader system, and what kind of impact that would make. We try to engage them in terms of building their capacity to work and open up areas, always looking at— For instance, if we start with the bar, we still want to know. We don't want to just focus on the bar, because by themselves they can do little.

At some point we have to engage the government. Even though you're going around, at some point the government has to change. You have to think of how do we engage them to change them. That may be a longer-term goal, but we always have to be looking at that. We have to decide where our point of intersection is, where the champions are, and then how we're going to stage our approach so we can bring all those actors together some way. Perhaps we have to be satisfied with small changes to begin with, and hope that they snowball.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam Sully.

We'll go to Madam McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Just before I raise a couple questions I'd like to take the opportunity to welcome back Madame Lalonde, whose participation was very much missed over the last while. I'm sure all members share the same feeling.

Maybe I'm just suffering from such culture shock as a result of having spent the last two weeks in Kenya and Uganda that I'm having a really hard time relating to where you're coming from. I have to be very honest about that. I agree with you absolutely that the absence of infrastructure of many kinds in sub-Saharan Africa is just a mind-boggling obstacle to making real advances, whether it's with respect to millennium development goals or any number of other indices that you might want to adopt. But I guess that after the trip that some of us have just taken, when you're looking at the absolute total absence of infrastructure for safe drinking water and sanitation, where World Bank policies have resulted in the annihilation of such education and health programs that were in existence, it's a bit of a leap to try to really grasp the application and the relevance of what you're proposing, maybe because it just seems fairly abstract from what we've been seeing.

I have a couple of very specific questions. You've made references to there needing to be a higher priority on rule of law. It's absolutely clear that there need to be measures taken and progress towards elimination of corruption, no question. I guess the issue is how best to do that. You've indicated that advocacy groups from outside just aren't going to cut it. So what you're really talking about is capacity-building through strengthening the rule of law. It worries me a lot if we're talking here about either/or.

I'll ask a couple of quick questions, because I really want you to take the time to address them.

My first question is where you think Canada is now in terms of meeting its international obligations undertaken again and again and again as part of the millennium development goal process and meeting the minimum—not the maximum, but the minimum—that has long been seen as the international standard for 0.7% of national income to be devoted to official development assistance.

Secondly, you've spoken about how putting in place rule of law will empower the poor and be a very effective poverty reduction tool and ensure access of the poor to legal representation. But actually what we've seen in Canada over the last dozen or more years is a significant erosion of programs that would actually give people living in poverty the opportunity to assert their rights, serious erosion to the point where now we're looking pretty bad in the world among developed countries in that regard. So I'm wondering if you could comment. I don't know whether there's a legal counterpart to “Physician, heal thyself”, but I would think the bar society would want to play a role in addressing that.

Thirdly, sometimes it's important to look at your neighbours as well as just within. One of the things this committee has been very aware of, and particularly the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, is that in Colombia, for example, we have people being outright murdered for engaging in any kind of political activism, labour leaders assassinated by the thousands. I'm wondering if what you see is the relevance of what you're proposing, for example, to the situation in Colombia today and whether you've had any involvement in Central or South America around some of these obviously very serious legal requirements, or whether you would see the kind of thing you're proposing as having a relationship to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam McDonough.

Mr. Hoyles.

[John Hoyles]

I'll take the last two questions first, if that's okay with you, Mr. Chair.

On the issue of rule of law, you made a comment about legal aid and access to justice in this country and the funding being cut. You may be aware that the Canadian Bar Association is suing the federal government and the B.C. government with a legal aid test case about the constitutional right to legal aid. So we're very aware; it's one of our top priorities.

But our experience, in the work we've done, is that if you look at it—and I can appreciate your having just come back from Kenya and Uganda—you wonder where to start. Our experience is you have to use the old wisdom to take small bites, and you'll make progress.

The example I would give you is of Cambodia. To go back to Mr. Casey's point, our starting point there was with a very small bar of 50 lawyers. Pol Pot did literally kill all the lawyers. The fact is, we have now been working with them for a number of years. We set up the training program—it was a partnership, actually, with Japan and with the Barreau de Lyon in France—to get a whole training program for lawyers started. That's where you're building the infrastructure so that the people can have a system they can rely on.

Concerning the Colombia example, I'll have Robin Sully speak to our experience in the Caribbean. My only general comment is that we have many more projects that we would be like to be involved in, but now the resources don't seem to be there to get the funding. Responsive projects are one of the best types of projects to do, where you identify a thing and make a proposal to CIDA or the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank and you do these types of things. Sometimes there's just not enough money to go around.

Robin, you may want to comment further.

[William H. Goodridge]

I'll make a few comments.

I know you've just been there, but I think that while we have lots of problems in Canada that we can't ignore, and we can even say there may be some levels of corruption and cronyism here in Canada and weaknesses in our rule of law, it's not even in the same stratosphere, or on the same page, as what the situation is in some of these developing countries, including Kenya and Uganda. The differences are unimaginable.