Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 27th, 2007

[Brock Carlton]

The Palestinian project has been in operation since 1997. We started off and have been working in the town of Rafah, which is right on the border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Canada has been in Rafah since 1948, when it started a refugee camp that is still called Canada Camp.

Our partners in that project were and are the local government of Rafah, the neighbouring local government of Khan Yunis, and the Association of Palestinian Local Authorities. Prior to the recent election we were also working with the ministry of local government and the Palestinian Authority.

I have to say that if you talk to CIDA folks, they'll tell you this was probably the only ongoing successful project over the years in terms of what we were able to do on the ground, but because of the security issues, we haven't had a Canadian there in several years. In fact, the project is closing at the end of June because we can't find a way to continue doing what we're doing in a way that satisfies the issues of the existence of Hamas in the foreign affairs policy, etc.

So we're still in discussions with CIDA, because we're trying to find some way to continue this presence without compromising the laws of the country and the policy of the government. Right now we're doing nothing but winding it down, in fact.

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

Is it the whole Canada Camp that's closing at the end of June?

[Brock Carlton]

No, it's just our project.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

That would probably be just a good spot to stop.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Madam McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

That would open up another really interesting line of questioning.

I have one very specific question to finish off on that. Of what political stripe was the local government in Rafah?

[Brock Carlton]

Do you want me to answer that right now?

It has been Fatah all along. In the recent round of local elections, Hamas won the election, but the results were thrown out. So at this point there's an appointed administrator from the Fatah government who is running the town of Rafah.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

I always think that the FCM international development program is one of the best-kept secrets, so I'm really glad you're here.

You spoke about a $12 million budget. I'm not sure that I got the answer to the question of exactly where the $12 million comes from. I add to that a question about the 2,500 municipal volunteers,. Can you clarify? I think I was under a misunderstanding about that. What we're talking about are municipal employees who are practitioners now--

[Brock Carlton]

Or elected officials.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

On average, what percentage of their time, defined either in work years or in months or whatever, would be actually expended in the country, or is that a figure that represents 2,500 municipal work years? That's my second question.

I have a third question, and this is really a comment. I wish you'd appeared before we had the session on Afghanistan, because I think you've helped to underscore the critical importance of dealing at the local level and the difficulties of building from the national level on down. I think your presentations reinforce that.

Finally, some of us have just come back from a week in Kenya, and I had the added opportunity to spend a week in Uganda. One of the most overwhelming things for us was the magnitude of the challenge to put in place the most rudimentary infrastructure in terms of sanitation, in terms of energy, in terms of even crude transportation that would allow people to get to clinics in the context of HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria.

Finally, you've spoken about HIV/AIDS several times but haven't mentioned TB and malaria. A big revelation for us was seeing on the ground that 50% of AIDS patients actually die of TB. I'm just wondering if you're dealing with the pandemic trio of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, which is of course what makes the whole challenge so complex.

[Gord Steeves]

I'll take a try at the first part, in terms of the volunteer and the people-hours. The way it generally will work in a municipality is that, simply put, an initial group of people will go over for a pretty short period of time; then, over an extended time period that could involve years, there will be secondments of civic and municipal administration--people who will go to the actual place and spend time working with the people. That's how we come to the volunteers and the hours. We leverage it through people in the community, universities, private organizations, and individual donors who also want to get involved and travel to the countries.

The nice thing and the convenient thing about the set-up is that in municipalities, as you can probably appreciate, it's often a difficult political sell to be involved in other countries, but I think people in municipalities are more tolerant of this type of outreach if the funding is coming from the federal government and is supported by the municipalities from an in-kind perspective--i.e., when people are going and actually working, it has a better perception. I think it's a real win-win in that perception.

Someone had mentioned partisanship, and again the beautiful thing about local government is our ability to get in there in a non-partisan way. You can appreciate that partisanship means one thing in Canada, and it is what it is, I suppose, but regrettably it means quite another in other parts of the world--for example, if we talk about places like Palestine.

Maybe Brock can fill you in.

[Brock Carlton]

I can say a little more on the volunteer aspect. Typically someone who goes as a volunteer overseas is going for around two weeks, and then they're hosting people back here from time to time. It's not a huge percentage of their work life, but it is a significant element. When we talk about 2,500, we're talking about 2,500 individuals who have been involved in this kind of thing over the life of the work that we've been doing. As for the $12 million, I realized when you asked the question that I didn't answer the previous question the way I think it was intended.

The current $12 million budget is a composite of a whole bunch of projects. We have two tsunami projects, we have a project on migrant labour rights in China, and we have some work in Africa. These are all of different lengths and times. This year it's $12 million. Next year we have three major projects that could close, which means our budgets could shrink next year to $8 million or $9 million, and the year after that it could go up again. It's very unstable and very unpredictable.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

The source of the $12 million is all CIDA.

[Brock Carlton]

It's CIDA. That $12 million is the CIDA contribution. The actual value of the work we do on that $12 million is about $20 million.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

That's what I was wondering.

Thank you.

[Brock Carlton]

We include the contribution.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Do you have interns from the Foreign Affairs intern program?

[Brock Carlton]

CIDA runs an intern program, and I think we anticipate maybe six interns in the next fiscal year. We'd love to have lots more, because they do great stuff.

The HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria question has been raised by our African partners particularly, and as we go into our planning for the next three-year cycle, this will become more prevalent.

Again, I just want to stress that we're not working on the medical side of things. We're working on the community issues, the urban planning and governance stuff.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We want to thank you for being with our committee today and for your comments, your written presentation, your recommendations, and certainly for the fact that you've been able to enlighten us about the work of FCM.

You mentioned Drayton Valley, Alberta. There on some on this committee who are from Alberta, as I am. I know Drayton Valley is not a large city; it's a fairly small little city, and very dependent on the oil and gas industry there. Are they just working through FCM? Are they themselves taking on a project, or do they financially support FCM in a broader way of carrying it out? How does that work?

[Gord Steeves]

Broadly based, this is an FCM CIDA-supported project. The funding to move the people back and forth, etc., and to fund whatever needs to be funded is coming form the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Drayton Valley is an excellent example. I'm not that familiar with Drayton Valley; from listening to your description, I think this is likely a small city that would ordinarily have no hope of participating in something like this, but these are good people who have something to offer Tanzania, and simply by virtue of this program and the way it's administered, they now have the opportunity to do so. There's enough community synergy and community energy that can be harnessed by virtue of this program and what it releases.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Do you know offhand the cost to the local municipality there? What kind of resources are they putting into it?

[Gord Steeves]

If they're following the standard model, it would probably be very little in terms of out-of-pocket expense. It would be people's time in terms of going and trying to build capacity, and it might be leveraging some community money.

Do you have any more specifics?

[Brock Carlton]

To put this into an order of magnitude, on a typical partnership, such as what Drayton Valley is doing in Tanzania, it could be $30,000 to $40,000 a year in terms of CIDA dollars. We calculate that generally the contribution is about 50% of the CIDA dollars.

So all the phenomenal work that Drayton Valley is doing in Tanzania around local government capacity building, working with the AIDS orphanages, and building and setting up the community foundation, which Gord was talking about earlier, is done on a shoestring. From the Government of Canada's perspective, $30,000 or $40,000 is not a lot of money.

But they don't put any of their own cash in. They're not paying for air fares or hotels. They may be hosting a dinner and stuff like that when the Tanzanians are in Canada, but their only contribution is the time of their people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

Thank you. We applaud Drayton Valley and other such communities that are involved through FCM, and obviously we applaud FCM on their good work abroad.

We will suspend for just a moment or two, and then deal with some committee business.