Thank you. I'd just like to spend a few minutes talking a bit more about how we actually work, and offer a few comments about some lessons learned. Then, as requested, we have some recommendations that we think the committee should consider.
Gord was talking about some of the community-to-community relationships, but I'd like to stress that the work we do is more than just about communities and municipalities working together. We approach a country and we work with that country at a national level in terms of a strategy and then build the community-level and municipal-level initiatives within that strategy.
If I may, I will paint a bit of a picture of Ghana as an example of a country where we have a focus. FCM as a national association in Canada has worked with the national association in Ghana. Together we have developed a strategy for local development in Ghana. It's not our FCM strategy; it's the national association's strategy in Ghana. Then within that strategy we would work with our members, and the Ghanaians would work with their members, to identify specific municipalities that would work together in the kinds of municipal partnerships that Gord was just talking about a few minutes ago, where municipalities, within the context of the national strategy, would establish formal relationships on a two-year cycle. And they would work on very practical issues, such as financial management, solid waste management, any of the key issues that municipal governments do in their communities.
What's really important here is that we don't build stuff, we don't build roads, we don't build bridges or solid waste sites; we're really working on the governance elements. So we'd be working with the municipal government, with the council, on how to manage a municipal government more effectively, how to engage their community in more effective local democracy and local governance, so that what the municipality actually does is in concert with the objectives and interests of the society at large. It also is really an important element for creating some equity and engaging the impoverished and the marginalized groups in the discussions about how a municipal government works in those communities to serve their community interests.
All of this is done within the national framework, so if a country--for example, Ghana--has a poverty reduction strategy paper or a national development strategy, our work fits within that national context as well. As Gord said earlier, inevitably as municipal governments in Canada are engaged with partners overseas, the communities in Canada get involved and they work together with the communities in Ghana or in the other countries where we work.
We've done this for 20 years, as Gord said. We've learned a lot of lessons and there are some lessons we would like to point out to this group.
First of all, for effective democratic development, for effective governance, one has to work within the system that exists. So as I was describing a few minutes ago, we come in, we're working with national and local partners, we're working within the context of national government programs and strategies, so that it's inside the system. It's also working with the existing institutions, so that we as Canadians are not creating new institutions; we're supporting the strengthening of existing institutions and supporting their capacity to respond to the needs of their community.
We also believe this kind of work is not fast. It takes time. You have to build relationships, so there are long-term commitments required. When our municipalities get involved in their development work, as I mentioned earlier, it's a two-year cycle, but typically these cycles go several times over. So at the end of two years there's an evaluation process, there's a realigning of that partnership between the two partners, and then they continue. And some of them have continued for 10 or 15 years. It's very much a long-term approach to development.
What's really fundamental in this, however, is that we are talking about partnerships between practitioners, between sectors. So in some of the development language, one could call it communities of practice related to municipal government. We're bringing the sector of municipal government in Canada to work with the sector of municipal government in Ghana, or Guyana, or wherever it happens to be. It's not just about technical assistance of someone with a particular expertise coming like a consultant to do some work. It's about the municipal government and its community working with that municipal government in that community. These relationships are much more than technical exchanges. They're really about partnerships between Canadian practitioners and overseas practitioners to solve problems that are identified amongst themselves as priorities.
Another element of this is the peer-to-peer approach. When we are working overseas, we are not bringing development professionals who go to Uganda for two weeks, do a nice report, and then they're on an airplane to some other place for another report. We're bringing the folks who do the work here in Canada, and they're volunteering their time to go and sit down with the folks who do the work in Kampala, or in Nairobi, or anywhere else where we're working. They're the people who really do the work. They are bringing the real Canadian experience. They're not saying, we do it in Canada the way it should be done and you should follow what we do. What they're saying is, we have a certain experience and we in Canada have come to a certain place in our development because of that experience, and because it's so practical, we can work through and help solve your problems in your context in the way that makes sense in your community. It's very much a practitioner-based approach.
It also very much stimulates a collaborative learning experience. In the networks that Gord was referring to earlier, the United Cities and Local Governments and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, etc., there are a lot of venues for this global sharing of learning and exchange that creates the mutual benefits that are so important in this kind of partnership.
In closing, Mr. Chair, we're suggesting four recommendations for this committee to consider.
One, there needs to be recognition that sub-national groups, municipal governments in our particular case, are really important in democratic development. Democratic development isn't just about parliaments and legal frameworks at a national level; it's about the system and local governance, and municipal governments that are an important part of that system.
The second recommendation is that we think it's important that the programming done through the Government of Canada via CIDA empowers Canadians to be involved in this work, so that Canadian municipal governments or Canadian practitioners in democracy can be working with their colleagues overseas in very practical ways. This is really important.
The third thing we think is important is that not only is it necessary to engage Canadian organizations in what happens overseas, but we think CIDA and other departments of the Government of Canada that work internationally need to be ready to engage Canadian organizations like FCM in some of their thinking and strategies and policy development about Canadian positions on these issues with respect to overseas development and other Canadian interests. FCM and other organizations have something to contribute to the Canadian debate about Canadian positions on these issues.
The last recommendation I would like to bring to your attention is a document that has been circulated to the committee. We call it the global program for local governance. We're suggesting that this is an approach that would enable FCM and the Government of Canada to work together in a much more coherent collaboration around sharing Canadian municipal experience, local governance, and local democracy internationally, as opposed to the current arrangement, where we're working with CIDA on a variety of projects, but there's no continuity over the long term. Projects come, projects go, but there's no long-term strategy or long-term perspective on how to engage the municipal sector in Canadian interests overseas. We're suggesting that supporting this global program would facilitate a coherent approach to engaging Canadian municipal government and Canadian international interests overseas.