Foreign Affairs Committee on May 31st, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Beer.

The final question is to Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today, ladies and gentlemen. Your presentation was most interesting.

I would first like to congratulate you, Mr. Beer, for your frankness in explaining the problems faced by police officers or members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over there. I had asked a question of Mr. Thompson, who preceded you, about why we did not have any conclusive results. I do not find you very positive, so I will direct my questions to Ms. Laporte.

Ms. Laporte, I am familiar with the work done by CIDA employees in the field, because I was the critic for the Bloc Québécois on CIDA, and I would not want you to take my questions as reflecting poorly on CIDA. I simply want to understand what happened.

Impunity and corruption have long existed in Haiti. I have a friend who went there in 2000 to do a doctoral thesis and who came back saying that the system is rotten and impunity is omnipresent. In the place where he was living, there were about 5,000 police officers for eight million inhabitants. People describe the situation as horrific.

Since CIDA has been in Haiti for a long time and since I know its workers there well enough to know that usually they are very well informed about what is happening on the ground, why is it that CIDA nevertheless continue to invest in Haiti? It disengaged gradually and has less and less of a financial investment, but it has nevertheless invested in this country. Did we not have an obligation to produce results?

In an announcement on May 1, 2006, the Minister said that CIDA would be investing $48 million in Haiti. Twenty million dollars will go to the local development program to help communities assume responsibility for socio-economic development, and $5 million will be used to support democracy.

There are two major problems in Haiti. First, people must have food. So the first problem is agriculture. The second is security.

Is it not strange to spend $20 million on socio-economic development to promote small business and only $5 million on democracy, when we know that this is such a big problem? You were saying earlier that there was no development possible without security, and vice versa.

What official guarantees do we have that this time this will work? Earlier, you gave some guarantees, but are there any others? Do we have any guarantees from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN, or do people simply assume that Préval will take certain actions?

I noticed that it was a joint statement by CIDA and the RCMP. Can any pressure be applied to ensure that this works?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Bourgeois, for an excellent speech.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I had four questions. I had to group them together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Madame Laporte and Mr. Beer, Mr. Superintendent.

[Suzanne Laporte]

On your question regarding corruption, there is no doubt that we are constantly aware of these situations, and of the culture of impunity that exists there. This culture is changing very gradually. I think that for the time being, the approach is very gradual. I referred to the fact that the director general of the national police force has dealt with some difficult cases. We think that others will appear. You will appreciate that in the interest of the success of the operations, we do not announce them beforehand. He must use very high-level models to send out strong signals to the rest of the population that this culture of impunity is changing and will disappear someday. I think these are very promising steps for the future.

It goes without saying that in managing its projects and programming, CIDA has risk-reduction measures for each project. We have follow-up project officers and control procedures for financing to ensure that the money is spent for the purpose intended and that it does not end up in the pockets of individuals who should not get this money. So we have some very effective financial management procedures in place, together with follow-up officers and financial controls.

We have an obligation to produce results for all of our projects. When we look at the country as a whole, there are a number of factors over which we have no immediate and direct control. We must proceed by means of a political dialogue with other members of the community. I am pleased that you referred to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others.

In order to provide budget support to the government for something in its budget, we need mechanisms to demonstrate that money is for the salaries of police officers, to take this example. The same is true in the case of teachers who were not paid for a number of months. Before we consider whether or not we are going to fund a program, control procedures must be put in place.

With respect to local development, the amount of $48 million does not reflect our entire cooperation effort. I think you will be hearing from Ms. Verner, the minister, who will be appearing before you next week. She will be talking to you about cooperation generally.

CIDA is focused mainly on four areas: governance, democracy and the essential needs in healthcare and education. We are also doing a great deal of work in the area of economic recovery, with credit unions being set up for access to credit, in order to set the economy on its feet. We are also working in the area of electricity infrastructure. We work both with the government and with civil society. I do not think these are choices that have to be made. We have to look at the entire situation and determine which areas are the most promising. The donor community is making a concerted effort to determine where our value added lies. Thus, local development was necessary.

I believe that the speaker who preceded me emphasized the importance of rural development. We don't want to focus all of our efforts on Port-au-Prince. We must take the regions into account.

Are there any guarantees? The guarantees are what they are. We take steps and make provisions to ensure that funds are managed properly. We carry out evaluations to correct the situation when difficulties arise. It would be presumptuous of me to provide absolute guarantees. This is part of the political dialogue and the administrative measures in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Laporte.

I think that pretty well wraps up our meeting.

I have just one quick question to Mr. Beer. Does my memory serve me correctly, that perhaps one year ago we suffered the loss of an RCMP officer in Haiti?

[C/Supt David Beer]

Mr. Bourque was actually a contractor. He was part of the election security group of 25 who came down.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

He was retired RCMP?

[C/Supt David Beer]

He was a retired RCMP officer. They were contracted by CIDA and Foreign Affairs through CANADEM.

Yes, you're correct. He was killed there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Is that the only loss we have incurred directly because of our involvement there?

[C/Supt David Beer]

It's the only loss Canada has ever received on a police peace mission anywhere in the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

Thank you so much for being here. Also, thank you for staying a little longer than we were originally scheduled to go. Thank you to the committee.

We are adjourned.