Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 12th, 2008

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I would fall off the chair if Madame Barbot agreed with me.

What I'm saying quite clearly, and I'm going to say it again, is this is a partisan display. The amendment that came down here that Madame Barbot wants is not exactly what she's trying to make. She can put the amendment again. I've given her that opportunity. She refuses to do it. She wants to muddle my motion, which I want to study, which is the Canadian delivery. Why are we not talking about Canadian delivery? Why do we want to talk about foreign capacity for developing nations under this motion?

That is why I am raising this question. And I do understand, Madame Barbot, exactly what it is, but I also understand that you, being a third party, can't just keep bringing on to your agenda what you want to do. This being the foreign affairs committee, you do have the opportunity to do that, as you took the opportunity when you declined our motion when we asked for unanimous consent on Pakistan, which was nothing, just asking for--

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Point of order.

Mr. Chair, the honourable speaker, Mr. Obhrai, has said he wants this on the record. I feel it my duty to inform him that his children will read this one day, and he may be embarrassed--

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

It's more a point of clarification.

Continue, Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I think it was stupid of him to come around and say that. I am here on a serious debate, and these guys here talk about my children. I think my children would be very proud of what I am saying here, making sense here. What would be the stupid thing is for them to know how you acted stupid, not me acting stupid.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Obhrai.

Madame Barbot on a point of order.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Chair, please tell me if I am mistaken, but I feel that we are addressing the chair when we have the floor in this room. I really do not feel comfortable when I am addressed directly by the speaker. I would like us to follow the rules. I do not need to feel attacked by anyone when I am making a motion. Making motions is part of our process. I am asking that my motion be considered, not that it be thrown back at me as if I had done something terrible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Barbot.

Madame Barbot brings out a very important point, and that is that in this debate we will continue to bring it through the chair. On the other hand, there has been a little bit of conflict and confrontation from the opposition as well, straight through to the member as he was speaking.

I agree that Mr. Obhrai needs to put his comments through the chair. I also would suggest to the opposition, in order to keep a certain level of decorum, which we want to have here, that those comments be brought through the chair as well.

Mr. Martin, you've had a couple of interventions already on a point of order. You now have a point of clarification. Is this to clarify something, or wanting clarification?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

It's just a clarification of what Mr. Obhrai said, Mr. Chair.

Through you, Mr. Chair, I would ask Mr. Obhrai. He accused us of acting stupid. Could you ask him to clarify what “acting stupid” is?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Obhrai, there's no need to clarify that. We need to be very cautious in our language, be judicious in our comments.

Just one other thing, Mr. Obhrai. Just for another point of clarification, you mentioned that you intended to go through the 190 countries. Where are we on that list now?

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

We've just started.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Okay. Continue, Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Chair, the issue is quite serious. We want to discuss delivery of Canadian food aid. We want to hear from Canadian players. We want to hear about this thing. But when you start muddling this with capacity-building of developing nations.... It's a very wide subject.

Let's talk for a second about the capacity of developing nations and why the scope of that study would be very different from what I propose, and why the motion that Madame Barbot proposed would change the essence of what I'm trying to do.

Under the proposal that Madame..... She may have picked it up from the food convention, and that's fine, but I am more interested in the study that I put forward about how Canada's food aid program is effective and what it's doing to Canadian players.

When we talk about developing capacity, we can talk about many things. Every developing country is different. There is no cohesiveness over there. I said in my last speech that we had people here from Kenya, who talked about climate change and the impact it was having on the collapse of the Kenyan agricultural system.

When I was in Nairobi the grass that feeds the cattle industry and on which the milk production is based was contaminated. Canada had to help them because the milk production in that country had started falling down, which was impacting the poor people of that region. This is the kind of capacity-building you're talking about. I'm only talking of country number one, which is Kenya at this stage.

Let's talk about capacity number two, in Tanzania. When the Ujama program took place, and when the Government of Tanzania moved over a million people into collective villages, the whole delivery system of that country collapsed. The whole agricultural delivery system collapsed, and they had to start importing food. One can do the study and ask what happened in Tanzania and why the productive capacity of that developing nation has fallen down.

As a matter of fact, let's talk about Zimbabwe--the gentleman's favourite country, which he likes to talk about--and how the--

[An hon. member]

How long is he going to be allowed to talk?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

You refuse to worry about Canada, because you're not following my motion. Let's talk about Canada. Let's talk about Quebec. Let's talk about what is happening. That's fine. Just leave my motion exactly where it is and don't go to the other countries.

But you want to go to the other countries. Let's talk about what has happened in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe the dictatorship of Mugabe and the moving of the white farmers has resulted in a total failure of the production of food grain in that country. So what happens? What is the food production capacity that we are going to talk about in these countries? This is only in Zimbabwe.

Now, for this present moment South Africa has a good agricultural policy. It is one of the driving economic forces. And in the developing countries, as Gerald Schmitz, who's written a very good book on international development says, agriculture is the prime economic engine of growth of those nations. Is it not? Therefore, capacity-building is critically important. That is why CIDA gives food aid, to assist.

I can give you a very good example. When I was growing up in Tanzania, Canadians came and said we are going to teach you how to grow wheat. They came in with their food aid program. They brought in large trucks. They had vast fields of maize plantation turned into wheat plantation, and it was considered to be the top disaster in the world for food aid programs into another country. Why? Because it didn't have the local capacity.

What I'm saying here is that every country has a problem, not only one country. We can't lump them together and ask, which developing country do we want to pick? Do we want to pick Egypt? Which country to we want?

Today they are fighting in Chad. Many of the experts who have come back talking about Darfur are also saying that Darfur is about land reform; it is about the capacity to grow food over there. That is one of the other major wars going on. Now that has spread into Chad. I just came from Mali, and the same thing. So which country are we going to talk about on this productive capacity of developing countries?

When I'm finished, my colleague will speak on Haiti. He did a thorough report on Haiti. You know what happened in Haiti.

[An hon. member]

The committee did the report.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Well, yes, you're right. The committee did the report. I'll give you that. The committee did the report, and the report talked about deforestation and agriculture, lost capacity in Haiti, which was, by itself, a big report.

We can do a report on Zimbabwe. We can do a report on all these countries. How in hell's name can you fix it in here? That's what I want to know. So in that capacity, I am asking that this amendment be removed.

I haven't even talked about Latin America, so let's go to Latin America. When I moved it, I just said Africa. So what about capacity-building in Latin America?

I've just been through five countries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, I know, but for the good of the committee, I'm going to ask you to consider this: I'm telling you, we're on the edges of our seats on this speech, but I would like to see if you'd be willing to close off your speech here.

There are a couple of comments here on the amendment, and then we would vote on this amendment.

I don't want this committee to be.... I don't think anyone is hijacking it. I know the disappointment. I made the decision that it was in order, so I'll abide by it, but there are some difficulties here. I understand your frustration that it takes us off into a completely different study.

It's entirely up to you. I'm not going to cut your time off, but if I could encourage you to close down, there are a couple of others who would like to speak to the amendment.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Chair, since you are a very nice chairman, and you have been a fair chairman, despite what the others say, in the interests of this thing I am willing to consider that.

I was going to speak about 198 countries; I've only gone through five. There is a lot more we could talk about here, a lot more about developing capacity. There are a lot of countries we could hear about. I just want it to be on the record very clearly that this amendment and the one we just finished keep coming out here because they're coming from us, but it takes away....

However, we will put forward the motions. We will put forward our witnesses. We will not participate in that portion of this thing, but we will bring forward doing the study in Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You have my floor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Obhrai.

Mr. Martin, and then Mr. Goldring and Mr. Patry—very quickly.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will be brief. I will not use the soaring rhetoric of our colleague across the way—

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, is the rhetoric...[Inaudible--Editor].

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

—other than to say that while we certainly have sympathy for the issue at hand, we will not be supporting this particular initiative, amended or not amended, because the committee has really determined that we have other more urgent priorities to deal with, priorities the Canadian public is aware of, priorities that are a matter of life and death, as, of course, is food security. Hopefully we'll be able to incorporate the issue of food security when we examine such issues as Afghanistan and Sudan, and perhaps we'll be able to get to the larger issue of aid effectiveness in Canada, which we hope we'll be able to look at as a committee.

Let's look at the larger picture of the effectiveness of aid, the activities of CIDA internationally, and by doing so we'll be incorporating Madame Barbot's issue and the concerns of Mr. Obhrai and others.

Merci .

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Goldring.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Mr. Chair, I have to agree with my colleague and emphasize that this amendment diametrically changes the original motion. I'll cite a couple of examples to illustrate this.

If we look at the issue of Haiti, what we're going to be determining there is its local productive capacity. Or if we look at the situation in several other countries—it might be Guyana too—what is the local productive capacity there? Without analyzing Guyana and understanding the necessity of it having dike systems and dams in order to have any productive capacity.... In other words, it's a multiple-layered analysis that would have to be done on each and every situation. In Guyana, it's like Holland, in that they've created their productive capacity by damming and diking the oceans. And if you look at Haiti, what is their productive capacity with all the erosion they've had in Haiti? Something has to be done on reforestation. The erosion is what's holding the productive capacity back.

Each and every country may have different elements to it. If we try to analyze what Canada's aid-giving capacity is for each country and get bogged down trying to analyze what each and every aid-receiving country has as its own inherent capabilities for producing foodstuffs on its own, we're going to be talking about two entirely different initiatives. I'm very much afraid the amendment that's being proposed to the motion would in effect make a very ineffectual study from the initial motion.

With that in mind, without going into all of the different countries, the 180 different countries, there are certainly enough examples to go by to see that each country, each area, has its own variables that would have to be examined. Those variables may be, as I said, from diking to damming to erosion, and they may also be irrigation requirements, or even salination plants in order to be able to have any water to be able to have any production.

So if we try to include that amendment, the complexity of any resulting study would be so vast as to be virtually ineffective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Goldring.

Mr. Patry.