Foreign Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2009

[André Gosselin]

I can give you a preliminary answer. We will follow through to the end on the $15 million joint initiative that you mentioned We have not yet decided how we will continue. We will look at the results and make an informed decision.

There are many ways we can provide assistance.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That's fine, and that's what I was looking for in terms of where we're at. I hope we do. There is clearly a lot of work that needs to be done in that area. We just heard testimony on Parliament Hill from people who have been there, and I certainly saw the need for it when I was there, so I hope we see that.

I have a question related to gender violence, and that is Canada's help in initiating, as was referenced earlier, Resolution 1325 and Resolution 1820. Do we have an action plan in the bureaucracy to activate those resolutions?

[Isabelle Roy]

In terms of an action plan, what we can say is that each time an opportunity arises in a political forum, at a francophone summit—the most recent being the one in Quebec City—these issues are addressed. We can now use resolution 1820, in addition to resolution 1325, which is a new instrument. That is also an aspect we can emphasize during our meetings with stakeholders in the countries involved.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

My question is a little bit different. I understand what you're saying, but to date, do we have what I'll call an action plan? I can call it something else. I'm not really adhering to any particular term.

You're saying that to date we don't. Okay.

I'd like to see it probed. Canada has done a lot of work on this issue. We're recognized for it. You can hear testimonies of the horrific gender violence that is going on, violence that some have called femicide. I won't get into the details; people can find out for themselves.

I see this as a perfect tool for Canada to be using to deal with gender violence. I don't know of any other country, actually, that is better suited than Canada to deal with this. I applaud the work that has been done. I see it on the ground. I'll say as a comment more than a question that I hope to see us push that more. I will do everything I can on this side to encourage government to do so.

There is a reference to the Peacebuilding Commission. That's again something that I'm glad to see we're providing moneys for. Are we a member of that commission at this point? I'm not sure if we are. I know that about a year ago or so, we weren't on the Peacebuilding Commission itself.

[Isabelle Roy]

Yes, we are.

[A witness]

We're a member of it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Right, but are we on the executive body? We weren't initially, but I'm glad to hear that's changed. There's a Canadian chairing it, but it's not an official Canadian appointment; she was selected.

But that's a different issue--another issue that I have with government--so I'll leave that for another day.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Issues, issues, issues.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I have issues, Chair.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I see the Peacebuilding Commission as another tool that Canada can get behind. For those who aren't aware, this is for post-conflict countries. We might have an argument about DRC post-conflict, but it's well suited for that.

We've done some work on training of police, in particular policewomen, in Sudan. I'd like to know, from any one of the witnesses, if there's any contemplation for using that Sudan model of training police, and particularly policewomen, for the DRC.

[Isabelle Roy]

Not for the DRC, but we have an extensive police training program, mostly in west Africa. That's not for the DRC now, because they're perhaps not at that point yet.

With reference to the Peacebuilding Commission, in the region of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region there are two countries benefiting from funds from the Peacebuilding Commission, Burundi and CAR. Canada is chair of Sierra Leone.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. Abbott.

Again, this is the second round, the shorter round.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I had a meeting yesterday with some representatives who had travelled to Canada from the east Africa community. I'm talking about Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, and Tanzania. We were discussing the country-of-focus initiative that our government has undertaken, which is to make our bilateral aid more effective and accountable.

There are two things they were not aware of. Of the $4.3 billion total that is in the CIDA budget, $1.5 billion is bilateral. Furthermore, this is a focus of 80% of that $1.5 billion, so we're talking about $1.2 billion being focused now.

Kenya is one of the focus countries. They were surprised to hear that, because they had been persuaded that all of the aid was going to be cut off. I pointed out to them that in addition to the $4.3 billion that is administered by CIDA, there are many other sources of foreign aid funding available to them from Canada. As a matter of fact--this is really important--from 2005 to March 2009, we have doubled the amount of aid to Africa to $2.1 billion, obviously not all from CIDA, but from all of the sources. They were really quite encouraged by that information.

I also pointed out that the other countries that had made the commitment to double their aid to Africa were still at least one year away from reaching the goal that we have already reached. So it's something that we, as Canadians, can be very proud of.

My question for our panellists is on the east Africa community. During the course of the dialogue I had with the group, they were quite persuasive that they were pulling together their equivalent of a European Union and a trade group and so on. Relative to the issues that we're trying to wrestle with in respect to the Great Lakes region, how much significance is there, or how does this concept of the east Africa community, these five countries formally coming together as best they can, and the fact that you have the DRC, relate politically and economically, and particularly, in the geographic movement of persons within that area?

[Ken Sunquist]

You've asked a question that I would run out the clock on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have about a minute.

[Ken Sunquist]

I won't answer it for that long, then.

Our comments are that where you had warring states before, they are now starting to cooperate--economically, politically, militarily. In effect, that is what Canada has been trying to do, that they take charge of their own destiny.

Madame Lalonde asked the question around prosperity and sustainable development, whether it's the Canadian investment fund for Africa, whether it's Export Development Canada, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, or CIDA, using a number of instruments of the Government of Canada to move towards.... We can give aid, but in the long term, it's how to get sustainable development. And the only way you can do it as a region is if all the countries contribute to it.

The answer is very clear: we have to build those institutions one by one and make sure that the countries and the region benefit from them. So you've asked the right question.

This gets back to the other question, about what has happened since the peace accord started to come together. They're actually working together. I mean, to have a trade grouping? I couldn't have even fathomed that five years ago. To have military action together? Well, they were fighting each other.

In fact, they are far better off today than they were five years ago.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Culham, you had a short comment.

[Allan Culham]

We did in fact double our aid to Africa as of this financial year. It was $2.1 billion. CIDA was responsible for $800 million of that. This was a commitment that was made by the government at a G8 summit, so we were very proud that we were actually able to fulfill that commitment. This was not only CIDA, it was the whole of government involving DFAIT and Finance and IDRC, so it was a real concerted effort on the part of many different organizations.

Thirty years ago, the east African community was a thriving institution. Then it fell into disrepute and disrepair and virtually collapsed with many of the economies in that part of the world. Now it's back on the map, so to speak, and it's a thriving organization with real prospects for the future.

Mr. Sunquist highlighted in the opening statement our regional program in that part of the world and the role that Kenya plays in that part of the world. We will continue to be involved in these regional efforts, because maybe even at the end of the day it will be progress in the region that will drive progress at the country level.

So I fully support your comments about regional organizations in that part of the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Culham.

Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you. My questions will be brief.

Given the violations of human rights in many parts of Africa, not only in the Great Lakes region but other parts of Africa, and also given the humanitarian crisis taking place in some of those countries, as we see it there is a need for Canada to take a leadership role in supporting and working with regional partners as well as regional bodies.

To that extent, how much funding and support and how much activity are we doing to work with organizations, such as the African Union, for example, and also the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights?They haven't had a case yet, but there is also a huge problem of lack of funding to even get these courts going. Unless they're prepared to support these fundamental institutions to deal with human rights violations, they will never be able to begin to address some of these violations.

I'm not sure how active we've been on that file, that's number one. Number two, would you consider the DRC a failed state?

Those are my two questions.

[Allan Culham]

With respect to the African Union, going back to the regional program, we are, indeed, actively engaged in supporting the African Union in its very nascent attempts to become just that, an African union. They changed their name a few years ago to reflect their political desire to become closer together.

Reflecting again on my comments on regional activities, we see the African Union as having real potential to drive the values of reconciliation and peace. This is particularly true for the issue you're interested in, human rights and jurisprudence. It's better to come at these issues from a pan-African level than at the country level, because we don't want to be pointing fingers. Working at the African Union level, we have an opportunity to have these common principles bought into by the member governments of the African Union. We will continue to be actively engaged with the African Union out of our embassy in Addis Ababa.

Do we see DRC as a failed state? I would say absolutely not. It has lots of problems, for sure, and we don't want to minimize the poverty and the impact of the wealth of that country on the distribution of incomes, but there is peace in large segments of that country. We're supporting the election process. The humanitarian aid is getting to where it should, and without that basic stability we cannot have development, which will be our objective in that part of the world for the foreseeable future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We'll move to Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for all of that information. I get a lot of my information on what's going on in Africa from my weekly read of The Economist. They generally have a really good section in there on current updates.

I know that we have put significant investment into these areas, so the question is not really just money. We see a lot of NGOs going in there. I have an organization from my own riding of Newmarket—Aurora that is working in Uganda to build a school. This is completely separate from any government funding that comes in. This is an organization that has been over there regularly in the last four years establishing the school, building the facility, ensuring that they have the engineering capability to keep the school going and make sure that there's water and cooling in the hot weather. So there's a lot of money going into these areas.

I'd just pick up on a comment from The Economist this week. They're commenting actually about the country of Nigeria, saying, “Fraud and corruption still scare businesses away from Nigeria, even though its market of 140m people is Africa’s largest.”

My question is framed around the question, and maybe, Mr. Sunquist, you can run out the clock carrying on with the answer. We need to build other institutions as well. Where are we in helping these countries to build a judiciary whereby contracts can be enforced and whereby businesses can go in and know that they have government organizations they can deal with that are going to promote long-term health, not only of the economy but also of human rights and all of these other things that we look to a society to be building?