Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Members of the Committee, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
We would like to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to discuss Canada's relations with Africa. This question is of great importance to CC Africa, and we think it's a major issue for a large number of Canadians working in Africa.
We hope our presentation and the questions and answers that will follow will help the committee make specific recommendations to Parliament. That's the way we believe parliamentary committees work.
First a word about CC Africa, for those who don't know us. We were created in 2002. We have a mission to try to increase economic relations between Africa and Canada. We are a not-for-profit organization. We have about 150 members from companies, universities, colleges, provincial governments such as Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and New Brunswick, and we have a certain number of ministries and agencies in Ottawa.
Our activities include everything under the sun in terms of economic development--i.e., hosting African delegations coming to Canada, doing missions to Africa, and developing seminars, workshops, daily news bulletins, research papers--so we believe that makes us unique in Canada. Nobody else in Canada does this kind of work outside the government.
Last week you heard a presentation from a group of 19 African diplomats, who called for a document for a renewed partnership with Canada. This is a very honourable reaction that needs to be underlined for its positiveness and perspective and bringing a message of dynamism and reconstruction, I think.
African nations want more from Canada, there's no doubt about that. They want increased diplomatic relations, they want more economic ties, they clearly want more countries on CIDA's priority list. You've heard that signal very clearly, that the perception of Canada's presence on the continent is shrinking. It's a perception, and we want to check with you: is it only a perception or is it a reality? A number of very valuable recommendations were suggested and should help the committee go forward with recommendations of its own.
CC Africa shares the concerns of the African diplomatic missions. In the last few years we have clearly observed a trend that indicates the Canadian government, in general, is less and less present in Africa, whereas the Canadian population is doing more and more there. We are here today to ensure that this concern is communicated clearly to members of Parliament and that this issue is taken as a priority by the committee. We understand you have many priorities, but we believe this is one that should be considered very seriously.
It is our assessment that there is an emergency and that Parliament must take necessary action to stop it and put in place a moratorium on budget cuts, on embassy closings, until a comprehensive strategy is developed after appropriate consultations with Canadians.
We want to share with you three areas of concern: diplomatic relations, international trade, and international aid.
In terms of diplomatic relations, a few years ago the Government of Canada closed two embassies, Guinea and Gabon. More recently, a year ago, there was an attempt to keep Burkina Faso's embassy in Ouagadougou, but without an ambassador. This fight was won, and we now have an ambassador back in place.
Last week there was an announcement of two further posts closing in Africa, Cape Town and Malawi. And by coincidence--or design, I don't know--a month and a half before, Malawi was cut from the priority list of CIDA. Is that a sign of the times? We cut the CIDA list and then we cut the embassy? I don't know; I'm just raising the question.
Based on informal discussions with people in the know in Ottawa, it is our understanding that this is not the end of embassy closings in Africa. It will be most valuable for the committee—I think that is a task you should take under your wing—to inquire of the responsible departments or agencies in a formal way about the review process, the target for each continent, and the planned closures over the next three years. We are very much afraid that by the end of the closure exercise there won't be many African missions left. Our indication is that a few more are to be closed--and “a few” is not small.
Canada is proud to be a member of the G-8. It has fought to become one and was a host of its summit a number of times, but when it comes to our presence in Africa, we are not even close to the G-8 nations.
We have compiled for this presentation a complete list of the G-8 embassies in Africa. Unfortunately, I was not able to distribute it; I thought the English version would do, but I was told it had to be in French when I came here.
So I will just give you the numbers: the United States, 39 embassies; France, 38; Germany, 33; Russia, 33; the United Kingdom, 24; Italy, 20; and Canada, 16. So we're really at the bottom of the pile.
We look at France and Germany and they have more than double, and if the trend continues as expected, we will readily become, de facto, a minor player in Africa. Is that the role of a G-8 member, to be walking backwards while many other countries are increasing their involvement and are developing new relationships with the African continent?
As a G-8 member, there is a tradition of a long story of friendship with Africa. An asset that no other G-8 member has is that we share English and French as official languages, which helps us with even more countries on the continent.
Is it our role to reduce or even just stabilize the number of our initiatives in Africa? We do not believe so. When CC Africa met the former Minister of Trade, he asked us, through the five representatives who were part of the delegation, what is the most important contribution Canada can make in your work in Africa? They said, very simply, unanimously, representation on the ground. It is very important for the Canadian government to be present on the ground. They don't want anything less than that.
On international trade, when the African ambassador came here last week, and they were not only saying “more”, they were saying, “more economic development”. They want to develop their economy; they want to have more relations with Canada on the economic front. A more prosperous economy is the key to the future. That was also echoed by Minister Oda's speech, which clearly stated that economic development is the second priority of CIDA.
Economic development means a number of things: investment, export, import, but also partnerships such as professional and intense training to potential exporters from Africa so they can do more effective exporting to the western world, including Canada; education at the college level for trade, such as training the young people in the mining trade in Tanzania so they can replace the expatriates who are in great numbers in that country; development of a curriculum for the new program at university level at the University of Botswana. I can cite all kinds of initiatives where it is part of the economic development.
All of these forms of economic development take resources and professionals who are highly knowledgeable about Canada, a capability that Africa needs. This knowledge cannot be improvised. You need people who are dedicated precisely to helping Canadians and Africans work together. These people are called trade officers.
While our investment in Africa has been significantly growing in recent years, reaching close to $21 billion in 2008--this is not a small number--the resources, and most importantly the human resources, dedicated by the government in the trade area have been drastically diminished, and I'm not talking about over the last year. It's something that has been going on for the last few years. Canada now has 25 trade commissioners for 47 sub-Saharan countries, representing 800 million people. Putting that in perspective, Latin America has 13 countries, 300 million people, and 68 trade commissioners.
In other words, comparing Latin America with Africa, for a little bit more than a quarter of the countries, and less than half the population, there are three times the number of trade commissioners.
If we have to talk about balance and growth, this is important. There is something wrong with this picture. Why should we be less present than any other nation competing in Africa? Everybody says that it is the last frontier of economic development, and many sectors are booming, not only in natural resources but also infrastructure, power, energy, communications, information technology, agrifood, and health. Why should Canada take a back seat in the development of the future of Africa, one of the major phenomena of the 21st century?
We congratulate ourselves on being an exporting nation and a nation that welcomes imports, with examples such as the MAI, multilateral access initiative, that welcomes imports from less developed countries, but it is obvious that the resources are not in line with the objectives.
We work closely with DFAIT, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and we have friends there on every floor, but unfortunately, it is quite evident to us that the resources allocated to Africa are totally inadequate. That will hurt Canada if we don't find a remedy and we don't have a solution.
The third aspect is international development. It concerns Canada's assistance program. As we heard last week with Minister Oda's speech and question period...we share many concerns with the members of the committee. CC Africa was very disappointed to learn of the cuts in the number of African countries from the priority countries. We were disappointed because we felt that the government--not this government, I agree--had already achieved the cuts in 2005 when they went from 69 to 25 countries, plus a more concentrated budget allocation directed to the countries of concentration that went 80% and 20%. Remember, we talked about that a lot last week.
Today, to say that these cuts are directed toward better efficiencies sounds redundant, since the policy had already been achieved.
There's another annex that you have, and this one is in a bilingual format. At the bottom of the page you will see that in 2008 and 2007 the priority countries in Africa received 90% of the aid--not 50%, but 90%. So the total objective of 80% and 20% was achieved. This is a sample. There is more money than that. But this is a good sample to show that it was already achieved. We realize that does not cover the $1.5 billion of 2007, but it does include all the grants and contributions over $25,000. Also, we didn't give the figures for the multilateral organizations, because it's not easy to get those numbers. We can conclude that over 90% of the grants were already met there and the non-priority countries were receiving 10%.
The second conclusion to note from that table, if you look at the yellow part, is that six African countries that remain on the list received an increase in aid of 143% between 2007 and 2008, which means that, without announcing it, the list for 2009 was essentially already active in 2008. That list of six was already there, and the countries that were priority countries but not on the new list saw a decrease of 64% in two years. So let's not kid ourselves; it was happening. We didn't know, but we realize it now.
Thirdly, like the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, which is a very respected organization, we do not believe that you can give seven countries 80% of CIDA help in the bilateral programs and give the 40 other sub-Sahara counties 20% and nobody will lose. Nobody can make the mathematics of that.
So we are convinced, as is the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, that the 70% of bilateral aid to Africa that was given will go down within the next two or three years to about 35%. We are not convinced that Canadians want to see, by this announcement, that we are going to help less the poorest region of the earth and the ones who are in greatest need.
Mr. Chairman and honourable members, our purpose was to bring to you a number of alarming signs that if we do not deal with it in the near future, it will create considerable damage to Canada's reputation. It will not serve Canadians well from both the public and the private sector.
Finally, we will put into question our national commitment to African development. We cannot, without consequences, take for granted our good reputation acquired in the past. We must continue and increase our present initiative in Africa on three fronts, not only one: diplomatic relations, international trade, and official assistance. Canada should take the necessary steps to remain a major partner in Africa, because we believe that the continent is changing. It is growing. I was looking at the numbers a couple of days ago. The number of people reached 1 billion on January 1, 2009, and it will be at 1.5 billion within 10 years or so. It is growing and it will play a great role in shaping the world of tomorrow.
Merci beaucoup. My colleagues are also here to answer questions.
