Evidence of meeting #41 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was document.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Rae Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
When you signed it, was there a “not” on the document? Was there the added “not” on the document? It is in the document. Was it there?
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Oda Conservative Durham, ON
No, I made the decision. The document then reflects the decision of the minister.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Rae Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
Was the “not” added after you signed the document? Either it was there when you signed it or it was there after you signed it. Which is it?
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Oda Conservative Durham, ON
Mr. Rae, I will ask the deputy to find out whether this was a pen-signed document or actually--
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Oda Conservative Durham, ON
I personally did not sign that document. I made the decision. I gave my decision, and the document then would reflect--
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Oda Conservative Durham, ON
It's my signature, which is either pen-signed or personally signed. I do not sign, as any minister does not sign, every document required to be signed--
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Oda Conservative Durham, ON
--but there are very strict restrictions on the utilization of pen-signed--
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Rae Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
Well, look, you have a document where Ms. Biggs has told us that the document she signed didn't have a “not” in it. The document you've distributed has a “not” in it. That leaves an utterly misleading impression that Ms. Biggs, or Mr. Singh, actually agreed with putting the “not” in. You've compromised your own officials by the way in which your department has handled this thing.
What happened in the two months between the time Ms. Biggs recommended it and the date of your signature?
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
President, Canadian International Development Agency
I think, as I said before, the project was recommended to the minister, but it goes to the minister for her consideration and it's her decision. She doesn't have to agree with the advice, and you wouldn't want every minister to agree with the advice all the time.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Rae Liberal Toronto Centre, ON
I just wanted to say that what's changed is the word “recommendation”.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
I'm going to suspend the meeting. I'm sure everyone will want to thank the minister for being here. Then we'll come back with the officials for the last hour.
So I'm going to suspend the meeting for one minute.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for appearing before us. We want you to know that on this side of the House we're very pleased with your work and the fine results.
I want to talk to you a little bit about Afghanistan, but before I do, I think there has to be some clarification. There must literally be hundreds of applications that unfortunately you have to strike off. Even the ones you may suggest be approved are going to be done away with.
Mr. Goldring and I are going to Africa in January and will be visiting some projects by Engineers Without Borders. I don't know whether or not they've made applications, but there are just so many of them. There's another organization that I've made myself available to and that I want to visit in Africa. It's an excellent organization, too, and I'm sure I will be suggesting to them that they make an application, but they may be turned down, like others are turned down.
I'm pleased, though—and maybe I'll give you a quick opportunity to just comment on this—with the direction the government is going. I believe, and I think I can speak for this side of the House as well, that Canadians want to see results. When they talk about $7 billion being given out in aid, they want to see where it's helping people. Maybe you can quickly comment on that.
The next part of my question, and then I'll let you just go right ahead, is about Afghanistan. Nobody has talked about Afghanistan. We know about the deplorable conditions there when we arrived. In this part of my questions I want to talk about the schools--and I'm sure some of my colleagues may want to carry on with this, because you have another 40 minutes.
How did you find the conditions in the schools when you first came to Afghanistan? What was the attendance by gender? What's happening today, and how have you been able to make a difference in the lives of the Afghan people, especially the children?
Ms. Biggs, I'll let you answer at your leisure.
4:35 p.m.
President, Canadian International Development Agency
Thank you very much.
I heard three separate questions. The first one was on the number of applications we receive.
Particularly in reference to our partnership programming with Canadian organizations, we fund more than 500 or 600 organizations a year, but we get applications from many more. Also, we often get applications we aren't able to fund in their entirety. I can't give you the exact ratio, but it is a fairly competitive process. We have to pick the ones that we feel are the strongest, that will deliver the strongest results.
All of them in our partnership programming are expected to show a commitment that they're also going to be able to bring resources to the initiative, and then we would match it, as I said, up to one to three. So that ends up leveraging their money, and they leverage us, and you can end up with a stronger impact. There is much more supply than we're able to fund, actually.
On the second issue, with respect to results, you're absolutely right that Canadians want and expect our international assistance dollars to deliver the strongest results possible. As with any government expenditure, they expect value for money. But also, in particular, when you're talking about trying to address poverty in developing countries, it's extra important that we do the very, very best with every dollar we have.
As to what we've been doing in that area, we really feel strongly that the more we can focus on fewer areas of concentration geographically and concentrate our efforts in some thematic areas, we're going to be able to have a stronger impact in terms of the delivery of results. I think CIDA has a very strong reputation for results management. We've done more in terms of reporting on that as well. So I think we have had a very strong effectiveness and results-oriented agenda over the last couple of years.
On the third issue, with respect to Afghanistan, you're right. There were many issues, going back to 2001-02, after many decades of conflict. There was a lot of destruction. There was underdevelopment to begin with, but also a great deal of need there.
In 2001, Afghanistan was the second-poorest country in the world. There are probably about seven million children right now, but only 700,000 of the children were actually in school. Of course, very few of them, if any—