Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 13th, 2012

[Chris Eaton]

Certainly in our experience you always also find people who are innovative, entrepreneurial, in most of the societies in which we work. It's identifying groups of those individuals and working with them in terms of strengthening the kinds of things they are doing, developing them, and helping them to be examples in the societies they come from, in ways that other people also emulate.

However, I haven't come across a whole culture in which people aren't interested in growth, or better education for their children, or a higher income, or business, for that matter. My last few years were in Afghanistan. And in Afghanistan they'll buy, sell, buy, sell, buy, sell you before you know what's going on—the most entrepreneurial people I have ever met.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. We're going to keep moving along because everyone wants to keep asking questions.

Madame Groguhé.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I found them very instructive and interesting.

I am going to ask a question that involves the population, but first of all I would like to say a few words about the development models that we have seen in the past. I think that those models may have been misguided, in that they targeted the states and not necessarily the populations.

As for the African continent, I would say that Africa is very diverse and multi-faceted. I believe, as Mr. Sullivan pointed out, that it is really important to tailor our interventions according to each context and each population with which we work. That is an important point to consider. You also talked about the importance of promoting democracy. However, the government has dissolved the Office for Democratic Governance within CIDA. In my opinion, that is a great loss with regard to the promotion of democracy.

I'd also like to open a brief parenthesis. Last weekend, in Edmonton, I met students from the African community. In the context of the Black History Month, they held conferences discussing their vision of Africa, the Africa of yesterday, today and tomorrow. The great potential in that African community was high on the list of important things I took away from that conference. I think we are going to have to help realize that potential and that it would be important to do so. Their point of view is that we have to give power back to the population. We hear about better governance. We do have to encourage states to put in place better governance, but we especially have to see to it that local populations are given back their power. I am getting to my question and it is addressed to you, Mr. Sullivan.

How can you guarantee that all of the local populations will have a voice? Are the measures aimed at entrepreneurs really sufficient to ensure that development will be of benefit to the whole population? How can that be achieved?

[Dr. John Sullivan]

First of all, let me say that I can't guarantee anything. It's up to the people of the country to guarantee it. But I also don't want to leave the impression that I think everything should flow down to, and be part of, an entrepreneurial delivery mechanism. There are other aspects of development that have to be put in place—the rule of law, for example, and educational systems. There are a whole lot of things that need to be done. It's simply that the part of this global task that we specialize in deals with the issues of entrepreneurship, economic growth and development, and rule of law, so that's what I've been focusing on. There certainly are a huge number of other areas that need to be put in place as well.

One of the things I have discovered in my travels around the world, though, is that you often find the same people, the same innovators, who are the leaders of the chamber of commerce and who are also the leaders of the rotary club. The rotary club doesn't have the same mission as the chamber of commerce. It has a different mission. But these community leaders...that spirit of entrepreneurship often does translate over into other areas as well. Almost by definition, if you look at the great philanthropists of the world, they have their roots in entrepreneurship, but they're not necessarily about the business of only doing entrepreneurship. I think the answer has to be that you have to build a community spirit.

I recommend heartily Estanislao's program, the Institute for Solidarity in Asia. He's organized the nurses' association. He organized all kinds of different civil society groups in a framework to set targets for improving their cities, at the city level, and then took it to the national level. These cities have a competition, and he awards a prize to the model city of the year. International groups have won prizes as well.

There are different approaches out there, but it all comes back to trying to find the association. Association doesn't mean simply entrepreneur. There are all kinds of professional societies out there, which can become part of this collective action framework, and can also become part of its mobilization process. But that is the heart of democracy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's it on the time.

We're going to move over to Ms. Brown.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have a comment and then a question. When I was in South Sudan, I learned that the state owns all of the property. Because the control of a certain sector of land is conferred on a tribal chief, it is at the whim of the chief as to whom he assigns that property for agricultural purposes, and his whim may change from one year to the next. So all of the investment that an individual has made—and all of the labour is done by females, so all of the work that she has done—this year may be for naught next year for an investment for her family. I see that as problematic for the long-term development. Consequently, there is a desperate need for land ownership and property rights and institution-building in a country like South Sudan.

That's not my question.

Earlier, I mentioned that my son-in-law is from Ghana, from Kumasi. He came here to do his doctorate. He's finishing a doctorate in electrical engineering, and he has a very entrepreneurial spirit. He is in the process of developing a company, looking for investors right now, that will go back to Ghana. He's not likely to go back and live there himself long term, but he certainly wants to develop a business that will impact and assist Ghana in moving forward in energy production.

My question is this. We've seen a great outflow of some of the brightest minds in emerging or poverty-stricken economies, so how are we able to harness the resource of the diaspora from various communities to help growth? They understand the cultural impacts. They understand better than we ever can the needs of their own country. Are we able to harness that resource to go back to these countries and help them develop?

[Chris Eaton]

I think that opportunity is greater now than it ever has been. Fifty years ago, if you left home and came to Canada, it would be very difficult to have an ongoing relationship with people in your home village or home country. That is so much easier today, in part because of social media, the Internet, ICTs, and also the availability of cellphones, which are ubiquitous across Africa, including in rural areas.

One of the things we need to look at is the tremendous remittances that are now going back to many of the countries from which people have come. One of the programs we have is a student refugee program. That's brought over 1,200 people over the last 20 years, mainly from southern Sudan and Somalia, and integrated them into Canadian society through post-secondary education.

What we're now seeing, in the southern Sudan context, is that these Sudanese Canadians with excellent educations are now contributing back to their own societies. They're going back and either forming either part of the government or the business community, but they're also sending huge remittances back home.

There are mechanisms we could use to develop that. I don't know if you have examples of chambers of commerce that link countries together, for example, or trade associations or informal groupings of people that help to foster this kind of work.

[Dr. John Sullivan]

There are a number of bilateral chambers where they have a large proportion.... The Afghan-American chamber, for example, has really tried to mobilize the Afghan diaspora to this end.

I think it is an underutilized resource. The remittances are certainly there. A lot more could be done, though, if there was more of a process whereby one could reach out to the diaspora community to try to link them together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Are there any other questions?

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I'm glad you brought that up. The diaspora has a huge role to play when you're looking at development in countries outside of Canada. I've certainly seen two or three of them work very, very effectively and be of great assistance in the country.

At the same time, what starts off very much as a humanitarian way to help develop I've seen has sometimes ended up trying to make that country more like the country they're living in now. It goes back to not really understanding that basis: even though you might have been born in that country, because you haven't grown up there you don't have that understanding of the culture or community. I have seen that and how there is that disconnect.

I really want to go back to a comment you made earlier about the importance of our not giving up on Africa. At times we hear comments: “We've put so many billions into Africa and we have very little to show for it.” I would say that every person who is not hungry, who has survived and now has children, would say they have a lot to show for it.

We may have to look at how we assist in Africa and how effective we are with our aid rather than moving away. This year we cut bilateral aid for sub-Saharan Africa, so a number of countries—eight African nations—are not part of our focus work.

Maybe since I grew up and now I see images of Africa—those are the ones that often come to mind when you see the poverty, the changes in climate, and the impact of all of that—it makes today meaningful for me. You said let's not say that aid is not working in Africa and there is a need for us to invest in Africa, so thank you for that.

That's not a question but a comment I wanted to make.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

I have one last question on the informal economy and the official economy.

What methods could be used to integrate those two?

[Dr. John Sullivan]

You had the world's leading expert here, Hernando de Soto, answering this question. I can simply repeat a little bit of what he said.

In Kenya right now we're working with an association of the informal sector to try to give them voice. There is a bill in front of the Kenyan sessional Parliament that has been supported by several ministers. We're hoping it will pass this year. I hope the recent arrests don't slow this down and sidetrack everything in Kenya, that in fact the parliamentary session will continue.

To me, changing the structure is the best thing that could be done for the informal sector. Now, that being said, you have to still recognize that even though you may have removed a lot of the barriers, unless you improve government services and unless you give the informal sector an incentive to want to migrate into the formal sector, it won't. If the cost is still higher than the benefit.... You have to remove barriers and make governance work in order to create the incentive for people to say, oh, yes, it's better over here.

There are cases in countries around the world where people have gone from formal sector jobs and opened up companies in the informal sector, because the return on investment was higher there. And a lot of it comes down to doing what you do because of your incentives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I want to thank everyone.

Dr. Sullivan, thank you very much.

Mr. Eaton, thank you very much for taking time to be here today.

This was a great session. I apologize for being late, but I saw your opening remarks, and I've had a chance to read those as well.

That's all we have for today.

The meeting is adjourned.