Foreign Affairs Committee on May 2nd, 2012

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

Colleagues, we'll commence meeting 35 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Our orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), are for a study of development assistance to Ethiopia.

Today we're delighted to have as our first witness, from the Canadian International Development Agency, Mr. Philip Baker, the acting regional director general for southern and eastern Africa.

Mr. Baker, thank you for coming today.

I think you're familiar with this procedure and process, so I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you.

[Philip Baker, Acting Regional Director General, Southern and Eastern Africa, Canadian International Development Agency]

Good. Thanks.

I feel a little lonely down at this end. Where is everybody else?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

I know. We should go down there and join you.

[Philip Baker]

My apologies to the interpreters. I think they're going to have to earn their keep today, because my French is a little rusty. But we'll get started and see where we go. I'll start with an opening statement, if I may.

To begin, thank you, Mr. Chair, and honourable members.

Thank you for your invitation to appear this afternoon. I am pleased to be here.

As Regional Director General for Southern and Eastern Africa under the Geographic Programs Branch at CIDA, I am responsible for overseeing CIDA country and regional programming in Southern and Eastern Africa, including Ethiopia.

I'd like to first update you briefly on the important context of Canada's international aid and development work in Africa. Then I'll move on specifically to Ethiopia.

First of all, CIDA is committed to making its aid more effective to ensure the achievement of positive and sustainable results that make a real and long-term difference in the lives of those living in poverty. CIDA is focusing its work both geographically and thematically in the areas of increased food security, children and youth, and sustainable economic growth.

Throughout Africa, CIDA is supporting national poverty reduction strategies so that our assistance is more effective and able to reach the largest number of beneficiaries possible.

While doing so, we recognize that Africa faces many challenges as it develops. CIDA continues to do its part to respond to humanitarian needs, as we did when the worst drought in 60 years hit the Horn of Africa region last year.

Considering that effective development work goes a long way to reduce the impact of disasters, CIDA is working to avoid humanitarian crises by increasing food security. We also recognize that food security is not only about getting food on the table; it's about getting the right food on the table. Nutrition is proven to be one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways of improving health and saving lives. That is why it is an integral part of the G-8 Muskoka initiative, which aims to improve the health of mothers, newborns, and children under five.

I'm now going to take a brief moment to zero in on and explain Ethiopia's development context in order to highlight the important progress that's been achieved over the last decade.

Despite being one of the world's poorest nations, Ethiopia has made major development strides in recent years. With an economic growth rate averaging more than 8% per year, the Government of Ethiopia remains committed to pro-poor growth, investing more than 60% of public expenditures toward poverty-oriented sectors. This is the highest rate in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of the portion of the budget committed to pro-poor sectors. This has translated into declining poverty levels—from 38% in 2004 to 29% in 2011, according to the Government of Ethiopia's own numbers.

Country-led investments to increase food security and expand the coverage of basic services such as health and education have contributed to rising human development indicators, and the country is on track to achieve six of the eight millennium development goals. Ethiopia's strong ownership of development priorities, combined with its commitment to anti-poverty programs, makes it a country where official development assistance produces results.

CIDA has contributed to these achievements—for example, through its support to increasing food security and securing the future of children and youth in Ethiopia. CIDA's contribution to food security and agricultural growth projects contributed to expanding access to fertilizer, improved seed, and credit services across the country. In 2010-11 these efforts resulted in an average yield increase of 100 kilograms per hectare of maize and wheat. Working with other donors, CIDA expanded training services to an additional 800,000 farmers so that a total of 4.9 million people now benefit from local agricultural services.

CIDA is also contributing to the health and well-being of mothers and children in Ethiopia. The proportion of births attended by local health workers rose to 25% last year versus 16% back in 2007. The proportion of children vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus rose to 86% last year from 73% in 2007, and against measles, from 65% up to 77%. This data indicates that more mothers and children under the of five have access to and are using basic health services.

In addition, in Ethiopia CIDA focuses its efforts under the Muskoka initiative towards improving infant and child feeding practices, and providing supplements, key vitamins and minerals such as iodized salt and vitamin A, to women of children-bearing age and to infants.

So now let me mention in a few words how we choose to build our country programs.

In developing an overall country program, CIDA requires country-specific governance, gender equality, and human rights analyses to be conducted during the planning and implementation phases. These analyses help us to shape our development interventions. We then monitor all our initiatives and take action if and when the context changes. We expect, just as the public and honourable members do, that from a policy viewpoint CIDA programs will have a positive impact on the development context in any given country.

In addition, CIDA assesses the country's poverty situation and the level of citizen participation in the setting of national development priorities. Our programming is a product of this work, as well as of ongoing consultations with local and Canadian partners, with other donors, with UN agencies and, of course, with the Government of Ethiopia.

As an example of how CIDA adjusts its programming to the Ethiopian context, we channel our funding through non-governmental organizations, private sector entities, and multilateral development institutions, and focus primarily on food security, agricultural growth, and nutrition. To state it in another way, CIDA focuses on providing support that directly and positively impacts the food insecure, the rural poor, children under the age of five, and pregnant and lactating women in need of nutritional supplements such as vitamin A. In addition, on a responsive basis we provide humanitarian assistance to address specific emergencies such as the 2011 major drought in the Horn of Africa, which we've discussed in this setting before.

Even on this last example, to go beyond short-term emergency assistance, CIDA is contributing to efforts to build resilience, particularly with our work through multilateral development institutions on the development of social safety nets, such as the productive safety net program implemented in Ethiopia. It is designed to build the resilience of 7.8 million chronically food insecure people in order to improve food security and ensure protection from the effects of climate change and other shocks. This program helps communities to invest in sustainable land management while enhancing their natural resource base through transfers of food or cash in exchange for labour. Examples of results to which CIDA contributed include the decline in the annual food gap from 3.6 months per year in 2006 down to 2.3 months per year in 2010. That is the reduction in the amount of time that you see a food gap. Over 318,000 hectares of degraded land have also been rehabilitated through gated fields, which we can talk about that later, and 31,900 kilometres of rural roads have been constructed to improve access to markets and services.

We also support broader democratic and accountability processes, which we believe are integral to progressively improving human rights. Recent examples include support to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, the Office of the Federal Auditor General, and Ethiopian civil society. Working with other donors, Canada engages in discussion directly with the Ethiopian authorities on such topics as human rights and gender equality. We participate in international mechanisms such as the universal periodic review, a process of the United Nation's High Commission for Human Rights. These are all areas in which we have clearly communicated our desire and expectation for improvement.

The contexts in which CIDA works are seldom perfect. I think members here would agree that we are there specifically because there are too many people living in conditions that are unacceptable to Canadians.

We continue to work toward the situation where the democratic and human rights conditions in Ethiopia will mirror the progress already achieved in social sectors such as health and education. This will allow the international community, including Canada, to consider resuming more direct support to the Government of Ethiopia in the future for the realization of its development agenda. But we are not there yet.

At this point I'll stop and would be happy to take some questions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

Thank you very much, Mr. Baker.

We'll start with the opposition. Mr. Saganash, you have seven minutes.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Baker, for being here today. Thank you for your presentation to this committee.

I want to focus on the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act, and some of the criteria there are under that act in terms of disbursements by CIDA and our country.

In particular, these criteria must be consistent with the international human rights standards. What is CIDA's approach to implementing the ODA Accountability Act? What does CIDA see as being the minimum requirement the department must meet in that context and, more specifically, in the case of Ethiopia, what due diligence did CIDA pursue to ensure this minimum requirement? What do you continue to pursue to ensure that this minimum requirement is met?

[Philip Baker]

Thanks very much for the question.

As people recognize, the ODAA act explicitly says that for to be considered as ODA, it must contribute to poverty reduction, must take in the perspectives of the poor, and must be consistent with international human rights standards.

So at CIDA, in our approach to this act, this is job one, if you like. This is integral to everything we do. In our work, when we look at moving official development assistance through our programming, we must and we do—through a number of policy instruments and through our programming implementation as well—look at how we can ensure that there's no direct or indirect contribution to human rights violations through CIDA programming.

That's the key, I think, in answering both. The minimum requirement you've asked about is that, at the very minimum, there is no direct or indirect contribution to violations of human rights.

Then, in terms of our approach, we have policy instruments. At the same time, we take those policy instruments and, when we are doing our analysis to examine which program elements to add to a certain country, we make sure that we both build in the approaches that will avoid human rights violations and then—in answer to your last question—we look at setting up systems of safeguards that allow us to both evaluate and monitor to ensure we are achieving that goal.

If you like, I could talk a little bit more on that front of what those are, or we could continue. I'll leave it to the chair.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

Thank you.

Mr. Saganash.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you.

You talk in your presentation about working with other donor countries and participating in international mechanisms such as the universal periodic review process with the United Nations.

To that effect, I read the August 2011 “Concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee [on] Ethiopia”. It does mention concerns about certain legislation in the country, particularly the proclamation on charities and societies, which prohibits, as you know and have mentioned, Ethiopian NGOs from obtaining more than 10% of their budget from foreign donors.

How does CIDA takes these country assessments into account in redesigning or reassessing country programs?

[Philip Baker]

In regard to the Universal Periodic Review, I'll start by saying that in general, all the UN member countries, once every four years, will go through or will be subjected to—whichever way you want to look at it—a review of their human rights record or their track record.

In the case of Ethiopia, their last review was in 2009. A final report came out in 2010. There were, I believe—and correct me if I'm wrong—142 overall recommendations, 99 of which were accepted by the Government of Ethiopia. So there was a good step forward on that front.

These included a number that Canada had initiated, including the need to create a human rights action plan. That action plan in fact has led to support for the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, which in turn has led to regional offices around the country being opened up to allow better access for Ethiopians, for the public.

So on that front, with 99 out of 142, is it perfect? It's not perfect. It's progress, definitely. Each country that goes through these reviews has to do its best to look at what it can take on board, and with what priority, to improve its record on human rights as it gets ready to show progress, hopefully, by the next time it is reviewed.

In the case of Ethiopia, there has been a lot of progress, but there have also been concerns, as you've noted. The charities act and proclamation is of particular concern. It does tend to narrow the space for freedom of expression and the activities of those charities, the NGOs that are active in Ethiopia.

So what does CIDA do about that? On several fronts.... As I said, we're bolstering the strength of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. We also do have a very strong network called CANGO in Ethiopia. It is a network of Canadian NGOs that are active with their Ethiopian partners in Ethiopia. We work closely with them in bolstering their capacity.

When we do a program, we look for opportunities where we can strengthen the opportunities for Ethiopian citizens to play a role. You may have heard talk of the protection of basic services initiative. It's a very large one that has been led by the World Bank for a number of years in Ethiopia. Within that, there's a subcomponent of the program that CIDA made a contribution to in years past. That actually built the right of citizens' participation within the whole notion of monitoring how the district administrations divvy up the moneys that are largely coming through the infrastructure support program, which is called PBS, or protection of basic services.

That was an example of CIDA successfully getting a mechanism built in that actually encourages the better monitoring of human rights, and then redress if things are looking like they might start to go wrong.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

But you do recognize that there are still ongoing human rights “issues”, let's say, in Ethiopia right now?

[Philip Baker]

Yes.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Okay.

Could you talk a little bit about the criteria that were used to rationalize the recent cuts or reductions to 13 geographic programs at CIDA? Eight of these were in Africa, I believe, including Ethiopia. Ten of the thirteen that were reduced or cut include the poorest countries in the world. Yet five with whom Canada has recently developed strong trade ties were unaffected.

How did the criteria of the act influence your decision around which country programs to drop? In other words, what criteria informed your decisions in that respect?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

You will have to make that a very brief answer because the time has run out and we'll have to go over to the other side.

[Philip Baker]

I'll make it very brief, then.

First of all, I'll speak to my area of the world only. I'll say that it wasn't my decision; it was a cabinet decision, which is the way that the reductions were designed.

Within our neck of the woods, southern and eastern Africa, there were several closures suggested for country programs and several reductions. Within that front, the driving force for the closures was the matter of cost-effectiveness, of running some of these important but smaller programs that are quite expensive to run, relatively speaking. I'm speaking now of our Zambia and our Zimbabwe program, which will be closing by April 1, 2014.

In the case of Malawi, which was also listed for closure in my area, the Malawi program will be coming for closure by April 1, 2014, but the Muskoka programming will continue to completion. So it was an exception on that front. Muskoka programming continues in all the countries.

There were several other reductions in other countries as well for some of our larger programs in Africa.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

We'll now go to Ms. Brown.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Baker. It's nice to have you here.

I had the opportunity to be in Ethiopia just three months ago and I was incredibly impressed with the growth and development that is going on in that country. Addis Ababa, of course, is going to be the centre of the African Union headquarters. If people haven't taken a look on the web at what that building looks like, it is absolutely phenomenal. Multiply the United Nations building by a hundred and you have this brand new wonderful facility. It is really going to be quite the place.

Ethiopia is a member of the economic union in East Africa, COMESA. They have set out some real development goals for themselves.

I know that Ethiopia has what is called Ethiopia's plan for accelerated sustained development to eradicate poverty. They have their own plan.

I wonder if you could talk to the committee a little bit about how CIDA interfaces with a country's plan because we're not there imposing one. But how does the country develop its own plan and then how does CIDA interface with that in order to help build capacity and get the best results both for CIDA money for Canadian taxpayers, and the development of a country like Ethiopia?

[Philip Baker]

CIDA is a very strong proponent, as I am as an RDG, of the point that doing extremely effective development derives from the notion of country ownership. You've mentioned the plan. In the case of Ethiopia, what we call a growth and transformation plan from 2010 through 2015 is basically their poverty reduction strategy paper, which is, in the lingo of the development world, the key paper that each country pulls together to rally support from other countries and from donors.

In this case, through that plan, they take a very serious look at how they've done so far over the last series of plans—there have been several in the case of Ethiopia—and then we take a look at how we mesh best with our own country strategy to dovetail with that planning. The notion is that whatever they are saying are their priorities, we want to look for a piece of it that is an appropriate fit for Canadian talents and skills. But most importantly, it is driven by that recipient country.

In this case, what has come up with this new plan is very interesting. They've had a realization and made a recommendation that if they want to have sustainable growth, they're going to have to see a bit more strength and shift towards bolstering the private sector. Over the past few years there has been very strong growth in Ethiopia, but it's largely been public sector driven. This has been a really interesting development in this new five-year plan.

There are many donors in discussion with the government now. That's the second part of the answer. Through discussion with the government, we have developed options on where we can fit in as a piece of the puzzle.

We've been extremely strong on food security, both on the notion of areas for growth in food-secure opportunities for growing more small business, for example, and in food insecure areas, like some of the programs that we discussed today, such as the productive safety net. Food security has been a strong front for us.

Children and youth is another theme for CIDA, and we have been very strong on the notion of the procurement of health commodities. That has taken us a certain distance, but I'll bring it back to one of the key issues we raised earlier about controls. The Government of Ethiopia is moving its health commodities purchasing towards more of a direct budget support request. Canada, since 2005, has not given any direct funding to the Government of Ethiopia; therefore, on that front of health commodities, we would not propose to continue with that support because of the mechanism they're going to use for the future.

We've got a little bit of room right now to look at possible new directions in this five-year plan. That work is underway.

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

One of the areas where we've been very strong is the agricultural sector. I note that among some of the projects we have there, we've got a school feeding program in Ethiopia, improved food security for mothers and children, an agricultural growth program, and support to multi-donor trusts. I don't have them all listed. I was just looking at agricultural market growth in Ethiopia. So there are a number of areas.

We visited a farm in Ethiopia where we're helping the farmers. It wasn't just a farm. We also have a veterinarian there who is helping to assess the health of the cows in order to impregnate them and develop better herds.

Food security is one of the most important things, and so is getting the right kind of food.

Could you talk about the micro-nutrient programs that we have?

[Philip Baker]

Fair enough.

I mentioned in my opening remarks the notion of not just getting food on the table, but the right food on the table. We talk about human rights, the rights of children and the protection of the rights of children as an important aspect for our programming wherever we work. In the case of nutrients for both pregnant and lactating women and for children, that's a key tenet of our work in Ethiopia.

Through the Muskoka initiative, there's been a very large, $50-million initiative on nutrition designed to assist three million children and pregnant and lactating women right across the country that will allow the right micronutrients to get to them, such as vitamin A, so that they've got their best start on life and for mothers to stay healthy and be able to raise their children better. On that front, nutrition has played a really important role for us.

You mentioned livestock, as well, and the notion of the food gap, which I mentioned earlier, is a critical one. It even links to the human rights discussion. If you talk about the amount of the food gap, the length of time that a family is without security on the food front, it leads them to measures such as selling off their livestock, in order to survive that short-term gap of getting across that absolute lack of food.

If we can shorten and reduce that food gap, then we avoid the need for them to sell off livestock that could have provided a long-term productive route to food security for that family. It's another key aspect of both food security and nutrition for families.

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

With 8% growth in their economy year over year, we have some hopes that things are going in the right direction, do we not?

[Philip Baker]

The United Nations has stated that Ethiopia has been the top sub-Saharan performer in the last five years, in terms of development progress towards the UN millennium development goals. There are eight development goals. Admittedly, on two of them there are still some challenges, but on six of them they're making great progress.

On maternal and child health, on maternal mortality especially, they're making good progress, but they're still not quite on track to meet the goal. That's something that we keep looking at through our Muskoka work to advance that progress.

Growth of 8% is pretty stellar on that front. Again, you want to make sure that the growth is reaching the people, and that's why we design our programming to get to the poorest of the poor in Ethiopia. We're talking of roughly 30 million people among a population of 85 million. There is a massive number of poor people in Ethiopia.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Paul Dewar]

Thank you, Ms. Brown

We're going to the Liberals and Mr. Eyking. You have seven minutes.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Baker, for coming.

You have a big responsibility. It's a big area. It seems like an area that's always having some sort of weather problem or conflict.

I have a couple of questions for you.

Not too long ago, our foreign affairs minister visited Ethiopia, I believe. There's been a Canadian in jail there for the last five years. You might be aware of him. I think his name is Bashir Makhtal. He's been five years in jail. The NDP already brought up human rights abuses.

Paragraph 4(1)(c) of our aid accountability act deals with international human rights and making sure they're taken care of. It's always complex, sometimes, when you're giving money to an underdeveloped country or a country in turmoil. How does the money get spent? Is it being spent on fair judicial systems and various things?

It's a pretty big thing when the Minister of Foreign Affairs goes to a jail and sees a Canadian. But I'm surprised that with the amount of money we give this country—I think it was $168 million in 2009-10—we couldn't have any leverage or couldn't have any positive outcome after that visit to get him out of jail.

Have you been using a bit of a carrot and stick on this file?

[Philip Baker]

You've mentioned the Makhtal situation. It's a Foreign Affairs lead, obviously, for the situation.

Our overall approach in any country where we work is one of collaboration between Foreign Affairs and CIDA to get the best effect for the aid dollars we spend. In the case of Ethiopia, we work closely on human rights with Foreign Affairs. We work closely with all donors through something called the Development Assistance Group, or the DAG, as I'll keep referring to it today. We look for opportunities to bring these messages on human rights, generally, to the government wherever we can, and we drive those messages home. We make our expectations extremely clear. We seek out ways to improve the situation in any country, including in Ethiopia, in terms of human rights.

I won't speak to the specifics of the case. There's actually a court case related to it, a Federal Court case. But in terms of our general approach to human rights in Ethiopia, yes, again with our ambassador, we work together in approaching the government and stating our expectations, and then we work with them to try to find solutions. There have been a number of examples where there has been progress on that front. As I say, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission is now able to have better access at the regional level.