Foreign Affairs Committee on Jan. 31st, 2013

[MGen Jonathan Vance]

The mission assigned to the Canadian Forces is to provide a C-17 with a good crew and capability to provide strategic logistic support with that C-17 until February 15.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Does that mean, therefore, that Canada has no separate military goal apart from France?

[MGen Jonathan Vance]

I'm not quite sure of your line of questioning. The fact is that the goal that has been established for us at this particular juncture is to support the French, a key ally, as they seek to respond to the crisis in Mali.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

You and I might actually agree it's a good idea, but it's not a goal, so let me suggest goals.

Is the overall goal of the mission to contain or degrade the Islamist threat in the Maghreb?

[MGen Jonathan Vance]

The Canadian military objective is inside a whole-of-government approach that speaks to wider national goals. It's difficult to pick one from another. Canada has, as has been well described by Ms. Buck, a whole-of-government comprehensive approach. Tying the Canadian military contribution as part of that whole-of-government approach to the military campaign at present is specifically designed to ensure the French are able to build up their forces rapidly to be able to conduct the operations they have been able to do.

They've been successful because they've been able to bring to bear an overmatched capacity against the Islamist rebels as a result of the international community and Canada bringing the equipment and materiel to bear rapidly so they could do that.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I don't disagree with that, but it strikes me as curious that our nation has not actually been able to articulate that we are there to contain or degrade the Islamist threat, because that is, for our nation, the issue. The issue is that this may go beyond regional; it may become more than just that.

Just as a point of clarification, can I assume that is the French goal in their efforts? They have had some success. They've had rapid success. It's perfectly understandable. They are a 21st century modern military up against, if you will, a 7th century mentality, but the way the 7th century mentality sees success is far different from the way we see success, so we shouldn't exactly break out in a parade just yet.

I go back to the core point. What will we consider to be success of our military mission?

[MGen Jonathan Vance]

At this juncture it is probably important for this to be seen in the context of Canada's foreign policy objectives, so I'm going to hand it to Ms. Buck.

I can tell you that Canada doesn't usually approach something like this with a one-off. In other words, it's not just a military goal. There is a wider set of goals, and the military contributes to that, as does CIDA or anybody else.

It would be inappropriate for me right now to try to comment on the French government's foreign policy objectives in Mali. It's not my area of expertise.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

If we don't actually have our own goal, we end up adopting one by default, so perhaps the French—

[MGen Jonathan Vance]

If I may, Mr. Chair, I will pass this to Ms. Buck to put the wider Canadian government foreign policy objectives in relief to what the military is doing.

[Kerry Buck]

The military objective of the French operation has been articulated by the French leadership, but it's in the context of the AFISMA mission, and in my opening statement I set out what those goals are. One of the first military goals, of course, is to turn around the Islamist extremists, and they have succeeded in that effort to date, but it's a wider objective of securing control over the north, which leads into a wider objective of stabilizing Mali and returning it to a sovereign, unified, democratic country.

We are looking at all of the tools we can use, and the C-17 supports the military, but we're doing stuff on security and stuff on the political—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

The problem with all of those wider goals is that almost without doubt it drags us into a much larger conflict. You can pick your goals, like stabilizing the Malian government. That's a pretty significant goal in and of itself. Dealing with the Tuaregs is another very significant goal in and of itself. Degrading or incapacitating the Islamists is a very significant goal.

The approach seems to be to attempt to achieve all of those goals, and yet there is no timeline.

My concern is that by having this broader approach, you may miss what some would argue is the most significant goal, which is the containment of the Islamist threat.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Buck, you have about 45 seconds left.

[Kerry Buck]

The goals I set out are the goals of the international community in response to the crisis in Mali. I take your point, but it has to be a complex and multi-pronged approach. Canada will be doing its part and has been doing its part. Mr. Morrison talked about our significant development assistance. I talked about our security capacity building. General Vance talked about the support to the French operation. We will do our bit, but the broader international goal has to be complex. It's a complex crisis with a lot of causes.

[MGen Jonathan Vance]

Mr. Chair, if I could just add one point quickly, there is a tendency sometimes to see military kinetic action as being the silver bullet on the Islamist threat. In fact, kinetic action does not address root causes. An appropriate balance between hard military and all of the other things that have been mentioned here is what actually stops the Islamist threat. You simply are unable to use kinetics to stop this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have.

We're going to start a second round, which will be five minutes for questions and answers.

We will start with Ms. Brown.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to all of our witnesses for being here.

I have a very personal reason for wanting to see Mali get back to stability. For the last 10 years, our family has supported a little girl by the name of Tolatta Togo in Mali through World Vision. To know she is living in a country that is undergoing such turmoil does not give me the satisfaction that there is hope and opportunity for her for the future. I personally want to see the country return to some sort of normalcy just so that in a very selfish way I can see Tolatta have hope and opportunity.

Mr. Morrison, you gave us some of the perspective on Canada's humanitarian involvement now. You said we have withdrawn our support from the government directly. Canada has been an actor in Mali for many, many years. I wonder if you could just lay out for the committee some of the things that Canada has been involved with in helping to build capacity. I understand we have been working with an auditor general's office there to help them develop some government structures. I wonder if you could lay out for the committee some of our larger activities. Maybe, if we have time, you could comment on how Canada responded to the situation in the Sahel last year when the drought was emerging.

[David Morrison]

I will take the bulk of the question talking about what Canada has been doing and is doing now, and then I'll ask my colleague, Leslie Norton, to talk about the humanitarian response to the Sahel crisis.

At CIDA, we do both long-term development helping to build a better future for the people of Mali, as well as responding to short-term crises, and that's what my colleague will talk about.

You're completely correct; we have been in Mali for quite some time. It is one of CIDA's countries of focus that we nominated in 2009. It has been a very significant part of our overall portfolio. The specific areas upon which the program focuses are a couple that I mentioned in my remarks: health care and education within our rubric of building better futures for children and youth. That has been the bulk of our programming, but we also are involved in trying to strengthen public financial management and trying to strengthen the justice system. Both are, you would recognize, integral to the proper functioning of a democratic country.

In terms of access or the capacity building we've been doing in the justice sector, we've been working for over a decade on what you might consider the demand side of the equation, letting Malians know that they have recourse to a formal justice system to resolve their disputes rather than taking disputes into their own hands. On the supply side, we've been working with the formal structures of the justice system, for example, training Malians in courthouse administration, caseload management, the bread and butter of a functioning justice system.

You asked about the auditor general. This has been kind of a flagship project for Canada because it has involved the Office of the Auditor General of Canada providing direct support to the Malian office of the auditor general so that there is appropriate oversight on the expenditure of public resources. I believe this is the only country in francophone Africa that has chosen to adopt the Canadian model of a more independent audit function than the French model, which is the case in many of the other countries.

It's a multi-faceted long-term set of priorities that we're following in Mali. Before turning to my colleague, let me add that we suspended direct aid to the Government of Mali in March 2012, but we have continued to provide, for example, inoculations for children, textbooks for children, to ensure that crucial years aren't lost because of the current turmoil.

Leslie.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm sorry, Ms. Brown, we'll have to pick you up maybe in the next round because that's all the time we have.

We're going to turn back to the other side, to Madam Laverdière for five minutes, please.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of you for your very thought-provoking presentations today.

I would like to go back to the announced Canadian contribution of $13 million. I would first like a clarification. Is that really a new amount of money or is it part of our response to the United Nations' appeal?

Is it new money?

[Leslie Norton, Director General, International Humanitarian Assistance Directorate, Canadian International Development Agency]

That money does come from the CIDA international humanitarian aid program for this year. We're not talking about money earmarked for something else.

Our budget for the international humanitarian aid program has not yet been fully allocated. We are waiting for the UN's consolidated humanitarian appeals for 2013 before we allocate money. We make recommendations on the distribution of expenditures between January and March.

So it comes from our existing budget, but the money for Mali is new.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

Let's compare that contribution to that of Japan, for instance, which is contributing almost 10 times as much as Canada. That's somewhat surprising. Canada has always been Mali's long-standing and key partner, but we are giving a little bit less. Canada is ranked eight.

Why is that?

[Leslie Norton]

In this context, we are talking about what is called burdensharing, where the burden is distributed among nations. Canada makes sure to contribute as much as that distribution calls for.

We also need to consider the context of Sahel. The $13 million is not our only contribution so far. We have already provided assistance for Malians who are affected both by the conflict and the food and nutritional crisis. In the current fiscal year—the fiscal year of the UN and our partners is not concurrent with our own—we have contributed over $21 million to the assistance for the two crises the Malians are experiencing.

[David Morrison]

I want to add a quick comment. That's on the humanitarian side. Our regular development program is continuing to run. Before the suspension of direct aid we were the second largest bilateral donor and the fourth largest overall. We've had to slow down a little bit, but we're ramping back up such that this fiscal year in the bilateral program we will deliver in order of magnitude almost what we were delivering before the coup.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Okay. Thank you very much.

It was one of my subsequent questions about how much we delivered this year on our regular programming. I understand the concept of burden share but it's such a discrepancy that Japan, for example, which is not at the same level as Canada as a contributor, has pledged nearly 10 times as much in Addis Ababa.

For the regular programming, which is now going through a number of organizations on the ground, you expect to disburse, what, 90% or 95% of what you would have disbursed otherwise?

[David Morrison]

On the regular programming, not the humanitarian side, pre-crisis we were in the range of 110%, with 90% of that being the regular development bilateral programming. That dropped a lot last year in the wake of the coup. We've had to shift gears so that now we're delivering it via Canadian NGOs and the multilateral system. It will climb up, depending on what happens in the next couple of months, but we will be up in that range again.