Foreign Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2013

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

I have a third question. You're an MP from the Ottawa region, so you're well aware of all the cuts that are being taken around this city, especially Foreign Affairs and CIDA. I was interested in this new job that you guys created in your economic action plan. It's called the coordinator of international economic relations. You're aware of that? Can you expand a little—because I have one more question—on what this position is all about? If you want to hold it, I can go to the next question.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

That's in the statute, but I can have my deputy speak to that.

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

Okay. So I'll go to my next question, or...?

[Morris Rosenberg, Deputy Minister, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

I'll just tell you that this is not new. That has been in the statute for quite a while. It's not a job that we are currently filling. There's no change there. It hasn't been created by the government.

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

So you put it in your action plan, but it was already there?

[Morris Rosenberg]

It's in the legislation and has been in the legislation.

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

What does that person do?

[Morris Rosenberg]

There is no person in that job. There hasn't been for a while, either under this government or recently under—

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

So it's a vacant position.

[Morris Rosenberg]

Yes.

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

My last question is, Minister, you're probably well aware of what's called the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act. Recently, the Auditor General found that many of the things you're doing do not fit the three criteria of that act. There are two in particular. One is being consistent with international human rights standards, and the other is taking into account the perspective of the poor.

Can you comment on why you have failed with that act, and why the Auditor General said that?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We have a minister responsible for international development. I think I can speak for both Diane and I, and I know I can speak for Ed Fast, we work tremendously well as a team on international development. I think it's appropriate to put those questions to him. He's the minister responsible and will continue to be.

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

How much more time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have one minute, Mark.

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

My last question is on Haiti. We just returned from Washington and I have grave concerns, and I'll question the aid minister on that, but you're the lead guy on the foreign affairs file. We spend a lot of money on Haiti. You were there not too long ago. Really, do you agree with the comments that Mr. Fantino made? Aren't we failing the people of that region?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I think Minister Fantino, myself, the Government of Haiti, all of us want to ensure that we do a better job and spend every single dollar and get the maximum bang for our buck. Minister Ablonczy was with me in Haiti. Canada has a long-term commitment to Haiti that we're going to honour. It's an incredible priority. The situation on the ground isn't going to change quickly, but we have a strong political commitment, a strong international development assistance commitment. I think it's always a fair thing to ask whether we are getting the best value for Canadian taxpayers. That's something we do everywhere, not just in Haiti.

I can say Prime Minister Lamothe, the second prime minister in President Martelly's government, has received wide acclaim. The Clinton Foundation, international development agencies, certainly our experience is that they finally have a really functioning government that's beginning to get the job done. That's something that certainly was absent a good number of years ago. So they're raising their game, and we're going to raise our game with them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

That's all the time. We'll start our second round, which will be five minutes.

I'm going to start over on my right-hand side with Ms. Brown for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our ministers for being here.

Minister Ablonczy, this is more just a statement of affirmation about travel.gc.ca, which has been an invaluable tool for my constituents. We have made use of it regularly. In fact, when constituents come to me and ask for pins to take with them when they're travelling, we always give them the information about travel.gc.ca and encourage them strongly to put their information into that site so that they're registered with the country that they're going to.

I also want to compliment you on the effectiveness of the work that you've done preparing letters for parents who want to take children out of the country. You know well enough the situations that I've dealt with in my own constituency office, and I thank you for your work on those files. Creating that letter has made things much easier for parents who want to travel with their children, who need the confirmation that perhaps a parent who is estranged or a parent who is no longer in the home has signed off on that, and I thank you for that.

Minister Baird, in the budget we made very clear that we are amalgamating CIDA with Foreign Affairs. We are going to maintain a minister. It's going to maintain its budget, but it is going to be under the umbrella of Foreign Affairs. In the same way that we did in 2006 with the amalgamation of International Trade—and perhaps “amalgamation” isn't the right word—we've put them under that same umbrella of foreign policy.

I wonder if you could speak to the committee about how we are going to work that through with CIDA now working more closely with Foreign Affairs. How is it that our foreign affairs policy is now going to align?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We tabled legislation yesterday, which we hope this committee will have the opportunity to look at. That's certainly our proposal. We're very committed to international development assistance. I think there was a concern and has been a concern for some time that sometimes there was a foreign policy of the Government of Canada and foreign policy priorities of the Government of Canada, and then there were the development priorities of CIDA, and even their own foreign policy. So we hope there will be better integration.

I think, for example, of our ambassadors around the world who are providing development assistance if they are working on trade, on foreign policy, and on development. That will only lead to a more coherent policy. We can have experts on sub-Saharan Africa whether they be on trade, working to have economic growth in those countries, or whether it be on diplomacy, engagement with governments on issues of human rights, and other political issues with development, to ensure that everyone's in the same boat. We all have an oar in the water and we all want to row together.

The relationship between Foreign Affairs and Trade has worked tremendously well. I think both Diane.... Particularly dealing with the Americas, where our trade agreements have been strong in coming, the relationship is very good. We have every confidence that it will be just as good, or better, when Julian joins the DFAIT team.

In many respects, when Diane is travelling in the Americas, she's dealing with foreign policy, she's dealing with development issues, and she's dealing with trade. When I'm travelling to a country—I was in the European Union in Brussels the other day—obviously I'm pushing trade. When Ed Fast is in India, working on the trade agreement there, he's pushing Canadian foreign policy as well.

We're hoping that with the management structure in the public service, with the ministers, we'll have greater coherence in our policy. There's no right or wrong answer to this. Different countries organize these things differently. We think this is the best model. We're 35 million people and we have a big economy, but we better use all of our resources coherently to get better results for Canadians on both Canadian interests and Canadian values.

Obviously, what do we want for Ethiopia? We want economic growth and people getting jobs. If we can assist that through trade, through development assistance, and by pushing human rights as a foreign policy priority, it's a win-win-win.

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

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have.

We're going to move to Madame Laverdière, for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank ministers Baird and Ablonczy.

I would like to say something about the Consular Affairs website. My husband, who organizes all of our trips, religiously checks that website every time we leave the country.

I also have a short message for Minister Baird. I want to thank him for his introductory remarks regarding the integration of CIDA within the Department of Foreign Affairs. We will clearly be very interested in obtaining more information on how that will be carried out. In a few minutes, I will move a motion calling for the committee to consider this issue. I hope that ministers Baird and Fantino will be available to meet with us again.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I think that the Minister of Finance or the Standing Committee on Finance asked this committee whether it wanted to study the part of the bill that relates to foreign affairs and economic development. I think that has already been done, but if not, it may be done in the next five minutes.

We would be happy to help you in your study of those proposals from the budget. Those proposals are modest, but the integration will be broader. If you have an opinion on the issue, we are always willing to hear your concerns and ideas.

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

We would be very pleased to discuss that at length, Minister. Thank you very much.

My colleague Paul Dewar mentioned that Canada has withdrawn from a number of organizations over the past few years. We also know that Canada wanted to withdraw from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. As I am a former diplomat, that seems like a huge deal to me.

I'm flabbergasted, so, Minister, what's next?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

The OSCE?