Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you.
I will make my presentation in English, but if you have any questions, it will be a pleasure for me to answer in the official language of your choice.
First of all, like many others I welcome the legislation's clear commitment to a Canadian aid program whose objectives focus on sustainable international development, poverty reduction, and humanitarian assistance. Such clarity of mandate is a good thing, and I support it. Sustainable international development, poverty reduction, and humanitarian assistance are objectives around which all Canadians can and should rally. I hope that all political parties in Parliament support these objectives as the cornerstone of Canada's aid program.
I do, however, have a few concerns about a couple of issues, and I'll bring these to the committee's attention.
I have a few concerns about proposed paragraph 14(d) in clause 74, which says that humanitarian assistance should be delivered “in line with Canadian values and priorities”. The phrase “Canadian values” is presumably an allusion to section 3 of the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act. “[G]lobal citizenship, equity and environmental sustainability” are the defined Canadian values in that act. But the statement is vague, and it misses the essential point, namely that humanitarian assistance must be allocated impartially on the basis of objective need.
I believe the legislation should rather require that Canadian humanitarian assistance be delivered in line with internationally accepted humanitarian principles and humanitarian law.
I am a little dismayed that this important piece of legislation is part of a larger budget implementation bill. I believe that clauses 174 through 199 of the budget implementation bill are important enough that they merit consideration by Parliament as part of a stand-alone piece of legislation. As I said recently in an article in the Ottawa Citizen, we now have the opportunity to refound Canada's aid program for a generation or more. I think that all-party consensus on the refounding of Canada's aid program is possible. It is certainly highly desirable, in my view. It would be a pity, if the refounding of Canada's aid program did not receive all-party support simply because the law refounding it is encased in a larger budget bill that has provisions that prove unacceptable to one or more of the opposition parties.
While the bill's emphasis on poverty reduction and humanitarian assistance are welcome and appropriate, they come with certain risks, which need to be acknowledged.
The objective of poverty reduction lends itself to an interpretation as short-term interventions, such as building schools, digging wells, and providing emergency relief supplies. These have been part of my career. They are certainly part of Canada's current aid portfolio and should continue to be so. But if we are to take seriously Canada's commitment to pursue sustainable international development, our aid program must pursue its objectives over the short, medium, and long run. Our aid program must help build capacities and systems so that developing countries can increasingly help themselves. The success of such efforts cannot be judged by the usual short-term management metrics. We are fighting 20-year problems with five-year projects and annual budget cycles.
Furthermore, in order to work well in the long run, Canada's aid program must include strong research, policy analysis, and evaluation components, so that it is always learning and improving. Our aid program must build the capacities of our partners in the developing world to do such research, policy analysis, and evaluation, so that they too can constantly learn, improve, and develop their own skills, capacities, and systems. This is the key to truly sustainable poverty reduction over the long run.
Let me add a word about the private sector and our aid program. The private sector is a big part of what has made Canada the rich and pluralistic country it is today. Canada's aid program can and should include the private sector when it promotes the objectives of poverty reduction, sustainable development, and the promotion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. We can find win-win-win solutions whereby Canada's image abroad is burnished, Canadian companies make a decent profit, and private investment reduces poverty, protects the environment, and respects human rights.
It is not in our national interest to have Canadian companies engage in corrupt and illegal practices abroad, nor is such misbehaviour consistent with Canadian values. Canadian policy, whether through trade promotion or aid, should never encourage such misbehaviour.
I have a word on aid effectiveness.
Legislation is important for setting objectives and principles to be followed, but legislation cannot and should not try to cover everything. Some things are very important for the effectiveness of Canada's aid program but do not appear in this legislation. To name two pressing issues that are hurting the effectiveness of our aid program one can cite the excessive centralization of control in the minister's office and the related apparently ever-reducing speed of decision-making at CIDA. I hasten to add this is not the fault of our good public servants.
The result has been that large amounts of the aid budget are unspent at the end of the fiscal year, large needs are unmet among our aid recipients, and many very good small Canadian charitable organizations are experiencing cashflow difficulties since they depend on speed and clarity of decision-making when they choose to compete for government funds in competitive calls for proposals. This slowness due to increasing centralization in recent years comes on top of already existing administrative and financial processes that can only be described as cumbersome to begin with. If we are truly interested in aid effectiveness this is the first frontier.
Finally, donor countries have been merging and demerging their aid and foreign affairs ministries off and on for decades now. The evidence from several studies suggests that neither the merger of the aid and foreign ministries nor their demerger is inherently a superior model. What matters for the quality of the aid program is the clarity of the mandate, the political will to make the aid program work—and that often means letting the managers manage—and pressure from civil society, the media, and parliamentarians to make it work and to keep it working.
With this legislation we will have gone a long way forward in getting clarity of mandate. The task ahead is to ensure that the other two elements, political will and political pressure, are present as well.
Thank you for your attention.