Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
It's an honour to be here before you today. My background is 30 years or so in the Department of Foreign Affairs, largely in the international security field, but I've also spent time in other government departments. I was a consultant for quite a few years. I was vice-president of the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. Recently I've been associated with the Conference of Defence Associations Institute. So I hope I bring a broad perspective, both from the public and the private sector, to what I think is a very interesting issue.
My reading of the situation allows me to draw five conclusions. Let me go through them very briefly, and then I'll elaborate.
The first conclusion I draw is that the government intends henceforth that the priority for Canadian aid policy be international development rather than poverty alleviation. International development is a larger concept and it incorporates poverty alleviation, but I think the adjustment is consequential.
Second, we're talking about a construct here that is one department with three business lines, not three departments under a common roof.
Third, if it's to work, they need a common script of some kind. The Government of Canada needs to articulate an international affairs strategy that explains the larger context in which these three business lines are to operate individually and collectively.
Fourth, I know this has been argued, but there's no reason to believe we're talking about a hostile takeover of CIDA by Foreign Affairs. I think there's a great deal for everybody in this, and I don't think that taking an unnecessarily negative view of it is particularly constructive.
Finally, in the final analysis, and this comes from my consulting experience, people are going to make this work. Structure and reorganization are not going to cut it by itself.
Let me go over those five points very briefly. The transition arrangements outlined in Bill C-60 are pretty straightforward, and there's no reason for me to outline those to you today.
What I see, though, in the language is an important refocusing of the aid effort, or at least the $4 billion that has traditionally been CIDA's budget, being cast into a broader international development framework, rather than the more traditional poverty alleviation/poverty reduction vocation that CIDA has aspired to. If you read the CIDA mission statement, if you look at the ODA Accountability Act, you'll see a very strong bias toward poverty alleviation. In this draft bill I see a raising of the issue beyond poverty alleviation to put the focus on a broader international development agenda.
The second point is that what's proposed fundamentally is a repositioning of an important federal asset. CIDA and its highly efficient staff and its very large budget are to be put more at the service of a broader federal international strategy to pursue the foreign relations of Canadians in a broader context.
Let me explain why I think some of the suggestions that I have read about the previous testimony might be just a little off base. As I read the draft legislation, the duties of the Minister of Foreign Affairs have expanded from what they were under the previous Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Act. In those previous iterations, the minister's responsibility was to control and supervise CIDA. He or she is now responsible for fostering international development, poverty reduction in developing countries, and humanitarian assistance.
The functions of the minister have gone from supervision and control of an outside entity or an agency to being directly involved in policy and programming. I think these same duties that are now assigned to the Minister of Foreign Affairs are also assigned to the new Minister for International Development, not International Cooperation.
The plain language of the text also indicates that the Minister for International Development and the Minister for International Trade are to assist the Minister of Foreign Affairs and to operate in concurrence with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. So there's no question in my mind of three ministers with equal status. That's reinforced by looking at the duties assigned to the deputies—the same hierarchy emerges from that discussion. So the net effect is one department with one minister and one deputy minister, assisted by other ministers and other deputy ministers.
The third point is, if this is to work, that the government needs to articulate, at least in broad terms, what it's hoping to achieve, not necessarily through the restructuring, but in its international agenda. That articulation has yet to appear in any form other than periodic presentations the Prime Minister might make in a speech to an international gathering.
I don't think this articulation should be a one-time thing. On arriving in office, democratically elected governments are entitled, indeed expected, to lay out their vision for the future. This vision may well differ, in degree or in kind, from that of the predecessor. I think in a democracy that is a good thing. The genius of the democratic process is that the people get to change their mind and change the direction of their country as they wish.
So I'm not advocating one international policy statement forever. I'm advocating the commencement of a practice where new governments lay out their policies. They don't have to do a big policy review every time, but they should at least lay out what they're planning to do.
Why do I not think this is a hostile takeover? First, I don't think CIDA has ever belonged to anybody but the government and the people of Canada. It doesn't belong to the people who work there. Second, I think CIDA has a great deal to gain from this merger. Its budget has grown, but I'm not sure its standing in this country has grown very much over the years, even in Parliament. I think one reason for this has been its tendency to take a view that is rather detached from other things that are going on.
As our colleague Scott Gilmore reported in, I think, Maclean's magazine, he once had a discussion with a CIDA staffer who made the comment: “It may be a government of Canada priority, but it is not a CIDA priority.” It's that kind of mindset that has imbued a lot of CIDA thinking about its place in the larger system.
I think as it moves into the new structure, CIDA rejoins the mainstream. That means it can play in a bigger game and aspire to having a dramatically greater impact in the field that is its business line. I think also the government as a whole wins. We've talked a great deal about 3-D and whole-of-government operations. This proposal helps to knock down the bureaucratic silos that have prevented those aspirations from being realized.
Let me make one point about CIDA's branding and CIDA's persona. I think it would be unfortunate if it disappeared from view. It's brought a lot of credit to Canada over the years. So notwithstanding the restructuring and the merger, I think there's a requirement to look at a way in which CIDA can be branded internationally. At least two examples come to mind: one is USAID, and the other is AusAID. Maybe we should be considering CanAID. It could certainly live under the structure that we're talking about.
Finally, reorganizations are dangerous. They aspire to improving matters, but the disruption they produce and the productivity losses they cause make a shambles of the great majority of reorganizations. In my experience, it's better to give good people licence to get around bad structure than to try to fix the structure. That said, we're proposing a new structure, and I think you have to make sure you have the right people to get the transition completed, and then you have to get the right people committed to working the new structure.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.