Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 26th, 2015

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

I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Everyone has a different definition of short question, but we'll come back again or maybe someone else will pick it up.

Mr. Garneau, you have seven minutes, sir.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is to the YMCA. I'm a big fan of the YMCA. I have three YMCAs in my riding in Montreal. I also have a YWCA and I'm not sure whether you're independent or both related.

You mentioned the youth empowerment mandate that you have in developing countries. You talked about programs that were related to education. One of the things that this committee has been seized with quite a bit in the last few meetings is this whole subject of forced marriages with young girls, child marriages effectively, and then being pulled out of the educational system and being really doomed to a life of having babies.

Does the YMCA—this is a delicate subject to advocate—try to engage in some of the developing countries with the local population to.... Obviously, if these young girls are going to be empowered at some point, they have to be able to develop themselves as well as boys, and they don't have that opportunity in some cases.

Do you intercede with the local population and try to get that message across as part of your youth empowerment mandate?

[Patricia Pelton]

Certainly, again, getting back to the subject to citizen program in Africa, the focus is on all girls and boys. All females and males are welcome into the program. There has been in the past, and currently still remains, a culture of male dominance and often abuse toward young females that could culminate in rape and/or forced marriage, and we see that around the world.

Part of the S2C program is transforming masculinity and trying to work with young males so that they can understand what we would consider appropriate behaviour with young females. It's trying to get at the root cause and culture change.

[Mary Anne Roche]

Just to comment on the YMCA/YWCA, we are two separate organizations within Canada, but obviously collaborate closely on many initiatives, and certainly in Montreal that would be true.

To supplement what Patricia said, a quick example from Nicaragua where the YMCA.... For the YMCA, by the way, the focus on youth empowerment is a global strategic priority, so that's the number one for all YMCAs around the world.

In Nicaragua, the young people go house to house and talk with families about the family laws within the country. They've developed a strength through their own leadership development work at the Nicaragua YMCA and learned about their rights and responsibilities. This is also a very key thing for children and youth to understand, that there are safeguards in place that need to be respected and implemented. In this particular case, they go around and talk about the family laws and what the rights and responsibilities of a good parent are within a community, what the community standards are.

The answer to your question is yes, absolutely. That's the work that we're engaged in. It's coming at it perhaps from the perspective of rights and responsibilities, and dialogue being the key element.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Ms. Stevenson, we all know that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was signed about 25 years ago. It was one of the most ratified, if not the most ratified, convention ever, by at least 190 countries. Yet we're talking about a lot of developing countries where the concept of female genital mutilation, the concept of child forced marriages are very prevalent.

What does the United Nations do to make people aware, make countries aware, of the importance of the rights of the child, specifically with respect to some of those issues?

[Sarah Stevenson]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

One of the things that we've been doing quite a bit at ChildFund Alliance in New York is helping to create awareness about these issues. Part of that has been the work around the post-2015 development agenda. Right now the version of the outcome document that we have has targets and goals partly for children but also for sustainable development. Within that we currently do have a target that is looking at forced female genital mutilation and cutting as well as child marriage.

One of the arguments that we've been using here is that the overall issue of violence against children and the costs of the physical, psychological, and sexual violence against children, according to the Overseas Development Institute and ChildFund Alliance, is $7 trillion U.S. a year. Not only do countries have the moral obligation as set out in these different conventions but also it makes economic sense for all of us to be working together to address these issues of violence against children. That number is 8% of the world's GDP. That includes the combined GDPs of Australia, Canada, India, and Mexico.

Starting in January 2016 the world will have the opportunity with the newest version of a global agenda to be able to set out and address these issues and to ensure that violence against children including child marriage and FGM/C are both prevented across the social norms of countries.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

Just to follow up, do you have a sense of whether you've making progress in the past 25 years in getting that message across?

[Sarah Stevenson]

In some areas there's been more progress than others. For example, within the issue of child labour we've seen the numbers of children in hazardous labour down from 171 million in 2000 to 85 million. We are able to show progress.

One of the things that the UN Statistical Commission is asking us for is to be able to show proven targets with indicators that we can measure, because if you can't measure it we're not going to be able to count it. There has been a significant push to show targets that have been improved upon within the last few years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Marc.

We're going to start our second round, which will be five minutes.

We're going to start with Mr. Trottier, please.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

My colleague Ms. Brown mentioned Canada's development themes around food security, children and youth, and economic growth. Obviously underpinning all three of those themes is safety and security in a functioning criminal justice system.

I know our guest from the YMCA mentioned some programs around criminal gangs in particular. You go to some cities in Latin America where entire barrios are taken over by criminal gangs, and we're not talking about large international narco gangs, we're talking about local gangs that get involved in extortion rackets, drugs, prostitution, contraband trafficking, guns, and those kinds of things. I was wondering if the YMCA has specific programs—there's this positive model that you talked about, civic engagement and giving children some tools to stay away from that—that work with kids in helping them to resist the lure of getting involved in some of these gangs, because once they're in it's very hard to get out.

The reason it's very important for youth is that they get recruited at a very young age. I was in San Salvador last year and they talked about an eight-year-old being recruited. To prove their worth they have to go out and kill somebody, an innocent person selling tortillas in the street, because maybe this person refused to pay extortion moneys to the local gang and it was just to send a signal to all the other people selling tortillas in the street that they had to do this.

Does the YMCA have programs to help kids stay out of gangs, other than the positive things you do, targeting and maybe even working with local police forces, if that's at all possible?

[Patricia Pelton]

I'll begin.

In our board meetings we often hear what we call the “thought of the day” and it's a practice that I would suggest all of you on any board start. When someone comes in and gives testimony about the value of the organization, it keeps you grounded. I've been in board meetings where we've heard from people who had been in gangs who commit and dedicate themselves to the YMCA or to working with like partnerships and community efforts because they feel they have been rescued.

Indeed there are targeted programs. We said in the initial comments that we'd worked with child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and certainly a lot of work has been done in Colombia. About three years ago a young YMCA leader of some temerity—and I'll get emotional here—was shot down in the street. So it's not always safe work, but yes, work is being done, particularly in the Americas and in scattered countries across the world that we've targeted.

[Mary Anne Roche]

Let me just add that absolutely this work can't take place in the community by the YMCA without it being done with school boards, police forces, and other agencies in civil society trying to move this forward.

Our Governor General and his wife did a visit to Colombia recently. The Governor General's wife had an opportunity to visit the programming at Medellin, Colombia. Comuna 13 is one of the highest communities of violence within that area. The YMCA has had tremendous success in reaching out, connecting with those young leaders, and then it's the young leaders themselves who talk with other young children to try to pull them away. But it's a huge issue, a huge problem. There's absolutely more work that can be done with more resources, but the secret is to do that in collaboration and with youth leading the process.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

I'd like to hear from the CCFC also about any program you might have to combat the scourge, the menace of organized crime in some of the countries that you operate in.

[Mark Lukowski]

I'll give you an example of a program that we implemented in Nicaragua. As you know, our focus is working through communities, and there was an issue of gang violence and lots of fights in the community. We set up a youth group and we educated them on the benefits of having a life without violence to the point that after that happened they went door to door recruiting their peers to show them that violence is not the way to go.

We saw some measurable results after we did it. Children felt more safe in the community after we did that training. So we engaged the youth. Our focus is always to engage youth, whatever the form of violence.

I'll give you another example. In Burkina Faso we worked in a community where there was a high proportion of women who were going into early forced marriages. We set up a community education program. We got mothers and fathers in an education program to make them aware that early, child, forced marriage is not in the best interests of a girl. It limits her opportunity to be able to achieve her full potential.

As the end of that training was completed, women then went door to door and identified young girls who they felt were at risk. At first there was a lot of resistance to it. But over time, within a couple of years, we learned that when mothers and fathers in the communities, or young people in the communities saw a girl who was vulnerable to this, they would go and see this leader and say, “Please be careful, that young girl is vulnerable to early forced marriage.”

So our focus is always on education because we're changing behaviour in any type of violence, whether it be crime or early forced marriage.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. Let's continue with Madam Laverdière for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

One first question to Madam Roche and Madam Pelton, and it may not be relevant, but you tell me then. I was interested by your comments about what you do at the community level to prevent organized crime without having to ask for either school boards or police to be involved.

I was wondering if you do something similar because what it brings to mind is of course the very timely topic of radicalization. Are you active also with youth who could become radicalized either in Canada or abroad?

[Patricia Pelton]

Thanks for the question.

I call ISIS and Boko Haram, etc., horrible gangs on steroids. Essentially it is literally the same kind of thing. People want a sense of belonging to something bigger, I guess, so anything that we can do as a society to bring in alternatives for people in terms of prevention, we do. So with all that we've talked about in terms of leadership and giving people the skills and the tools, using evidence, I must say that as an organization we are very evidence-based and we know tactics that work and tactics that don't work with youth, and we try to use those tools in our programs and working with youth.

Is it measurable? I would say no. At this point in time it's very hard to say how many people we did save by not having them go in and by giving them a feeling of belonging. But I would say that it is leadership training, and training the trainer, word of mouth, and peer-to-peer support. They are like a mushroom. It just keeps ballooning out. So yes, we are very aware and we are focusing on that in our youth programs in Canada where there's active recruitment.

[Mary Anne Roche]

If I might add to that, this whole question for the YMCA is all about making sure there are alternatives—legitimate, good alternatives—for young people and that they have a sense of choice when they're confronted with this challenge of perhaps joining a group, and they can choose no.

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

Thank you very much. I find that very interesting.

If I may suggest, if you have any written documentation about what you do in that respect, generally gang and radicalization, I would think it could be interesting for the committee to receive. From my point of view the more you have the better, so thank you very much in advance.

I have two minutes left. Very rapidly, to Madam Stevenson, we know that many child and early forced marriages result in either unintended or unwanted pregnancies. What kinds of services do the young girls need in order to face those unwanted or unintended pregnancies and what could the Government of Canada do to support these services eventually?

[Sarah Stevenson]

Thank you very much.

The services that we find are very helpful.... It's very similar to what we were talking about earlier in terms of the youth engagement. How do you create peer supports for young girls who are mothers? It raises awareness within communities of the impact of being a young mother but it also creates a support network for that girl. Ideally there is also an opportunity for the girl to continue with her education. Her education is something that will in the long run continue to help the family.

In terms of what the Canadian government can do, I think the Canadian government should be congratulated. As a proud Canadian, I sit here in New York always proud of the work that Canada has done when it comes to this issue. The Canadian government has been a champion for the issue of child marriage. There is more that needs to be done in terms of being a champion against violence against children, but the Canadian government should be congratulated for its leadership on the resolution that recently passed and for its ongoing commitment to the issue of child marriage.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go back to Mr. Hawn for five minutes, please.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for joining us.

You talked earlier in the YMCA presentation about underlying social determinants and understanding those, and so on. But when we're talking about places outside of the developed world I think we're talking about cultural and religious determinants more than what we would call social determinants here.

I'm wondering how we train.... Are we equipped? Are we in the developed world equipped professionally, emotionally, whatever, to go and deal in those areas where there are cultural and religious determinants? Things like what we would call maybe inappropriate tenets of Islam in places in Africa or maybe some different religious or cultural determinants in South America.... Are we equipped to go over there and deal with that? How do we train our folks who are going into that environment? How do we train the folks that we're going to work with there to deal with that?

Mr. Lukowski.

[Mark Lukowski]

Our focus has been on implementing programs to educate the communities. An example I can give you is a program that we've implemented in conjunction with Hincks-Dellcrest out of Toronto. It's a program designed to help parents play with children. As we're teaching them how to play with children and teaching parents how to have activities with children, we're also teaching parents they need to protect their children and also teaching the parents, as the children are very young, to give the opportunity for each child to achieve their full potential.

As Canadians we should be proud of the fact that we do have expertise in this area, as exemplified by Hincks-Dellcrest. It's a global organization known for its work with youth and adults. That is one way we can continue to expand and implement programs in communities.

We've used these techniques from Hincks-Dellcrest in some of the developing countries and that methodology is being adopted by the Government of Burkina Faso.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I want to go back to the ladies from the YMCA.

Following from that, we talk about best practices, which may be different in Africa and in South America, etc. Can you give some examples of best practices from Canada that have been adapted to either of those places? Are there best practices from there that we can bring back here?