Foreign Affairs Committee on April 21st, 2015

[Sandeep Prasad]

Thank you very much for the question and for the comments as well.

The statistic that gives the most recent estimate of deaths related to unsafe abortion globally is 48,000 women and girls per year. Even more—probably about ten times as many—experience disabilities due to maternal causes, in addition to that number.

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

Thank you very much.

That is a terrible number; you shudder just thinking about it. The response, of course—and I feel that we are in agreement on this—is access to safe abortion services and also to contraception. You talked about it a lot in your presentation, which I greatly appreciated. You also brought up the matter of the return that contraception provides by pointing out the extent to which it is an investment.

You were wondering about the payback. There's a big return on contraception. I remember the President of Tanzania at the MNCH summit in Toronto talking at length about how happy he was with the progress they've made in Tanzania with contraception.

Here is a simple question: do you think Canada should do more in terms of contraception, family planning, education, and so on?

[Sandeep Prasad]

Definitely I think that Canada merits some praise with respect to the Muskoka initiative, in terms of prioritizing maternal, newborn, and child health, though in terms of the specific funding for family planning, there is certainly scope for greater investment by Canada for those issues.

For family planning funding specifically, for the four fiscal years between 2010 and 2014, the government spent $30.87 million on family planning overseas. Of the $2.565 billion spent to that point overall through the Muskoka initiative, that was only 1.2% of the Muskoka initiative funds. One would expect, given how effective and smart an investment in family planning is, and for this signature maternal health initiative, that there would be greater spending on family planning for sure.

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

I agree that it is a smart investment that should be seen as a forced investment.

I'm still on the same track.

I will go back to French now, if you don't mind.

You have also established a program of sexual education to prevent child marriage. Could you tell us more about that, please?

[Sandeep Prasad]

Specifically we look at comprehensive sexuality education as an important intervention in terms of the long-term prevention of early and forced marriage, but also in terms of ensuring that adolescent girls and young women have the information they need to carry out fertility decisions, to protect themselves from HIV, and so on.

The key in the global context is to ensure that we are moving from education around sexual and reproductive health to comprehensive sexuality education, and that this education be pursued comprehensively so that it deals not only with disease prevention and control but also with diverse sexuality, fundamental issues of gender equality, and human rights. These are interventions that seek to address pervasive gender norms within societies and to break them down. So as a long-term strategy to transform social and cultural norms relating to gender, it's an important investment.

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

Will we have a second turn?

Okay, good

I'll come to you later.

I'll stay with you, Mr. Prasad.

The post-2015 objectives are still up for discussion, to a degree. Do you think that, at this moment, the needs for gender equality, education for girls, and basic human rights are adequately reflected in the proposals that have been put forward? If not, what could Canada do in that regard?

[Sandeep Prasad]

That's a great question.

I think the package being proposed by the Open Working Group for Sustainable Development Goals is very robust. Probably no stakeholder that has been participating in those negotiations, whether a government, a non-governmental agency, or a UN agency, is perfectly pleased with the final outcome. However, there is quite a robust gender-equality goal, and at this point, we need to make sure we keep that package intact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have in the first round.

Do we have the video ready? We want to show the shot. We could do that, and then we'll continue with our questions.

[Adeline Lescanne-Gautier]

Thank you very much.

I will deal with the first part of your question briefly because I have already talked to you about it.

The therapeutic assistance that Plumpy'Nut provides allows mothers to stay at home and take care of other children.

I talked to you about treatment and prevention. Working with the WHO, we have developed a zinc tablet which, together with rehydration salts, is to be taken at the onset of diarrhea.

Let me show you this short film that explains what PlumpyField is.

Unfortunately, I see that the film is not working. It is one of those days. I will not be able to show it. I am sorry. It did not work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's not a problem. We're going to continue with our questions.

Mr. Warawa, we're going to turn it over to you for seven minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, witnesses, for being here today. Some of you have travelled very great distances.

Ms. Martini, you mentioned that you have zero administrative costs. That's not normal. I think almost every organization has some sort of administrative cost, and that varies from organization to organization, but you said that for the organization you represent it is at zero. Is that correct?

[Maria Martini]

That is correct. Our family looks after all of the overhead. Part of that is because they really believe in the work we're doing, and I'm very appreciative of that.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

So every dollar that comes in goes right toward dealing with severe malnutrition?

[Maria Martini]

Absolutely, yes.

Every single penny that is donated goes to purchase the product. As Mark said, we purchase the product from MANA.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

You referred to it as RUTF. What does that stand for?

[Maria Martini]

It's ready-to-use therapeutic food.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay.

I received a sample a while back, and it tastes like very sweet peanut butter. When this is distributed to children who are malnourished, how do you determine where it will go? Who determines which country it will go to?

[Maria Martini]

Our partner, World Vision, determines where the need is greatest. As I mentioned earlier, eight countries have received shipments, a total of 17 containers, from Food for Famine Society.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Each container, then, would hopefully save the lives of how many children?

[Maria Martini]

Each container usually consists of 900 boxes, which essentially would be for 900 children.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

So you're saying nine hundred times seventeen?

[Maria Martini]

Yes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

There was a comment made by Nutriset that this should be made locally using the local resources.

Mr. Moore, I think you talked about making it in North America and then having it shipped out.

Maybe we could hear from both of you. What is the advantage of making it in the west and then shipping it over to the countries through a partnership to meet that need? What would be the advantage of having it done locally?

Mr. Moore.

[Mark Moore]

I'll go first, and I'll let Adeline comment as well.

Obviously, there's a big disadvantage to having it shipped across the ocean to get it to where it needs to be. There's also a big positive. If you can create a supply chain within a country, it's a fairly simple product: about a third of it is peanuts, and a third of it is milk, and a third of it is sugar to add calories. That's what it is for RUTF. There are several different products out there, but they all have a similar sort of makeup. The vitamin and mineral makeup will be different.

My wife and I lived for 10 years in Uganda and East Africa. I have great sympathy for African farmers. I spent my youth basically walking around on African farms that were trying to grow peanuts.

I was on the phone yesterday with a big supplier in Kenya who's become a very good friend of ours and who is part of the Nutriset network. They cannot source peanuts in Kenya. They buy them, unfortunately, from the United States right now. Peanuts would be the simplest part of this. Powdered milk is produced in New Zealand for the most part, and maybe in the States or Europe. I've been in warehouses all over Africa in which I've seen it brought in from New Zealand. In the United states, the metalized polyester packaging that gives you the shelf life is from China. The fact that we source it from China doesn't win us any friends, but that's where the metalized polyester or the foil, depending on what you're packaging it in, has to come from. Sometimes you can obtain sugar locally. You're talking about an intervention for a compromised infant. Sadly, all of those barriers make it tough to make locally, but there are some real success stories out there of people who have invested heavily and who are trying to make it locally and affordably.

You're right that in the long term, and maybe even in the short term, in some countries where the investment is ready and there, it makes sense to make it locally. But there are a lot of hurdles. This is, as I said, a pretty simple product.

The big thing about peanuts is the aflatoxins that are present. We're working with the University of Georgia in the United States and with the American Peanut Council, the biggest producers of peanuts in the world, to try to work with local farmers to get a higher-quality post-harvest process with peanuts so that local peanuts could be used. I know in the Haitian programs right now they're having a really tough time just sourcing the peanuts. Milk, as a commodity, is tough anywhere in Africa because there are no drying facilities on the African continent, outside of South Africa, where there are some drying facilities. You have a long shipping process for the individual components of this product.

If you can do it and create a supply chain and create jobs, it's a great thing to be able to do locally, and I think it's something we should all be absolutely working for. MANA is a non-profit. Everything about us is transparent. You can read everything about us online. Every salary that's paid is way below industry averages.

We're trying our hardest to go out of business. We're hoping that we eventually will.

[Adeline Lescanne-Gautier]

I don't entirely agree with you.

Today, the network we have established has eight partners. They produce and use peanuts, of which 90% are locally produced. Of course, before the harvest, when the storage bins are empty, there is a shortage of peanuts. We bring them in from Argentina mainly, and from some other countries. However, 90% of the peanuts are produced locally. On average, 85% of the basic ingredients are produced locally.

We use the oil and sugar that we can find. We cannot find milk powder, of course, so until such time as we can develop that industry, we will continue to send products from the north to help malnourished children.

So today, that means creating skills, jobs, developing an economy and not just providing aid as we have always done by sending products from the north to the south. We can do it. It is complicated, of course; they would not be called developing countries if industrial production in Niger, for example, was simple.

Look, I run a company in France. We produce 40,000 tonnes a year. I do not know whether I would be able to make the 2,000 tonnes they make in Niger every year because the economic environment is more complicated. They are not protected as we tend to be in Europe. The United States helps its industries too. They impose import tariffs.

So life is a lot more complicated, but it can be done and we have to push for it to be done. That is where assistance has to be provided. We have to buy locally, at least when there are local products to buy. That is still not possible everywhere, but those economies have to be assisted if, one day, we want to stop sending products to malnourished children.