Foreign Affairs Committee on April 21st, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're now going to turn it over to Mr. Garneau for seven minutes.

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

Mr. Prasad, you mentioned that about $37 million, or 1.2%, of the Muskoka initiative budget went towards family planning. Could you give details of how that money is spent?

[Sandeep Prasad]

I have no specifics, but those are figures that have been collected by DFATD.

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

Would it be primarily for education, such as informing people about reproduction and things like that?

[Sandeep Prasad]

Likely it's a mix of interventions relating to commodities and the actual provision of information and services, as you say.

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

Okay.

We have heard from many people who work very hard, NGOs for instance. They have talked to us about early and forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and the cultural and societal challenges in the countries where these things are widespread. I've often asked them how they can change those attitudes. They've answered that it's primarily through education, persuasion, and what have you.

Those are NGOs. Does the Government of Canada make a government-to-government effort to try to get that message across when it deals with a country where this kind of thing is widespread, or is it just the NGOs that try to change the attitudes?

[Sandeep Prasad]

I can't necessarily speak to specifics around how the Government of Canada handles that.

Certainly it's clear that a variety of development partners, donor country partners, will work through their presence, their embassies in countries, to hold dialogues with host governments on particular issues. That's also a role that UN agencies can play. UN agencies such as the United Nations Population Fund can play a very strong convening role between civil society and government within countries. I think the convening role that UN agencies can play is actually quite strong, because that dialogue has to happen domestically between civil society and government.

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

I understand that.

You mentioned embassies. Do our embassies actually have a dialogue with government people in those countries to try to bring about change in terms of what we consider to be human rights violations?

[Sandeep Prasad]

There's certainly scope for more of that to happen. I don't know of any particular efforts that have been made. Certainly, in our view, that is a role of government as a development partner. Government, along with providing development cooperation, needs to be engaged as a key partner in those policy dialogues at the country level.

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

In your involvement, in the work you do, are you getting a sense of any progress being made in reducing the number of early and forced marriages and the practice of female genital mutilation? Are we making progress?

[Sandeep Prasad]

We're making progress in terms of changing governments' attitudes. There have been definite steps to eradicate FGM and to eliminate early and forced marriages through legislative efforts. However, those efforts are not sufficient to curb this immense problem. In the next decade alone, 142 million girls will be forced into early marriages, so at the present time whatever efforts are happening are not sufficient to curb those numbers.

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

Speaking of nutrition, peanuts are an important element in RUTF.

Mr. Moore, you talked briefly about toxins. Certainly here in North America as parents we're all terrified that our children might have allergies, until we find out whether or not they do, and there are all sorts of rules in schools.

Is this an issue in countries in which you're dealing with famine? Is it just a North American thing, or is it a danger wherever you provide these products?

[Mark Moore]

We don't see peanut allergies in children in developing countries. I was just at the University of North Carolina. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Just down the road is a UNC nutrition team, and they have a focus on peanut allergies. There's a lot of new research and maybe some theories as to why we have our problems in the west. One of them is that we think children aren't introduced early enough to peanuts so they present as having an allergy.

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

Mrs. Lescanne-Garnier or Ms. Martini, I first became aware of the nature of famine during the Biafra crisis. That was a long time ago, but it was the first time that I had heard about famine as a major crisis. Now we see it on television all the time.

Is famine a regular occurrence? Is it cyclical? Are some times worse than others? Can we say that famine is everywhere, all the time?

[Adeline Lescanne-Gautier]

At any given time, 45 million children are suffering rom acute malnutrition. From time to time, there is going to be a crisis in the Sahel. Unfortunately, they are cyclical and they occur every two years. That essentially means that a child is going to be malnourished some time in his or her first thousand days. They can also be linked to events such as those going on in Yemen or Syria at the moment. War makes them worse, but the rate of acute malnutrition remains quite stable in those countries.

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

Ms. Martini, did you want to add anything to that?

[Maria Martini]

I think she has summarized that very well, and she has way more experience than I have. I'm still in the learning stages.

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

So at any time in the world today, 45 million children are pretty well constantly undernourished or malnourished. That's quite a staggering figure.

[Maria Martini]

It certainly is, and I really believe that together Canadians can make a difference in the lives of millions and millions of these children. We hope one day malnutrition will be eradicated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'd like to do one more round each to finish up for time. We're going to go with Ms. Brown and then Madame Laverdière to finish off.

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

To our witnesses, thank you so much for being here.

Mr. Prasad, I thank you for recognizing Canada's leadership on the issue of early and forced marriage. It was our former Foreign Affairs minister, John Baird, who brought this subject to the table at the United Nations General Assembly a year and a half ago. It's an uncomfortable topic, I think, for a lot of people in that assembly, but very proactively and courageously the decision was made that Canada would champion this issue, and we have done that.

I thank you too for recognizing the fact that we have spent $30.8 million on issues related to family planning. In the same way, the Muskoka initiative was announced in 2010 and Canada put $2.85 billion on the table. We have seen that money leveraged to some $7.3 billion with the contributions that have come from other donor countries, from many of our private sector partners, and from foundations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the largest ones we work with. The issues of family planning are very dear to the heart of Melinda Gates. She spoke at the summit last year in May in Toronto and reaffirmed their commitment to that very issue. With Canada putting another contribution on the table for the years following 2015-2020 in the amount of some $3.5 billion, I'm sure we are going to see that leveraging happen again and we are going to continue to see these kinds of contributions.

I've now been to 22 countries in Africa, and I recognize that there are policy issues within those countries and they need to make their own decisions. I happened to be in Malawi in January and I read the policy document that was put forward for their health department on building a sustainable health system in Malawi, and we are working very closely with them.

I'm pleased to say that over the past five years we have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of moms, and millions of children are now reaching their fifth birthday. It's a great record and a great legacy that Canada carries.

I have a question for you. I happened to be an attendee at David Cameron's summit in England last summer, which was called the Girl Summit. The issue of early and forced marriage was very clearly on the table, and every one of the country actors who was there and every one of the civil society participants also said that their country was going to champion this. We saw at the Francophonie meetings in November a whole display of young girls who had been taken into early and forced marriage. But the person who really caught my attention at that summit in England was the father of Malala. He said we should work on tomorrow's fathers, and he asked why he should be a different father to his daughter than to his son.

Do you have any thoughts on how we can work to strengthen countries and to strengthen legislation and policy development to take direct education to the young men of these countries who are the perpetrators of early and forced marriage?

[Sandeep Prasad]

Thank you very much for those reflections and those thoughts.

You've hit a number of important points. I'll just make one point regarding country leadership, which is one thing you observed as being absolutely necessary for successful interventions.

The Government of Canada actually participates in the universal periodic review of many countries. It does a good job at that, and it focuses a number of its recommendations on this issue. One thing the government could do would be to follow up when a country accepts a recommendation or indicates that it intends to implement a recommendation that the Government of Canada has issued, and to look at supporting that country in implementing that recommendation. That could be an area to consider for Muskoka part two, support for the on-the-ground implementation of recommendations that have come through that UPR process. I think that's a very important thing to look at.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We'll move over to Madam Laverdière for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mrs. Gautier, you mentioned that you transfer expertise to your partner plants right inside those countries. So with the transfer of expertise, I imagine that the staff, even the management, of those plants has to be trained.

[Adeline Lescanne-Gautier]

Yes.

In fact, we identify the skills needed, whether they be in quality, in production or in purchasing. The skills are those of the agri-food industry. We provide training both in France and in the plants themselves. Then we identify the partners' deficiencies in terms of skills. So we tailor the training to each country and provide the skills those countries need.