Foreign Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2015

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

I'm sorry. Yes. Absolutely.

[Dr. Robert Scott]

I think we should be quite clear, and your question is very pertinent, that there is great danger out there for vaccinators, particularly at this moment in Pakistan, where I know the situation extremely well.

The children are being vaccinated at the cost at this time of nearly 200 lives. Vaccinators, mostly 18- to 19-year old young women, are getting paid the equivalent of $2.50 a day for three days' guaranteed work. There is great danger. The government is trying to combat that risk with people with rifles. I've vaccinated children with somebody who has an AK-47 protecting me. This is a real danger. We are overcoming it by constantly negotiating with these people, and it is only through negotiation that we will get it done, as we have in Afghanistan.

It will work, but there is danger out there. I don't want Mr. Wilkinson or Dr. Button's answers, which are very relevant, to go by without telling the committee that there is danger out there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

We're going to move over to Mr. Goldring, sir, for five minutes, please.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you very much. Thank you for appearing here today. I'm not going to be able to get all the questions in I'd really like to ask.

I'm going to touch on one area. The Financial Post put out a report card on charities, identifying that there are some 86,000 charities out there in Canada. That's absolutely astounding. Some $10 billion has been raised, but not all of them are good charities.

We know the good work you do. As the charities are competing for the same dollar, you might say, what type of organization other than the Financial Post...? Is there some type of regulating committee that sets some standards? There were even 54 charities that didn't spend any of the money at all that they raised.

Is there some type of standard that is understood by everybody by which charities can be rated, such as an ISO rating for charities, so that people expect their charities to qualify to a certain standard? What should it cost charities to raise contributions versus what they're actually giving out?

Who would like to respond?

[Dr. John Button]

Our money for our maternal and neonatal tetanus program flows through the Kiwanis International Foundation. Like other foundations, it is assessed regularly by an outfit called Charity Navigator, which determines how efficient it is at raising its funds.

Right now I believe that the Kiwanis International Foundation is somewhere between a 3.8 and a 3.9 out of four.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Is that internationally...?

[Dr. John Button]

Yes. UNICEF's costs for our maternal and neonatal tetanus program are 10% or less. We insist upon that, and in our fundraising effort for the $110 million, we insist that our cost be 10% or less.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

How do those other organizations justify going beyond the 10%? Is it justifiable? I see in this report that MADD Canada was identified has having irregularities.

[Debra Kerby]

I'd be happy to take that one on.

I think one needs to take care in simply looking at ratios of 10% or saying that 80% is a good ratio. I think it's really important that we raise the bar in terms of whether or not an organization is having a demonstrated impact, because I think a 10% ratio might look good but that organization might not be having a strong impact and there could be governance issues within that organization.

I sit on the advisory council of Imagine Canada. Some of you may be familiar with it. It's an excellent Canadian-grown organization, and they have put together a fantastic model for excellence in good governance and financial transparency. It's almost like a road map. For those 86,000 charities in Canada, there are only a couple of hundred that have been accredited underneath Imagine at this point in time, but there's a huge push forward.

Also, I think in the international development sector it's particularly important. Is say this because the Muttart Foundation issued a report on Canadians' trust in charities about a year ago, and for international development agencies, Canadians have about a 50% trust level. Of course, it's competition for funding, to be sure, but also competition for share of mind.

But I know that at Canadian Feed The Children, not only did the Imagine accreditation help us get our finance and programming in order, but it was also an important journey for our board. One mustn't overlook the role of the board in terms of excellence in governance in charities. Also, I think it's helped put us on track, so that in two years we've actually doubled our donations from our major gift donors, who are leadership donors. I think that's because of the excellence in the quality and the way we drive our organization. We have a 10% administration, and about a 65% program. But again, we're pushing impact; we're not pushing ratios.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have, but Mr. Styles, do you want to add a quick comment?

[Bryn Styles]

I will and, Mr. Chair, I'll make it fairly quickly.

As with Kiwanis, we are also rated by Charity Navigator in the States, and we do get the highest rating. They're one of the few that do that, and we're quite happy. We have Rotary Foundation, which is based in the United States, but we also have Rotary Foundation Canada, which has staff in Canada governed by a board.

About four years ago we commissioned Grant Thornton to do an audit of our organization to ensure that we were adhering to the Canada Revenue Agency's guidelines. We were adhering to them, but of course they found some issues that we had to sharpen up on. We did that and are now at the top with the Canada Revenue Agency now, as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go over to Mr. Schellenberger, who will start the third round. Five minutes, please.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to our witnesses here this morning.

I'm a Shriner, and I understand that we aren't quite as focused around the world as you are, even though we are international.

I know that you have to have a focus area, and in our case that has been crippled and burned children. We have a cut-off at 18 years, but if someone is under our care through that time—they've been hurt or under care at a younger age than 18—as they get older, they aren't kicked out of the program, but go right through it. So I totally understand that.

One thing I see from all of you this morning is that you do specialize in focus areas, and rather than try to spread your resources over every problem that's out there, you focus on those problems.

As a government, we also have kind of learned that a wee bit, in that we have focus countries. Rather than try to fix everything around the world, we're trying to focus on, I think, roughly 10 countries for some of those types of things. So I congratulate you on that. I think it's about realizing that, if you put more into a pool, you might be able to eradicate polio or you might be able to eradicate tetanus. I appreciate that.

What lessons are to be learned from Rotary's efforts to eradicate the polio virus? How can we transmit this knowledge to eradicating or curbing other preventable illnesses?

[Wilfrid Wilkinson]

Perhaps, Mr. Chair, I could say that Rotary is made up of more than 34,000 Rotary clubs. They're all independent. They're all doing their own thing; they're all doing their work in the community. In addition to that, they're encouraged to give money to The Rotary Foundation to do bigger and better projects worldwide. To that extent they cover a wide variety of areas of focus.

The Rotary Foundation, which we're representing here, concluded that they could use this new vaccine that had come out to immunize children against polio. The local Rotarians in the Philippines carried out a project to immunize children. This was back in the early 1980s. It was so successful that the World Health Organization came to Rotary and said, “You know, if you can raise $150 million, we can do this for the whole world. We can do it in five years”. That was nearly 30 years ago. It's how the program took off. There were 125 countries where polio was endemic at that time. Now we're down to the three, possibly just two. It's taken a lot longer and a lot more money than we thought. We now have $1.3 billion in this program, and we're going to see it through. That's how it works.

Rotary is working at all levels in the community. The money for polio comes from the members through The Rotary Foundation as an extra to their community service, or their educational service, or the other services they carry out in the community.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Would you like to comment on that?

[Dr. John Button]

What we have learned is that what you actually are accomplishing may be far greater than what you think you are accomplishing. The other real tangible to come out of the tetanus immunization program is the development of heat stable vaccines.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

I want to put it to the committee that we will have bells. The votes will be at 12:35. We have two more individuals to finish off all the questioning, which would mean that we would still have 15 minutes to go. Should we engage? Is that okay?

What I'll do is to ask members to come back after the votes. We have to give drafting instructions. Let's see if we can come back even if it's for 10 minutes to give some drafting instructions. Let's see how the time is.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I have a commitment after 1.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have commitments till 1 at this committee.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes, but if....

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm suggesting within that time.... That's what I'm wondering about. We'd probably be back here at 12:50. Is that enough time?

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

We're always late.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Let's finish off the questioning and then we'll move the drafting instructions to Thursday. We're going to have to try and look at them then. Okay, thanks.

Go ahead, Madame Laverdière, over to you for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Button, you told us a story about a 15-year-old girl who went to school and had social support and an environment that allowed her to interact with other girls her age. The goal was basically to help her to resist a forced marriage. Again, it shows the importance of the role of education and, in this case, the education of girls.

When possible, do you think it would be a good idea to provide sexual education courses to avoid some of these early marriages or at least help women to space out their pregnancies?

As you pointed out, a lower birth rate results in healthier mothers and children, and makes women more able to participate in the social and economic life of their community.

I know that this kind of approach is not always possible, but do you think it may be beneficial in areas when it is?

[Dr. John Button]

I don't think there's any question that sexual education courses could have a positive effect. Do I think it will have a positive effect in eliminating child marriage? No, I don't. I think education and empowerment of young girls will have a positive effect there. I do think when it comes to birth rates and fertility rates, we know that the more educated a girl is the lower her fertility rate is. The other thing we can educate her in is family planning. However, if we're going to educate her in family planning, we have to make sure the tools for family planning are available as well.