Foreign Affairs Committee on May 5th, 2016

[Daniel Jean]

From a structural standpoint, our structure is very much integrated. For example, Vincent Rigby was our ADM of strategic policy. He's responsible for the strategic policy of all sectors, whether trade, foreign policy, or development. In the same way, in our geographic bureau, under the ADM for each of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, you have people who do development and trade, and we push the envelope even more on how far we integrate.

We have created governance that integrates all the sectors. We have an executive committee that has representation from everyone. Also, under that we have a policy committee where there are representatives on all policy discussions on any of the subjects. They try to leverage the full potential of having an integrated department. It's the same for our program policy and some of our corporate policies.

As well, one of the first actions we took early in the amalgamation was to change the role of our head of mission abroad and make them truly the head integrator of the various sectors. That has led to some real success. For example, when I was in Ukraine last year, some of our like-minded allies told us that our agility to be able to respond using our tools, whether they are the stabilization tools we just described or development assistance, helped us perform very well.

We de-streamed all our executive category about a year and a half ago and are encouraging people to take assignments in others. We're now working on even more foundational work where we're going to try to establish what competencies we have.

In June, at the request of the previous minister, we had a third-party review of where we were in amalgamation. It was done by somebody who was a deputy minister many years ago and who does a lot of consulting work both in Canada and abroad. He was a deputy minister who was involved in many structural changes like this, and he basically felt we were very advanced and that, as with most exercises like this one, the biggest challenge that remained was on the cultural front. We continue to work on this.

[Peter M. Boehm, Deputy Minister of International Development, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Let me maybe add just two points to what Daniel has said. The amalgamation effort is continuing. It's not a finite thing. It continues with deeper integration, depending on the needs of our various branches.

The second point, too, is that we're not the only country in the world that's done that. We check with some of our friends in the Nordic countries, just to see how their own amalgamation effort is going. The Netherlands has done this. Australia has also done the same thing.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I'm very interested in what you've just said there, because the potential to learn from other states is something that can really help avoid mistakes being made, frankly.

Is there anything in particular you would point to in your dealings with the Nordic countries, Australia, or the Netherlands, that really stood out as being particularly important in terms of learning?

[Peter M. Boehm]

I think it would be efficiency, both in policy-making and in how resources are allocated.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

They are technical questions, I suppose. However, when Canadians hear acronyms being thrown around, CIDA for example, which we don't have anymore, I think it's important for Canadians to understand that significant changes have been made. However, what has been the impact of those changes? Hence, the reasoning for the question.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much.

That's the end of this round.

We're now going to go to Mr. Saini.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming today.

I have a couple of questions on the main estimates.

On one of the line items, you have global commerce support program, which I see from 2014-15 has almost doubled for 2016-17. Can you explain what that program is?

[Arun Thangaraj]

Global commerce support program.

[Daniel Jean]

Maybe you're talking about the Canada export program.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I'm going by the line item here in the main estimates. It says global commerce support program.

[Daniel Jean]

Is that $21 million?

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

No, it's $17.955 million.

[Arun Thangaraj]

I don't have that.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That's okay. You can provide that later.

[Arun Thangaraj]

I will get back to you on that.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

There's another program I found interesting. It's the Canadian international innovation program that almost doubled to $5.8 million.

[Arun Thangaraj]

The Canadian innovation program is a bilateral program we have to support technology and science partnerships with Canada, Korea, China, India, and Israel.

What we do is partner small and medium-sized industries between Canada and these countries to spur innovation in those companies.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

You're predicting that from the 2014-15 fiscal year to the current fiscal year that expenditure will be doubled. That's to increase and promote commercial interests?

[Arun Thangaraj]

That's correct.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Another item I found interesting was your contributions for the anti-crime capacity-building program that almost doubled.

[Arun Thangaraj]

This is a program we've had for a number of years. You see the renewal in these main estimates. This funding is for us to work with key partners and allies to slow migrant smuggling, especially in working with authorities in Southeast Asia and West Africa. By providing technical assistance to police forces, and other national organizations abroad, it encourages those local authorities to have the processes they need to have in place to prevent this.

We've had a lot of success as a government and as a country in doing this and providing training, and a lot of co-operation between governments in buying in for Canada's priorities on this.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

The program has doubled. Is it more because our engagement in this file is deeper, is it because other countries have asked us, or is it because the issue has grown more profound?

[Daniel Jean]

I think it's one of the variants. It was in the budget last year. It's coming through mains now, so it's not that it has increased, it's just because it happened in the budget. We're getting it into our main estimates this year.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I have a quick question. This is out of personal interest.

It's a question about currency fluctuations. When you have the main estimates, these are all in Canadian dollars, but a lot of the programming that's done abroad I'm assuming is in U.S. dollars. Is that correct? Or could it be the currency of where you're doing the programming?

[Arun Thangaraj]

It's in local currency. We manage 100 different currencies. In those 170-something missions, we operate in over 100 currencies.