Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 5th, 2019

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

On the lessons learned, if you're doing it through bilateral programs, of course, things tend to be in silos. You have experts in a particular country or region. Where are the coordination, the lessons learned and the building of best practices? Where does that happen?

[Christopher MacLennan]

That happens in my shop.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Okay. Is that being done at the moment?

[Christopher MacLennan]

Yes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We know that Canadians, when we go around the world.... Canada is particularly good at this kind of work.

[Christopher MacLennan]

Yes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Most of the major international organizations, such as the UNDP, the OSCE and also a lot of other specific countries—the Netherlands, the U.S.—hire Canadians, yet a lot of that knowledge and a lot of that is happening outside of Canada. Is there a mechanism or a way such that Global Affairs is able to somehow coordinate?

In particular, we also have a lot of our diasporic communities that are going abroad and helping to build democracies in their home countries. Is there somewhere that this kind of knowledge is being collected and coordinated and best practices are being drawn from that? This is beneficial to Canada as well, because we would learn a lot about what's happening on the ground in these countries.

[Christopher MacLennan]

At the present time, we're not actually tracking Canadians who are working in other democracy promotion agencies and whatnot. That said, we're keenly aware of which Canadian CSOs are active in this space, and we often will work with them. For example, there is the Forum of Federations. We work with them for the promotion of more federalist approaches to governance and democracy, and CANADEM as well. We're actively using and working with Canadian organizations, but in terms of tracking Canadians who are working abroad, no.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

MP Laverdière, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. MacLennan, Ms. Whiting, thank you for being with us this morning.

I would like to make a comment before I begin. You mentioned the decline of democracy around the world, but this is not exclusive to developing countries. Take, for example, Poland, Turkey and even our neighbours to the south, not far from here. I would like to come back a little bit to the point that was raised, that is, that it only affects developing countries and that, as a result, our policies would have been a failure.

Can we also say that this is a general decline and not specific to developing countries?

[Christopher MacLennan]

That's a very good question for theorists. I'm not one of them.

This is indeed a phenomenon that is not only widespread in developing countries at the moment. However, I think there is a big difference between well-established and less established democracies in terms of their ability to resist change. In some developing countries, where democracy is not necessarily very deeply rooted, it is more difficult.

There are, of course, fears and concerns about some countries such as Hungary and Poland, which are now referred to as non-liberal democracies, that is, countries where we want to continue to hold elections and respect some aspects of democracy, but eliminate some others. We hope that these democracies are well enough established to resist this phenomenon, but this remains to be seen.

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

Okay.

You also mentioned support for women's organizations in the field, local organizations. I remember seeing the following figure a few years ago: 0.03% of our international development envelope went to local women's organizations.

Is this percentage still in the same range or has there been an improvement?

[Christopher MacLennan]

There has been a significant improvement. The government has already announced the creation of the women's voice and leadership program, a five-year, $150-million program to help local organizations support women's rights and gender equality.

Last year, Ms. Bibeau, Minister of International Development, announced the creation of a new gender equality fund, which also aims to find processes or ways to channel more money to local organizations. It is still an announcement of $300 million Canadian, in partnership with the private sector.

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

Do we have an idea of the total amount of all these announcements in the overall envelope?

[Christopher MacLennan]

I don't have the figures with me, but we could find them and send them to you.

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

That would be appreciated.

I would now like to come back to an aspect that has already been discussed. Many Canadian institutions are involved in democratic development, including your department, the International Development Research Centre, the Parliamentary Centre, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation and the Forum of Federations.

I am not one of those who believe that if we built a kind of new superstructure that would bring all this together, we would be more efficient. I think the diversified approach is preferable.

Are there any gaps? Is there an aspect of the issue that is not sufficiently covered by all these institutions?

[Christopher MacLennan]

Democratic development assistance differs significantly from other sectors because it involves political aspects. As part of our bilateral relationship, it is very easy for a department to provide support to a developing country, whether it is to set up audit offices or to provide assistance in the training of judges. What is much more difficult, however, is to offer highly political things, such as support to opposition parties and organizations. This was recognized in the 2007 report, I believe. It is another path, when it comes to touching on much more political things. Offering political assistance can even put at risk our partners in countries where there is resistance to this type of assistance.

This is an issue for all donor countries. We are wondering how to provide services in a way that will ensure that they are well received. We are wondering how to encourage a country that may not be on the right track at the moment to do things differently. This is where it gets more difficult.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

MP Sidhu, please.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for coming in front of the committee this morning.

You touched on the very extensive study that was done in 2007, about 224 pages and 28 recommendations. The main theme from the committee was for Canada to become a large actor in democratic development. You did touch on the fact that, lately, there has been a gender lens and LGBTQ put into it.

My question is this: By doing this study, do we have more suggestions, more room to tell the government in which direction to go? You did mention that there's enough money put aside. Where do you go with this study? We have four meetings with people like you coming to talk to us. What would be the new recommendation on top of the extensive study? That committee travelled around the world, as well, so it was done up to that level. What else can we add on? Do we have more space in this to tell the government?

[Christopher MacLennan]

More space? I think the study from 2007 was a very valid study, and as you mentioned, was very detailed and is still very helpful. I think the difference, in what advice would be helpful, is much better understanding of how the situation has changed since that time. I know you're going to be hearing testimony from actors in the space and from others, and I think it would be very helpful to understand that the recommendations from that committee made perfect sense at the time. Are they still the right recommendations for what we're facing today? Is there a need to increase or decrease the amount of money that we invest in these areas? Is this the best place for Canada to make a difference?

All of that is always welcome from a government department.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

With the changing world, as you said, even in 2007 the committee thought it would be very difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the development. Can you describe any projects where the Canadian government has been successful in that regard?

[Christopher MacLennan]

I can give you an idea of some of the things that we're doing, but you've put your finger on one of the more difficult aspects of this.

The easier projects to measure in results achieved are the ones.... If we think about a scale between projects that are purely developmental—what I mean by that is projects supporting the audit function, ensuring that the audit office is capable of doing audits—through to opening up political space by working with dissidents, which is very political, our ability to measure progress over the short term of a project is much easier on that developmental side. We built the audit office. We helped them train the right people. We ensured that they had all the tools they needed, and they are now capable of doing audits of that particular department.

Supporting dissidents at the other end of the spectrum is even difficult to determine the proper measures. You provide support to them in, perhaps, a better understanding of how to use social media, and a better understanding of the options available that other countries have used to open up political space in a non-democratic country, and the results don't take place in a year. The results are maybe over a decade and you may not see those results for a long time.

Our ability to measure on that end has been quite difficult. This is why your previous question I think is important. Within that space, some recent studies have shown that drive to have measurable results has pushed a lot of spending down toward the development side and out of this space. It's called tame or non-tame democratic assistance.

By forcing us to work in purely developmental areas, you get results that are more easily explained, but there's a tendency now—talking obviously about the entire industry—to move out of the space that's more highly political and where it's more difficult to demonstrate true results.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to MP Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. MacLennan, you began your presentation by talking about the retreat of democracy and then you expanded on that a little by saying we were still in the afterglow of the third wave of democratization with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact Soviet Union, but if we looked closely, we would have been able to see that democracy and the expansion of democracy were under attack at that time. We're still in that era, this hubris, the end of history, as many of the academics were talking about in the west.

Would you not agree that one of the first very clear signals to the west that democracy and that form of governance were under attack was the Orange Revolution of 2004? Some 50 million people in a country rose up because they saw their democratic aspirations being hijacked in a very methodical way by those who saw an alternate model of development, economic progress, under a system of autocracy. If we had looked closely, we would have seen that the beginnings were there in that time.

Would you agree with that premise?