Foreign Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2016

[The Chair (Hon. Robert Nault (Kenora, Lib.)), Liberal, Bob Nault]

First of all, I want to welcome all of you back.

This is the beginning of one of our studies. It's on the countries of focus for our bilateral development assistance. This will be our very first of a number of meetings to have a very solid look at those countries of focus, the partnerships, and the development of that policy over the next number of years.

In front of us today are officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. We have Deirdre Kent, the director general of development policy, and Isabelle Bérard, the director general of the Americas programming bureau. I want to welcome both of you here.

As usual, the objective of the exercise is to hear from our witnesses and then to get into a comprehensive discussion about the policy matters. I want to turn it right over to Ms. Kent to get started, and we'll run our way right through this for the first hour.

As you know, in the second hour we'll have the International Development Research Centre.

I'll turn the floor over to you, Madam Kent.

[Deirdre Kent, Director General, Development Policy, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, I am very pleased to be here with you today to talk about Canada's countries of focus for bilateral development assistance.

As the chair just said, my name is Deirdre Kent and I am the Director General of Development Policy at Global Affairs Canada. I am accompanied by my colleague Isabelle Bérard, Director General of the Americas Programming Bureau.

Today I will first explain the reasons why we choose certain countries for bilateral development assistance. Then we will discuss the measures taken to direct our assistance, as well as the sectors that benefit from it.

Before that, however, let me briefly explain the current context.

The Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, Ms. Bibeau, recently addressed the committee. As the minister explained to you, we have been conducting a review of our international development assistance policies and our funding framework. Our objective is to refocus Canada's international aid on the poorest and most vulnerable populations, and to support fragile states. This is one of the minister's main priorities. As Minister Bibeau stated, we must ensure that Canada's international aid responds to the needs of a new global context, which means that we must both overcome the obstacles and seize the opportunities.

We need to ensure that Canada's international assistance is aligned to support the new global development agenda, including the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which has set the ambitious target of eradicating poverty globally in the next 15 years. This will require renewing Canada's approach and building on Canada's strengths and comparative advantages, including our existing relationships.

Canada has a tradition of broad global development, and advances its development priorities by working closely with a range of partners. As a result, Canada's international development and humanitarian assistance programming is delivered through multilateral organizations like the UN, Canadian and international civil society organizations, and public institutions in developing countries. Today, other actors—foundations, cultural community organizations, emerging donors, and private sector actors—are all growing in importance.

In terms of volume, roughly one-third of Global Affairs' international assistance in 2014-15 was bilateral—$1.25 billion out of $3.74 billion in total from Global Affairs. It is this bilateral funding that is subject to geographic focus.

Canada does retain a global reach through multilateral security and democratic development programming, and through our work with Canadian organizations and local developing country partners around the world. Furthermore, Canada's international humanitarian assistance is provided on a needs basis, guided by the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence. It is not limited to specific countries or regions.

To be very clear, two-thirds of Global Affairs Canada's international assistance—multilateral funding, partnerships with civil society organizations and institutions, and our peace and security programming—is not subject to geographic focus. Therefore, my presentation today will focus specifically on bilateral development assistance.

Like other donor countries, Canada has strengthened the geographic focus of its bilateral assistance over the last 15 years in order to achieve greater results in reducing poverty. Geographic focus has been an important component of Canada's development effectiveness agenda.

The 2007 OECD Development Assistance Committee's peer review of Canada concluded that Canada was engaged in too many bilateral programs. They observed that this dispersed approach was limiting Canada's potential to achieve significant results. We were spread too thin. Our voice was diminished in countries where we were not a major donor, and our ability to have a measurable impact on the ground was limited.

By concentrating financial and human resources in fewer, larger bilateral programs, Canada has aimed to improve its ability to have a real impact through stronger relations and a more credible voice with local partners, including partner governments and other donors; and a better ability to respond to local needs and conditions, and align with local priorities in order to reduce poverty.

A focus on a limited number of countries is recognized as reducing the administrative burden on recipient countries through division of labour among a few larger donors. It has helped Canada to reduce administrative overhead, as fewer transactions are required, delivering more aid per dollar spent.

Focus also helps to position Canada among the major donors in a country, providing greater influence and an ability to program in a wider range of sectors to increase our field presence and to have more active in-country engagement. In addition, developing countries have identified focus as important for aid predictability and transparency where commitments over time are required for sustainable development results.

How do we focus?

Canada's bilateral development programming greatly increased its focus from 2000 to 2015, moving from 89 to 37 bilateral country programs. Canada currently has 25 countries of focus and 12 partner countries for its bilateral development assistance. In June 2014, Canada increased the number of countries of focus for Canada's bilateral development assistance from 20 to 25.

The 25 countries were chosen based on their needs, namely the extent of poverty, vulnerability, and underdevelopment in the country; their capacity to benefit from development assistance, and the potential for aid to translate into concrete results; and their alignment with Canadian policy priorities. These same criteria were also used in 2008-09 to make decisions based on Canada's initial list of 20 countries of focus.

Canada increased the number of countries of focus in 2014 due to an increased emphasis on bilateral programming, and 90% of bilateral development assistance spending takes place in countries of focus compared to 80% previously. The remaining bilateral spending is primarily in Canada's 12 development partner countries formally called countries of modest presence, as well as a small number of regional programs, such as the pan-Africa regional program.

Our bilateral programming is targeted toward the priorities of our partner countries and is in line with five thematic priorities for international assistance, namely, increasing food security, stimulating sustainable economic growth, securing the future of children and youth, advancing democracy, and promoting stability and security.

Canada's bilateral development assistance involves broad global engagement in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Thirteen of Canada's 25 countries of focus are least developed countries where poverty rates are highest, but we are also working in lower-middle income countries, some of which are fragile states where important pockets of poverty remain. Africa is the most important region with 10 countries of focus.

There are a range of approaches used internationally for determining geographic focus. As part of the evidence base for our international assistance review, we are looking to learn from other donor countries. Some donors, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, and France, use a tiered approach based on country type or income group. The focus of their cooperation differs by group. For example, they may focus on stabilization and peace building in fragile states, on economic growth, or on triangular cooperation with middle-income countries.

Some donors such as Australia have a geographic focus on their immediate region. The United Kingdom devotes a set proportion of 50% of its bilateral assistance to fragile states.

In conclusion, one of the central objectives of the international assistance review is to refocus Canada's aid in order to support the poorest and most vulnerable populations, as well as fragile states. The study will among other things look at the best way to refocus efforts on the poorest and most vulnerable, as well as ways of improving our effectiveness and bolstering innovation.

This gives us an opportunity to reassess our current approaches in light of the information we collect, especially through consultations. We look forward to hearing your committee comments in the context of the information-gathering aspect of our review.

Ms. Bérard and I will be happy to answer your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Ms. Kent.

I will now go to Mr. Allison.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thanks to our guests from Global Affairs for being here today. I also want to thank the government for its increased contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria this past week. I think it's an important initiative, and we need to give credit where credit is due. There have been 20% increases all along. I think this is absolutely critical.

There have been some issues with Mozambique, which is a country of focus, in recent weeks. Canada has frozen aid to the government. When we have bad actors, that's a challenge, right? We have some bad actors in certain vulnerable countries. The story said that money to NGOs would continue as best it could. Is there a thought process to try to reallocate that money? Is this something that over time would be of interest as we look at countries of focus?

I realize that we want economic and political stability. In a situation where governments are behaving badly, is there an opportunity to redistribute funds to NGOs on the ground?

[Isabelle Bérard, Director General, Americas Programming Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

I'm the DG of the Americas bureau, so I don't specialize in Mozambique. That said, I have been working in the business of development for 30 years, and I've touched on a number of programs, including some in Africa. So I am somewhat familiar with situations such as the one you just described.

We do intervene in a number of countries where there are issues, governance issues, and we do need some time to make decisions on how we deliver our support. We sometimes have to redirect our support from the government or institutions related to the government. We sometimes support other institutions or other organizations such as NGOs.

The thought process to get there is very specific. It's done on a case-by-case basis. It very much depends on the tools we're using in a country. Of course, Deirdre did talk about different categories of countries. We work in middle- and low-income countries, and so the toolbox that we use when intervening in these countries varies. We don't work in a middle-income country like we do in a low-income country such as Mozambique.

One example that comes to mind is Ethiopia. I was once closely associated with that country. In 2005, we were offering budgetary support to Ethiopia directly, and then there was civil unrest. We decided that the donor community should stop providing support directly to the government. At the same time, we didn't want to leave the population, the most vulnerable ones, out in the cold. So we redirected the support.

So there are ways and means to do that. Yes, there is a thought process on this that we are engaging in internally. We have to work within the department and with the Canadian government to establish the next steps. We also work with the international community in an example such as Ethiopia, which I know better than Mozambique.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

I'm just going to ask another question and then I'll turn it over to my colleague.

I was recently in Vietnam and one of the concerns they had, of course, was that they're developing and then get taken off the list. I know, once again, there are middle-income countries. I understand those things. One of the things they said, which I'd like you to expand on, is that although their income is rising, they still have huge deficits in the civil service and in a number of capacity-building items.

Would you just talk a bit about that. With the country focus, I have read the criteria and know that it could be the poorest of the poor, but you also talked about middle-income countries in terms of some of the capacity building efforts, because we have a tonne of great tools as Canadians that we can offer them.

[Deirdre Kent]

You raise an important point about determining where the poorest and most vulnerable are. The least developed countries have a certain population, but then there are also pockets within middle income and lower middle-income countries. That is one of the challenges, and it's one of the objectives of the international assistance review to determine how we do focus on the poorest and most vulnerable.

Speaking generically, not about the Vietnam specifically, that is a challenge for the international community. As Isabelle was pointing to, we're doing different types of programming within different countries. As my statement pointed out, in a middle-income country, you may be doing more technical cooperation related to the security sector, for example, or in the health sector, versus what you would be doing in countries where there are larger populations who require assistance with basic needs.

[Isabelle Bérard]

If I may just complement what Deirdre said, we now know that 70% of the poor in the world do live in middle-income countries. We do have to pay attention to that factor, though I understand that the trend is that by 2013 most of the poorest will be living in the fragile states. Nonetheless, if we look at middle-income countries, we are very much preoccupied with the most vulnerable within those middle-income countries and we use various tools to identify them. So, definitely, we are not leaving aside the middle-income countries.

In the Americas, most of the countries I'm working with are middle-income countries, except for Haiti, which is a low-income country. We do have all sorts of tools—technical assistance mostly—but they differ quite a lot from what we do in a low-income country. In Vietnam, I assume that this is something that we could certainly offer. In low-income countries we tend to provide more significant amounts of money to respond to basic needs essentially.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Now we'll go to Mr. Fragiskatos.

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

I have a question as far as the criteria go. What factors are applied when adding and removing states from the list of countries of focus? What's privileged, for example? If I look at the list, Afghanistan is at the top of the list of states that received the most amount of aid. Obviously, Afghanistan has serious needs, and I know that issues around poverty are very important too in our criteria. In fact, in 2008, as you know, legislation was passed that stated that the fundamental goal of foreign aid is “poverty reduction”.

When we look at the list of the poorest states in the world, Afghanistan is not at the top of the list, poor as it is. Yes, there are certainly those challenges and lists vary, with states like the Congo making it to the top of the list.

I'm just wondering if you could shed light on that because I have some concerns about it and think there's a need for greater clarity.

[Deirdre Kent]

You pointed to the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act, and that is an important element that I didn't mention in the statement. In fact, all of Canada's official development assistance is compliant with the ODAA Act, which means that all of Canada's ODA goes to combatting poverty. That is a fundamental principle, whether it's in Afghanistan or in DRC.

With respect to how countries are chosen, need is one of the pillars, including the poverty levels and the degrees of vulnerability of the population, both pockets of the population and the country as a whole. We look at an evidence basis for that.

There's a capacity to benefit from development assistance, and that gets at questions of governance, and performance, and capacity to make best use of international development assistance and alignment with Canadian priorities. That looks at the intersection of trade, foreign policy, security, and development assistance in determining the countries of focus and the partner countries.

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

It's the latter point that critics have pointed to and talked about in terms of aid being linked to Canadian policy priorities. I have some examples.

Colombia and Peru were added in 2009. Mongolia, Myanmar, and the Congo were added in 2014. The argument is that the decision to look at those states and to make them part of our policy was done entirely as a result of a decision of the government in power at the time to align aid with particular strategic priorities and economic priorities.

The result was what? The result was that states like Cameroon, Malawi, and Niger were dropped off the list to make room for those particular states.

I'm trying to follow this out and tease out exactly which criteria are given privilege. That's the substance of the question.

[Deirdre Kent]

All three criteria are given privilege if you like. Sorry, that's the wrong word. All three play equally into the consideration, so you have the need, the effectiveness, and the ability to use the funding effectively, plus the suite of Canadian international interests.

Perhaps I can ask Isabelle, with her expertise in the Americas, to shed some light on the merits of having bilateral programming in Colombia and Peru, which, as she pointed out, are middle-income countries, but where we can see the.... It is about results, and it is about addressing poverty, and I think there are good stories to tell.

[Isabelle Bérard]

Actually, as I said earlier, I've been working in this area for 30 years, and I've actually gone through four different concentration exercises. If I look at the Americas, 10 years ago our top 10 recipients were exactly the same as the top 10 recipients we have today, except for Brazil, which we've dropped for obvious reasons.

The only program we've added is what we call the inter-American program, which allows us to provide support to a greater number of countries, those countries where we do not necessarily have a presence, or where there is limited interest, but where we still want to be in a position to provide some support.

From that perspective, Peru and Colombia have always received some funding from the bilateral program.

Of course, the concentration exercise has allowed these countries to get a little more money because the budget was increasing and because there was a strategy for the Americas that was put forward in 2007. As part of this strategy to re-engage in the Americas, it became clear that Peru and Colombia were going to get a little more funding.

Given some issues that are there in terms of education in Latin America, Peru is the country where the education system is the weakest, and where people are essentially left out, where kids are left out of the system. So it was a good opportunity for us to re-engage with Peru in the Americas, to increase our support and then get involved in the education sector, which we did. We are providing support to quite a number of schooling initiatives in Peru.

As for Colombia, the peace process.... There are lots of people affected by the crisis and the guerrilla war. So getting involved in Colombia was a good way for us to be at the table, to in some sense be in a position to have greater proximity with the government to be able to have a conversation on the peace process, and be able to further our involvement in this process.

In Colombia, the poorest and the most vulnerable are the indigenous population and the Afro-Colombian people, so we wanted, as well, to be able to provide some support there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

We'll now go to Mr. Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here with us, Ms. Kent and Ms. Bérard. There are three broad questions of principle I hope to have time to discuss with you.

If we look back at what has happened, historically, from the Paris Declaration until the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we see that the underlying concept remains the same: international aid is aligned on the needs and potential of the countries we help. I get the impression that over the years, the understanding or definition of that alignment has deviated somewhat so that it now applies to countries that share common interests with Canada, or could, in terms of foreign affairs policies.

In the context of our study, and when the time comes to choose countries, should we not get back to the essence of that alignment? That is my first question.

[Isabelle Bérard]

In terms of geographic focus, which is my field of expertise, we have always paid close attention to aligning with the priorities of the governments in question. It is impossible to achieve results if we we are not aligned with the priorities of the countries where we intervene. If that is not the case, we are headed for failure.

With that in mind, in the Americas, the objective has always been to address, as a matter of priority, the needs of the countries as they express them. Of course, the priorities in general are always more numerous than our capacity to respond.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Yes, no doubt.

[Isabelle Bérard]

Choices can be made. In the conversations we have with the countries where we intervene, choices are made. According to what comes out of our discussions, we can choose priority A, B, or C. Canada has immense expertise, and we can respond to many priorities.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[Isabelle Bérard]

We work with middle-income countries. These countries are quite directive as to what they hope to obtain. Generally we respond to their needs, but that is a situation—

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

If I may, I will interrupt you because time is passing very quickly.

Let's stay with the historical perspective that allows us to look at the future. We have gone from an abundance of somewhat dispersed bilateral aid to the concept of countries of focus, and geographic focus. Has the effectiveness of this focus been proven?

[Isabelle Bérard]

Absolutely, beyond a doubt.

From a programming perspective, my impact is different when I have significant resources to contribute. To be clear, I am not referring to volume; it's not the amount of money that is important. Geographic focus is important. To be sure, financial needs are probably more circumscribed in the Americas than in Africa. That said, in order to intervene in the area of maternal and child health, if you have access to more significant resources, clearly you can accomplish more. This has been demonstrated in the area of maternal and child health, especially in Haiti, where we have made good progress. We have also worked in Honduras and Bolivia, where we have had very good results.

Also, with geographic focus, it is much easier to interact with the government. The scope of our presence generates credibility, which allows us to develop a number of things.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Once we've concluded our study, we will probably have to realign certain things.

Do you have some ideas to express about the transition we should put in place? The idea is not to leave the countries we are working in overnight, but to go in a new direction. How are we going to bring about that transition in the countries of focus where we have been engaged for a number of years?

[Deirdre Kent]

Development has to take place over the long term; it's is a fundamental aspect. The partners demand transparency and predictability. It's fundamental.

I'd like to add something in reference to your last question.

You spoke about sustainable development objectives in connection with the 2030 Agenda. There are 17 global objectives, but we have to remember that it is the least developed countries that have to be at the centre of our efforts. A global approach is not the way to look at objectives 1, 6 and 16. Rather, we have to think of the priority needs of each country. We also have to take into account the changes that are occurring in the countries.