Foreign Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

That's the end of the first round. We'll go to the second round.

Mr. Saini, please.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Being a pharmacist I want to talk to you more about the Ebola vaccine, because it took 15 years to develop, like you said, and many medications take many years with a lot of investment to be developed.

I think that as Canadians we want to make sure that our policies are not changed every time there is a change in government. We want some longevity. I think we can all agree on that. So how do we do that? How do make sure that our policies are consistent over the long term? How do we support organizations and what should we be doing?

[Jean Lebel]

Invest more in the IDRC. No, I'm just joking.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jean Lebel]

It is important that we maintain continuity. That's definitive.

However, if you we were to look at the history of IDRC over the last 46 years, there are four common threads: agriculture, health, economy, and science.

If I look at the policy of the Canadian government over the last 15 years, food security and agriculture has been there and health in various forms has also been there. I think the thematic focus is not necessarily challenging, but what is more challenging is the continuity. In my business, if we are not working on long term we're dead.

We have to make the case all the time to our shareholders, to you in Parliament and other Canadians, and worldwide, that an investment in research may not pay now, but it might pay in a few years down the road and it may also have an impact that is not foreseen.

This Ebola vaccine, when it was tested in Guinea, the Guineans didn't want to be told by Canadians and westerners what to do. They brought in a team from Mali and by pure coincidence this team from Mali was trained by an IDRC grant, a Canadian government grant, on HIV vaccine trials. So the Malians were teaching the Guineans how to do it and the Guineans were successful in this ring vaccination process. That's an illustration of continuity.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That leads to the second part of my question, because my colleague here mentioned government buy-in.

When you talk about states, especially in post-conflict states, say you go into a state that has emerged from civil war or some sort of conflict and you build a hospital, like you talked in your opening remarks. When you go there and you're going to build this hospital, you obviously need buy-in from the local population. We know that in the past sometimes when the good deeds of others.... When I talk about polio eradication, there was some hesitation in certain societies to allow people to come into to administer the polio vaccine.

So now if the Government of Canada were to invest in IDRC—let's just go with your theme—how would you do that?

You're going into, typically as a foreigner, a post-conflict state and you want to do something good in this regard. You want to build a hospital and to provide those essential services—not dramatic services but essential services. If you're in a small town, and maybe in a larger urban area you wouldn't have that problem, but in a small town or small village what kind of mechanism do you have?

You talked about Mali, but that can't always be the circumstance.

[Jean Lebel]

Mr. Saini, it's an excellent question and something I should bring to the forefront of the committee.

First, IDRC is providing support to researchers and institutions primarily in the countries where the problems are taking place. We are not on the ground putting our hands in the dirt; they are.

Second, if the environment is not conducive to research, we're sorry, but we don't do research. There are contexts where we are unable to send a researcher into the field, because it's too dangerous, and there are risks.

Third, when it comes with a roadblock that is not affecting security but is more the result of a mental mindset, like vaccination, then we can carry research that explains why we have those roadblocks. Then, with our research team supported by IDRC, we can find solutions to avoid this roadblock becoming a definitive roadblock to a vaccination problem, for example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lebel. You have my support for more resources.

[Jean Lebel]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Mr. Saini, for that recommendation.

I'll go to Mr. Genuis, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Lebel, I want to ask for your thoughts on an area of particular interest to me, and that's the relationship between aid and human rights, and especially the human rights of persecuted minorities in other countries.

I'll put a few questions out there, and you could share your thoughts on them. How much should we be thinking about human rights when we're allocating aid? What is the effect of Canadian aid on human rights situations in different countries? In particular, how can we make sure that aid gets to religious and ethnic minorities who may be persecuted in the country where they're in and may not be favoured in the allocation of different kinds of support?

[Jean Lebel]

I can talk to you about IDRC programming. I will not have the factual information from the Government of Canada. What I can tell you is that in our context, we are facing and have programming that covers topics like governance and justice.

Let's take a situation like Guatemala, where we are in a post-conflict situation, and there have been repercussions on a numbers of groups, such as indigenous communities. We have funded research to ensure that the voices of these people are heard and that a reconciliation process is driven forward. This is an illustration at the heart of our preoccupation with the values of the country, which are also transmitted with the type of work we are supporting.

Are we limited with whom we can work in terms of religious or ethnic groups? No, it's research. Often in the research, we are interested in what goes on at the margins, rather than what goes in the middle. In French, we say,

“the margin holds the page”.

Often in the margin, this is where you have the side notes, where you have the interesting idea and where you have the research. We need to look at these side notes and margins in order to change the core and make progress.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

You mentioned Guatemala, and our study, of course, is on Canada's countries of focus. Pakistan was a country that was on our countries of focus list, and then it was taken off that list. I wonder if you have done much work in Pakistan, and if you have thoughts on how our aid and the removal of Pakistan as a county of focus might impact positively or negatively the human rights situation, and how aid interacts with human rights considerations in Pakistan, in particular.

[Jean Lebel]

I cannot comment specifically on Pakistan, because it's a country that I have never visited. I know we have been doing programming there. The more fundamental point I think you're asking about, which is similar to the one that was asked earlier, is the continuity. That's where IDRC, because of its mandate, its status, and its way of operating, is a tool for the Canadian government to do things that could not be done in other circumstances.

The countries of focus list changes and it's normal, because there are operational conditions, and there is a political dimension. There are a bunch of things. Our small organization is able to carry on over the long term in one country, and in one region, work that goes beyond a short-term agenda. That's how we have built, over 46 years, networks that are deeply routed in the realities of the countries, and which are benefiting all of us over here when a problem arises.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Perhaps you can comment on the following as well. We heard in the last panel about the criteria for selecting countries. There's the interaction between need and capacity to benefit and, of course, there may be cases where there are countries with great need, but for whatever reason they don't have the capacity to benefit, or we don't have the ability to effectively address those situations. What are the factors that inform capacity to benefit? What are the things that might prevent a country from having the capacity to benefit from our aid, versus factors that might make them more likely to be able to benefit from our aid?

[Jean Lebel]

That's a big question. If I had an answer to capacity-building and resolution—again, from my experience at IDRC and the experience of my staff.... The importance of research is that the same time you're providing a research capacity, you are producing an outcome that will serve the development of the country. Often we are getting into a dichotomy: is this producing an impact, or is this building research capacity or capacity generally? For us, it's two faces of the same coin, because by tackling a problem, by giving the tools to people, by helping them to find a solution to the problem, you are building their capacity. Often if there is a particular witness, we're going to bring people who have lived similar situations and can inform the capacity-building. However, I'm not sure if I am answering your question.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I think you made some great points, though, about what we can do to inform capacity-building. My question was a bit different in its emphasis on how we assess whether or not a country is well positioned to benefit from our aid or not.

[Jean Lebel]

That's difficult for me to answer because we are working thematically, so when we get a proposal from a country, we see already if they have the tools to do the research. If they don't, we are going to work with them to reach that point, but broadly speaking, at the national level, I don't have an answer for you. I don't know if my colleagues do. No.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

No problem. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

I want to thank Mr. Lebel for his presentation and members for your great questions this afternoon.

This will conclude our meeting and our first go-around on the countries of focus. Next week stay tuned for more witnesses and the continuation of our very large initiative to try to get a sense of Canada's abilities to deal with poverty, climate change, and all of the issues that we spoke about today.

Mr. Lebel, thank you very much for your presentation.

This meeting is adjourned.