Foreign Affairs Committee on April 2nd, 2019

[Graeme Simpson]

I can speak on it, but I probably shouldn't, because it's not an area of my expertise. What I will say is this: there is a really important parallel here in the way in which we think about...and the potential dangers of securitizing the conversation, whether it's about youth, peace and security or women, peace and security. I think they are very closely connected.

There is a very powerful and important message being sent in establishing the presence of young women in armed forces, in peacekeeping forces, in policing institutions, and not just in those institutions but ideally in the structures of command and control as well. This is a very important contribution because women bring a different discourse, potentially, to these areas of the provision of security and policing.

That said, this shouldn't be a substitute for recognizing the alternatives to the security-based solutions. So as long as there is a parallel investment in young people and young women's participation in other arenas of society, in non-securitized arenas of society, then we have a more holistic and comprehensive approach to women, peace and security. That includes in areas of the economy and a broader polity, etc.

I don't know if I've answered you're question.

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

You kind of have.

You said “youth” maybe 20 times during your address. Are females more effective around the world in peacekeeping than men or young boys?

[Graeme Simpson]

My understanding is that the evidence reflects that, but as I said, it's not an area of expertise. I can't cite the studies that would back that up. I'm not doing a study of young women's participation in peacekeeping operations specifically. There's no question in my mind that young people are demanding that they participate and that they be present in these arenas. There's no question in my mind that there is still a gender divide even where the generational issues are being addressed, and there is a prevalence of young men in these institutions. I think it's very important that we increase the number of young women in these institutions, but I can't provide you with the empirical evidence that this produces more effective peacekeeping.

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

Let's move on to the involvement of youth around the world. You mentioned that it is as important on the international stage as it is at home. The question is, are we lagging behind in Canada, when it comes to youth involvement?

[Graeme Simpson]

I certainly wouldn't say that. My instinct is that Canada may have a great deal to offer the world, as a society that demonstrates a very clear commitment to inclusion, in ways that others don't. I think that Canada is wrestling with the particular experiences of its indigenous population's needs. The trans-generational impact that has had on young people in the present generation, in those communities, has perhaps gotten attention. I wouldn't be so arrogant as to suggest it hasn't received enough attention, or that it necessarily can receive enough attention. These are real attributes. They are assets. Canada, in partnership with other societies, may have a lot to offer.

It's for this reason that I want to emphasize the importance of Canada owning this as a domestic issue. You can always deepen the participation of young people, and get that right on a gender-balanced basis as well. Canada has an extraordinary platform for doing this. I would go further than that, if I were to perhaps be provocative. This could be a very powerful vehicle in Canada's international affairs platform. In the future, the UN Security Council will require members of that council to be willing to champion the issue of youth, peace and security, and keep this alive. That's an amazing opportunity for Canada to claim that space, at some point in the future.

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

What do you think about having a UN office in Toronto, instead of New York?

[Graeme Simpson]

I have a bit of a love affair with New York. I also have a number of relatives living in Toronto. I have a personal dual loyalty on this, and would be very comfortable with it. There is a more important agenda for me. I wear the hat of an international, civil society, peace-building organization. What the progress study on youth, peace and security has done, largely under the radar, and through the back door, is challenge the assumptions that the UN has made for many decades about its inability to forge partnerships with civil society. I think what happened with the progress study is that we built a coalition of civil society actors who could access young people in a way that governments and the multilateral system couldn't.

If you want a centre of excellence in Toronto, my strong recommendation would be that you don't try to reproduce the UN offices in New York, but that you think very creatively about the role Canada can play in fostering the interface between the multilateral system and civil society, as non-state actors. I think this is an enormous gap to be filled; use Toronto for that.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

MP Vandenbeld, we'll come back to you. You can finish off that previous question.

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

Thank you.

I was actually going to ask about social media, which you got to with Mr. Caron's question.

I have another question. I know a number of countries have a national youth congress as a coordinating body for young people in the country. Can you give an example of how those succeed, and whether that might be something Canada should undertake?

[Graeme Simpson]

This is a really interesting question and I'm afraid there is no simple answer to it.

Youth congresses, youth councils, parallel structures—there are some amazing examples of where these are truly represented. They provide genuine access for young people into the political process, and the stepping stone, especially if there is a creative, reciprocal relationship between the formal political structures of parliaments and the youth parliaments or youth structures, youth congresses, that sit below that. I think it requires very careful design.

It's challenging because we need to recognize that youth is a transitional status, that we constantly need to reproduce youth leadership. These may be very powerful tools for doing that, for cultivating youth leadership that is then channelled into other arenas of political participation. The channel has to be clear and open.

If it's seen by young people as an alternative to the real thing, they will distrust it. And worse than that, there are some instances in which young people, for very good reason, are allergic to youth councils or to youth congresses because they are seen as a deliberate strategy of oppressive and undemocratic governments to cultivate their youth, to create a youth voice that reflects their political control and manipulation. So I am afraid there is no one-size-fits-all.

I've been encouraging youth councils themselves that do have these credentials, in Finland and in Denmark, to work with youth councils in other societies that are conflict-affected, in order to help them strengthen the independence of those structures. I have to say, I think it would be a mistake to think beyond the relevance and importance of this, and to consult young people in our country on it at any country level. I think the one-size-fits-all runs the risk of empowering structures that are an alternative to the empowerment of young people and it corrupts them, rather than the opposite.

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

We know that on women, peace and security, on Security Council Resolution 1325, which Resolution 2250 is partly modelled on, there are national action plans in place for different countries.

Do you know of countries that have a national action plan on Security Council Resolution 2250, and what countries would they be? Would that be something we could potentially adapt?

[Graeme Simpson]

Yes, there are. Finland has gone down the path of establishing a national action plan. There are one or two others as well. I'm not sure exactly how far down the path they are.

We considered this very seriously. We were strongly advised by stakeholders in the women, peace and security agenda, who were both very positive and extremely wary of our reproducing the national action plan endeavour.

In countries where this was achievable, it was achievable very quickly and was a powerful tool. It signalled the right kind of commitment and created mechanisms of accountability for government against a plan, etc.

In societies where this was taxing limited capacity, actually the action plan itself became the object of the exercise and there were a lot of women's organizations that felt that the key issues got mired in the bureaucracy of an action plan that actually was dysfunctional and inefficient, and in some ways became an exclusively government-held endeavour rather than a participant-inclusive one.

Again, I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all.

I also have to say that I think in some countries, a comprehensive engagement with youth, peace and security, or the youth empowerment, youth inclusion issues is readily available and possible.

I think in other societies it's going to be more tactically important to think about the entry point issue, whether it's education or employment or political participation, and try to connect them, but not necessarily develop a national action plan that is about all things youth, because that may actually make it less operable.

What we've emphasized less than the action plan as a blueprint is the establishment of national coalitions. It's the partnership endeavour that we think we need to emphasize for governments to invest in. The partnerships between government, civil society stakeholders, and the diverse range of stakeholders in the partnerships for building a youth, peace and security agenda is much more important as an entry point approach than a national action plan as a blueprint, which doesn't exclude it as a possibility, but doesn't presume it as the right fit for all systems or societies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you.

MP Aboultaif, please.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Peace, security and youth is the topic here. In the report, youth have great hope for the role of education because it is potentially a transformative tool for the peace-building process. In that regard, I think the emphasis on education also has to do with the focus on building peace and moving forward. Can you share your insights as to how this can be realized and how we can build that, because education is not just about one topic, especially in this world? How can we distinguish that and make sure that we realize how to move forward in order to be able to make sense of peace and security for youth?

[Graeme Simpson]

It's a great question, and I wish I could do justice to the complexity of the feedback we got from young people on this.

On the one hand, I think you're right. We need to see the innovative and diverse space that education offers. Young people always talk about primary, secondary and tertiary education; they were always talking about formal and informal education, societies learning about their past, museums and the range of factors, education not just as a formal curriculum in the schools and tertiary institutions, but informal education as well.

We were struck by the number of organizations out there, both civil society organizations and youth-led organizations, that were doing innovative and creative work on educational issues from early intervention models, for example, in the focus on masculinity and the fact that young people are saying we have to address this issue of masculinity.

I remember talking to a young gangster from Honduras who was saying to me, “You're talking to me about masculine identity as a destructive force. I'm 20 years old; you're about 15 years too late.” He was saying that early childhood intervention models, when we're starting to deal with values-based approaches, issues like masculinity and trying to address the negative forms of masculinity or embed more positive, non-violent discourses about masculinity that are not necessarily shaped around power over or access to young women, need to start much earlier.

UNICEF, although their concern is under-18-year-olds, recognize that, as part of a contribution to the youth, peace and security strategy, early intervention models in schools-based education at the primary and secondary level is critical; the early period of adolescence is absolutely critical.

On the other hand, it was interesting to us that young people—and it may have been about the selections of the young people we spoke to, although I think we accessed a wide range—were telling us to be careful, don't trap this just in vocational education. They don't want to be seen as economic automatons who are being designed for places in the economy, jobs in the community. Education is much richer than that.

It doesn't mean that vocational education is unimportant to young people, but they were telling us not to just focus on this as a vocational issue, an educational issue, for the purposes of employment not least because, in some societies, young people were saying the gap between the educational qualifications that they can acquire and the opportunities to use them in creative, inclusive spaces in society produces real frustration. If we don't recognize that education has to be utilizable to young people, we make a grave mistake, but that doesn't mean we can consign it just to the area of vocational education.

So yes, in all of these arenas, I think young people were seeing education as critical, but I will say this: It was very powerful for us, the way in which they described the triangular relationship between education, employment and civic engagement. Young people were saying they didn't want education that gave them no pathway, but peace education was very important to them. They were saying they didn't want jobs that just made them street sweepers; they wanted jobs that had meaning and that reflected a contribution to society. I think this is a very powerful voice in the way we understand the relationship between education, jobs and peace for young people.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

How optimistic are you about the curriculums of some of the nations in tackling this peace and security in education and the amalgamation between education for jobs or education for building process and building a better society?

[Graeme Simpson]

On the education stuff, we saw unbelievable innovation and creativity in the way in which young people who took control of educational curriculum innovated. We saw extraordinary civil society organizations, which are often standing outside of formal educational curriculum, but are sometimes in very creative partnerships with formal education systems to connect the formal and informal forms of education. We saw a real appetite among young people for values-based education, for education that was about driving values in society. These things were very important. They were part of the privilege of spending two years with young people, young people who would probably be even more intimidated than I am by the protocols and formalities of these spaces, who would often feel excluded from them. I would like to uncap the bottle of everything I've seen in the last two years and open it in this room so that you could share the sense of inspiration I have from my conversations with young people, because so often we see them as dangerous.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Mr. Simpson, I just want to thank you for your testimony before us this morning. Obviously you can tell by the questions and discussion it's been very well received and exceptionally insightful.

With that we are going to suspend to get our next panel in place.

[Graeme Simpson]

Thank you very much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

We're resuming.

There has been no single issue of greater significance and discussed more, both at the subcommittee for International Human Rights and in this Foreign Affairs committee over the last number of years, than the plight for democracy in Venezuela. We've had multiple engagements, including hosting members of the democratically elected national assembly back in 2016, and outside of this committee, numerous round tables both before and after the government support for the Lima Group initiative.

It's with that we have today Orlando Viera-Blanco, the Representative to Canada of Juan Guaidó, interim President of Venezuela, here to brief us on the continuing repression that's happening in Venezuela; we see the images.

I just got to spend several days with Ambassador Diego Arria, hearing first-hand what's happening on the streets, and the horrendous situation of displacement, especially into Colombia.

Mr. Viera-Blanco, it's an honour to have you here before us. I know there's a lot of interest around the table in getting an update from you on the events over the last several months. I welcome you to the committee.

As is our practice, I would ask you whether you would like to take 10 minutes or so to provide us an update, and I know there's going to be a lot of interest and a lot of questions provided by members of all sides around the table.

Please, sir, go ahead.

[Orlando Viera-Blanco, Representative to Canada of Juan Guaidó, interim President of Venezuela, As an Individual]

First of all, good morning. Thank you very much for your kind invitation to try to give you an update about what's going on in Venezuela.

Five years ago, I faced this committee with a lot of witnesses, political leaders from Venezuela, trying to make a file about the dramatic tragedy that we live in Venezuela. Five years later, the situation has gotten worse. We live in an emergency. We live in the worst humanitarian situation that has ever happened in my country or in any Latin American country in history.

When you talk about seeing 8,000 people executed in Venezuela, when you see 30,000 persecutions, when you have about 3.5 children in every 10 born in Venezuela just die, when you have 300,000 people who have died in Venezuela in the last 20 years for criminality without justice—94% of impunity—these are embarrassing statistics that come from a regime.

It doesn't just devastate the economy in the country. It doesn't just devastate our stability. It's a social devastation. It's a humanitarian devastation. It's a political devastation. In the end, it's a devastation of the concept of a state.

We have no institution; we have no separation of power. Now we have no energy; we have no power; we have no light. We have no food; we have no medicine; we have no water.

Each time that I've had the opportunity to repeat this amount, I repeat it because it's important to understand the magnitude of the devastation in Venezuela. In 20 years, Venezuela has received $1.4 trillion, which is $1.4 million millions. If you take into consideration that the whole city of Dubai has a cost of just $250 billion, one-fifth of $1.4 trillion, then the devastation in Venezuela for corruption and malpractice is immense. It is some kind of record as well.

Recently, the chief of staff of the interim President Juan Guaidó was arrested. This is not a simple prisoner. He's the chief of staff of the interim president recognized by Canada and by the most important democracies in the world. That is the situation. It is a fact of the state. The international community has to take into consideration some kind of reflection about what this situation means for international public order.

We have more painful statistics. I'm not talking today as an ambassador. I'm talking today from the heart, from my people. You see Venezuelan children drinking water from a toxic river. On Saturday, I just saw a 23-year-old girl deliver a child in the streets. I saw an old friend of my family die in the hospital on Sunday because they have no power to keep the breathing machines working.

This is not a single situation in the middle of the 21st century. When you see what was going on in Rwanda in 1994, when you see what was going on in Somalia and when you see what was going on in many devastated countries before a genocide happened, think about that. In Venezuela, we are just on the cliff of a possible civil confrontation. Again, there is no water, no medicine, no food, no lights, no power and no justice. It's impossible to live like this.

I want to share with you one last reflection. When I came to Canada the first time, I was 17 years old. I came at the invitation of my father-in-law just to see the country. I was fascinated not just with the immensity of the country. I was fascinated at the age of 17 with just one concept: justice. You breathe justice in Canada. Justice for modern people means freedom. Freedom means happiness; happiness means love. That's why I love Canada: you have justice, you have happiness, you have freedom and you have love.

In Venezuela we lost justice, we lost freedom, we lost happiness and we lost the possibility just to have a dignified life. We need the help of the international community, but we need something else from Canada and from the international community: a huge reflection about this situation. With respect, it's not just about condemning the situation. It's not about more declarations and statements. It's about moving forward and thinking how to create a coalition to save our country and to create justice, freedom, democracy and the rule of law.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We'll go straight into questions. We'll begin with MP O'Toole, please.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ambassador, for coming. It's good to see you again. Through you to President Guaidó and the people in Venezuela, please know that all sides here in Canada are with you through this crisis.

Since this is televised, it's important for Canadians to know the full extent of the crisis, so I'm going to speak a bit about it. I'm going to refer to the OAS preliminary report on the refugee crisis specifically, which calls this the largest crisis in the history of the western hemisphere. The estimates are that by this year, there will be almost five and a half million refugees from your country. The people who are staying are facing nutrition challenges, food shortages and health care shortages. The people leaving are fleeing and going to surrounding states. Do you see over the last year this migration—this refugee departure—increasing? Do you see any end in sight if the Maduro regime clings to power?