I think there's a growing problem, and it has to do with the focus the government has placed on accountability. People have to be able to say where every single dollar or cent was spent. Development is an area with considerable uncertainty and not just in fragile states. It entails risks, so failures are inevitable. The goal, however, should be to learn from those failures, to admit to them, to study them, and to speak frankly about them. That information shouldn't be confined to a secret report that is kept out of the public domain. We should follow the lead of organizations like DFID in the UK, which subjects its programs to scrutiny through a sort of self-review and opens the door to discussion. It acknowledges its failures and tries to learn from them.
My sense is that, in Canada, there is a fear of admitting that money was wasted. The government goes to great lengths to tout the success of a project or hide the results when it turns out to be a failure. I think this focus on the “flavour of the month” forces public servants to misrepresent the reality somewhat or to reframe what they want to do. For example, if the project seeks to build a school in a certain part of Kenya, they will highlight the fact that the region is home to a major extractive sector in order to draw the attention of a former minister who placed a lot of importance on such considerations.
Even before CIDA merged with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, I believe it was The Globe and Mail that revealed the existence of a report on priority countries. An analysis had been done to determine why we were active in those countries and whether that involvement should continue. A summary had been prepared for each country. In some cases, a good chunk of the text had been blacked out because the information only became available in response to an access to information request. It was not public information. But when the reasons cited for Canada's involvement in the country were not blacked out, in most cases, they revolved around our commercial interests. And that was even before the merger.
Personally, I worry that the merger will make that kind of approach easier. One of the reasons the government gave for the merger was policy consistency. That may sound like a very good thing, but if it really means consistency across policies that favour Canada's commercial interests, then development is going to suffer. That is more or less where the line has been drawn in terms of the current consultation process, and that may also be the case as regards the committee's mandate. You are focusing on development assistance without discussing other sectors or other Canadian government institutions that have an impact on development.
Consider, for instance, the priorities announced last week as part of the consultations. Women's rights, human rights, and peace and security were among those priorities. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we are focusing on these issues when we have decided to sell weapons to the government of Saudi Arabia, a country that violates both women's and human rights. We are talking about one of the worst authoritarian regimes in the world.
Not only is it very important to think about what development assistance can do, but it's also essential to look beyond that, at the bigger picture, and take into account other areas of activity that Global Affairs Canada and even other departments are engaged in.