As Mr. Audet said, I think we need to be realistic about the impact that the donor country can have and the impact that assistance, in general, can have. Even for those countries that depend the most on official development assistance, it likely represents only 10% of their GDP. Let's be realistic about what assistance can and cannot do.
In addition, I think that where we need to start, in terms of making reforms and cleaning things up, is in our own backyard. Let's do things right. As a G7 country, a member of the OECD, and so forth, we carry a certain amount of sway. We should continue to exercise our influence on international standards. But, if we truly want to improve Canada's aid effectiveness, the way to do that is through measures like the ones my colleague, Stephen Brown, suggested, in other words, by decentralizing and significantly building expertise in regions and theme-based areas of action.
As I mentioned a few moments ago, some administrative reforms need to happen in both the public service and foreign service. That includes putting an end to the practice of rotating workers so frequently. When I worked for UNICEF, during my five years in Zimbabwe, I dealt with three different Canadian counterparts. In Zimbabwe, as in many other countries, it takes a year and a half to get adapted, have people know who you are, and really get a handle on the local situation. Someone does well for a year and, then, gets ready to leave after three. Frankly, it makes no sense. The worker rotation system has to change.
The last thing I would say is that we need to revisit some of the practices in place across the public service. That's an observation that applies not only to the official development assistance program, but also to all programs across the entire public service. I think the results-based management approach taken by the Canadian government for the past 20 or so years hasn't always been suitable for international development projects or a great many Canadian projects. It's a great tool when building a bridge or an airport. It's very effective for projects of that nature. But when you're dealing with a project to promote stronger governance, women's rights, and so forth in other countries, this approach makes things significantly harder. Once again, as I said earlier, it forces government workers to become increasingly creative in their proposals and reports, and that's not necessarily a good thing, in my opinion.