Foreign Affairs Committee on June 2nd, 2016

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to our meeting on foreign affairs and international development. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on the Canadian government's countries of focus for bilateral development assistance will continue.

I want to welcome our witnesses today. Thanks for taking the time to be here. I'm guest-chairing today, or vice-chairing, as our chair is away on some official business.

What we'll do is start with your reports. I think each of you has about 10 minutes. We'll try to keep you to that as much as possible. Then we can have as much time for questions as possible.

I'm going to go according to the list that I have here.

Mr. Werker, welcome. We'll have you introduce yourself and give us a bit of your background. If you could start with your presentation, that would great.

[Eric Werker, Associate Professor, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honour to be consulted before such an accomplished and experienced group of individuals.

I will give you a bit of background. I returned with my family to Vancouver last year after spending nearly 20 years based in Boston, where I did my education in economics at Harvard and then spent almost a decade with the faculty of the Harvard Business School. My research is on foreign aid primarily, but I also have looked into a number of areas of economic development. Part of the foreign aid research has been on aid allocation decisions by donor countries, so it is especially exciting to be a part of this committee.

I've also maintained a foot in the real world, working during grad school on refugee issues in Uganda and then briefly for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. government aid agency, in the year that it was starting up, and then advising the government of Liberia on economic policy. Most recently, in my return to Vancouver I'm Simon Fraser's in-kind contribution towards CIRDI, the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute, where I'm working on issues of resource governance.

I'd like to make myself available informally to the committee—to the individuals and to the analysts—going forward, to the extent that it's helpful.

Canada has the tenth-largest economy in the world. Its contribution towards the GDP of advanced economies is just over 3%, meaning that on a good day we might be contributing 5% of the expenditure towards solving the global public good. Now, 5% is a funny number. Done well, that means we can target a handful of problems, work in a handful of places, and really push the envelope and lead the agenda in terms of generating change. Done without much focus, it might be like trying to boil the ocean.

How has Canada's focus on foreign aid been so far? I'm not sure how many of you have the handout that I sent in. Yes? Okay. I can refer to it.

I looked at the top 10 aid recipients in the last year for which OECD provided the data. The leader of the list is Ukraine, with around $130 million U.S., and then it goes down to Jordan and the West Bank and Gaza as numbers 9 and 10. Then I compared their GDP and the total aid from other donors to these countries. As you'll be able to see when you see the prepared remarks, to only one country do we actually give the equivalent of 1% of the country's gross domestic product, and that is Haiti. Most of the others are at less than half a per cent of their GDP.

If you look at the share of the aid received by all our recipient countries, you see that the two leading countries are the Ukraine and the Philippines, where we give close to 10% of their total aid, and those aren't aid-dependent countries. Those are middle-income countries that don't really rely on aid for much. If you were to look at countries where we give at least a half a per cent of their GDP in aid and we contribute at least 5% of the total aid received by those countries, you would see only two countries on the list, Mali and Haiti. That's a fairly low bar for being a real driver of those countries' inclusive development agendas.

That was exhibit A. The second one that I wanted to talk about, exhibit B, which corresponds to table 2, is the possibility of thematic focus, of leading the global agenda on a substantive issue.

In my world of economic development and resource governance, I admire a handful of programs by some bilaterals. Norway has a couple.

One is their support to countries around oil governance. Their annual spend on that is around $50 million Canadian a year. It's a relatively narrow issue, but that $50 million is well within the resource envelope of a country like Canada in terms of pursuing global leadership.

A second is their climate and forest initiative. Norway is by far the world leader amongst donor countries in trying to solve the problem of climate change that's caused by deforestation. They acted for a number of years when everyone else was kind of fiddling around and trying to understand the problem. Their spend on that is close to $500 million Canadian. That's much larger, but it's still well within possibility for Canada if we were to dream big on an issue like that.

The U.K., which, as you know, has hit 0.7% of its own GDP toward aid spending, is the world leader on being the smart donor. They spend around $600 million Canadian on research. Of course, they're spending across the gamut of development issues.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I'm working on two projects, one out of the LSE and the other out of the University of Manchester, that are basically applied research projects. We're working closely with advisers in DFID, the Department for International Development, in bringing economics research to bear on the challenges they're confronting.

Again, it's $600 million across the gamut. Canada could achieve leadership with a fraction of that on a select group of issues.

From the United States government, Obama's initiative, Power Africa, gives $390 million Canadian a year. Again, that's well within our ambitions.

Even the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is seen as the best bilateral aid agency that helps countries that are growing successfully, is only about $1.6 billion Canadian.

Substantive themes are also the way knowledge is organized. With a few exceptions, there are very few area specialists and many more specialists who know something about water engineering or financial regulation. The sustainable development goals are organized into substantive areas.

This is not to say there's no point in having a strong presence in any one or handful of countries.

My recommendation is a two-track approach, one of depth with breadth.

On the country side, we could search for a handful of countries where Canada could play an outsized role. By far one of the largest bilateral aid donors, contributing on the same order of magnitude as the World Bank, Canada can be involved in a whole-of-problem approach to creating inclusive growth. This would be good for us as well as for them.

It would be good for us because we would get exposure to the areas we might not have chosen to specialize in. We could have that on-the-ground presence that would allow us to see the issues that were rising in importance as well as to involve the whole of the Canadian ecosystem back home, from provincial regulators to city planners to university educators to high school teachers, or however we would choose to engage with that country.

Given the findings of the first table, to do this effectively Canada would need to choose a much smaller number than the 25 countries, particularly if we were also to take almost an equivalent amount of our budget and invest it in a handful of issue areas where Canada could aim to be the best in the world and could aim to involve, again, our ecosystem of actors, from our professors in the universities to our civil society leaders to our provincial and municipal leaders to our private sector and investment community as part of the change in these particular areas.

In table 3 I list some hypothetical Canadian focus areas. The countries might be....

These aren't based on any empirical process. That's my next point.

Imagine we're present in Haiti, Mali, Syria, Peru, and Mongolia, and we're working on substantive themes, such as maternal health, responsible mining, agricultural productivity, water management, and refugee welfare. This would be a representative portfolio on which Canada could have strong ambitions in a handful of substantive areas as well as in a handful of geographic areas. This would not be done in isolation from our multilateral engagement strategy.

Here again there would be strong investment in a handful of broad-reaching international organizations, such as the UN Secretariat or the G20, as well as in a handful of international organizations that have substantive expertise, such as the World Health Organization or the UNHCR, where our goal would be to be a leading voice, to be among the top two or three countries in terms of staff members, leading reform efforts, playing host to meetings, pushing initiatives, and, of course, funding.

How would we choose these areas? I suggest putting together a scorecard. Bringing in people and listening to Canadians is obviously important, but looking at a scorecard as well could identify and rate the need for us to be engaged in this area, and whether there's a gap that other donors aren't filling.

With Canadian capacity, can we be the best in the world at something? Can we provide it at sufficient scale?

Then, of course, there's the national interest. Can we engage a Canadian ecosystem outside of the international development constituency and can we make Canadian lives better by this engagement?

I look forward to your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Werker.

Now we're going to go on to Mr. Greenhill for 10 minutes.

If you could quickly introduce yourself, tell us a bit about yourself, and then give us your presentation, that would be great.

[Robert Greenhill, Executive Chairman, Global Canada, As an Individual]

Good afternoon. I am extremely pleased to be here today. Thank you for inviting me.

In terms of a bit of background, these are obviously my personal views, not the views of Global Canada, which I'm in charge of.

I'm from western Canada. I was a consultant at McKinsey and Company for a number of years, and then I became global head of strategy at Bombardier and then president of Bombardier International group before working at IDRC as a scholar looking at Canada's role in the world. I was asked to serve as president of CIDA for three years under both the Liberal and Conservative governments, and then for six years I was managing director of the World Economic Forum, the folks who organized Davos, among other things, and who are very engaged in collective actions to share global problems.

It's with that background that I will provide my perspective here.

In terms of a strategic context, over the last 15 years or so we've gone from a G7 world to a “G7 billion” world in which a multitude of states and non-state actors can affect our collective future. In this kind of a world, innovations and improvements can be shared rapidly across boundaries. Similarly, negative developments, whether infectious diseases, cybercrime, or terrorism, can be shared with equal speed.

This world is at a crossroads. It is possible that over the next 15 years, we could eradicate absolute poverty. We could stabilize a number of the most fragile states in the world. We could have a record number of states and a record number of people entering the middle class. We could secure a more just and stable and prosperous world, all while respecting planetary boundaries. It is possible and it would be historic.

Unfortunately, I think it's less likely than the other alternative, which is that we'll actually go down a wrong path such that international co-operation will falter; a number of fragile states will collapse; key income states will be captured by extremist groups or authoritarian vested interests; a number of western states will disengage or lash out; the world will enter a downward spiral of tension, conflict, environmental degradation, and, in some areas, ecological collapse; and we will potentially see a catastrophic failure of the international system.

Just because we haven't experienced it yet, we should not imagine that we will not experience it in the next 10 years. In a sense, we're sort of in a 1928-1929 kind of world—not with the tensions of fascism, but with collective challenges and pressures on the system. I think we need to appreciate that we really are at a historic crossroads.

It's also clear that the more likely scenario is the negative one, which would be disastrous for Canada and a terrible legacy for our children. I believe that is the context.

I also believe at this critical moment that Canada can play a more significant role than any we've had in the last 60 years. Probably we're positioned to have the kind of influence we had in the late 1940s and early 1950s, for two reasons.

The first is our capacity to make a difference. We actually have the fiscal room and the domestic support for decision-makers in Ottawa to make bold moves internationally if we choose to. There is Canadian support for a globally engaged Canada.

The second is that we have the mindset and the skill set that correspond with any of the challenges of today, and we have international credibility. We are trusted to do the right things for the right reasons, so in an absolute sense, we can make a difference.

Perhaps even more striking—and, in a sense, more worrying—is that in a comparative sense, we really stand out, because although we are the smallest G7 country, we are perhaps the G7 country today that has the greatest unused capacity to make a positive difference, since many other G7 partners are tapped out. The United States is going through a very difficult period politically. The U.K. is tapped out in terms of its fiscal commitments to defence and development, which are well beyond ours or those of many others, and it's also going through an existential crisis. France is in a very challenged space. Italy and Japan are in a financial morass. If you look through the G7, we're the ones left standing in terms of being able to actually engage in a significant way if we choose to.

Given that context, I believe we have the opportunity and also the obligation to engage in a way that's consequential: not just to be present, but to actually make a real difference.

So how does one do that in this complex world? I would argue we do it by being very focused and very determined.

What I'm going to lay out in the next five minutes is a development diamond with four points.

The first point is a very sharp focus. There are, as Eric mentioned, a number of geographies where we can be very useful. I would argue that there are only a limited number where we can truly be game-changing.

If we look at countries that have regional or global significance in terms of world stability and that are also countries where we can actually make a difference in outcomes, there are two.

The first is Haiti, which Eric mentioned. It is the only fragile state in Latin America or in the Americas—although Venezuela is trying to catch up—and it has a huge impact on the entire Caribbean region. It's at a critical point in its own political and economic development. We are, together with France and the U.S., the three major players there, but we have a credibility and objectivity that the other two do not. We can make a unique difference there, should we choose to.

The second is Afghanistan. It's obviously one of the poorest countries in the world. It's a critically challenged country. It is very important not just for its own sake, but also for the impact it has on Pakistan and the region. It is a place with which we have a unique relationship, not just because of the sacrifice of treasure and blood that we've collectively made, but also because of the capacity that we have in our civil servants, in our leaders, and in civil society here in Canada, and the tremendous respect with which Canada is held from the lowest level right up to the president of Afghanistan. It is another place where, should we choose to, we can make a real difference. These are the two.

Let me go to the other part of focus, which is thematic. When looking at our way in the world, think about this as a T. We can go very deep in a limited number of countries, and there are a few areas where we can engage globally in a way that again would make a difference.

These aren't exclusive. There are other things that we will be doing as well, but in terms of the places sectorally where there is again a great unmet need that has global implications—not just that it's nice to improve them, but that they could actually change the track of the global outcome—and where we have a unique contribution to make, I would argue that again there are two.

The first is reproductive health. In international development programs, people have too often tended to cherish girls but abandon or forget about women. In some developing countries that we're involved in, a girl has an 80% to 90% chance of being immunized or going to school. She has less than a 10% to 20% chance of having access to modern contraception when she becomes a woman.

The impact of 200 million women being without the contraception they are often dying to get means 100,000 women and 600,000 children perish every year. The implications on the development of a country go beyond that.

When women are empowered to choose when they have children and how many they have, they tend to have smaller families. These smaller families allow more workers per dependent, which increases per capita economic growth by up to 30%. It also tends to reduce the ecological burden on the country and, in fragile states, the chance of resource-based conflict. Therefore, empowering women is not only good for rights; it actually changes the demographic destiny of countries and regions. If we look at issues like the Sahel, we see that countries like Mali and Niger will collapse in the next 30 years unless there is full empowerment of women there.

This is therefore not just a rights issue: it is a geopolitical issue. It's a place where Canada is uniquely positioned because of our credibility on MNCH, which the present government is continuing, and because of the present government's focus on women and girls and our general credibility on dealing with sensitive issues. That would be one theme.

The second one is within our own DNA: it's peace, order, and good government. When looking at the world and looking at development, we see that whether it's fragile states or low- and middle-income states or states that are more developed like Brazil, governance is key. To paraphrase James Carville, it's the state, stupid. That's the key issue.

Canada has a great tradition of working on governance. It's a place that we have understood right from the beginning of our own country. Particularly within peace, order, and good governance is the peace and order aspect: policing, judiciary, penitentiary systems. These are places that the world needs help and these are places where Canada has a tremendous credibility. I would argue that peace, order, and good government are Canada's strongest competitive advantage and the world's greatest unmet need.

Those, then, are the geographical and sectoral points of focus.

The third point is how we do it. We need the right resources, focused at the right level. That would mean that for these countries and for these particular areas we need to invest with the intention of becoming the best in the world. If we're going to focus on good governance, including the resource governance that Eric mentioned, we should say that Canada and Ottawa are going to become global centres of good governance. There's no UN institution for good governance in the way that the WHO is for health. This is something we can own.

Beyond the idea of putting resources into a specific area, there is the question of resources overall. In my last two minutes, I want to note where we are in terms of overall commitment in order to make sure our resources can match our rhetoric.

I draw your attention to the next four slides.

The first shows where Canada is compared with its peers, those being other G7 countries and mid-sized open economies such as Norway and Sweden. We are well below average in that group. In 2014, we contributed about 0.24% of GNI; in 2015, it was about 0.28%. The average is almost twice that, at about half a per cent of GNI. If you look at countries that we refer to as “like-minded”—the Scandinavians and the U.K.—you can see that our minds are in the same place, but our pocketbooks are not. We're generally spending one-half to one-third of what our real peers are spending.

The second point, as shown in the third slide, is that not only are we spending less than our peers, but we're now spending much less than we have spent historically. For 30 years, across Conservative and Liberal governments, there was a strong commitment to development. We were leaders, at about a half a percent of GDP. In the early 1990s, with our fiscal and constitutional crises, that fell, and it hasn't come back.

The situation today will be the worst we've been in if we continue at this level. Last year was the second-lowest commitment of our resources in history in relation to GNI. Today we're at about 0.28%; under Prime Minister Chrétien, it was 0.31%; under Martin, it was 0.3%; under Prime Minister Harper, it was 0.3%.

Don't think of these hundredths of a decimal point as a fraction of a per cent. Each one-hundredth is about $200 million—more importantly, it's about 25,000 lives. It's about 50,000 refugee families, 2 million girls going to school, and 1.5 million women having access to family planning. That's what you can do with one one-hundredth of one per cent. This isn't a fraction of a decimal point—this is millions of lives.

If we continue at this level, we will have the lowest level of commitment of any Canadian government in the last 50 years. With respect to our campaign for the UN Security Council, one of the reasons we lost was that we were seen as not being committed to international development. Our commitment at that point was 0.34%. To go back up to a level seen as too low several years ago, we would have to commit an extra billion dollars a year.

This isn't to be defensive about the past; rather, it is to point out that we need to be determined about the future. We need to step up and move forward.

The U.K. is the only G7 country that has reached 0.7%. It reached it across three administrations—Labour, a Social Democratic-Conservative coalition, and Conservatives. It reached it over a period of 15 years of sustained commitment. They started on this journey in 1997, and they realized this end in 2013.

The U.K. in 1997 is almost identical to us today. Their unemployment rate was about 7%; ours is about 7%. Their deficit was about 2%; ours is about 2%. Their commitment in terms of ODA, official development assistance, to GNI was about one-quarter of 1%, which is where we are today. Where the U.K. was then is where we are now. The question is whether we have the collective ambition to be, 15 years from now, where the U.K. is today, which is in a position as a true leader in international development.

We're not talking about aid and we're not talking about assistance. We're talking about an international investment in our collective well-being. This is about investing in preventative maintenance for the planet. That's what international development engagement is in the 21st century. That's why I think the role that you're playing in reviewing bilateral development assistance is so critically important.

Thank you for your time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Greenhill.

We're going to start our first round with the Conservatives.

Go ahead, Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you gentlemen, both of you, for some provocative, thought-provoking messages.

I sense from the testimony we've heard and from the questions and discussions among members since we began the countries of focus study that there will be encouragement to the government to be more ambitious in moving our aid percentage, if not to the 0.7% ideal, then at least closer to the historic point between those two levels.

I'd like to ask you, Mr. Greenhill, for comments, and perhaps Mr. Werker as well. You suggest that two countries that we might be very wise to focus on enthusiastically are Haiti and Afghanistan, two countries where we had ambitious initial investment in both security and development. I think the Canadian government's performance in the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, along with the other major donor countries, was highly effective. It was probably a model for international response for whole-of-government interdepartmental co-operation and focus on the ground. However, six years later, there are still slums on hilltops. Haiti is basically under a military administration, the Brazilian-led MINUSTAH, and the biggest problem there is just the complete inability to restore proper governmental administration.

We've seen, I think in both Afghanistan after the withdrawal.... The cause of the withdrawal of our military forces was partly that Canadian public support for those two countries had visibly diminished, given the lack of results that perhaps were expected and given the total dollar amount of investment. I am just wondering what Canada would do differently in terms of making Haiti.... Let's take Haiti. There's a political reason to be in Haiti as well as a developmental logic. I'm wondering what you would suggest we do differently to achieve a better outcome sooner.

[Robert Greenhill]

I think those are fantastic questions, and they outline the fact that these are very challenging areas.

Development in a Haiti or an Afghanistan, which are like South Korea or Taiwan, for example, 40 years ago, is not a five- or 10-year issue; it's a 30- or 40-year issue.

In Haiti during the 1980s and 1990s, per capita income was dropping, environmental devastation was increasing, and there was increasing political violence. There was a downward spiral. Haiti has now, despite the earthquake and the other challenges, stabilized. There are certain indicators of education of young people, particularly girls, and certain elements of per capita growth that are starting to be positive, but it's going to take a lot of work. A lot of the best officials were the ones who were killed in the buildings during the earthquake. Rebuilding capacity takes decades, not years.

What can we do? I think Canada, both in Haiti and Afghanistan, did some excellent work. What do we need to do? Keep the focus at a high level. It's complex and challenging and it's not nice to work in these areas, but it's necessary, so what it requires is a cross-partisan parliamentary decision to stay by it. We have to decide that although there are ups and downs, we're going to keep pushing.

What can we do to build on this? We can continue to do the security sector reform in Haiti by reforming the police, the judiciary, and the penitentiary system so that MINUSTAH eventually can leave; we can continue to build some of the key institutions and create the rule of law that will allow private sector and other growth; we can have someone at an assistant deputy minister level charged with Haiti, either the ambassador or a special envoy; and we can lay out in Haiti and Afghanistan not a two- or three-year commitment, which is what we're presently doing, but a conditional 15-year commitment.

If we want to make a difference in Afghanistan, we have to say, “We're there.“ If certain things are realized, we're there for 15 years at $300 million a year, which was what we did at the peak civilian engagement. That's a $4.5 billion commitment. We're going to have an assistant deputy minister, or a special envoy retired deputy minister, as someone there to oversee it. We're going to report back to this group every quarter, as we did before. We're going to keep pushing. We're going to do it not because there's a partisan reason or a political reason, because it's not that popular; it's just important. I think that's the level of commitment we have to have.

I mentioned South Korea because it's interesting. In the case of South Korea in the 1960s, a decade after the end of the conflict, the World Bank and others were in despair. It was a terrible mess. There was a military dictatorship. Why did they stay the course? It was because they had to. We couldn't let South Korea collapse. If you look at what happened in the 20 years since, you see that things bore fruit. That's because there was strategic persistence. I think that's another element we can bring to it. Those would be the parts.

To conclude, one difference in development compared to 30 years ago is that the key remaining development challenges are fragile states. These are the toughest of the toughest nuts to crack. If we're going to make a difference, we have to be prepared to make a difference in a different way.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kent.

We're now going to move over to Mr. Fragiskatos.

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

I'm going to defer this question to Karina Gould, and Michael will defer his question to me.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay. That sounds good.

Go ahead, Ms. Gould.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

We want to keep you on your toes, Mr. Allison.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much. Thank you both, Mr. Greenhill and Mr. Werker, for being here today and for sharing your insights. I thought they were interesting and unique in terms of what we've heard so far on this committee.

I want to follow up on one question. We're talking about countries of focus, but we're also talking about the global challenges and how we address those. Mr. Greenhill, you mentioned specifically the region of the Sahel, which I thought was interesting because I just returned from the World Humanitarian Summit, where I had a chance to speak with a special rapporteur on this issue. When I asked him to name the key challenge, he brought up exactly what you said about the importance of empowering women and about maintaining a sustainable population in regions of the world where there's already a lot of fragility and conflict.

The question I have is in terms of development assistance. How can Canada be influential, or have a positive impact, on some of these more global thematic challenges while still working with our existing partners? I'm hoping you can elaborate a little more on that.

[Robert Greenhill]

That's a great example. The Sahel is an area that, without a change in demographic trajectory, will collapse. In Niger there is a fertility rate of about seven children per woman right now, and Mali is at about five or six, and they are so resource-constrained and water-challenged that they can hardly support the existing population.

How does one adjust this? Part of it is working with the existing government, building on the great work that was done in MNCH—work that is being continued and expanded in a lovely cross-partisan way—and then working with some of the most creative partners there.

The Ouagadougou Partnership, which is basically a partnership of a lot of the francophone countries in the Sahel, is doing outstanding work on family planning and is working with religious leaders and community leaders there in a way that embeds empowering women within the culture rather than presenting it as some foreign imposition.

My sense is that we actually have a unique role to play in that area. I think the issue is making sure that we're providing the additional resources to do it. To really change the needle on sexual and reproductive health and rights would probably require the equivalent of about 5% of our present ODA, meaning that about $250 million a year would empower probably 18 million girls and women. That's equivalent to all the women in Canada today. If we were able to do that over the next four years, working with partners like Family Planning 2020, we could to help change the demographic destiny of that region.

What would it take? It would require a very structured, focused approach with resources and then building the internal capacity here to really program this properly.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

My follow-up question is that in talking about countries of focus, one of the things that we hear from the OECD-DAC and from other bodies is that with focus comes influence, but, Mr. Werker, you talked about the fact that in many instances we're not even contributing to 1% of a country's budget. In line with the question that I asked, how do we use our limited resources to have these tangible impacts and to make that influence and work sustainably and tangibly with partner countries?

That's to either of you.

[Robert Greenhill]

One example is building off what Eric talked about, which is about resource governance.

Influence isn't just about money; it's about excellence. Canada played a critical role in Vietnam during its transition out of a kind of closed society when we had Marc Lalonde and a couple of key former officials working for 15 years with the central committee of the Vietnamese government on changing its way of governing itself to become more effective and more responsive. That was about a governance involvement. We didn't spend as much money as other countries, but we had more influence than other countries because we were involved in the design.

We've done the same thing in terms of environmental governance in China. In fact, I think, Mr. Kent, you've been sitting on the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. It is probably the most influential body in China in terms of its development policy. It was set up in 1990 or 1992 and has been sustained for over two decades. It's a fraction of the spending that others are contributing to that. It's had outsized impact, and it's because of this idea of focusing and persisting.

I think what we do is we don't try to be everywhere, but in those few things that we are engaged in, we try to be the best.

[Eric Werker]

Could I just add? I'm not sure if you've seen the working group report from CIPS, “Towards 2030: Building Canada’s Engagement with Global Sustainable Development” that I worked on with Margaret Biggs, John McArthur, Kate Higgins, David Moloney, and Julia Sanchez.

In response to your question, what we argued is to build up the Canadian ecosystem. What could we do differently? Sometimes it would be planting the seeds in Canada in the institutions and the organizations and maybe cross-institutional collaborations that have Canadian capabilities in this area, and then giving them the challenge to go out to do great stuff. Their networks are going to be different from the official development channels. They're going to connect sooner to communities of practice in those countries and they might just happen to do the sort of thing that Robert talked about in China.

It's really one of those. It's almost like a venture capital approach in investing in biotech. You can invest in 50 companies, and if two of them change the world, you've made a spectacular portfolio.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Gould.

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move back over to this side and to Mr. Aubin, please, for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you for being here, gentlemen.

My first question is for Mr. Greenhill, but please feel free to jump in if you wish.

Obviously, we are not surprised by the charts you showed us, even if we are disappointed. We are even more disappointed when we hear the Prime Minister tell us that the 0.7% objective is too ambitious.

I would like you to tell us about the United Kingdom's model. Fifteen years ago, the British were where we are at today, and now they have met the 0.7% target. What was the catalyst? How did they manage to get there? Was it simply a policy decision, or was it combined with a public awareness campaign in which it was explained to people that this was not an act of public charity but actually a real investment? In all of our ridings, people are favourable to Canada helping the poorest countries, but they also recognize that poverty exists here as well. We need to be able to separate the two issues. I think we can work on both at the same time.

I would like to hear your thoughts on the United Kingdom's model. How did the British manage to achieve this milestone?

[Robert Greenhill]

After talking to people and reviewing some of the documentation from that time, my impression was that it was an enlightened geostrategic decision. So there was some leadership. It is clear that the Labour government was elected with a mission to show the world that the United Kingdom could play a positive role. In addition, public servants had already laid the groundwork. They thought about what they could to with that money to bring about real change. Civil society was also very involved.

Planning for the long term was the key. The working document for the development policy review clearly showed that it would be impossible to do it over three or four years. I am of the same mind. The idea is to ask what we can do in the next 10 or 15 years. That's what the British did. They said it wasn't just a matter of charity, but also a question of shared prosperity and global stability. I think that, in the United Kingdom, perhaps because of its history, people were more sensitive to the issue than we were 10 years ago. Today, I believe that we, too, can become a bit more sensitive to this reality.

In order for Canada to become a leader like the United Kingdom, between now and about 2030, we will need to increase spending by 12% per year. That's not insignificant—it's a lot of money—but it's not impossible. In such a situation, the Department of Finance may say that it doesn't want certain things, but that it is willing to do others. These are some of the current options.

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

Mr. Werker, would you like to add anything?

[Eric Werker]

I think the only thing I would add is that the tendency toward the focus areas that have been previewed, where Canada might have its strengths, might not bring in the broader Canadian public in the same way the social side and the gender side would. Those are extremely important areas.

A number of you, including Robert, have made the argument that they are geostrategic, but it's also to have the geostrategic and prosperity linkages that are connected with our Canadian international development so that it's not preaching to the choir. Those who might not see international development as being in their interests recognize that it is when their son gets an internship in China or when their company is able to reach the Caribbean market.

That can still be linked with global development, because the goal of it, of course, is to create economic growth and then to make that growth inclusive. The first part of the problem is the harder one to do, as we've seen in the case of Haiti.

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

My next question is about Canada's credibility in a number of countries we send assistance to, particularly Haiti, which you had talked about. Has our credibility remained intact or has it taken a hit when, for example, Canadian mining companies give us a bad name or when we are ranked near the bottom among OECD countries? At the moment, has our credibility taken a hit internationally?

[Robert Greenhill]

In general, Canada is probably one of the most credible countries in the G7. All countries have their shortcomings.

As for mining policy, it presents a big challenge, but it's also a great opportunity for Canada. Responsible mining development is not easy to do, but it's important. It's important for us and for our mining companies, and it's essential for those counties.

After I left CIDA, the government decided to get involved in this area. It was quite controversial, but honestly, I think it was a good idea. If there are things that need to be improved, we should do so, but we cannot ignore what is an essential sector for many developing countries, nor can we ignore our role, for better or for worse. Working together to achieve the best possible results is, strategically, good for everyone. But it's not easy.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Provide a quick response, Mr. Werker. Thanks.