Thank you for inviting me to offer my perspective on your timely study. I'm sure that your findings will make a valuable contribution to the ongoing international assistance review policy.
I'd like to address two of the proposed questions. One was around how Canada's international assistance can be designed to work in different types of countries. In support of what Aniket has said, I will touch on the integrated differentiated approach. I'd also like to speak a bit around the question of agenda 2030 and how we can ensure that our efforts support the implementation.
One of the benefits of appearing before this committee following so many excellent contributions is that I'm afforded a chance to both emphasize some points that you've already heard but also to offer you some new perspectives.
There has been quite a bit of debate on the question of whether focusing on particular countries has merit in the first place. Some have called for Canada to focus on the poorest regardless of the countries they live in, given the changing geography of poverty. Others have noted the lack of evidence around whether the country-of-focus approach actually leads to more effective aid, but they have, of course, recognized the logic of the approach. It allows us to have greater resources, and, as such, influence in the countries in which we work, facilitates development of expert knowledge, and has the potential to reduce administrative costs.
This may not be enough to ensure aid effectiveness, but it is likely contribute to it. We have limited resources, and we need to choose to spend them wisely to reach scale and impact. However, I think it's worth further emphasizing that the focus question is not just about our perspective on the role of the donor. It's actually about the burden that's placed on our developing country partners who have to spend a significant amount of time reporting to all of the various donors that they engage with. Really, we need to make it worth their while.
I do not have a strong opinion on the number of countries that Canada should focus on. Aniket certainly knows the data much better than I do, and I would encourage you to have a look at the background document that he submitted. For me, rather, I think it's time for Canada to take an approach to international co-operation that's grounded in a recognition of the needs of partner countries and that they have changed significantly, and that it's high time we moved beyond aid in terms of how we think about international co-operation.
Like Aniket, I would argue that Canada should take a differentiated and more integrated approach to international co-operation, which articulates our objectives and the modes of co-operation that Canada will use when engaging with different types of countries. You've heard about the Netherlands example in terms of this differentiated approach. You have your aid countries, those for which the main form of engagement is around external assistance, recognizing that these are countries with less capacity and in greater need of external assistance. You have your transitional countries, your low and middle-income countries that we would call emerging, and for which co-operation might include other things like trade, investment, and aid working alongside.
In the case of the Netherlands, they actually also include another category that they call their trade relationships, which are basically the countries that they promote investment and trade in that are, of course, contributing to benefits in that country. For the committee's knowledge, Vietnam and Columbia as well as Canada fit in that trade category. That's maybe something for us to think about.
I'm not advocating that we adopt the Netherlands characterization lock, stock, and barrel, but I do think we need a similar kind of approach. I agree with Aniket that in the case of Canada, we need a separate bucket, if you will, for fragile and conflict-affected states versus those that are not experiencing conflict but have greater government capacity to absorb assistance.
The differentiated approach should be rooted in a clear set of criteria that outlines, for each type of relationship, the rationale for that approach and the countries selected therein. Moreover, there should be clarity on the kinds of tools that we are looking to use when we talk about these different relationships. For example, in aid countries, we might use a mix of traditional forms of assistance, supporting countries to reduce poverty, reach those that are being left behind, and create an improved enabling environment for trade and investment. In transitional countries, Canada might pursue enhanced trade relations but also make use of the development finance institution that we've been promised. In this context, aid becomes a very strategic input that you're using to target the poor in those countries, of course, but you're also leveraging other forms of finance and supporting your partners to raise domestic resources.
Once these relationships are selected—I think you've heard this a number of times—they need to be long term. As a country transitions from one category to another, perhaps owing to success or setbacks, that doesn't mean they should be abandoned.
Finally, the differentiated approach should work in conjunction with other forms of assistance. That's something else you've heard. We need to consider how we're working with civil society organizations, multilaterals, regional organizations, and how we're addressing global efforts to realize or address global public goods challenges, for example.
I think it's helpful to highlight the merits of this approach for your consideration.
First, the differentiated approach moves us beyond a conversation of aid alone to a more sophisticated discussion of how our development, trade, foreign policy, and other priorities intersect. The approach requires us to think about how policy levers can be used to realize mutual benefit for us and for partner countries. The Netherlands approach was the result of a major review this country underwent to look at how they engage with the world in every domain: agriculture, environment, migration, aid, and so on.
If Canada were to take this approach, I would caution that we too need to properly review how our engagement works with the world, and avoid jumping to a list of countries, based necessarily on our existing list of focus countries or the trade negotiations, though I do agree that there needs to be continuity. We would need to consider, of course, the perspectives of the partner countries themselves. Unfortunately, the international assistance review does not sufficiently capture the beyond-aid domains for this purpose.
Second, such an approach has potential to improve transparency to Canadians and to our partner countries by recognizing our multiple interests and being transparent about them, and clearly articulating a coherent approach to Canada's engagement with the world, one that I think we can expect or at least should be able to expect, given that we have the joined-up ministry that we do.
Third, a differentiated approach allows us to tackle the question of poor countries and poor people, something you've heard a lot about. It means addressing the needs of both. Rather than using strict categories of least developed, fragile, middle income, and so on to determine how we engage, we should look at the many factors in setting out this differentiated approach, one of which would be pockets of poverty. We can make provisions to target poverty in all countries, including those that may end up in any category.
I recognize that there are risks to this approach and many have talked about the need to conserve the Canadian brand, to ensure that our development assistance is guarded from other policy interests. Frankly, I don't buy that this is some kind of zero-sum game. Of course, assistance should be provided according to the ODA Accountability Act and it should target the poorest. That said, we are missing a world of opportunity if we are not better at effectively linking our interests across policy domains. We are also doing a disservice to our partners, many of whom feel it's time for this sophisticated discussion.
There's always a risk that aid will be used for commercial or security interests, but on the other hand, the differentiated approach is also about the impact for other policy domains. Last November I visited the Netherlands for a study looking at private-sector engagement in development, and I remember when I was speaking to the aid people, they of course talked about the need to bring in trade or commercial interests or work with their own companies in their development assistance, and many highlighted that this was a positive in sustainability. Perhaps we can get into that in the Q and A, if there's interest.
But then when I spoke to the “trade people”, they saw it as their remit to be bringing conversations around sustainability and development into the trade negotiations and conversations they were having with their trading partners as well as in multilateral forums.
The differentiated approach isn't about using aid in the service of other interests. It's about recognizing and working with different objectives to realize mutual benefit and maximize the outcomes of international cooperation, using all the policy levers in a coordinated way.
I'd like to end with a couple of points about agenda 2030 and our bilateral assistance programs. I understand that you're very familiar with agenda 2030. You've heard a number of people speak about the merits of that agenda. So I won't go into that. I wanted to flag a few points for us to consider.
First is one of the risks I see in how we engage on this agenda. There's a real risk that countries like Canada will reframe what they're doing to fit with the SDGs, rather than making any real changes. We saw this with the millennium development goals. The risk is greater this time because the SDGs, as you rightly pointed out, Aniket, cover everything. We could just keep doing what we're doing and say that we're doing it to meet the sustainable development goals. We need to be careful of that and we need to recognize that the goals and the principles of that agenda suggest that we need to do things differently.
Second, our approach to bilateral assistance can be informed by the targets of the sustainable development goals themselves. If I take the example of goal 17, which is on implementation, it includes things like enhancing policy coherence for development, strengthening domestic resource mobilization, and mobilizing additional financial resources for development. These are all things that we could be contributing to through a differentiated approach.
Another target, which relates to my third and final point, is actually about respecting country policy space, and the need to support countries that take leadership on their own national sustainable development plans. Canada's bilateral assistance needs to align behind our partner countries' national sustainable development plans. For me, this does not mean that Canada should get engaged in every sector, but rather that we should contribute to supporting our partner countries in the sectors where we have expertise, and according to their plans.
Our thematic focus is currently wide enough that I'm actually not worried that we would be unable to fit with national priorities in our partner countries. Rather, we should recognize the importance of ensuring that we have the appropriate expertise within government, harnessing it from across Canada, and ensuring that we're able to bring that expertise to the countries that we work in. The bottom line is that supporting the SDGs means supporting country ownership and aligning our assistance efforts as appropriate.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions.