Foreign Affairs Committee on June 9th, 2016

[Isabelle Bérard]

I will have to be consistent with what I said the last time I appeared on a similar question. I am of the view that focusing is a very good thing. We do need to get ourselves involved in the long term. Countries need predictability from donor communities to be able to know what to do with the funds and the support they are getting, and the only way to achieve long-lasting results is to be in the country over a number of years. If I recall correctly, I did mention health. I did speak to a number of MNCH, maternal, newborn and child health, initiatives. You cannot accomplish something sustainable if you're not involved over the long term. Especially in the education sector and the health sector, investments are usually very important if you do want to accomplish something.

In the case of Guatemala, as Mylène mentioned, our support to CICIG dates back to 2007-08. It's true that with a long-term commitment you can actually see the results of your investment.

In Colombia, we have been involved in demining for quite a number of years. There's still a lot of work to do, and because of the situation in Colombia, we haven't been able to go as far as we'd like to. But now we are very well positioned, if a peace agreement is signed, to do very, very good work. A long-term commitment and presence do end up showing results.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

No, you're done, Garnett.

I have a quick question of clarification. My understanding is that the Canada fund for local initiatives does not supply funding for core funding, and it says it specifically in your policy. We've been told by many witnesses that in fact this is becoming a serious issue. Has something changed, or are the witnesses I've heard from not correct in that endeavour? Your comments suggest that this program in fact does give core funding.

[Isabelle Bérard]

No. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that CFLI is giving core funding. It isn't. I was trying to address the issue of supporting local organizations. This is what I meant.

Sylvia, do you want to add something?

[Sylvia Cesaratto]

I would just reiterate that's it true, at the moment, the way the fund is rolled out, it's on an initiative basis.

One of the main objectives of the fund is also to help build capacity within these smaller NGOs. We do have program coordinators within our embassy, or sometimes working with our embassy, to help build that technical knowledge within the local NGO population, which will help them to then seek other funding from perhaps bigger donors to help the core funding issue. I think that's important. At the moment, it is initiative based in the way we roll it out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Laverdière would like to ask a very short question, Mr. Sanai. Do you mind?

Hélène.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much.

My question will be very brief. When will we have the report on the assessment of human rights in Colombia as part of our free-trade agreement?

[Isabelle Bérard]

That's a very brief question, and I imagine the answer will be, too.

[Sylvia Cesaratto]

You'll have it very soon. The document has been drafted and is ready. We expect it will be available in the next few weeks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

Mr. Sanai, please.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much for coming here today.

I have a question I want to ask for clarity. Perhaps you could help me understand this.

My friend Mr. Levitt mentioned that Guatemala had 5,000 murders. When we look at the northern triangle of countries, whether it be El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras, we know that part of the situation is the gang warfare that's happening between MS-13 and Barrio 18. All three countries are affected by the same problem, but our aid delivery is a bit different. Honduras is a country of development, but Guatemala is a partner in development. The borders are very porous; similar situations are affecting all three countries, and we're talking about regional stability. I know that in Guatemala the focus is on food security and human security. In Honduras there's a different focus.

I'm just wondering if we're misaligning our focus and not achieving it. Part of the issue I'm sure many NGOs have is aid delivery, because the situation is not safe. Would it be more prudent to focus on the regional stability, and not just one country? All three countries have the same situation. They're geographically very closely located. Would it not be more prudent for Canada to focus its efforts on the regional stability of that area to make sure we deliver the aid effectively?

[Isabelle Bérard]

That's a very good question. We are totally cognizant of what you're describing. Our analysis over the past couple of years has led us to believe that we need to start changing our focus.

Yes, in Guatemala we were involved in food security. Especially on the bilateral front, we were focusing on food security and health and education, and in Honduras as well at some point. MNCH was very much front and centre. We have started to shift our focus, I'd say in the past year, actually. You did refer to the consultation our assistant deputy minister had in Guatemala. He also went to Honduras. Those questions were raised by the government and by some of the interlocutors he met with. Clearly, we've indicated that we're totally open to start shifting our focus to address those issues of insecurity and try to address the root causes of the problem.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay.

You brought up the issue of insecurity. Guatemala signed a peace accord 20 years ago, and now Colombia is on the cusp. Post-conflict, do we have any mechanism for providing a space for either mental health or women's health in those areas? Colombia especially has a different issue in that 40% of the FARC members were women. You have to reintegrate them into society and create a space for them. In Guatemala it's something else. Do we have a mechanism or a plan to address the same issue but in two different places?

[Isabelle Bérard]

Usually the humanitarian assistance that we have provided in Guatemala and the one that was just announced for Colombia will address issues related to the health of women. In the case of Colombia, it will deal with indigenous women as well.

Of course, through our normal health programming, we have been indirectly dealing with the mental health issues and issues of women victims. We did mention earlier the Canada fund for local initiatives. In the case of Guatemala, they did have specific initiatives to address mental health and to support the victims as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

I think we'll probably wrap it up there, colleagues, to try to stay on time today for a change. I have a bad habit on a Thursday, I understand, of making it longer than it's supposed to be.

On behalf of the committee I'd like to thank our witnesses from the department. We very much appreciate it. Just keep in mind that we're very seized with these initiatives, and we'll look forward to meeting with you many times again.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back to our witnesses in about five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

We'll bring this committee meeting back to order.

In our second hour, we're going to hear from Jean Daudelin, associate professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. From the Fio Corporation, we have with us Michael Greenberg, who is the chair. From Inter Pares, we have Bill Fairbairn, who we have talked to before. From KAIROS, which we have entertained before, we have Rachel Warden, who is the coordinator for Latin American partnerships and gender justice.

Welcome to all of you.

This is a little bit larger group, so I hope we can keep the opening remarks to about half an hour for the four. That gives us time to ask some very pertinent questions, so I would appreciate it if we could do our best in that regard.

Jean Daudelin is first on the list, so I will turn the floor over to him.

[Jean Daudelin, Associate Professor, The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank the committee for this invitation.

First, I'd like to apologize to the francophone members of the committee because my presentation will be in English since my notes and databases are in English. I'm sorry, of course, but I will be pleased to answer your questions in the language of your choice.

The two countries we're discussing today offer radically distinct situations, but also, in both cases, good reasons for selective Canadian engagement.

I'll start with Guatemala, one of the continent's poorest countries. Given the extreme inequality there, the average statistics hide the severity of the deprivation in which a large part of the population lives. It's also the country of the Americas with the largest proportion of indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are among the poorest of Guatemala's poor. If only for those reasons, Guatemala should be a shoo-in as a focus country for Canada's aid program. At the same time, however, the country is plagued by extreme levels of violence, corruption, a formally democratic but in practice extremely exclusionary political system, ineffective public institutions, and willingly underfunded public policies. The former president and vice-president were arrested, at the end of 2015, for literally selling government contracts. New arrests have taken place in recent days.

In a recent report—I think this is very important—the International Monetary Fund, a temple of fiscal orthodoxy, criticized the Guatemalan government for its lack of spending on infrastructure, education, and social services, and for keeping excessively low tax rates that prevent it from acting in those areas. Given the needs and the relatively stable economic situation of the country, the fund encouraged authorities to increase the fiscal deficit. I've been doing Latin American affairs for about 30 years. This was the first time I read a report of the IMF telling people that they could have a larger deficit. This gives you the scale of what I call the “willingly” restricted public policy expenditure in Guatemala.

The military is still unwilling to acknowledge the massive abuse of human rights it committed in the 1980s, which have been called, with reason, genocidal not only by human rights organizations but also by the Supreme Court of Guatemala. The party of the current president, Jimmy Morales, was set up by a group of retired military. Some of his closest advisers were involved in the campaign against the Ixil Mayans, which was basically the centre of the most savage part of the military campaign against the population. About 70% to 90% of the villages in that area were razed by the military during that campaign.

Corruption is rife among the military and the police, some of whose members are involved with major Mexican cartels in the transit of drugs from Colombia to Mexico to the United States. The management of the traffic, however, is poorly organized, contributing to a high homicide rate—less high than in the past, and less high than among some of its neighbours, but at 32 per 100,000, about 30 times higher than Canada's rate. Even if the Guatemalan military and police were functional and free of corruption, the economic power of Mexican organized crime would dwarf the capacity of local law enforcement to counter it. In other words, because of its political stability, Guatemala is not generally considered to be a fragile state, but it should certainly be seen as vulnerable to the ripple effects of Mexico's drug wars.

There are two bright spots in the bleak picture. The first one is the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala. I think the representatives of the ministry explained what it was. I won't expand more. It's currently financed until September 2017. President Morales has asked for a renewal, and I think it's a good idea to support it. The other bright spot is the Attorney General's office under Thelma Aldana, which, with the support of CICIG but also on its own, has mustered remarkable courage to confront the network of politicians, military, and oligarchs that continues to dominate the local political system.

The rationales for Canadian aid include the dire needs in a country that could easily be destabilized by drug violence, but is tempered by its limited political absorption capacities. Mid-term potential for progress lies essentially in the consolidation of the rule of law where needs are important, credible recipients exist, and the potential for impact is significant.

I would thus recommend a very selective engagement, support for CICIG, and perhaps direct support for the attorney general's office. For the rest, I would say bypass the government and work with NGOs.

Colombia is a middle-income country with a stable democracy, quite effective institutions, and a bold, capable, and creative political class and technocratic elites. It has one of the largest economies in South America. It is second in population, and is still largely unexplored and unexploited in terms of natural, mineral, and agriculture wealth. It has enjoyed decades of stable and disciplined economic policy, no debt crisis, no large fiscal deficit, no hyperinflation. Its long-term prospects are good.

For these reasons, although it remains unequal and is only slowly addressing a large deficit in the provision of public goods to its poor population, it should be the very opposite of a shoo-in for Canadian development assistance. In theory, it should not be a country of focus. I will still make a case for it, though.

Colombia is currently at a crucial moment of its history as a protracted peace process is coming to fruition. It could spell the end of a series of civil wars that have shaken the country since basically the end of the 1940s almost without interruption. There's massive but not unanimous political support for the peace process, from left to right, including by the Uribisto sectors of the former government, and not only for the peace process but also for the government to invest resources in compensation of victims of the conflict, for repossession of land by people who were expelled from it, as well as for ambitious programs of land redistribution. We're talking millions. However, the promises made by the government, particularly with regard to repatriation, are fiendishly difficult to implement and also extremely expensive, probably well beyond the capabilities of the Colombian government at this point.

In addition, Colombia is still confronting extremely high levels of violence, much of it drug-related. Its homicide rate is still 50% higher than Mexico's, although Colombia is presented as some kind of success story in the fight against violence and drug trafficking. The production of cocaine has diminished in Colombia, but just recently eight tonnes of pure cocaine powder was confiscated. Eight tonnes, if sold pure on the Canadian market, would be worth about $800 million. It's still significant in the economy, and it's still a lot of money.

Rationale for Canadian aid: Co-operation with Colombia should be framed as a building block for long-term co-operation with a like-minded country with significant capabilities and a fast-rising regional status. The best way to see it is to think of what Chile has become since the FTA in 1997, only in this case Colombia is a country with much more significant demographic, economic, and military capabilities and potential. Chile is a small country with a small economy; Colombia is a big player.

Colombia is not dependent on foreign aid. The extent of the leverage that can be expected from the kind of money that Canada can offer will be limited, so the value of that aid matters less than the political commitment that it would represent. The recommendation is for selective engagement, mostly financial, mostly in support of the peace progress, perhaps very focused. Gender issues were mentioned. That would be an excellent area in which to focus resources.

There could be technical co-operation in areas of complementarity, such as public and tax administration; taxes could go up there too. In resource and land management, there is a massive challenge in Colombia related to the peace process. Finally, there should be triangular co-operation on drug policy and security, working with Colombia in third countries where and when political conditions are favourable, in Central America's northern triangle as a key target for instance, but not now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to the Fio Corporation and Mr. Greenberg, please.

[Michael Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Fio Corporation]

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Last year $8 trillion was spent for health care globally, with $2 trillion to lower- and middle-income countries. As well, $30 billion, a massive number that sounds small only when you compare it with these huge numbers, was spent on global health by the aid community, including USAID, UKaid, us, the Gates Foundation, and the Global Fund. About two billion contact points between people and a health care system occurred last year, meaning contacts between a patient and a doctor, a nurse, or a health worker.

At the heart of this massively expensive and complex system touching so many lives is a damaging dysfunction that I want to tell you about and that I think Canada can address as a theme. For people spending all of that money and managing all of those health care systems, there is next to no data going to them about how that money was actually spent and the kind of care that was actually delivered.

You hear that and you wonder how that can be. There are electronic health record systems, and health care IT systems, so how can there be no data? But when you're thinking about that, you're really thinking about hospitals and major medical centres. Those are the guys with that technology. But only about 5% of all of the two billion health care interactions I just mentioned occur in hospitals, while 95% occur in decentralized health care facilities—clinics, offices, and little health posts. Even in the U.S. it's no more than 15%. The vast majority of health care is delivered in decentralized facilities and the vast amount of money is spent there. Yet only approximately 5% of the data we have about health care comes from there, and 95% of all health care data we have over the last decade comes from about the 5% of where our health care happens.

It's not possible for any system organized like that to be spending the money wisely. There's a big data disconnect between where the vast majority of health care is delivered and the vast amount of money being spent. How can that be? Why isn't there more data coming out of clinics?

To understand the answer to that, just picture a clinic. You will picture, probably, hundreds of patients waiting to see a couple of health workers whose supervisors, by definition, are somewhere else, because that's the definition of decentralized health care. Now let's picture the health worker seeing patient number 22. In that short conversation, a tremendous amount of valuable information occurs about how the whole system works and the demographic needs of the population. At the end of that session, when patient 22 leaves, there's a data dilemma. This busy health worker can either stop and record all of what just happened with patient 22, or she—it's mostly a she—can go on to see patient 23. They go on to see patient 23 because there's no time to capture the data. In that moment, multiplied by several hundred times a day in that clinic and in millions of clinics, all of that golden, valuable information is gone.

If the health worker doesn't capture the data at the moment of care, no one gets the data—not their supervisors, not their funders, and not the World Health Organization. The result is a mind-boggling situation where you have trillions of dollars being spent and we don't know exactly how, and you have millions of health workers being very busy but we don't actually know what they're doing.

Fio Corporation is a Canadian company that has solved this problem and is scaling this solution globally. It's a solution that I'll describe briefly and then get back to the main problem. It's simple, it's sustainable, and it's scalable. Instead of the arrangement where delivering health care competes with capturing data, there's a technological way of having the delivery of health care drive, in an automatic way, large-scale data capture so that the result is unprecedented amounts of data for people responsible for the health care system and their funders and other stakeholders.

I have a visual aid here. This is a rapid diagnostic test. We don't make these things. Last year 800 million of these were sold, and that's growing at 20% a year. You squeeze a little blood out of a finger, put a couple of drops there, put in a little buffer, and then in some time, if this thing changes colour, it means you have tested positive for the Zika virus. That little test on the spot can tell you if you have Zika.

This is for malaria. It's the same thing for HIV, dengue, and so on. There are hundreds of millions of these a year. Health workers do this. Do they do this accurately? Nobody really knows. We've created a set of mobile smart devices that go into the hands of health workers. This is an example. It has a little drawer. After you prepare the test, you pop it in and it will read this test with a level of accuracy equal to that of a centralized laboratory. It's highly accurate.

It will guide the health worker. How do they even know which test to give? Well, there's a whole bunch of Q&A involved, and it will guide the health worker through that, and by offering questions and having answers that the health worker just touches as soon as the patient speaks, basically, as the health worker is delivering care, it is automatically entered as a by-product of that process. It is uploaded to a cloud from which managers overseeing these supervisors can be looking at their tablets or smartphones, and it is as if they are hovering over all of the thousands of clinics they're responsible for and they can actually see what's going on. It's a new level of accountability and transparency. It interconnects a continuum of care.

Cellphones became smartphones when they fused data and email with calls. These devices are fusing data with diagnostics and other care delivery. It's the same thing, and once they're together they won't be pulled apart.

The results from the field are a ten-fold reduction in diagnostic errors made by health workers within weeks. There's been a ten-fold increase in the accuracy of the care they give. Just because somebody gets the right diagnosis doesn't mean you get the right drug necessarily.

There has been a twenty-fold reduction in unnecessary patient visits. If you misdiagnose a patient and they're still sick, they're smart, and they're going to come back. If you give them the right diagnosis, the right treatment, they have better things to do than to come back.

There's been a twenty-fold increase in epidemiologic accuracy. For example, in a certain region of Kenya, they believed that malaria incidence was 17%. Think of all the drugs and tests the government must order for 17%. They installed our devices and found it was 0.7%. All those people with fevers didn't have malaria.

Africa spends approximately $1 billion per year on anti-malarial drugs for people who do not have malaria.

We're scaling this technology in a number of countries, and I guess this begins to get at the question that was posed. We're in Colombia. We're in Brazil, where we're working on the Zika problem. We're talking with Honduras and Ecuador. In west Africa we're in Ghana. We just entered Nigeria, where ExxonMobil—and this is a very interesting opportunity in which dollars are matched by the private sector—is doing a pilot in the Niger Delta.

In east Africa we're in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. In central Africa we just launched in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where people who are literally in the middle of nowhere to the rest of us are getting laboratory-quality care delivered with clinical expertise through these devices. We are in South Africa and Lesotho, and we are about to start a pilot in India with the largest private health care provider.

We are working in Europe with the largest diagnostic company, and the same in the United States. In the United States, the U.S. Department of Defense has us in about a half-dozen projects. We also work with the Gates Foundation and the Global Fund. We're in programs that deal with malaria, HIV, maternal and child health, and primary care. I tell you this list because we started relatively recently, and yet we have had such a response with this business of health care data from decentralized places and not hospitals that we're on to something.

You're contemplating a strategy of selected countries versus themes. When Fio came into being and started from scratch on this in 2010, we were in a world that had, to use a well-known phrase, “separate solitudes”. There was data and there was care delivery. You had to choose. It was data versus care. Our solution is based on realizing that there's a way to make it data and care—the fusion of care and data. Global health care data is a theme that can result in profound leverage when it's added to selected countries, because it's a sector that impacts all other sectors.

We always fly the Canadian flag whenever we do business anywhere. Canadians are known for being a measured people. Let's be known for measuring health care data. It's a wide open field. It's estimated that in the next five years there will be fifty times more health care data than today. It's a field in which tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of spending can impact hundreds of billions of dollars, or trillions of dollars, of other spending and outcomes. It's a very big bang for a very little buck when it's combined with selected countries.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Mr. Greenberg.

I'll go to Mr. Fairbairn.

[Bill Fairbairn, Latin America Program Manager, Inter Pares]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's really good to see you again today.

Thank you for the invitation to come and make a presentation. I've been asked to give some input about your upcoming trip to Latin America, as well as to provide some insights and recommendations on the study you're conducting. I'll do my best to do this in the time that I have.

Let me say at the outset we are delighted that you're going to Colombia and Guatemala this summer to learn first-hand about the very real challenges facing both countries and the aspirations of their citizens for a better future.

Inter Pares has worked with counterparts in both countries since the 1980s and we would be more than pleased to provide you with a detailed briefing and to facilitate meetings with local civil society contacts in each country. There are a lot of positive things to say about what's happening in both Guatemala and Colombia right now. Mr. Daudelin mentioned a number of them.

In Guatemala, as I mentioned to you in April, there have been important advances in the struggle against impunity this year. I'm referring especially to the Sepur Zarco case in which a group of Maya Q'eqchi' women made history this February in the first criminal trial for sexual violence during Guatemala's armed conflict and the first ever case of sexual slavery to be heard in a national court.

In Colombia, for the very first time in many years, there is real hope that peace accords will soon be signed to bring an end to the country's 60-year-old armed conflict. However, in both countries, conflicts are still raging. In Guatemala, we are seeing a re-militarization of citizen security, including declarations of states of emergency; judicial persecution of community leaders; and, once again, the establishment of military bases on territories of indigenous communities where there are existing land disputes. This is happening to support large-scale resource development projects, in particular, mining and hydro-electric dams.

Femicide remains a leading cause of death for women in Guatemala. In Colombia, as I speak, there are over 70,000 people—mainly indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesinos—who are taking part in mass mobilizations in 80 communities across the country, expressing their opposition to the Colombian government's development model, in particular its impact on marginalized communities and their access to land and food security.

Inter Pares has received disturbing reports of indiscriminate and excessive force being used by the state security forces against protesters. Last night in a phone call, I was told that to date three indigenous protestors have been killed, over 100 have been wounded, and close to 200 have been arrested.

As Colombia moves closer to a peace accord, there has also been an alarming increase in attacks against human rights defenders and members of political opposition parties, most notably the Marcha Patriótica.

For our partners in Guatemala and Colombia, your visit is extremely important and timely, and it goes without saying that we hope you will make adequate time in your agenda to have meaningful engagement with a broad range of civil society representatives in both countries. Doing so will enable you to hear directly and from the ground up the issues of concern and to learn first-hand about the impact of Canada's actions in the region, both positive and negative, in promoting human rights and democratic development.

Related to this, and before I speak to the theme of the committee's study, I'd like to bring an urgent matter to your attention. Two weeks ago, the president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a clarion call to the member states of the Organization of American States, stating that the commission is facing the worst financial crisis in its history and that unless member states come through with funding commitments by June 15—six days from today—the commission will be forced to lay off almost half of its staff, cancel its next two sessions, and suspend upcoming country visits.

The Inter-American Commission is the pre-eminent human rights body in the Americas, and Canada has been one of its strongest supporters, but unfortunately that commitment seems to have collapsed. Between 2011 and 2015, our financial support dropped from $600,000 to $75,000, and nothing has been committed for 2016.

Last week, the Americas Policy Group—a coalition of which Inter Pares is a member—sent an urgent letter to Minister Dion, calling on the Canadian government to show leadership in providing support this year and ensuring stable funding in future years, to ensure that the commission can undertake its important work. More than 300 prominent civil society organizations in 18 countries in the Americas have likewise signed an SOS in defence of the commission. We call on all members of this committee to urgently take up this issue, as we cannot afford to lose this important regional mechanism.

Turning to the issue of focus countries, this is an important theme with huge implications for organizations in our sector given the high concentration of Canada's aid budget in a small number of countries and sectors. At Inter Pares, we have never based our programming on lists of focus countries or sectors developed in Ottawa. Rather, our program is developed based on long-standing relationships with civil society counterparts in Canada and in the global south. For us, the most effective accompaniment we can provide is to support our partners' solutions and not impose our own.

We concur with the analysis and recommendations of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, and would like to highlight six recommendations of our own.

The first recommendation is that if Canada maintains an approach based on focus countries, then there must be transparency in the selection of criteria, and these should be based on reducing poverty and inequality. We all know that situations can change overnight. Countries that seemed stable can suddenly become fragile states, or levels of inequality or poverty can grow very rapidly. We need to be flexible and responsive to meet the changing but real needs and realities on the ground.

Second, there should be a greater percentage of funding available for non-focus countries.

Third, the funding landscape has changed over the last years, as has the relationship between Canadian NGOs and the successors of CIDA. Increasingly, aid is “project-ized”, and NGOs are treated as service providers or contractors and not as long-standing partners in development. Our third recommendation is that it's crucial that the Canadian government reinstate its ability to provide long-term, predictable, and flexible core funding that allows Canadian civil society to build relationships with local civil society and respond to the opportunities, challenges, and needs as they arise. Our experience is that this long-term approach has provided the stability that is necessary to develop innovative and even groundbreaking programming. At times it involves taking risks.

I spoke to you earlier about the Sepur Zarco case in which our partners provided holistic accompaniment to the women plaintiffs for over a decade. To give you another example, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Inter Pares developed programming in Colombia that focused on the situation of internally displaced persons, or IDPs. In those years, the Colombian government was denying the existence of IDPs, claiming instead it was just a case of normal migration patterns. The Europeans were reluctant to support this work for a variety of reasons. In fact, while the term “refugee” has an authoritative definition under the 1951 refugee convention, there was no legal definition of “internally displaced persons”.

The support we received from the partnership branch of CIDA enabled us to engage on this theme in an agile way and gain valuable experience, which helped inform Canadian government policy. Not only did this help place the situation of IDPs on the map domestically, but it also contributed significantly to the development of the UN guiding principles on internal displacement, which today is the key international framework for work with internally displaced persons throughout the world.

Fourth, too often in conflict or post-conflict scenarios aid becomes entirely focused on strengthening the state. Supporting democratic states is very important, but it must include a balanced approach: ensuring a state is responsible to its people and empowering all people to hold their governments to account. Our recommendation four is that Canada needs to invest in local civil society, especially a civil society grounded in work with indigenous, oppressed, or excluded communities and populations.

My fifth point is around the promotion of women's rights. We have seen a shift in the past years away from supporting the broad range of women's rights, and instead focusing narrowly on supporting women as mothers. There has been a further narrowing of support excluding women's sexual and reproductive rights. Canada has been a leader in the promotion of women's rights globally, although we have lost ground in that area in recent years.

The news that Canada has been elected to the governing body of the UN Commission on the Status of Women is a welcome development, but it also means that with such a high profile role, we have more responsibility to ensure that we're walking the talk. Development with a feminist lens needs to mean something, and is a beautiful opportunity for global leadership.

Accordingly, our fifth recommendation—and it is in a package of them here—is that 20% of all Canadian aid investment should have the promotion of women's rights, advancing gender equality, and women's autonomy and empowerment as their principal focus. Moreover, women affected by armed conflict and post-conflict situations need to have access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health services without discrimination, including regarding pregnancies resulting from rape. Furthermore, thinking particularly of the situation in Colombia, it's crucial that we support women's active role in formal peace processes and in the monitoring the implementation of accords reached.

Sixth, and finally, we need to ensure policy coherence in our international development. Trade and commercial interests cannot trump human rights and undermine our development goals. Canada needs a human rights framework for its international assistance, including not only cooperation but also foreign policy and trade. We think that Canada should show strong coherence on the primacy of human rights in order to attain positive results.

Thank you very much for your attention. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Mr. Fairbairn.

Now we'll go to Rachel Warden who is representing KAIROS.

Rachel.

[Rachel Warden, Coordinator, Latin American Partnerships and Gender Justice Program, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives]

KAIROS very much appreciates this opportunity to appear as a witness. KAIROS and its member churches have a long history of working with partners in Colombia and Guatemala on issues of women's peace and security, indigenous rights, and ecological justice. You can imagine how difficult it's going to be for me to contain my remarks within eight minutes, but I'll do my best, and I hope this is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue.

We're encouraged by the committee's decision to host this consultation and by its plans to travel to Colombia and Guatemala at the end of the summer.

We look forward to continuing to work with you as you plan your delegation.

In April, my colleague Ian Thomson spoke to you about KAIROS' work, including our Women of Courage program. At that time he put forward some recommendations on women, peace, and security. In fact, our partners in Colombia are an integral part of our women, peace and security program. I hope to build on KAIROS' previous submission by speaking specifically about our partnerships in Guatemala and Colombia and what recommendations we can draw from this experience.

As Latin American partnerships coordinator and gender justice program coordinator at KAIROS, I've had the privilege of working with civil society organizations in Colombia, particularly women's organizations, over the last 15 years.

Today I want to focus on one partner, La Organización Femenina Popular, the popular feminist organization, which is a grassroots women's organization that has worked for 44 years in the region of Magdalena Medio. I do this because the OFP represents the tenacity, the creativity, the resilience, and the determination of many civil society groups in Colombia, characteristics that have allowed it not only to survive, but to thrive despite the conflict and the constant threats to its work and to the lives of its members.

OFP works at a local level through women's centres, providing training, legal accompaniment, and even affordable food at community kitchens. At the same time, it plays a key role in networks for peace and human rights at a national level. While its strategies and programs have changed in response to the context of the conflict, it remains a reference point for work in human rights and peace. For example, in the 1990s at the height of paramilitary control in Barrancabermeja, when it was extremely dangerous—deadly, in fact—to be a human rights defender, the OFP led and held together a human rights network at a local level, while simultaneously mobilizing tens of thousands of women in the most conflict-ridden areas in Colombia and providing accompaniment to these women in these conflict areas.

In 2012 the OFP held regional women's courts for justice, peace, and territory and gathered hundreds of testimonies from women who had experienced human rights violations as a result of the conflict. In the context of impunity, these ethical or symbolic courts were an important space for women to denounce human rights violations and to expose the truth. Legal action demanding reparation was initiated in a number of the cases presented during these women's courts.

The visibility of the crimes also strengthened the advocacy efforts of the women's movement, as well as its demands for truth, justice, and reparation within the current peace process. In the last few years, the OFP has engaged in a process to secure collective reparations from the Colombian state under law 1448 on the rights of victims to reparation.

The OFP's 44 years of work with victims and survivors, as well as its crippling institutional losses, including the assassination of a number of its leaders, makes this case for collective reparations emblematic in Colombia. It has documented this experience in a number of documents and those are being used as a model. As well, throughout the reparation program, the OFP has made concrete advances and real change in the lives of thousands of women.

In the OFP we see the resilience of civil society in Colombia, its ability to respond to the given national and local context to create spaces and proposals for peace, and to reach the most vulnerable populations with really concrete programs. In fact, at KAIROS, our gender-justice work has been inspired by the OFP. We have learned how militarized conflict impacts women; how women are victimized many times over through gender, inequality, poverty, and racism; and how sexual violence is used in the strategy of war. At same time, we have seen how women's groups are integral actors in defence of human rights and processes for peace, justice, and reparations.

The OFP has also demonstrated the importance of psychosocial and legal accompaniment that empowers women victims of human rights violations to heal and themselves become active in the peace process. This is in fact the basis of our women, peace, and security program that is currently under active review in the partnership branch at Global Affairs. The focus of this program very much aligns with the focus of this committee's work. Civil society organizations like the OFP represent Colombia's hope and strength and require ongoing and sustained support.

This brings me to two recommendations. One is that Canada's bilateral assistance must prioritize financial support for independent civil society groups in Colombia, particularly women's groups. It is important that these are long-term partnerships and that they inform development policy and priorities. Investing in civil society will guarantee resources to groups that have the capacity to influence and implement peace accords on the ground. Two, it is important that bilateral assistance adopt a human rights approach to development, including accompaniment of victims of human rights violations and providing human rights training. We have seen, as I mentioned, how women, often victims of violence themselves, can become protagonists in the peace process with appropriate psychosocial support and human rights training.

I would like to take the last few minutes to talk about our partnerships in Guatemala and how this experience informs additional recommendations for your review.

For 10 years now, KAIROS has worked with CEIBA, an organization that supports community development in indigenous communities in western Guatemala. CEIBA was founded in 1994 when Guatemalan refugees were returning to the region. It has accompanied these communities since then with responsive programming in community development and human rights. CEIBA has delivered programs in community health, food sovereignty, environmental and land protection, leadership development, and human rights training.

Some of the communities accompanied by CEIBA are responding to resource extraction projects, the majority of which involve Canadian companies. In a number of cases, communities have raised concern that these projects threaten the very community development and human rights that are being supported by this partnership, particularly indigenous rights. When they raise these concerns, when they protest and demand that their rights be respected, they face criminalization, threats, and sometimes death. In Guatemala, as in Colombia, we have seen an increase in threats and assassinations of indigenous and environmental rights defenders. Leaders in CEIBA, as well as in the communities they accompany, have been targeted.

Based on this experience and the conflict in Guatemala, I would like to add the following recommendations. Canadian development policy and practice must be informed by indigenous rights, including FPIC, free, prior, and informed consent, as outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, the Government of Canada must establish a mechanism to hold Canadian resource extraction companies accountable, so that the investment and resource extraction policy does not undermine the very development initiatives we are trying to support. To this end, we call on the Canadian government to establish an independent ombudsman on resource extraction and legislation that holds Canadian companies accountable.

To summarize then, Colombia and Guatemala must be a focus. More importantly than this, within this focus, Canadian development assistance must support independent civil society groups in long-term partnerships. By doing so, we are investing in resilient, effective programming that reaches the most vulnerable. Human rights are key. Development assistance needs to be underpinned by Canada's commitments to human rights, including the rights of indigenous people and to all women. Finally, Canadian development assistance needs to be responsive and informed by long-term partnerships with civil society organizations in Canada, in Colombia, and in Guatemala. Our partners tell us that as important as financial support is the capacity of the Canadian government to amplify their voices in their demands for peace and human rights.

Finally, and as I mentioned earlier, KAIROS has submitted an unsolicited proposal to the partnership branch at Global Affairs. While we are still awaiting a response, we remain hopeful that the work of KAIROS and our partners will complement and ensure the success of Canada's international development assistance in Colombia and in other countries of concern.

KAIROS very much appreciates being included in this consultation, and we look forward to being a part of the ongoing dialogue as you prepare your itinerary in Colombia and Guatemala, and in the policy discussions that follow.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much to all our presenters this afternoon.

In the short time that we have, we'll have protracted questions for a round, at least—or we'll give it a try.

We'll start with Mr. Allison.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

My questions are along the lines of our countries of focus. We've had a number of individuals in here saying that maybe it should be thematic, and that maybe it could involve more countries or maybe fewer countries.

However, I want to talk specifically to you, Mr. Greenberg, about your experience in Colombia and the thought process that you have. Why Colombia? Tell us a bit about your experience and what you've been doing there.