Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Colleagues, welcome to meeting number 10 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

I'd like to start with a very warm welcome to our newest member, Ya'ara Saks, the member of Parliament for York Centre.

Welcome to the committee. We look forward to working with you.

Colleagues, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion passed by the committee on Thursday, October 22, 2020, the committee is resuming its study on the vulnerabilities created and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Colleagues, thank you for your understanding this afternoon with the change in schedule and timing. Rest assured that we are able to accommodate the original panel one in the schedule of next week.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would encourage all participants to mute their microphones when they're not speaking and to address comments through the chair. When you have 30 seconds left in your questioning or witness time, I will signal you with this yellow sheet of paper.

Interpretation is, as always, available through the globe icon at the bottom of your screen.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for this afternoon.

From Save the Children Canada we have Rachel Logel Carmichael, head of humanitarian affairs, and Taryn Russell, head of policy and advocacy.

From UNICEF Canada, we have David Morley, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Annabelle Bodmer-Roy, Director of International Policy and Programs.

From the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations we have Dr. Anas Al-Kassem, physician and board member.

Without further ado, I will pass the floor to Ms. Logel Carmichael from Save the Children for her opening remarks of five minutes.

Go ahead, please. The floor is yours.

[Rachel Logel Carmichael, Head of Humanitarian Affairs, Save the Children Canada]

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

As the chairman said, my name is Rachel Logel Carmichael. I'm the head of humanitarian affairs at Save the Children Canada. I am here with my colleague Taryn Russell, who is our head of policy and advocacy. We are very grateful for the opportunity to speak to you this evening on the impact of COVID-19 on humanitarian situations.

Our comments today will be through the lens of Save the Children's experience working to address children's needs and rights in humanitarian and development settings for more than 100 years. Every year, Save the Children responds to close to 80 humanitarian crises across 120 countries, including Canada, where Save the Children supports indigenous community-led emergency response.

This year we launched our largest-ever response, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'd like to illustrate the impact of the convergence of the pandemic and conflict by first speaking about the situation in Yemen.

Let me tell you about a little girl who has been seeking assistance in a Save the Children-supported health centre in Haboor district, Yemen. Her name is Suha, and she is only two and a half years old. She is suffering from severe malnutrition, which makes her weak and unable to eat her own food.

Her mother Manal has given birth to 14 other children, some of whom have died—two girls and one boy of malnutrition, and two boys from high fever and diarrhea.

The impact of the war and pandemic caused her to struggle to feed her family because of loss of household income combined with the increased price of food, water and basic items related to high transport costs due to border closures. Manal has not been able to breastfeed, as she is undernourished herself, saving what little food she has for her children. Her family usually eats two times a day, but often Manal herself does not eat, so as to give to her children.

Pre-pandemic, 25% of Yemen's population suffered from malnutrition, and there is a real risk of imminent famine.

The issues I've highlighted in Yemen and their impact on the health and safety of children are reflective of what we're seeing in humanitarian situations around the world. The combination of COVID-19, conflict and climate change has drastically increased risks for children, including the risk of an estimated 10 million children never returning to school at all, of a one-third reduction in progress toward ending gender-based violence by 2030, and of an additional 2.5 million girls at risk of child marriage by 2025. The global gains we have made in recent decades are in peril unless we act now.

This past Tuesday, the UN launched the Global Humanitarian Overview, which is a projection of the humanitarian needs of people impacted by conflict, protection violations, acute hunger, and COVID-19. The report estimates that $35 billion U.S. are needed to reach 160 million people with life-saving support in 2021.

Despite the desperate need, we are seeing worrying signs of donor fatigue in humanitarian response funding. A donor conference for Yemen in June 2020 saw international governments pledge only half of what was raised in 2019. Recent pledging conferences in Afghanistan and Central Sahel also failed to hit their targets. Child protection programming, including gender-based violence prevention, mitigation and response and mental health and psychosocial support, are particularly neglected when it comes to funding.

Funding alone is not enough. Active conflict significantly weakens countries' abilities to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing violence is hindering the battle against the outbreak, whilst pushing millions to the brink of conflict-induced famine and significantly increasing risk to children.

A global cessation of hostilities in countries such as Yemen, the DRC, and Syria and full humanitarian access is the only answer.

It is vital for political leaders to put their weight behind the call for a humanitarian pause to fighting, facilitate safe and sustained access for aid workers and accelerate COVID-19 response in conflict and humanitarian crisis-affected countries. Save the Children supports the Security Council's resolution for a global ceasefire to allow for unimpeded access to populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on a children's rights crisis, and we recommend that Canada place the needs of children—particularly those who are most marginalized, including girls, children with disabilities and children affected or displaced by humanitarian crises—at the centre of its global COVID response.

Here are our three recommendations.

First, Canada's humanitarian response should be scaled up, timely, flexible, and targeted to where it's needed most.

Second, Canada should prioritize urgently needed support to neglected response areas of child protection, gender-based violence prevention, mitigation and response and education. This includes mental health and psychosocial support, sexual and reproductive health services, and information for child survivors of violence.

Finally, Canada should support calls for a global ceasefire and renewed assurances that aid workers have unimpeded and safe access to people in need of support.

Thank you for your time today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Ms. Logel Carmichael.

The floor goes now to UNICEF Canada, a team led by David Morley.

The floor is yours for five minutes, sir.

[David Morley, President and Chief Executive Officer, UNICEF Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for having me and my colleague Annie Bodmer-Roy here today.

UNICEF is the world’s largest humanitarian organization for children. We work in 190 countries to help children survive and thrive.

Today UNICEF released our humanitarian action for children, a comprehensive overview of children's humanitarian needs and a costed plan to respond to those needs. The findings are alarming, in that 532 million children will need humanitarian assistance in 2021. Some areas of highest need include Syria, where 16 million people require humanitarian assistance; Yemen, as Rachel said, where 80% of the population relies on humanitarian aid; and sub-Saharan Africa, where children face a deadly combination of malnutrition, conflict and displacement, climate shocks and disasters. This includes more 11 million children in the DRC, 7 million children in the central Sahel and many more. Furthermore, close to 20 million people have been hurt by the crisis in Venezuela, and they also require humanitarian aid.

In all of these existing humanitarian crises, COVID-19 has just made things worse. Lockdown measures are hampering our life-saving efforts. Immunization campaigns, screening and treatment of malnutrition, safe water and child protection services have all been affected by the pandemic, so we must respond to the pandemic itself.

Our response covers three strategic priorities. First is reducing coronavirus transmission and mortality. Second is supporting the continuity of life-saving services. Third is supporting the access to COVID-19 tools known as the ACT Accelerator—and the Covax facility.

First of all, to reduce COVID-19 mortality, we scaled up our global humanitarian logistics capacity to equip 1.8 million health workers with PPE and have reached three billion people with life-saving information to reduce the transmission of COVID-19.

To ensure the continuity of life-saving services, we deployed flexible funding and mobilized our teams and partners on the ground, together vaccinating 3.4 million children against measles, treating 1.5 million children for severe malnutrition and providing safe water to more than 14 million people.

To ensure COVID-19 treatment, diagnosis and access to vaccines, we're working through the ACT Accelerator and are proud to be the official procurement agency and coordinator for the Covax facility, the global initiative to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines reach those in greatest need. We welcome Canada’s contributions and active engagement in the ACT Accelerator and Covax facility, and they must be scaled up to beat the pandemic in the months ahead.

Canada has played a critical role in supporting UNICEF’s response. Canadians from across the country have stepped up to contribute. Support from Canadians is now among the top five private sector contributions to UNICEF’s global efforts. While the Canadian government is not yet within the top five donors to our COVID efforts, we are grateful that Canada is one of the top 10 humanitarian donors to UNICEF. With the welcome commitment to provide an additional $400 million in funding to Canada’s international COVID-19 response, there is room for increased contributions.

Funding amounts are not the only important factor. We particularly appreciate the flexibility of funding that allows us to place that funding where it is most needed. As we head into 2021, we urge Canada to maintain this flexibility, increase contributions in line with need and in line with Canadians’ own generosity and ensure timeliness of response.

We're proud of the role Canada and Canadians have played this year in mobilizing to support children and their communities, and we know we can count on this support as we face the challenges of 2021.

Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Morley, thank you very much.

Our final round of opening remarks goes to Dr. Al-Kassem.

Please, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Dr. Anas Al-Kassem, Physician, UOSSM Canada]

Mr. Spengemann and members of the committee, thank you very much for the opportunity.

My name is Anas Al-Kassem. I'm a trauma and general surgeon who has been to northern Syria on at least 13 missions since the beginning of the war.

The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations has been focusing on Syria but recently started activities as well in Yemen. I'm going to focus, though, on the situation in northern Syria and the impact of COVID there.

There are over four million people living in northern Syria, with about 2.7 million refugees or internally displaced persons. All these people are in dire need of daily humanitarian aid. The sharp decline in the value of Syrian currency in the last two years has added more challenges to the daily lives of the displaced people, which has escalated the need for more humanitarian aid than ever.

Additionally, the spread of COVID-19 in northern Syria has been given priority by different parties of the humanitarian sector, as it impacted the vulnerable communities in northern Syria, particularly the elderly population who have pre-existing co-morbidities such as diabetes, COPD and hypertension.

Due to the widespread damage in northern Syria caused by the Assad government, there has been a lack of a government health system, as well as significant destruction of the infrastructure, including roads, houses, schools and hospitals, which have been systematically destroyed because of air strikes.

From July when the first case of COVID-19 appeared in northern Syria to the end of November, there have been 16,000 confirmed COVID cases, split between the major provinces of Idlib and northern Aleppo. More than half of these cases are active and there have been over 240 documented deaths.

The priorities of the humanitarian sectors in coordination with OCHA are as follows: containing the pandemic of COVID-19 by minimizing the need for hospital admissions, because of the significant lack of clinics and hospitals and equipment in northern Syria; improving the quality of life of the vulnerable communities by providing them with proper food, appropriate PPE and sanitizers; and supporting the hosting communities for these millions of displaced people by providing them with appropriate medical personnel and appropriate equipment before we need to transfer these patients to the hospital.

There is a lack of significant supplies and equipment, pre-existing COVID, including ICU beds, ventilators, monitors and oxygen generators, in addition to PCR machines with appropriate kits.

The plan has been focused on increasing the capacity of the pre-existing clinics and hospitals by adding disease prevention units and ensuring that appropriate drugs, PPE and oxygen are available in the houses before we need to transfer the patients to the hospital; two, creating a patient transfer system so we can smoothly transfer the patients when they need to be taken care of in the hospitals, particularly if they need ICU beds; and three, establishment of quarantine spots within the camps, particularly in the hot spots such as Dana, al-Bab and Azaz city.

Again, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity, and certainly I concur with my colleagues from Save the Children and UNICEF in their recommendations to Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Doctor.

Colleagues, we have a hard stop at 5:30 tonight. In light of the compressed time frame, I would propose that we do what we did last time, which is to go with a single but expanded first round. Doing some quick math here, that would amount to eight and a half minutes per party.

With that in mind, I would ask Mr. Diotte to lead off, bearing in mind that members are free to share those eight and a half minutes among themselves as they see fit.

Mr. Diotte, the floor is yours.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

My colleagues and I have eight minutes, correct?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Yes, Mr. Diotte, it's eight and a half minutes in total.

Please go ahead.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

All right.

Let me just ask a question of all of you. We all know right now that money is very tight worldwide for a lot of things just because of the whole situation with the pandemic and people being out of work and people on support. How can we get the best possible value for money with international development by minimizing spending on overhead and maximizing the impact on the front lines?

I know it's a fairly broad question, but could I just get a bit from each one of you on that topic?

[David Morley]

We're jumping in.

If we're talking about development, it's engaging local governments and local communities. That makes a profound difference.

A few years ago the Government of India stopped relying on foreign aid to buy vaccines, for example, and right there is one-seventh of the world's population. We didn't have to be buying the vaccines for them anymore. It's supporting those efforts of local governments and local communities as they focus in on their needs.

[Taryn Russell, Head of Policy and Advocacy, Save the Children Canada]

Maybe I can build on David's comments. I think when it comes to humanitarian funding, in particular, what's really important and having the biggest impact is its timeliness and flexibility, so that the quicker the money flows out, the more lives can be saved. I think we can be better at putting mechanisms in place to ensure that this can happen so it doesn't get caught up in bureaucratic constraints. We can have a quicker impact, which will be more efficient over the long run and really have greater benefits.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Doctor?

[Dr. Anas Al-Kassem]

I do agree with Mr. Morley, certainly, that we should try our best to rely on local communities. The local communities know where the disease is, where the issues are. If we identify local charities and try to support them directly, we probably won't need lots of money because they are doing the activities. They are providing the patients with the care, but they're probably missing a little bit of expertise, training or equipment. They can get that with not much money, particularly when it comes to the COVID prevention screening and management before the cases need sophisticated care in the hospitals.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Excellent.

Actually, I'm going to split my time. When I get to four minutes, I'll just turn it over to my colleague Marty Morantz, if that's okay, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Yes, absolutely, Mr. Diotte.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Okay.

Mr. Morley, you had mentioned that lockdown measures are hampering relief efforts. That's interesting. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

[David Morley]

The global lockdown, for instance, when we were trying to get PPE into different countries—and we were able to get almost two million...to support health workers—stopped a lot of movement among countries and had a terrible effect. The biggest effect and the biggest suffering, I, and we at UNICEF feel is that children have suffered due to the lockdown and the shutting of the schools. That has had a terrible impact on children's mental health and on their protection and safety, as well as on their education, of course. All that we have to do is social distancing.

Here in Canada we have more resources to be able to deal with it. It's been hard enough for us. If you're working in Burkina Faso, if you're in Kenya, Tanzania, it's much harder.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

That's interesting.

[Rachel Logel Carmichael]

If I could just add as well...?

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Go ahead. Absolutely.

[Rachel Logel Carmichael]

I think the various types of impacts from lockdowns, the containment measures, the arbitrary restrictions on movement, also mean that there's a lack of available information so that not everyone is accessing the life-saving services in an equal way. This is really having an impact not just on organizations that are reaching people, but also on people who have humanitarian needs, who are reaching out for information to understand where there are services available and what the newest required information is to understand COVID-19. We see, in particular, vulnerable families. When there is this lack of information, that creates these additional risks to that existing vulnerability.

On the issue of lockdown, all the various facets are very complex in the ways that we're seeing them it impacting how people are accessing aid and how aid actors are gaining access to people.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Excellent.

I'll turn that over to Marty Morantz now.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Kerry, and Mr. Chair.

Ms. Logel Carmichael, during your recommendations, you said that Canada's response should be scaled up. I think those were the words you used. I just wonder if you can elaborate on that.

[Rachel Logel Carmichael]

In terms of the humanitarian funding and the funding that's been provided to date, I think Canada has been generous in its support. Where we see that additional funds could be provided relates to particular humanitarian response plans that are integrating COVID needs as well. My colleague Taryn can speak a little bit about particular response plans for Yemen or other areas. We have specific numbers with regard to their underfunding.

We would like to see not just scaled-up funding, but timely funding as well, because lives are saved right now. When we see that needs are emerging, especially in second waves, the timeliness of that response is quite critical.