Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 8th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Colleagues, welcome to meeting number 11 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the Committee on October 22, 2020, we are resuming our study on the vulnerabilities created and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

To ensure an orderly meeting, as always, I encourage all participants to unmute their microphones when speaking and to address comments through the chair. When you have 30 seconds remaining in your questioning or speaking time, I will signal with this yellow piece of paper. Interpretation services are available through the globe icon at the bottom of your screens.

I would like to welcome our witnesses.

This afternoon, we have with us Rahul Singh, executive director of GlobalMedic, Alexis Gaiptman, executive director, and Ryan Duly, regional programme director, of Humanity and Inclusion Canada, as well as Zaid Al-Rawni, chief executive officer of Islamic Relief Canada.

We will start with Mr. Singh and GlobalMedic for five minutes of introductory remarks.

The floor is yours, sir.

[Rahul Singh, Executive Director, GlobalMedic]

GlobalMedic is a great Canadian story. We're an agile, small and innovative aid agency that's managed by professional humanitarians, but driven by volunteers. We believe in getting the right aid to the right people at the right time. GlobalMedic has run 226 missions in 76 countries and helped four million people.

In the past decade, humanitarian needs have doubled. The money to service those needs has not grown at the same pace. COVID has simply exacerbated a bad situation. One solution is to program more money, which seems fiscally unlikely. I would urge you to do more with existing funds and look for value for money.

I propose the following four recommendations.

First, focus on creating a supply-style project where you can buy and stockpile Canadian aid items in bulk and push them into crisis zones. Many of our allies have similar programs. In fact, GlobalMedic implements a program for the Americans where we provide a peanut-based nutritional supplement to stave off malnutrition for 12,000 kids in Somalia.

As an agency, GlobalMedic looked inward and we saw that we were buying a lot of items like water purification units. We drove down the costs by buying in bulk and had volunteers assemble these kits. This meant we could do more with the limited funds we had. We replicated the same model and found significant savings across other products, like emergency food kits and soap.

I would suggest that you take up to 1% of your aid budget and use it to buy, stockpile and deploy life-saving items. Studies show that aid is not pushed in fast enough early on in a crisis. This program would address the needs of scarcity, while controlling price and engaging Canadians. This approach demonstrates value for money and represents the best that Canada has to offer the world.

Second, Canada should ensure that its policies do no harm. Recently, while responding to Lebanon, Canada decided to match only funds for donations made to the Humanitarian Coalition. While matching funds may be a useful tool to help raise more money, it should not be used to single out one group—especially a group that agencies pay to join. This tilts the playing field. In fact, it divides the sector. I personally received calls from donors saying they would not contribute to our response because it would not be matched. The government would never create unfair competition in other sectors. It would never tell Canadians that they would get a free phone if they bought a phone from Bell Canada, but not from Rogers. This policy hurt some agencies and, therefore, it hurts beneficiaries. It was rolled out without consultation. I suspect the reason this occurred was that the government was lobbied for this, which leads me to my next point.

Third, large agencies in the UN lobby the Government of Canada so much that GAC, Global Affairs Canada, has simply become a cheque-writing machine to them. The focus is only on these large groups. This does a tremendous disservice to Canadian agencies and small to medium organizations. The UN especially has been proven to be bureaucratic, slow and heavy on administrative fees. A focus on Canadian agencies and a sharper focus on small to medium organizations would help. Often, UN agencies take Canada's funding, keep the administrative fees and implement through smaller partners. Canada can cut out the middleman and do more with less.

I would encourage you to meet with leaders of Canadian small to medium organizations and have a frank discussion with them. Even if you held an in camera session with them, it would help your committee gain insight into the problems of funding. If you're just listening to the voices in the room that agree with you and that you fund, you'll never improve.

Fourth and finally, as a nation we need to follow through on the promises we make. In 2017, Canada said it recognized the need to focus on small to medium organizations, and it created a fund for $100 million for five years. It's a small amount of money and it has only funded 20 programs. The sector is still waiting for the rest of the program to be rolled out. In 2018, Canada announced a $900-million program over five years to fund innovative aid programming. That fund has only spent $120,000.

Our government is very good at making these promises and these announcements, but its ability to program the money that it promises is lacking. It begs the question of whether its infrastructure to program the money is fit for purpose. There have been two reviews by the Auditor General that have raised several concerns in the last decade, and they don't seem to have been addressed. I would encourage the committee to look at those reports and learn from them.

In closing, lives are on the line. We're talking about millions of people in need who are suffering. Policy failures hurt people. Canada needs to do better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Singh, thank you very much. You were very judicious with your time.

We will now go to Humanity & Inclusion Canada.

Ms. Gaiptman, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Alexis Gaiptman, Executive Director, Humanity and Inclusion Canada]

Committee members and fellow witnesses, last week was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. While persons with disabilities are estimated to represent 15% of the world's population, in countries where conflicts and humanitarian crisis are present, these figures may be much higher.

While people with disabilities are already too often excluded from the rest of society, the long-term effects of COVID-19 threaten to further exacerbate this exclusion. There is no excuse to leave people with disabilities behind.

On behalf of Humanity & Inclusion Canada, I will elaborate on findings collected by programs in 19 countries of intervention on how the COVID-19 crisis triggers disproportionate risks and barriers for men, women, boys and girls with disabilities living in humanitarian settings. In conflict- and disaster-affected or fragile countries, the pandemic can increase the risk of discrimination against persons with disabilities, creating the added challenge to access information and assistance which can lead to higher risks of contracting COVID-19 for certain groups.

Humanity & Inclusion has several concerns. People with disabilities too often do not have access to health services. These vulnerable groups, in many countries, already face significant barriers in accessing health care and other services, due to general stigma and discrimination, lack of accessibility, limited health care services and limited awareness. These barriers may become even more prominent during a health crisis like the current pandemic.

Persons with disabilities may have greater difficulties in accessing prevention messages due to inaccessible communication. For example, in the Philippines, half of the youth with disabilities surveyed, between the ages of 18 and 39 in Manila and Jakarta, needed more accessible information about COVID-19 and community quarantine. They also needed much more health support, such as medicine, access to hospital care, and medical consultation.

People with disabilities face heightened protection risks, such as abuse and violence. Evidence shows that the risk of violence to children and adults with disabilities is routinely three to four times higher than for those without disabilities. Women with disabilities are 10 times more likely than women without disabilities to experience sexual violence.

In the current circumstances of COVID-19, public restrictions, self-isolation of households and disruption of community life and social support may lead to increased protection risks for persons with disabilities and their caregivers. Those include separation from families and caregivers, domestic violence, gender-based violence, sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.

Persons with disabilities and their relatives are also less likely to disclose and report violence because of shame and fear, because family members and community members are often the perpetrators, or because the subject is still perceived as a taboo.

People with disabilities are disproportionately affected by the economic shock caused by COVID-19. Specifically, vulnerable and marginalized groups, including persons with disabilities, persons with chronic illness and older persons, who were already vulnerable due to socio-economic exclusion, are even more likely to get hit harder by the reverberating effects of the pandemic.

According to UN estimates, half a billion people, or 8% of the world's population, could be pushed into poverty by the end of the year, largely due to the pandemic. The fight against poverty could see a setback of as much as 30 years.

Humanity & Inclusion calls on Canada to consider endorsing the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action. Canada committed that its humanitarian funding will be inclusive of people with disabilities. We call on Canada to ensure that the $400 million devoted to combat COVID-19, announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last September, directly targets the most vulnerable and marginalized people around the world, especially in crisis- and conflict-affected areas.

We recommend that Canada ensure that its funding of COVID-19 awareness campaigns promotes inclusive information on prevention and response through diverse accessible formats and technologies, specifically to reach people with visual, hearing and intellectual disabilities, such as sign language, easy read, plain language, audio, captioned media and Braille, so as to leave no one behind.

In addition, we recommend that public communication also use inclusive messages and images to share information with persons with disabilities on how to stay safe and healthy, and how to access assistance or submit concerns.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you so much, Ms. Gaiptman.

Our final set of opening remarks goes to Islamic Relief Canada.

Mr. Al-Rawni, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Zaid Al-Rawni, Chief Executive Officer, Islamic Relief Canada]

Thank you all so much for giving this issue your time and deliberation.

First, I will introduce Islamic Relief. Islamic Relief has become the largest Muslim faith-based NGO in Canada. When I came in 2010, Islamic Relief was raising roughly $900,000 a year from Canadians. This year, despite the COVID pandemic, Islamic Relief has raised over $50 million in cash from Canadian donors.

That money is predominantly spent to help some of the most vulnerable communities in some of the most failed states in the world, places such as Somalia and northern Syria, places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and central and sub-Saharan Africa. Our projects are primarily helping in areas of humanitarian crises. That means people who are in an emergency situation and who need aid.

The evidence I'm going to share is based on our experience with some of those most vulnerable people and some of the challenges where, from a development perspective and from a humanitarian perspective, we could really support with the work we're doing and could really affect people in a more positive way.

The first thing I will say is that Canada has a really good reputation globally. Everywhere we go, people are really impressed and really happy to see the Canadian flag. There's a general good feeling about Canada. Our values as Canadians are known by people. Unfortunately, we made a commitment as Canadians to give 0.7% of our GDP to the world's poorest people, and currently, we're sitting at roughly 0.27%. We haven't really ever met the commitment we initially made to meet 0.7% of our GDP.

What that means is that some of the problems we're seeing globally, especially the refugee crisis, are exacerbated. I've been all over the world. I have met refugees first-hand, and I have yet to meet a single refugee whose main ambition or main desire is not to go back home, to stay home. They never wanted to leave their homes. Nobody ever wants to be forced out from where they live and where they're coming from. Unfortunately, a lack of support means that many of these people are forced into migration camps, forced into refugee camps, forced to cross the channel now from France to England, forced to cross the different treacherous seas and put their lives at risk.

Therefore, it's really important that we consider the 0.7% that we have committed to. This is not lobbying to make a commitment; this is a commitment we have already made, and we try as best we can to meet that commitment.

More aid is actually good aid, and Canadian organizations are well placed to deliver that aid. As a member of the Humanitarian Coalition, Islamic Relief serves with 12 of the best and most respected Canadian organizations in Canada. We work together and collectively to remove the confusion around whom to give to in a time of crisis when all these people are asking for whatever it is.

We came together and we committed to reducing the noise in a humanitarian crisis, saying, look, all these organizations you know, which you give to for child welfare projects, which you give to for these types of projects, are coming together under one banner and working together to support the most vulnerable people on the ground. Canadian organizations are well placed to do this.

All across the globe, there are Canadian humanitarian workers working day and night, risking their lives, running into the fire when others are running out. You have exemplary organizations such as Oxfam, World Vision, Plan International, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and others that are part of this coalition moving forward, but we find sometimes that the commitments made from an international development perspective are made and given to unilateral agencies, UN agencies.

Here's the real kicker from our perspective: We have a high burden of showing our direction and control. That same burden does not apply to these multilateral agencies such as the UN agencies.

I will end my comments there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you so much, Mr. Al-Rawni.

We will now go to our rounds of prepared questions by members of the committee.

Just before we do, I want to remind colleagues that periodically we might get requests from interpretation services to adjust our microphones, because really sometimes a fraction of an inch difference in positioning is what they require.

Ms. Gaiptman, there was a request for you to lower your microphone ever so slightly. That should probably work for the Q and A. If there are any other deficiencies, we will be advised.

The first round consists of six-minute segments, the first of which goes to Mr. Diotte.

Mr. Diotte, the floor is yours.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks very much.

Thanks to all of you for all the good work you do. It's really essential, especially with the times we're seeing today.

Mr. Singh, I'd like to start with you. It sounds like you probably have a lot to say about certain topics. I like how you gave some very, very practical suggestions so that the foreign aid that goes out there is used appropriately and we're using best practices, etc.

You mentioned the reviews by the Auditor General that raised some concerns about Canada's foreign aid. Could you detail a little bit of that for everybody's benefit?

[Rahul Singh]

Yes. Before I do that, I'd love to quantify some of the numbers I gave you earlier.

When we started looking inward at the water units we were buying, we were paying about $50 for a unit. When we did it ourselves by buying in bulk and leveraging volunteers, we were down to about $10.50. We were able to push out four to four and a half times more. While some arguments will be made that you have to double the amount of aid you're giving, I'm saying to you that you can actually quadruple the amount of aid you're giving by being more efficient with the money you're spending. With the systems we're using, we're able to push out much more aid than we ever did before, simply by changing some supply chain methods. If I look at 2018-19, year over year, we're up 95% in beneficiaries and deliverables with only a 35% increase. It's a very good multiple.

Coming to the point you're asking about, those specific reviews talk about how our aid is not focused. We don't understand why we're giving certain amounts to different countries. It's not based on KPIs. It's very slow to respond and then it's not programmed quickly. If you look at the comment I gave you about 2018, when we promised $900 million for innovative aid projects, that's a beautiful-sounding thing. Then we spent $120,000 on it. It's very hard for us in the sector to take you seriously as a nation when you fail to deliver on that. The Auditor General...your own government's folks are saying what the problems are, and then they don't get fixed.

I'll be very frank; I was in a meeting, in Chatham House rules, where I heard senior officials talk about the Auditor General and their findings. They downplayed it. They said, look, this is not so bad. As an external participant, as somebody coming in and hearing all these bad things or opportunities to improve for us as an agency, I would take them very seriously. They're right there. I recommend that you take a hard look at these. The guidance to improve is right in there. It would have a significant impact.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Again, maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit. I know you touched on these, but what are some of the key recommendations from the Auditor General?

[Rahul Singh]

A couple came up in different segments. There's the uncoupling of the unilateral...or the giving to the UN. What ends up happening is that you give all this money into a very large system. They then take a significant percentage of it as an administration fee and go out to try to program it. They will come to smaller agencies and say to them, “We want you to implement, but we're not going to give you an administrative fee. In fact, you need to give us some form of a match.” Basically, the UN becomes your middleman, if you will, or your power broker in between. That becomes a problem. If you just cut them out of the system, you could have saved that 13% management fee, put it to the side and saved the money. When we talk about $1.4 billion, which is what you program, it's a significant amount of money. So I would look at that one.

The other thing is this: Look at Haiti versus Pakistan. Haiti was a horrible incident that involved three million. In Pakistan it was 20 million—seven times the number of folks involved. The money given to Pakistan didn't correlate to the number of beneficiaries or victims who were affected by an incident. Often the questions were raised of....

You can come back to the whole matching program, which the Auditor General touches on as well. As Canadians, we thought of using a matching fund to encourage Canadians to give. If we left the program alone, many agencies would get their match. We would get our funds. We would report to the government what we raised. The government could simply take all that and say, hey, Canadians gave $10 million to all these agencies, so we're now going to match it and give to the agencies we want to. You'd still achieve the exact same objective, which was engaging Canadians to give, without hurting agencies.

Now we're in the middle of a pandemic. We have agencies that are struggling to raise funds. All of a sudden the government tilts the playing field. I know that one is not mentioned in the Auditor General's report. I'd be surprised if it weren't in the next Auditor General's report, because that's certainly something the government should not be doing. Then it came down to efficiency and value for money.

Respectfully, if we're able to push more aid into a crisis zone at a lower cost.... Imagine if we ran this dual program as a nation, where we said to our partners who have boots on the ground, delivering the aid, that we are not only going to fund them, but we're going to provide them with the right aid solutions. We know that all those refugees who are fleeing fighting, or the IDPs who are fleeing fighting in Syria, really need access to clean water. The Rohingya who are in Bangladesh, who have fled all that horrible fighting in Myanmar, need clean drinking water. Now we're going to give you all of this aid at a much lower cost. We'll still give you the money to go and distribute it, but then we get to control costs and actually get to do way more with the money we have right now.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thanks so much. Your comments are right on the money.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Diotte.

Thank you, Mr. Singh.

The next round goes to Mr. Fonseca for six minutes, please.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses who are joining us.

My first couple of questions are for Islamic Relief Canada.

Plan International and some United Nations agencies have informed their members that the pandemic is correlated with an increase in gender-based violence, early marriage and genital mutilation. Care Canada has said that these increases are particularly significant in fragile or conflict-affected countries.

My question is for Mr. Al-Rawni. Has Islamic Relief Canada collected similar evidence in the countries where it's working?

[Zaid Al-Rawni]

Yes. We're in the process of actually collecting data from various projects in fragile states in places where the incidences of GBV, forced marriage and FGM are an issue. We published a report a few years ago about FGM and the effect of FGM and how faith-based organizations can actually play a pivotal role in ending FGM.

Unfortunately, there is a correlation between an increase in poverty and an increase in vulnerability and the price that women and girls are paying. In every single context we've been to to date, in the most vulnerable communities, women and girls are paying the highest price for the family trying to grapple with the challenges, and that often means fathers and mothers are forcing their children into marriages at a very early age.

We have anecdotal evidence currently from Yemen, where early child marriages are on the rise, unfortunately, in a context where the only difference between now and previously is that the pandemic has exacerbated the situation.

We are still collecting data from most places, but unfortunately, the data that you represented resonates quite heavily and unfortunately stands true. We suspect—not to pre-empt the data we find—that it will be the case, and the research that we produce will say as much.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you.

I know that this November you came forward with your Islamic gender justice declaration. I want to ask you about that declaration. Did it take into account the vulnerabilities created and exacerbated by this pandemic?

[Zaid Al-Rawni]

Unfortunately, the declaration was produced and worked on before the pandemic. The idea was that it would encourage faith healers to play a pivotal leading role in ending GBV—gender-based violence—in their local communities. They can be some of the strongest actors in local communities in some of the most vulnerable and fragile states where we work.

It didn't take into account COVID specifically, but unfortunately, we suspect that, again, COVID will make things a lot harder for the poor generally, but specifically a lot harder for women and girls.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you.

Now I'll go to GlobalMedic.

Mr. Singh, it's good to see you again. I've had the opportunity to visit your facilities in the past, both here in Mississauga and over in Etobicoke, and help you pack some of those kits.

GlobalMedic has sent equipment and volunteers to more than 75 countries since it was established, so congratulations. What factors determine the emergencies to which GlobalMedic responds?

[Rahul Singh]

Thank you, Mr. Fonseca.

There's a triad that we always look at. The first thing we have to do is determine if we can we validate, if there is a need. The second thing we look at is whether there is access. Is there a need that we can help with? Is there access into that nation? Then, third, do we have funding, whether that funding is in the form of material aid or actual funds to come in?

When we're inside that triangle, we're usually deploying. As you yourself know, we deploy about 15 or 16 times a year.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Okay.

I do want to ask you about what you brought up about this double administration fee and the partners. The programming money takes an administration fee and the partner receiving the money takes an administration fee. What can Canada do to mitigate that double administration fee when providing its foreign assistance during COVID-19?

[Rahul Singh]

There are a number of ways. It would be ridiculous if we all thought that you could stop funding the UN. Obviously that doesn't work. If you cap the amount that you are giving to the UN and the big systems, cap the amount that goes to large organizations, and introduce, let's say, that 1% for a stockpiles program that I talked about, just so we can control the amount of money that we're putting into those stockpiles pushing out Canadian-made aid, then all of a sudden you have a mirror effect where you can say to smaller agencies on the ground that you're going to give them the right aid. If you just gave them a little bit of money and forced them to go and buy products, they're going to be at the mercy of the market.

Just look at people buying PPE. Look at our own government buying PPE in the last few months. We're at the mercy of the market, and that can go way up and way down and have an incredible impact. So, by just putting parameters in and going directly to some of the smaller and medium organizations.... You had it bang on when you launched in 2017 that small and medium organizations fund, but it was only $100 million over five years. If we just did more with it, you would be helping more of those agencies in need and you'd be avoiding that double administration.

Respectfully—I testified at another committee—we make the same mistake here in our system when we're trying to help domestically, because we programmed all the money through three really large agencies that had an admin fee, then gave another admin fee over, and it just created this double admin. We have a civil service. They're professional, they're competent, and there's no reason that they cannot be assessing and evaluating those smaller agencies and getting the money directly to them.

I encourage you. There are so many small agencies here in Canada, and I think I'm the only one speaking to you who is not funded by the government. Again, you have to talk to these other agencies. They have so much knowledge, and it will do so much good to help push Canadian dollars into where they're needed most.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Singh, thank you very much.

Mr. Fonseca, that's your time. Thank you.

Mr. Bergeron, you have six minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

Again, I appreciate your contribution to the committee's work.

My first questions will be for Mr. Singh from GlobalMedic.

I did some research on your organization. Unlike Mr. Fonseca, I haven't had the opportunity to visit your facilities in Ontario or to participate in the development of a number of your kits. I understand that you use unmanned air vehicle technology.

Could you tell us what unmanned air vehicle technology is all about? What is its purpose? How do you use it in the areas where you operate?

[Rahul Singh]

First of all, I would like to say that we are often in Quebec and we have volunteers out helping us pack aid, so I'd encourage you to come. We've worked with L'Oeuvre Léger, who have since changed their name. The next time we're in Quebec, I'll reach out. Please come out and help us pack some aid.

The drone program we call RescUAV, and we use drones for four reasons. One is to deliver aid into areas that are hard to reach. We are running a program right now with one of the first nations in Canada, on an island that's very hard to reach. We've launched an air bridge with a Canadian company, Drone Delivery Canada, where we have a drone that goes back and forth all day ferrying aid in. We can use that same principle to reach folks who are really hard to reach, whether they're the Yazidis on the mountain during the conflict a while back, or folks who are in the last mile after hurricane Matthew in Haiti. There are many people in tragic need, and drones will help.

The second reason we use the drones is what we call situational awareness—what road is out, what bridge is out and where populations have moved. After a crisis, we want to be able to tell emergency managers and give them better information so they make better decisions and aid is delivered immediately.

The third reason is that we support search and rescue teams. The fourth reason is that we take hundreds of thousands of photos, cross-stitch them and make maps, and then make comprehensive damage assessments. In countries like Bahamas after it was hit by hurricane Dorian, they say they have a hundred thousand homes that are damaged, and the World Bank has to give them money. The World Bank will ask them to prove it, and then we're able to offer them the evidence by producing the map.

It's excellent technology. It is Canadian—you'll notice a theme that I speak of often is delivering Canadian aid out there—and it's an excellent Canadian solution. By the way, we won an award from Google—I'm not sure if you've heard of them—but Google said we were great at using innovation and technology for good.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you for those clarifications.

I understand you've sent nearly 700 emergency kits to families affected by the crisis during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Did you have to use this type of technology to deliver your aid?

How did you ensure that the kits you sent were actually getting to the families who needed them?