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.