Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 25th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Saks.

Mr. Bergeron, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the witnesses who are taking part in this meeting. Their input is most relevant to the work of this committee.

It is very inspiring to hear you and to see your determination to move forward despite the difficulties.

The portrait that is painted for us, from one testimony to the next, is extremely depressing. Last time, I asked a question about hope. I asked if there was still hope. The dedication and determination you show is what keeps us hopeful. So thank you very much for who you are and what you do.

I would first like to address the representatives of the Fondation Paul Gérin-Lajoie. You have quoted, both in a press release and on your website, this statement by Nelson Mandela:

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

However, as mentioned earlier, between 250 million and 260 million school-age children are not in school. As you are involved in operations both at home and abroad, you know that ensuring that children in a developed country are literate, are interested in reading, grammar, writing and spelling, and perform well in these areas, is already a challenge. Of course, one might think that the situation is even more complex in developing countries.

There was already a problem with the structures that enable learning in developing countries. Yet we were told repeatedly that these difficulties were exacerbated by the pandemic. As we know, students in Canada and Quebec have difficulty maintaining their motivation and level of achievement because of distance learning. For logistical reasons, this is an additional challenge.

This exacerbated situation leads us to believe—I am referring here to a World Bank statistic—that closing schools for three, five or seven months or even longer will eventually result in a loss of income for these children. This crisis will therefore have the effect of increasing poverty in the long term. That's probably why one of the witnesses told us—I think it was again a representative of the Fondation Paul Gérin-Lajoie— that we are witnessing perhaps the most serious education crisis in history. Added to that is the difficulty in accessing the vaccine in developing countries.

In a simple, orderly, systematic way, what could be done to address this series of multifaceted problems we are currently facing? Where should we start and in what order should we proceed?

[Christian Champigny]

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron.

This question is obviously extremely complex and no one is in a position to answer it with certainty.

You spoke of hope and of the 258 million children who did not already have access to education. I don't know if my colleagues in other organizations will agree with me, but this is a decrease compared to what existed. I think there have been improvements in education, but the problem is much broader, and the current crisis is certainly an economic crisis that will increase the barriers to access to education.

I've worked in this field for many years and I've seen that people generally have a thirst for knowledge and a desire to learn. But there are shortcomings in terms of the quality of education, the structure of education or the economic, sometimes cultural, capacity to access it. This is what needs to be worked on above all.

Where do we start? In other societies or in our societies, I would say that everything has to develop at the same time. When I talked about the biggest educational disaster, the COVID-19 crisis, I also mentioned the white paper "Save Our Future,” which has been endorsed by about 100 organizations. I invite you to consult it, because it talks exactly about the COVID-19 crisis—it is very recent. We can talk about an educational disaster, but education is also a source of hope. Certainly, this is not going to be solved overnight, and we have to try to include as many people as possible in this movement.

We welcome the initiative that Minister Gould presented a few weeks ago on the education of refugees, particularly refugee and displaced girls. This initiative must be supported by funding, of course. We are waiting for news in this regard, as Mr. Eaton mentioned.

It will therefore take shape, but gradually. Indeed, it is a gradual process, but you have to start somewhere, and education is an absolutely crucial starting point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bergeron and Mr. Champigny.

The final six-minute round goes to Ms. McPherson.

Please go ahead.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of our witnesses today. I'm always very impressed with the work that organizations such as yours do. It's nice to see some of my past colleagues on the call this afternoon.

One of the things this committee doesn't often get to do is to hear from a variety of different organizations that are engaged in international development efforts around the world. I'm delighted that we have a number of small and medium-sized organizations represented. I think it's important that those voices get amplified because, of course, it's always a little bit harder for a smaller organization to engage with the federal government in a meaningful manner.

I'm going to direct the first couple of questions to CODE and to Change for Children.

In terms of the role of small and medium organizations in Canada, and the role in terms of our official development assistance, could you talk about how important it is that we are supporting our small and medium organizations? What key roles do SMOs play in the development landscape?

Ms. Swift, could I start with you, please?

[Lorraine Swift]

Sure. I'm always great at answering this question of why SMOs should be funded. We are very agile, and we're innovative. We can pivot quickly to respond to the needs of the communities where we have been connected to very specific people in specific places from across the globe, sometimes for 40 to 60 years. There are SMOs across this country that have been around for decades that really gain their support from their local communities.

We mobilize and leverage support from across the country; here in Alberta not so much these days, but there is a lot of wealth here, and we have been able to double the capacity of our Global Affairs Canada funded projects with our matching grants from Albertans and Albertan corporations and foundations.

We also connect Albertans and indeed Canadians from across the country from small towns and indigenous communities with our communities that we work with overseas. Through our brigade programs, we take people who wouldn't necessarily understand the details of international development, and they get to see first-hand the impacts of their support.

We also educate Canadians. We have school outreach programs. We're in the schools. We're making presentations. We're doing that across Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. We basically bring the global community to western Canada, which is something.... If we didn't have NGOs based out here, maybe the involvement in international development would end with writing a cheque and mailing it to Ottawa.

There's a lot to say about how we engage Canadians and how we leverage support from across the country.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Walter, could I turn to you next, please?

[Scott Walter]

I would respond that, as a smaller organization, we don't try nor are we able to be all things to all people. As a result, we're very focused. We've been around for a long time, but we're very focused on the question of the quality of education. If there's one thing that's universal, it's that parents want a better life for their children, but they're not stupid. If they don't see their kids gaining or learning at school, they'll pull them out.

What we do is focus on what we think can make the greatest impact. Often big organizations are involved with all manner of community, school and infrastructure programs, but a school is not a school until there's a teacher inside it with good books. That's where we focus.

It happens to be something that Canada knows a lot about. We produce some of the best teachers in the world. We also know a lot about the importance of indigenous publishing to produce a national literature that children can relate to, that speaks to them and that reflects what their reality is in a relevant way. Relevant means being linguistically relevant, relevant quality-wise, and relevant to the length of the curriculum.

That's what we do, and we think we have a special role to do it.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

Speaking about relevant curriculum and education, I'm going to turn to Mr. Eaton, if I may.

You spoke a bit about the importance of education for refugees. We know that women and girls are disproportionately impacted by COVID. We know that girls are at most risk, especially when they are refugees, indigenous or living with a disability.

How do we make sure, as we develop the together for learning program, that it meets the needs of those girls and that refugees are at the table as part of the discussions to develop it? What would you as a Canadian organization like to see that program look like?

[Chris Eaton]

We have a tremendous network of people here in Canada who have the lived experience of being refugees and who have actually come to Canada because of the educational opportunities offered to them in other parts of the world and here in Canada. This is emphasizing that focus on education. There is thus this tremendous expertise across Canada that we could draw on to inform the design of the campaign itself.

I think that the campaign at its heart has to have something that accentuates values and supports refugee leadership itself, not only in Canada but globally in the places in which we want to do some more educational work.

We have an equality fund that does outstanding work with women's rights organizations. How about having something just like it that supports refugee-led responses, refugee voices, refugee agency in the educational space, in the parts of Africa where all of us work and in other parts of the world as well? I'd like to see something like that at the heart of the campaign.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Colleagues, we're hovering at the 10-minute mark of our scheduled time with witnesses. I would propose to do what we've done a few times before, which is to divide that time evenly, to give every party a chance to ask another question—somewhere in the neighbourhood of two and a half minutes per questioner.

Let me just mention to our witnesses that there have been a couple of times when interpretation has had difficulty picking up the sound. It was marginal. It wasn't severe enough to interrupt. If you could speak as loudly and clearly into your microphone as possible, that would assist interpretation services greatly.

Mr. Genuis, please take us through the first of these two-and-a-half-minute rounds.

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

Thank you so much to all of the witnesses.

There is something I would like clarity on, because it's an important point. Ms. Swift, I wrote down that you said “Fewer children mean healthier populations and lower carbon emissions.”

Did I get that correctly from you?

[Lorraine Swift]

Yes.

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

At one time, people might have made the argument that fewer children was something that was desirable from a development perspective. That happened in the context of various coercive population controls that tried to push the message on women that they should have smaller families, that they needed to have smaller families.

A lot of emerging data—I'm referring to a paper by Wesley Peterson, “The Role of Population in Economic Growth”, which does a sort of historical survey. It notes:

In low-income countries, rapid population growth is likely to be detrimental in the short and medium term because it leads to large numbers of dependent children. In the longer run, there is likely to be a demographic dividend in these countries as these young people become productive adults.

We're seeing in countries that have had higher population growth rates, for example, dramatic economic growth. Such is the case in many countries in Africa, and there are many other countries, such as China, that have had aggressive, coercive population control policies that have been very violent in their implications. The impact of those policies now is an aging population and inevitable impending demographic problems.

Is the case you're making that we should emphasize choice for people, or is it that we should try to push the message that people should not have larger families, even if that's what they wish to have in some of these countries?

[Lorraine Swift]

I'm not sure how much time I have to respond to that, but it's well documented that family planning available to women and girls allows them to decide when to have children and how many to have, and basic math around carbon emissions tells us that every person on the planet is contributing to climate change.

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

Can I just clarify, though, madam, that we're talking about two different things. There's the issue of giving people information and choice, and then there's the issue of pushing the message that you should have a smaller family. Those are two conceptually distinct things, right?

[Lorraine Swift]

Right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Just really quickly, please. We only have seconds left.

[Lorraine Swift]

Women who have information about how to control how many children they have are typically having fewer children, because they don't want to have 12 children. It's not pushing the message to have fewer children, but it is giving women the choice to control their own bodies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Genuis. We'll have to leave it there.

Mr. Fonseca.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Let me thank the witnesses for the tremendous work they do. We are all so impressed by everything you are able to accomplish.

I'm going to go along the same line of questioning Mr. Genuis just brought up.

We've heard from many other witnesses about wrap-around services and how important education is, in particular health and reproductive health rights education. When young women and girls go to school, I'm sure they get this education about their own bodies, about choice, also about nutrition and being able to get food. We heard from CODE, from Mr. Walter, that marriage is at 13, 14 and 15, taking away the empowerment, the control, that these young women and girls have.

Can you tell us about that? How important is it to have sexual and reproductive health rights education, and how important is that for their empowerment?

[Scott Walter]

I'll jump in.

I would say that with education, young women can make informed decisions. That's number one. With literacy, it leads to higher-order thinking skills. Really, what comes with that is problem solving and critical thinking. It's all about being able to make informed decisions once you have that information. But, yes—

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

How important are sexual education and reproductive health rights?

[Scott Walter]

They are critical. A comprehensive sexual education is critical to the equation you're talking about.

In many of the countries we're working with, they're very conservative, traditional societies, and there's no allowing of that to be in the curriculum. More and more, countries are now opening up to that. They want to have stronger economies, healthier populations and literate peoples, so they're opening up to that kind of curriculum-based program.