Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 25th, 2021

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

Yes, and also nutritional education, and so on.

Does anybody else want to weigh in on how important it is that young girls and women get that type of education, to be able to have control of their lives?

[Lorraine Swift]

We definitely support the feminist international assistance policy and the proliferation of information more and more in the schools, in the hands of young women, around their sexual and reproductive health and rights to that sexual and reproductive health.

Certainly, there are a lot of programs now that we can thank the Government of Canada for providing leadership on. Certainly, of course, we need more funding to get those into the hands of the girl students, but that's a definite—

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

And young boys—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fonseca.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you so much, both of you.

Mr. Bergeron, you have two and a half minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Mr. Chair, earlier reference was made to the impact of COVID-19 on learning operations in developing countries.

I would like to know what impact COVID-19 has had on your operations. I am thinking in particular of the Change for Children Association, which had school construction programs in some of the communities in which it operates.

What impact has COVID-19 had on your operations in terms of literacy efforts in developing countries?

[Lorraine Swift]

We have an education program, a technology-enabled, indigenous mother-tongue language education program, that also includes sexual and reproductive health and rights education for girls in Guatemala that was closed down completely because of school closures. We have a similar program in Nicaragua where the schools remained open and we were able to continue both our teacher training program and our student learning programs in those schools. It's quite variable in terms of where we're able to continue our work. It's based on the local governments' decisions and on whether or not they have closed schools.

Certainly, we've been responding to COVID. We also have large water projects across Central America. In terms of water and sanitation, we've been able to provide a COVID response effort to the beneficiary populations there. Then, of course, in Canada, we actually expected our revenues to go way down. We predicted a 60% decline in donations because of COVID and also because we're based in Alberta and our economy is in difficult times right now. However, we actually saw our donations increase, so we know that Canadians are supportive of international development investment, and we know that Albertans are supportive of international development investment. We are impressed by our citizens' ability to support that.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Does anyone else have a short answer for me?

[Scott Walter]

I can just say that we work almost exclusively through local partners, so they have managed to continue to work. We've also had some very interesting programs where we've supported the local publications. They've developed anthologies to put them into home-schooling kids. They've distributed them and then partnered with local radio stations to have radio reading hours that will reach students wherever they are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bergeron.

Thank you very much, witnesses.

To finish off our round this afternoon, Ms. McPherson, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was quite compelled by the questions of Mr. Bergeron, but also I'd like to comment on how Mr. Walter talked about the cascading impact of education loss and what that looks like.

I would love just a very quick comment from all our witnesses on what it would mean if we were able to have long-term—not just three years, but long-term—predictable funding through the Government of Canada, and how that would impact your ability to do good work and recover from the impacts of COVID-19 on your programming.

Again, I'll start with Ms. Swift, if I could.

[Lorraine Swift]

Absolutely.

We are running kind of from project to project with gaps between projects. We aren't able right now to commit long term to our partner organizations in the south, to the communities where we work or to the participants in our programs. We have been very lucky that our funding continues from one funder to the next and that we're able to sort of continue programs. However, it would be much more advantageous for us and we could leverage more support from Albertans and Canadians across the country if we were able to say, “We have this long-term funding from the Government of Canada. Will you also support this initiative?” We could do much more, and of course, we will have to do much more because the effects of COVID and climate change are profound.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Eaton, could I ask you the same question, please?

[Chris Eaton]

We could work with our local partners and make long-term investments in quality education for the communities that we're concerned about. We're unable to do that fully at the moment, but longer-term, predictable funding would allow us to do so and would be of great benefit to the people we're particularly concerned about.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Do I still have time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

You have about 30 seconds, Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Wonderful.

Mr. Walter or Mr. Champigny, either of you, perhaps you have some comments on that.

[Scott Walter]

I'll just say very quickly that education is a long-term goal, and there's no silver bullet in education. More than in almost any other sector, you need predictability and you need long-term funding. You invest in a child at age six, and by the time the child is 16, you start to see the return on that investment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you so much, Ms. McPherson.

Colleagues, that takes us to the end of our time with our witnesses this afternoon.

As usual, I'd like to thank all of them on our collective behalf for their expertise, their testimony and, most importantly, their service. It was great to spend time with you. We would have appreciated more time, but time is limited. There's always an opportunity for you, if you haven't had a chance to express all your thoughts or recommendations, to address us in writing subsequent to this meeting. Thank you again. We'll allow you a few minutes to disembark.

We have some business to attend to, colleagues. We're still in public session.

We're continuing our discussion on the motion introduced by Mr. Harris and Ms. McPherson. We most recently in our discussion on this had an amendment on the floor that was introduced by Ms. Sahota, if I'm correct.

I'd like to hand her the floor to continue to speak to that amendment. Then we will take a speakers list as usual, through the “raise hand” feature, please.

Madam Clerk, let's do the same thing we did last time with respect to members who are present in the committee room.

Ms. Sahota, please go ahead.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you for giving me the floor, Chair.

I should probably start with a refresher for everybody, because I believe the last time we spoke to my amendment was last Thursday, a week ago.

I'm sorry, Ms. McPherson, that we weren't able to get to it on Tuesday. Anyway, I'm really glad that we got our interim report done, finally. That's good news, at least.

My amendment is to Mr. Harris's motion.

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

I'm sorry, I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Yes, please, Mr. Genuis.

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

I would just encourage us to be careful about matters that were or were not concluded in camera being discussed, given that we are in public.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.