Foreign Affairs Committee on April 29th, 2021

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

I just heard a little now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Okay, let's assume it works.

You may continue, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. You have about one minute left.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

All right, thank you.

Canada is currently experiencing the consequences of multiple disastrous global crises. I am not telling you anything new. We hear of potential famines in some 20 countries, which would affect many people, especially women and children. We had made progress over the last 25 years in human development, but as we know, we have lost a lot of ground and are now falling behind. There are so many issues that need to be addressed, but I do not see any funding for this in the budget.

How is Canada going to achieve its crucial international development goals if there is no increase in funding for international development in this budget? That is what annoys me.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

The budget provides for new investments of around $700 million this year. This includes $375 million to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, $165 million to provide humanitarian assistance and $300 million to respond to the Rohingya crisis.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Do you think these $375 million are enough? Do you think the COVID-19 crisis is over?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

That's an excellent question.

This is a huge crisis, but we have already given $1.7 billion in the last year to fight it. In addition, $940 million has been provided to the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator. Canada ranks fourth globally for its financial assistance in response to COVID-19.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Madam Minister. I have to stop you there for the time being. You will no doubt have the opportunity to come back to this point later.

I will now give the floor to Ms. McPherson, please, for six minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the minister for joining us today, and her colleagues from Global Affairs Canada, many of whom I've had the privilege of working with in the past.

Minister, you won't be at all surprised to hear me say that I was disappointed by the numbers we saw in the budget. We've had many discussions. I think you know that while I appreciate the feminist international assistance policy—indeed, I contributed to it before I was elected as a member of Parliament—the words and the announcements we hear just don't match the ambitions of our budget for international development and for Canada's role and obligations around the world.

I'm going to ask a few questions. First, I'm going to start with some of the development objectives that I think may have been neglected within Global Affairs.

Canada is currently suffering, like the rest of the world, from multiple dire global crises. There's rising poverty. There's a climate crisis. There is the COVID-19 pandemic. We know this has deeply impacted women and girls. We know it has deeply impacted marginalized communities. We know we are further away from achieving the sustainable development goals, we are further away from achieving what we had put forward as objectives within the feminist international assistance policy, and we know that in the last 25 weeks we've lost 25 years of human development progress. There will be incredibly long-lasting consequences. We've seen this with all of the studies we've done within the international human rights subcommittee and within the foreign affairs committee.

How will we be able to invest in some of those critical objectives we've identified when there have been no increases, or very small increases, in our international development efforts?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. McPherson. Of course, I always welcome your input. You have a lot of experience in development and it's great to work with you on this file.

When it comes to the budget, I just want to clarify a couple of things because I think you raise some really good points.

There was an increase of $1.4 billion in the ODA budget on top of the existing budget in Budget 2021. This is in addition to the $1.7 billion in new resources we mobilized last fiscal year that went to, on the one hand, fighting COVID-19, with $940 million for the ACT A process, making Canada the fourth largest contributor in the world to the ACT A. This I think is something that is extremely important in the global fight against COVID-19. It also included $400 million in additional dollars for humanitarian and development programming last year.

I agree that there is huge challenge around the world, but we have mobilized significant new resources in the last year alone. This year alone it's $700 million in additional dollars to fight many crises around the world.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

With all due respect, Minister, realistically we are hearing the United Nations' call that we are facing famines of biblical proportions. We are looking at an extremely long tail on COVID-19. Yes, there was $1.4 billion, but in the current budget going forward there's only $375 million. It isn't going to be sufficient. People are going to die and we are lacking ambition.

I just feel like, in a way, that what you're trying to say is that this pandemic is behind us, when we know from everything we've heard that the impacts of this pandemic on low and middle-income countries are just beginning. It is just starting; it is not ending, so why is our ambition getting smaller?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

At no point am I saying that the pandemic is behind us. To the contrary, we announced $10 million to the Red Cross just on Monday for the response in India. This is very much a live issue. However, we also need to mobilize other donors.

Canada is the tenth largest donor in the world, but we're the fourth largest donor to the ACT A. There are others that also need to step up, and we're doing that work, encouraging others to step up as well.

When it comes to food security, we've contributed new resources to the World Food Programme and to Nutrition International this past year to help with their efforts. We've increased our humanitarian funding by $165 million this year. We contribute every year $800 million to humanitarian crises because we recognize that there are these challenges around the world.

I agree with you. This is a very difficult world with lots of different crises. That's why Canada is responding. In this budget, we extended the Middle East strategy, we extended the Rohingya strategy and we extended our response in Venezuela as well.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It's all with insufficient motivation, all with insufficient ambition.

With all due respect, I have to say that our development assistance is still far below the 0.7% that was a Canadian target, a Canadian initiative. We are still so far below that. We are still well below international commitments and global standards.

Saying that Canada is doing enough is not sufficient. I think what Canadians need from their Minister of International Development is a commitment to push the government of the day further, to push the government to do more and to have greater ambition. We're depending on you to be our voice at the cabinet table to ensure that Canada is doing what needs to be done around the world, and we're not seeing it.

We're not seeing the funding that we want to see in terms of humanitarian care. We're not seeing the funding we wanted to see in terms of support for women and girls for our education initiatives.

Where is the $450 million promised in the 2019 federal election platform for education for refugee and displaced children? We didn't see that money in the budget.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Ms. McPherson, I apologize. You're just about out of time.

We'll give the minister a brief chance to respond, and then we'll have to move on to the next round.

Minister.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Ms. McPherson, again with all due respect, in the last year alone we mobilized over $2 billion in new funding. When you consider what our base budget is, that is a significant increase in one year. I fight every single day for the poorest and the most vulnerable around the world and I'm very proud that we've been able to mobilize those additional resources.

At a time when many of our peer countries are cutting their assistance budget, not only have we been able to maintain and protect it, we've actually been able to continue to grow it. I will continue to fight for that, but we have mobilized additional resources. Canada has stepped up, and when it comes to the fight against COVID-19, we've been holistic in our response.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Ms. McPherson.

We'll now go to our second round. These are shorter allocations. The first one is a five-minute round.

Mr. Diotte, please.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Minister, thanks for being here.

You said gender equality is at the heart of everything the Canadian government does, and that's admirable, so I want to talk a bit about another important thing: human rights.

The 2021 estimates state that nearly $154 million will be going to help provide sovereign loans to foreign countries. What countries would be eligible to receive this funding and what steps are being taken to ensure that countries that abuse human rights can't receive the funding?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Certainly. Thank you for the question.

The sovereign loans program is a new tool we have in the Government of Canada that was provided through Budget 2018. We are currently in negotiations with countries, so I can't talk about it until those conversations come forward.

We base all our official development assistance in line with Canadian values. That is one of the objectives in the criteria of the ODAAA, and that is something that our officials take into account when they are entering into any agreement with different organizations.

Perhaps I can also just say that our feminist international assistance policy obviously has gender equality at the heart of it, but it also takes human rights into account, and we take a human rights-based approach in all the work that we do.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you.

You mentioned Canadian values, so this is another question along that same vein.

Last year, UNRWA acknowledged that hateful content had been present in its educational materials for about eight months but professed that this was the result of an error and that error had been rectified by November 2020.

Are you now confident that today, in April 2021, Canadian and UN values of tolerance, non-violence and peacemaking are consistently emphasized in UNRWA schools?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you for the important question, Mr. Diotte.

As you know, UNRWA provides education to over 500,000 vulnerable Palestinian children in five different areas. Canada has been a long-standing partner of UNRWA. I also want to recognize and welcome that the U.S. government has made a commitment to re-engaging with and re-supporting UNRWA.

As soon as I learned of this issue, I contacted my officials. I had a conversation with the commissioner-general of UNRWA. We have been engaged very thoroughly in what happened and in understanding what happened. We are working with UNRWA to ensure that they have the policies in place to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again.

It was an oversight, but UNRWA recognizes this and they are very committed to ensuring that the materials they provide do align with UN values.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you.

The Government of Canada recently announced a $49.9 million pledge of humanitarian aid to Syrians. The news release talks about how this amount builds on a previous commitment, bringing Canada's humanitarian aid to Syrians in 2021 to about $330 million.

Are these amounts included in the appropriation sought in the main estimates in 2021-22?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I will have to defer to Leslie MacLean to confirm that.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Answer very briefly.

[Leslie MacLean]

I believe the answer is that they are. That announcement was made in the month of March, which would mean the funds would be appropriated in the main estimates before [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Okay.

What regions of Syria will receive humanitarian aid funded by Canada? Can you specify a bit?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

We provide our humanitarian assistance to trusted humanitarian partners. We generally provide flexible funding so that they can respond where the needs are greatest. The objective is always to reach those who are most in need.