Evidence of meeting #6 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pandemic.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
We have five minutes remaining for Ms. Sahota, and then we will come to a hard stop.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Actually, Mr. Diotte asked a few of the questions that I wanted to ask, so I think I'm going to continue along that line.
For CARE, I know, Barbara, that your organization and others have called gender-based violence the “shadow pandemic”. I found interesting as well the high increase that you were seeing in some issues such as female feticide and FGM. I'm finding it hard to understand why we are seeing those increases.
Can you talk to me about whether there was a decrease that you were seeing prior to the pandemic, or a levelling out of these incidents, and now there's a spike? In the last decade, has your work been able to decrease what we saw in this area?
President and Chief Executive Officer, CARE Canada
When we look at those troubling statistics around femicide, female genital mutilation and access to family planning, to contraceptives and to safe birthing situations, I think that globally we have made remarkable progress over the last 10, 15 or 20 years. Globally, virtually every single indicator—through the social development goals and through UN and other large metrics—was coming down, and I mean that in the sense of moving in the right direction.
What I think COVID has brought about, because of the complexity, particularly in conflict areas.... The restrictions have brought...what used to be conversations that could be had in a more public or even quasi-public setting, in a family planning clinic, in a community health setting, where we could be helping and working with women and girls over a period of time to help them learn how to make choices. Also, frankly, we could work with the men and boys in their lives to help them understand why it was a good thing to empower women and girls to be able to make these choices.
Now, because many of those quasi-public, public or community settings where those kinds of conversations are able to take place are no longer available within the confines of the social and movement restriction requirements of COVID, it is pushing people back into more private spaces. Those kinds of more constructive social conversations about giving women and girls choice and about the broader opportunities that are open for women and girls and for their families are no longer available to us.
From a rather horrific perspective, it has also brought back, sometimes quite literally indoors, some of the violence and the lack of access to basic sanitation such as latrine access. Many of those things where we had been making gains have now been reversed.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I wanted to get your input. I like the analogy that was used earlier about building fire stations rather than putting out the fires yourself each time. Can you describe a bit more the work you've done or intend to do that is essentially providing them the resources there to deal with some of these types of situations themselves? You're saying now that you're not able to provide the same types of supports or education.
How do you instill this in a community or society for the organizations and people on the ground to be able to do that work when you're not there?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Red Cross
Is this for the Red Cross?
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Well, it's for anyone, really, but I was asking CARE because I liked the analogy and I wanted to see what kind of response I could get from Barbara.
President and Chief Executive Officer, CARE Canada
Sure. I think I'm going to really mirror what my colleagues from the Red Cross have said.
Quite frankly, our job over time, in any country and in any context, is to work ourselves out of a job there. Our job is to build local infrastructure, local capacity and local leadership capabilities, so that over time we leave, and we leave a social infrastructure and a community infrastructure of leadership that can carry on long after we've been there.
We can call that a fire station. We can call that whatever we want. There's no question that, from the perspective of CARE, communities are better—the world is better—when women lead too. Our particular focus is on the notion of lifting up and building women's capacity for leadership, so that when we do leave, we've left a community, and we've helped to build a community that is resilient and that has gender equality and gives women and girls and the men and boys in their lives the opportunity to thrive in the longer term.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thank you very much, Ms. Grantham. Thank you for ending on such a positive and forward-looking note.
On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank all our witnesses this afternoon for their testimony, and more importantly, for their service in so many difficult areas around the world. Thank you for your expertise, and for being with us today.
We will let you disembark the ship.
We will suspend to empanel our second panel, and we will resume shortly.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Welcome back, colleagues.
For the benefit of our witnesses in the second panel, I would encourage all participants to mute their microphones when they're not speaking, and please address comments through the chair.
When you have 30 seconds left in your questioning or speaking time, I will signal you with this famous yellow piece of paper. Interpretation, if required, is available at the bottom of your screen through the globe icon.
I would now like to welcome our second panel of distinguished witnesses to the committee.
We now welcome the Honourable Bob Rae, ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York.
We welcome Sir Mark Lowcock, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme.
Before we begin, on behalf of the committee, I would like to congratulate Mr. Beasley and the entire WFP team on being awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. This prize was awarded to WFP “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.” Congratulations, sir, to you and your team.
Ambassador Rae, we will start with you. I will turn the floor over to you for five minutes of prepared remarks.
Welcome.
Bob Rae Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations (UN) in New York, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the committee members for the opportunity to speak to Canada's humanitarian response to COVID-19.
I had the chance to hear the discussion with the previous panel, and I would like to thank them for their work and dedication.
We're very fortunate to have Mr. Beasley and Mr. Lowcock with us. I've had the pleasure of meeting them both virtually and talking with them. Their insights on the magnitude and severity of the impacts of COVID-19 are unparalleled.
I extend warm congratulations to David and the WFP for being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. You gave great cheer and comfort to a great many people, Mr. Beasley, not only with winning it, but with the way in which you won it and how you received the award. I know the official ceremony is coming, but I wanted to throw that in.
Since February 11, the Prime Minister, Minister Gould and other government officials have announced more than $1.1 billion in aid to help developing countries cope with the effects of the pandemic, and support their recovery and resilience as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc.
Through this assistance, Canada has placed a particular focus on reaching the most marginalized and most vulnerable who have been disproportionately affected, such as women and children. All of this comes, of course, on top of significant annual investments in international and humanitarian assistance, much of which has been redirected in a flexible manner to respond to the most immediate needs stemming from the pandemic.
Where possible, we've also expedited scheduled payments to allow partners to respond more quickly, as we did with the UN agencies, such as UNICEF. As the United Nations Secretary-General reminds us, and I think it is a good sentence, “solidarity is self-interest”.
As long as individuals are vulnerable to COVID-19 anywhere, there is a risk to populations everywhere. Equitable, timely and affordable access to testing, treatment and vaccines is critical for controlling and ending this pandemic. The Prime Minister demonstrated Canada's commitment to such access by announcing, on September 25, $440 million to the COVAX facility, an advance market commitment, with half of these funds supporting the procurement of vaccine doses in developing countries.
Of course, the need is only increasing. In my recent report to the Prime Minister, I recommended that Canada allocate additional resources to the global COVID-19 response. I have not changed my opinion on that.
This has happened throughout the pandemic as information on needs and gaps has emerged. We saw it again on September 29, 2020, when an additional $400 million in funding to support the response was announced. Of this, $200 million will be dedicated to supporting ongoing humanitarian efforts. As I expect Mr. Lowcock and Mr. Beasley will underscore, this funding is very much needed, and more will be needed in the time ahead.
As you will undoubtedly hear over the course of your study, this health crisis has exacerbated a humanitarian emergency, which has the potential in some countries to become a famine. It is leading as well to an economic and social crisis, and in some cases already has led to a liquidity and solvency crisis, which we widely expect to become more severe. Public debt levels in emerging markets will rise by as much as 65% of GDP and 50% of GDP in low-income countries. These are levels at which aggressive action by creditors could lead to a cascade of defaults, which would then threaten the global financial system.
Through Canada's funding and policy leadership, we've been active in the UN, working to limit these additional impacts of the pandemic. In the financing for development initiative, which has been co-chaired by Canada and Jamaica, the UN Secretariat has worked to develop over 200 policy recommendations on how to overcome and build back better from the social and economic impacts of COVID-19. This will include investments to deal with climate change, both from a mitigation and adaptation perspective, as well as significant partnerships with the private sector.
Just as it is with vaccines, solidarity with low-income and small island states is in Canada's economic self-interest. The world is simply too connected for us to allow anyone to fall too far behind. We cannot allow the impact of COVID-19 to prevent the world from reaching sustainable development goals.
I'm going to describe three numbers to you, please write them down: 23, 6 and 2. Twenty-three percent of GDP is what advanced economies have spent on ourselves; 6% is what is being spent in developing countries; 2% is what's being spent in the least developed countries. This is the inequity, and this is the key financial gap that we must close.
Just as the world's advanced economies have been forced to do more than we would have ever thought conceivable last year at this time, we now have a duty not to let the world economy slide into depression and hundreds of millions of people fall back into deep poverty.
My short time at the UN—although the time has gone pretty quickly since I got here—has only served to reinforce to me that Canada cannot fix this alone. As Canadians, we have to do it in partnership with a number of other countries, but neither can we shrink from our responsibilities, which I can assure you will only grow—responsibilities to Canadians, of course, but also to the international community.
We are all bound up in this together. I am happy to answer your questions in the time available.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Ambassador Rae, thank you so much for your remarks.
Our next speaker is Mark Lowcock.
Sir, the floor is yours for five minutes.
Mark Lowcock Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Good afternoon.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to talk to you all today. A lot of what I want to do is amplify what Ambassador Rae has just said so compellingly. I hope it's not inappropriate for me to congratulate you on being so well represented by your team led by the ambassador here at the United Nations in New York, where I'm speaking from.
It has been a year full of unpleasant surprises. The virus itself caught us by surprise, but I think a lot of people are being surprised by the severity of the global recession it has caused. I don't think it's surprising that this recession has hit hardest in the 50 or so countries where a hundred million people already only survive because of the help they get from organizations like David's and mine, but some people have been surprised by the speed with which the damage is being done.
What we're going to see this year, for the first time since the 1990s, is that extreme poverty is going to increase, life expectancy will fall, the annual death toll from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is going to double, and the number of people facing starvation may also double. David will talk more about that. This carnage, which is what it is, is really concentrated in the most vulnerable countries.
Last month, Bill and Melinda Gates, through their foundation, published a report that put it very well. The last 25 weeks basically threaten to unravel 25 years of development progress around the world. It's worth remembering what many poor countries were actually like 25 years ago. I was then working in a country which at that time saw a quarter of its children never reach their fifth birthday. Most of those children never went to school, and one woman in 18 died at childbirth. I don't think any of us really want to see all of that back.
Ambassador Rae has made an excellent point about the difference between the 2% and the 23%. What the better-off countries have done is exactly the right thing to have done. They've essentially thrown out the rule book to pump liquidity and fiscal support into their own economies to protect their own citizens. The poorest countries don't have the resources to do that. That's why they have only been able to do 2% compared to the 23%, and that is surprising in a number of ways. First, it would have been possible for many of the necessary actions of those very poor countries to have been taken with the help of the international financial institutions, not least because those institutions did exactly the same thing for the vulnerable countries just as recently as 2008-09.
It's surprising it hasn't happened, because, as Ambassador Rae has said, solidarity is indeed self-interest. Failing to take action now on behalf of the poorest countries unfortunately isn't just a failure of generosity or empathy. Like the virus, the problems that will be spawned by the huge economic retraction we're seeing now are going to come back to bite everybody. All the poverty, hunger, sickness and suffering are going to fuel grievances and despair all around the world. In that way, there will be a risk of more conflict, instability and migration and refugee flows. All of these things are going to give succour to extremist groups and terrorists, and the consequences of all that will reach far and last long.
Canada is in a really important position to use the months ahead to move the world to a different path. The meeting that Ambassador Rae referred to and that Prime Minister Trudeau chaired on financing for development set out a very powerful forward agenda. There are two things in particular that it would be great if Canada were to champion.
The first is dealing with this 2% versus 23% problem. It can be largely dealt with in a way that does not require significant additional fiscal effort by better-off countries. If the IMF were asked to make a general allocation of the currency—it could issue the so-called special drawing rights—but also to devote those resources mostly to the most fragile countries; if the World Bank were asked to run a program to extend the suspension of debt services being agreed to so far to move toward some rescheduling of debt, but also some debt stock reduction; and if the powerful countries who are the shareholders of the IMF and the World Bank could put influence to bear, so that the private sector comes to the parties as well, that set of measures would get the 2% much closer to the 23%. We would avoid all of the serious adverse consequences, not just for the countries themselves but for the wider world that will also be faced with this problem.
The other thing that I think would be super helpful for Canada to lead the rich countries on would be emulating one or two others in the G7 in moving faster toward the 0.7% target, a target indeed designed and instigated by a very distinguished Canadian public policy expert. You will all remember his work, which is official development assistance. That 0.7% target has contributed over the last 25 years to a lot of the progress that's now at stake, and if Canada were able to increase the overall level of assistance but also get closer to that 0.7% target, it would be easier to persuade others to follow.
The use of those resources is not difficult to find. They are exactly the same things that have been done, including by Canada, over the last several months, and Ambassador Rae ran through a lot of them just now: more humanitarian assistance, support for vaccines, and so on. That is good use of money, not just out of generosity and empathy but also out of self-interest in building a world that is fairer, safer and more prosperous for all of us.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thank you, Mr. Lowcock, for your remarks.
Our final speaker for prepared remarks is Mr. Beasley, again for five minutes.
Sir, the floor is yours.
David Beasley Executive Director, World Food Programme
Thank you very much.
A very special thank you for.... The Nobel Peace Prize was quite a surprise. I was in the middle of Niger when this happened, and I had literally al Qaeda above us and ISIS below us, and we were working on access issues. As you can imagine, it was a very tense environment. I was meeting with the leaders when I got this phone call. My team comes running in, busting through the door saying “Nobel Peace Prize”, and I said, “Yeah, okay, who won it?”, and then they said we did. It was such a surprise.
I talked at length to the Nobel Peace Prize committee the other day. They said thank you, of course, but they were sending two messages to the world. The first was to thank WFP for what we've been doing, bringing peace and stability, and the women and men who put their lives on the line every single day.
The second message I think was to the world, and it's that the hardest work is yet to come, because 2021 is going to be a very difficult year, as Mark and Ambassador Rae have already alluded to. Ambassador Rae, thank you. I've had such a great pleasure in getting to know you virtually. Of course, Mark and I talk almost every day, as we're seeing an unravelling around the world in countries that were making great progress but are now going backwards.
I had been telling leaders around the world that late 2019 to 2020 would be the worst humanitarian crisis year since World War II, and I would lay out the reason and the rationale—and then the desert locusts came on top of that, and then on top of that came COVID.
Tony Blair, whom you all know, gave me a call back in March, after I had just spoken to the subcommittee. It came and went with a flare it seems. Tony asked me, “David, you're travelling all over the world. What are you seeing?” I said, “Tony, what I'm concerned about is that everyone is making decisions about COVID in a vacuum, and we cannot address the health pandemic in a vacuum. If we do, we'll have a hunger pandemic and the cure will be worse than the disease. We must work on both at the same time, because as COVID impacts, economic deterioration takes place.”
As I began laying out to Tony what would happen over the next six, 12, 18 months in five or six countries, Tony was like, “Oh my God, you have to tell this to the United Nations Security Council”, and I did. Mark and I were both giving leaked reports that if we did not respond, we would have unprecedented famines all around the world and destabilization and migration.
Fortunately, the world leaders responded and acted.
Now, 2020 financial numbers were based more on the 2019 economic outlook, which was very positive, and then countries stepped up with these economic stimulus packages, worth $11 trillion to $17 trillion. Mark talked about debt relief, because a lot of these poor countries, low-income countries particularly, have eight trillion dollars' worth of debt. Fortunately, with financial institutions bilateral decisions were made to alleviate that debt until January 2021 and a little bit later. Unfortunately, that date is now coming upon us. Those monies were used for safety net programs and health programs inside these poor countries. Countries stepped up with us, and we were able to avert famine for 2020.
The good news is that, when you look at the fact that 200 years ago 95% of the people on earth were in extreme poverty, a few years ago fewer than 10% of people were in extreme poverty. Between Canada, the United States and countries all over the world, we have built systems to share more wealth than we've ever done, yet try telling that to the 10% who aren't experiencing the system.
How do we improve the system? Unfortunately, in the last few years we've been going backwards because of man-made conflicts. I really believe that we can end hunger but, man, these conflicts are just devastating to us. Now with COVID, the number of people on the brink of starvation—and I'm not talking about people going to bed hungry—will spike from 135 million to 270 million.
If we don't act now with a major response, we will have famine, destabilization and mass migration around the world. That will be a thousand times more expensive than otherwise. Mark alluded to that in Syria. It costs us a lot more to help a Syrian in Syria than if that Syrian ended up in Berlin or Brussels.
I know I'm running out of time, but one of the things that I would ask this committee to do is to prioritize investing in food security, because if we invest in food security, with the limited funds that we will have for this coming year, I do believe we can avert famine, destabilization and mass migration.
We're in a unique situation, but working together, I believe we can truly address this amazing situation on planet earth, and I believe all of us together can get it done.
Thank you for allowing us to speak to you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thank you very much, Mr. Beasley.
I'd like to thank all of our speakers for their powerful and thought-provoking introductory remarks. We wish we had a couple of hours with you. We have slightly more than half an hour.
We're now going to go to carefully timed rounds of questions by members of the committee, the first of which is six minutes in length, and it goes to Mr. Chong.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Beasley and Mr. Lowcock, for your opening remarks.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to direct my questions and comments to Ambassador Rae.
It's good to see you, Ambassador Rae. Congratulations on your new appointment as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations. I hope you and Arlene are both doing well. Carrie and I pass along our regards to both of you.
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations (UN) in New York, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Thank you very much.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
The status of statehood is an important element in the global response to COVID-19. We've seen this recently at the World Health Organization regarding the status of Taiwan's participation in the World Health Organization. We know that the Palestinians are not full members of the WHO, and we've also seen recently Canada oppose a resolution at the WHO that singled out Israel for different treatment. It's in that context that I would like to ask you about today's vote at the United Nations and your subsequent speech.
You mentioned in your speech that you do not agree with some of the elements of the preamble to the resolution that was voted on. What particular elements do you not support?
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations (UN) in New York, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Michael, thank you for the question. I want to stress that any comments I made today at the United Nations were made in a statement that is a statement of the Government of Canada, so your questions would be equally well placed to your counterpart in Parliament as to me.
My point was that many of the references in the preamble to previous decisions of the International Court of Justice or to other issues are not necessarily helpful in getting us to the table and getting us to a resolution of it. I think the view of the government in the end was, this year as it was last year, that it was important for Canada to join with....
I think this year there were 162 other member states of the United Nations indicating that we supported the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, which is a right that is contained in the charter. Self-determination of peoples has been an important right expressed in the charter. Also, we all need to work hard to establish the security of and the status of having a Palestinian state side by side, living in peace and security with Israel. It's the view of most people, I would say, that it's very difficult to imagine how we're going to get to a greater degree of stability and security in the Middle East unless we have a resolution or steps toward a resolution of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Government of Israel.
I have to say that I noticed your tweet yesterday, which I thought was very positive. I think that the efforts that have been made by the Palestinians to re-engage with the Israelis will make a big difference in terms of providing greater stability to people living in the Palestinian Authority, and I think that's the right direction for us to go.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Ambassador Rae, I have a more specific question about the element of the motion that Canada voted for today. The resolution stresses the need to respect and preserve “the territorial unity, contiguity and integrity” of all of the occupied territories. Now, as you know, all of—
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
We are on a specific study at the moment about vulnerable people and the impact of COVID. I let this begin, thinking that it might be going in a direction about the impact of COVID, but it certainly does not seem to be. I would, perhaps, see if we can direct our colleague to go back to the study area.
