Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 26th, 2022

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I have just one quick question, then. In a scenario like what we see in Pakistan now, where people are going to be hungry and we're going to see different groups coming in with different ulterior motives to try to influence people with food, will that destabilize the region? Do you see the possibility of having more—I'm not sure what the right word is—groups radicalizing people through food and distributing radicalized ideas through food? Do you see that destabilizing the area even more?

[Marie-Louise Hannan]

Mr. Chair, I think that in any natural disaster and destabilizing situation, there is the possibility for internally displaced people and those who are long-term displaced from their usual social networks to turn to radicalization. It's certainly an area that we are concerned with and are following, and that we aim to address through other channels of our engagement with the country.

We are certainly not unaware of security aspects, and we attempt to address that with other types of engagements that we undertake on a regular basis with Pakistan, in particular.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

We now go to MP Zahid.

You have four minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses and our officials for appearing before the committee today.

Pakistan is experiencing very challenging times. I was part of the delegation under the leadership of Minister Sajjan in September. I have seen first-hand the extent of the damage.

You mentioned that a needs assessment is being done. You also quoted a figure of $816 million...that some sort of assessment has been done.

There are still many parts of Pakistan where the water has not receded. When I travelled to the province of Sindh, especially the Dadu district, it was all under water. People are living in schools. Kids are not going to school. Most families are dependent on farming. This year they have not been able to plant crops. The seeds were supposed to go in in late September, early October. Winter is approaching. People have lost their houses.

What role can Canada play to make sure the needs assessment gets done? Can we provide some sort of technological help to Pakistan, to see if there is any technique that we can help them with to help recede the water? In parts of KPK, the water has receded. It did damage, but it's not there. But especially in Sindh, where the water is not receding, what can be done? Has someone looked into it? What can be done to provide help to Pakistan to make sure the water can recede so that at least the redevelopment process can start to happen?

[Marie-Louise Hannan]

Mr. Chair, for this question, I believe it is still in the overall zone of our humanitarian response, so I think my colleague is better placed to address it.

[Tara Carney]

In terms of needs assessments from a humanitarian perspective.... In order to develop the appeal that was referenced—the $816 million—humanitarian actors came together and completed the immediate response assessment, which is what allowed them to reach that figure to address those needs. That money goes until May 2023. It looks at the needs in the immediate, but also the relief needs that are going to be needed from January to May.

As part of that, Canada has supported a number of humanitarian partners with unearmarked funding that allows them to continue to use that money. As water recedes and areas become accessible, they will go in and help provide some of those populations with some of the services and relief items they haven't yet been able to access in their home locations.

Coupled with that is the ability to respond to winter, which has been factored in. As the needs assessments were done, the humanitarian community was not unaware that winter was approaching. Certainly, humanitarian needs shift as temperatures drop.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I have one quick question in regard to medical needs, because there are parts of Pakistan where there is water still. It's giving rise to water-borne diseases such as dengue, typhoid and malaria, with medications not being there. I was told that, in Dadu, 60,000 women have to deliver babies.

Is there any drive being done to make sure we can provide some help on that and the appropriate medications needed in Pakistan?

[Marie-Louise Hannan]

Generally speaking, as my colleague Christopher mentioned, health is very fundamental to our development assistance. I think the question is, in the immediate response, within our humanitarian response, whether access to medication is being considered, if I'm correct.

I'll go again to my colleague Tara.

[Tara Carney]

From the humanitarian perspective.... This is a crisis where the WHO went in for this very reason, quite early, and released funds—$10 million U.S.—from the contingency fund for emergencies, to which Canada is a donor, annually. The multilateral system will be providing some of the water-borne disease response that is going to be needed.

Equally, we have provided direct support to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies via the Canadian Red Cross, which will provide some emergency, immediate health-related response in country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much.

That concludes our first panel of witnesses. Allow me to thank them, not only for their remarks but also for their expertise. It will certainly come in very handy for us.

I will suspend this session, and then we will be returning with representatives from various organizations in the next hour, as soon as voting has concluded in the chamber.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We will now resume our meeting, for the second hour of hearing from witnesses on the flooding in Pakistan.

We are very honoured to have with us four different witnesses. First, we have Mr. Shariff, who is the chief executive officer of the Aga Khan Foundation Canada. He is here with us in person. We're also fortunate enough to have three additional stellar witnesses: Mr. Rahul Singh from GlobalMedic; Dr. Aslam Daud, who is the chairman of Humanity First; and Mr. Usama Khan, who is the chief executive officer of Islamic Relief Canada.

Welcome to all of you.

Each of you will be provided five minutes to provide us with your remarks and observations, after which we will proceed to questions from the members.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

How long do we have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We have exactly an hour.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Is that starting now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

That's starting now.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Right, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Okay.

For the benefit of our witnesses, if I hold this yellow pad up, that means you have one minute remaining for your remarks. In addition to that, if I hold it up when you're answering questions, that means please try to wrap it up as soon as possible.

Since Mr. Shariff is here, we will start off with him, and then Mr. Singh, Dr. Daud and Mr. Khan.

Mr. Shariff, the floor is yours. You have five minutes for your remarks.

[Khalil Shariff, Chief Executive Officer, Aga Khan Foundation Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will absolutely be brief, because I think we'll get lots of insight from my colleagues who are online as well.

Let me just thank the committee, first of all, for turning their attention to this really serious crisis. I won't spend any time now rehashing the scope and scale of it here. I think you've heard from officials, and I think you know even from the press reports what an unprecedented crisis this is for Pakistan.

Let me just say a word about the Aga Khan Foundation Canada and its response so far. The foundation is part of a global family of institutions known as the Aga Khan Development Network, and we have had a very long presence in Pakistan. In fact, I would characterize our response as deeply locally rooted and globally connected, and I think that's part of the strength that we bring to the response.

We have been working very closely with the Government of Pakistan and with the governments of the various provinces affected to respond to the crisis in a variety of ways. Let me give you just a couple of examples.

The Aga Khan University, which is the country's top health sciences university, has been responding to the extensive health needs emerging from the flooding. Dr. Fry talked about this in the previous session. It has served over 300,000 patients across Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The Aga Khan Agency for Habitat has been working with hundreds of teams of volunteers to respond from a community basis to evacuate 10,000 people, supporting thousands of households with food assistance and dewatering across Sindh, Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan. The response has tried to harness every capacity we have in the country. That has been necessary.

I want to express our gratitude to Minister Sajjan, who made it an early priority to travel to Pakistan to see first-hand the effects of the flood, not only in the very significantly affected populated areas but also in some of the more remote areas, which he made time to visit to see the effect of the floods and to really understand their national scope and their impact.

I might very briefly now just offer three thoughts about how donors might respond and what kinds of design principles the situation demands.

The first principle I would offer is that there needs to be a lot of flexibility in the framework of our assistance. I say that because what we are likely to see and what we are seeing is a multi-dimensional crisis. On the one hand, we'll see urgent humanitarian assistance, early recovery and reconstruction needs occurring simultaneously, because, as you know, parts of the country are still under water. There are some parts of the country in which just recently the water has receded, and there are other parts of the country where, in fact, some reconstruction work is now possible. These situations are going to exist simultaneously, and we're going to need to be able to respond to them simultaneously.

It's also multi-dimensional in the sense that, as I think you heard in the discussions you had in the previous session, there's a massive agricultural impact; the health system is under massive stress at a time when the needs are very severe; we have an educational crisis that has been compounded now since the crisis with COVID; and, as is the case in all crisis situations, we have a gender equality crisis because the situation of women and girls in a humanitarian crisis like the one we are witnessing is going to be, of course, the most vulnerable.

So we're going to need to have a lot of flexibility with respect to both the stages of recovery we're responding to simultaneously and the dimensions and sectors in which we're ready to respond.

The second principle is that we're going to need to take a truly inclusive approach in our response and take into account the differing needs of different parts of the country.

This has been a national disaster. We have been witnessing the scale of the disaster in the populated parts of the country: Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. That's been very severe. We also shouldn't forget that more remote and sparsely populated parts of the country have also been affected and they will have their own needs. A truly inclusive response is going to require us to take into account the differing needs across the country. Winter, I think, was raised in the previous session. In the north, obviously winterization has to be a massive priority because that is already now with us. If you are in a remote and isolated part of the country, there's been massive damage to infrastructure. Connective infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, etc., is going to have to be a very significant priority.

I have a third principle. Again, you've talked about this in the previous session, but as we look to the future, we really need to think about how we invest in preparedness and disaster risk reduction. The plea I want to make is that we think about this also at a community level. The first responders in every crisis situation in every part of the world are the communities that are affected themselves. They are always the first people who are there. With the capacity of those communities for training, infrastructure investments, stockpiling and early warning systems, the things we can put into the hands of the communities themselves as a result of this crisis will help equip them to deal with the crises that are invariably in front of us.

I will stop there, Mr. Chair, with those three principles. I look forward to the discussion with the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shariff.

We now go to Mr. Singh from Global Medic.

Mr. Singh, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Rahul Singh, Executive Director, GlobalMedic]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The crisis unfolding in Pakistan is a humanitarian catastrophe. GlobalMedic has teams on the ground installing water purification systems in villages, providing essential medicines to field hospitals to treat patients, distributing food rations, and providing thousands of families with family emergency kits that include a point-of-use water purification unit to ensure those families have access to clean drinking water.

Unfortunately, the Government of Canada has implemented a policy that actually hurts the humanitarian sector and, by default, it hurts the very people we as a sector are trying to help. The government has a policy of matching funds raised by humanitarian charities. The idea is to encourage Canadians to give by doubling their impact. Historically, the policy matched the funds raised by all responding agencies and created a pool of those funds, which the government then programmed.

A few years ago, the government changed course and started appointing only one charity to be the matched partner. Matching funds given to only one entity actually come at the expense of the other charities in the sector. We know this because we receive calls and emails from donors who do not donate to us when they hear that the funds will not be matched. These are individuals who have previously donated to us and our organization, and because of this policy we lose their support.

The crisis in Pakistan is so large that we need a widespread approach. The policy hurts the broader sector that is responding and trying to help, and thereby hurts the very people who have been affected by the floods. This policy needs to be changed. It also leads to a few questions that should be answered.

First, to a charity, a donor is like a customer. In this scenario, the government is using the force of its power to incentivize donors to give to certain charities at the expense of others. Would the government ever provide a free matching airline ticket to customers buying on Air Canada but not WestJet? Would they provide a free cellphone to someone who bought a cellphone from Bell but not Telus or Rogers? Of course not. The policy actually creates an uneven playing field. The government's job is not to create monopolies.

Second, it's a very difficult time for the charitable sector, and a policy like this hurts smaller charities. Thus far, only three entities have been given the matched funding: the Red Cross, UNICEF and the Humanitarian Coalition. To be clear, I am not disparaging the agencies. I'm calling out a bad policy.

These entities are all large and have lobbyists. The public needs to understand if lobbying occurred to make this policy change. If it did, was the lobbying done fairly and appropriately? Was it declared? Was there broader sector consultation? You should know that $157 million of funding has moved towards these three agencies in the past five years because of this policy. Now listen, if no lobbying occurred and the government chose to make an arbitrary decision, why was this done? Where was the broader sector consultation?

Third, members of the Humanitarian Coalition make a contribution annually so the coalition can operate. The members tend to be larger agencies, and the current requirement sets the bar at $10 million. It's hard to imagine that our government would allow a program to exist whereby a charity would have to pay to join a group in order to access government funds. Pay-for-access programs are not appropriate.

The last point I want to raise is that I've spoken to other members in the charitable sector—other leaders—and they share the concerns I'm bringing to you, but they are hesitant to speak out because they are afraid of losing government funding and of how this actually may impact their professional careers. This is not a good sign for a democratic country. The Canada we live in should not have the fear of speaking truth to power and calling out a bad policy.

By incentivizing Canadians to give only to the Humanitarian Coalition, our government—the Canadian government—has hindered the ability of other agencies to help Pakistanis in their desperate moment of need. If you had kept the old policy, dozens of humanitarian agencies would be working to rally their donors and create a larger movement of help.

I want to be clear before I close: I'm not disparaging the work of other agencies. I'm not even requesting government funding. I'm requesting that this government stop taking funds away from smaller charities with this policy. As members of this committee, you have something that we as humanitarians don't: You have the power to stop this bad policy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Singh.

Now we go to Dr. Daud.

Dr. Daud, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Dr. Aslam Daud, Chairman, Humanity First]

Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mr. Chair and committee members.

I will not go into describing the situation in Pakistan. Previous speakers have covered that and, in the previous session, details and statistics were given.

I will introduce Humanity First. It is an international humanitarian aid agency with branches in 62 countries. Our Canadian headquarters are based in the city of Vaughan, Ontario. Humanity First provides emergency assistance using a global volunteer network, irrespective of race, gender, age, religion or political affiliation. Since 1995, Humanity First has responded to over 190 emergencies in 99 countries and assisted around 2.5 million people affected by natural disasters, including major responses in Haiti, Bangladesh and the Philippines. This is in addition to our other humanitarian programs.

Since the start of flooding in Pakistan, Humanity First has continued to assist victims of the flood. Humanity First has provided over 1.1 million meals, distributed thousands of care packs and helped tens of thousands of people with emergency supplies. We have helped 68 medical camps, where over 101 doctors treated over 25,000 patients. Humanity First has given tents, mosquito nets and water purification tablets to affected people. In fact, 3,395 volunteers have worked over 34,700 hours to help.

Our long-term plan includes building 500 homes for impacted families, continuing our medical clinics, providing farmers with feed for their livestock and providing crop compensation and fertilizers for farmers. We will also be assisting with other needs, such as education of children and psychosocial support.

Like all other international organizations, Humanity First is also facing various challenges on the ground, including but not limited to the safety and security of our volunteers, the fund transfer process, and the inflation, which is not only impacting Pakistan and Canada but is worldwide. However, the biggest challenge that Humanity First has faced was not on the ground in Pakistan; rather, sadly, it is being faced in Canada, our homeland.

I would like to bring to the attention of this committee how the launching of the matching fund has adversely impacted Humanity First and many other small Canadian NGOs. The Government of Canada announced funding of $30 million to help humanitarian partners provide life-saving services. Also, on September 13, Canada launched a matching fund in which the government matched dollar for dollar donations made by individuals to the Humanitarian Coalition and a couple of other organizations. The funds were matched up to a maximum of $7.5 million. Sadly, Humanity First did not receive any funding from the $30 million announced, and we are not part of the matching fund.

What was the impact of that? Canadian donors are among the savviest people, who want to ensure that their donation has the maximum impact. When they find out that the government is going to match their donations to certain organizations, they choose only those organizations to get the value of their donation doubled up. It definitely makes sense. Who would not like to complement their generosity by increasing the value of their donations? However, this unfair practice negatively impacts organizations like Humanity First in terms of fewer donations, resulting in the shrinking of our response, despite our potential. Moreover, some donors take it as a credibility issue. They prefer and trust those organizations that are funded by the government. We received numerous calls asking us if the government would match their donation. When we said no, they did not donate to us. We lost a substantial amount of donation that could have been used by us in Pakistan. We rely on our donors to provide this help.

The government completely ignored some key factors when deciding about matching funds, factors such as on-the-ground presence, past track record, availability of resources on the ground, volunteer base and the agility and nimbleness of the organization.

For example, Humanity First has a proven track record of being a trusted partner of the then CIDA when we responded to typhoon Haiyan in 2014. We built over 400 homes and two schools with help from funding by the Government of Canada, a project on record that was successfully delivered by Humanity First. The fact that Humanity First has over 100 doctors and over 3,000 volunteers on the ground in Pakistan with the ability to reach out to a wider population, and that we have already helped thousands of victims from our own resources, was never considered by the government when deciding matching funds.

I have only two recommendations.

We recommend that the government consider pre-qualifying a larger base and a mix of large and small organizations as their trusted partners who are eligible and may automatically receive government funding as their on-the-ground partner.

As well, for matching funds, the government should impartially and universally match funds for all charitable organizations that receive donations for the particular cause and that are also active on the ground.

I will end my submission by saying that it is never too late to change this unfair policy. There is an urgency for the need to help the people who are impacted, and aid delayed is aid denied.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Dr. Daud.

We now go to Mr. Khan, from Islamic Relief Canada.

Mr. Khan, you have five minutes, sir.

[Usama Khan, Chief Executive Officer, Islamic Relief Canada]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for discussing the situation in Pakistan.

Islamic Relief Canada is part of a global family, a global network. In Pakistan specifically, our teams have been active for more than 30 years. Currently, we have 400 staff members throughout the country, and 100 specifically working in Balochistan. Islamic Relief Pakistan has, so far, reached more than 550,000 individuals in providing life-saving aid.

I'd like to provide a first-hand account from August 17 to August 28. I was on the ground in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan. This is a province that, even compared to the rest of the country, has already been lagging in terms of the infrastructure that's there. Most of the areas that have been impacted by this flooding.... Most of Balochistan was already under extreme poverty. You're talking about six million out of the 12 million individuals there already living in poverty.

What I saw on the ground were people who had lost not only their homes—and in some cases their lives—but a dignified way of earning a livelihood. Most of the rural parts of Pakistan rely on either agriculture or animal rearing. Because of global warming and climate change, what has happened is that in this area of Balochistan, just two months before the flooding, there was a severe drought. It hadn't rained there for a long period of time. You go from drought-like conditions to excess rainfall, where the infrastructure isn't there to manage all of the excess water. More than 30 million people have been impacted and have lost the ability to provide a dignified livelihood for their families.

Even when the cameras leave, when the media stops talking about the situation in Pakistan, we know and we fear that for many years down the line the impact will still be there. This is a larger impact than the earthquake and the floods that happened a decade ago.

Islamic Relief is doing what we can. We appreciate the Government of Canada for initially announcing rapid deployment funds of $5 million, and then $30 million. Islamic Relief has had a presence in Pakistan, and $2 million was deployed through us. Islamic Relief is also part of the Humanitarian Coalition, a pre-vetted group that has received government funding in order to make sure that efficient, transparent and effective aid can get to the people who are in most need.

Canadians have been very generous in this crisis. I can report that just with Islamic Relief Canada, we have raised $5.5 million since the middle of August, specifically for Pakistan. Canadians from coast to coast do care about the crisis and are willing to heed the call of the matching funds to donate more.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to mention that in the previous session we spoke about climate change. I think one element of this crisis in a country like Pakistan is that when you look at their GDP and their debt financing, it is really handicapped by not being able to invest in climate-resistant infrastructure.

An initiative that I saw on the ground, when we talk about disaster reduction, is something as simple as a $5,000 flood wall. It's stones and can be built in strategic areas near the villages. The villagers showed me videos where the flood waters came and because we had done that intervention just six months ago, the waters bypassed their village and their homes, and their crops were protected.

I think it's this type of climate-resistant disaster risk reduction and common-sense initiatives that we need to empower both the NGOs and the governments to do more of.

Both the IMF and the World Bank, in terms of multilaterals, and I think Canada and some of the other nations, have a responsibility to talk about how we can do debt swaps to make sure that the country is not burdened by debt repayments. Some of those external debts can be forgiven and converted into climate-resistant and climate-adaptive interventions.

As you know, the ODA from Canada is extremely low. That's another area we'd like the government to increase, but the needs will remain for the people of Pakistan.

It's our hope that we can be standing with the people of Pakistan. They have more than 5,000 or 6,000 glaciers in the north. Unfortunately, global warming and climate change will probably mean that we will be having this conversation in the near future again, with climate disasters. It is an area of urgency.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Khan.

We will now go to the members for questions.

I would just ask the witnesses to slow down a bit in their responses. We heard from the interpreters. They were having a bit of a challenge keeping up with you, so we'd appreciate it if you spoke a bit more slowly.

For the first question, we go to MP Epp.

You have six minutes.