Foreign Affairs Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I do understand what you are saying but—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron. I'm afraid you're considerably over time. Thank you.

We next go to MP McPherson.

You have five minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here and sharing your expertise with us today, witnesses.

I just want to respond very quickly to what you said, Mr. Smith, about trade's being an important part. I would suggest that our government has promoted trade over development, over diplomacy and over peacekeeping. Frankly, when you have trade without development, diplomacy and peacekeeping, it is not trade; it's exploitation. I would flag that for the group.

When I was within the sector, I was actually sitting on the TaFIE task force, namely, the task force for improving effectiveness at Global Affairs Canada. Many of the concerns that we raised within that task force have not been addressed by Global Affairs. They are still outstanding. One of them is the time it takes for a proposal to go from proposal to completion.

I'm going to raise an issue right now about the initiative for small and medium organizations. Right now, we have this initiative, which asked for proposals in September 2021. Eighteen organizations were asked to complete a full proposal in May 2022. They have still not received a result. Basically, we have a situation where 18 proposals cannot be evaluated by Global Affairs Canada in a year—which is appalling, of course, especially because of the impact, as I'm sure you all know, that it has on organizations. My understanding is that it takes up to 17 different sign-offs for a proposal to be approved.

I have two questions.

First of all, is this acceptable? Does this meet the standards that Global Affairs Canada has in terms of time frames?

Also, if this is the case, how on earth can we expect that Bill C-41 would work in a humanitarian crisis when we require Global Affairs to be able to respond?

[Patricia Peña]

To answer directly, no, it's not acceptable, and we recognize it, but we're working very hard at it. We have a huge volume of grants and contributions. We know that our systems are cumbersome. We have multiple old systems that don't fit well together. This simply doesn't meet our current and future business needs. When I say “our”, I mean ourselves and also our partners.

We have aging technology, and we know that there's a need to modernize how we do our work. All of these are factors that have influenced our commitment to move forward with a transformation of grants and contributions. This is something that we identified early with the Auditor General's team when it was doing its work. We know that our information management systems are simply not up to the task.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm sorry to interrupt, ma'am—and thank you very much for that—but can I ask if you are understaffed? Is Global Affairs Canada an understaffed department within this government?

[Patricia Peña]

With regard to the issues that you raised, there are multiple factors that influence what is affecting, for instance, our ability to look at not only projects that we received and capabilities of our staff but also some of our systems that we're looking at.

For the grants and contributions, we'll look at that whole piece and not just one part of it. There's a fundamental IT part of it. We will be rethinking our business processes and looking at where we actually need to streamline—use new technologies, for instance, artificial intelligence—where, let's say, something no longer needs to have somebody do a paper form. It would hopefully lighten the burden for our partners.

What I really like about this process is that our partners are in the tent and involved with us. You mentioned TaFIE. That's now being rolled in as a committee that's part of a partner forum within the grants and contributions—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt. I'm just so short of time.

I sat on the TaFIE in 2017, and those things were identified then. It feels very much like nothing has changed since then. I don't doubt very much that the staff at Global Affairs works very hard. I know that first-hand. However, I do wonder why nothing has changed in the five years since then.

The Canadian International Development Agency was brought into DFATD and then Global Affairs Canada. Do you believe that was the right decision to make? Do you think Canada's development has gotten better now that we no longer have a Canadian International Development Agency?

[Patricia Peña]

On the first part of your question, the grants and contributions transformation project just got under way this year. I understand that these are issues that have been identified for some time. We have a clear commitment to move forward now and to roll up all of those issues with a plan over the next five years to look at addressing all of those issues.

I don't have an opinion on the latter part of the question.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Very quickly then, could you also provide the committee with written information about the breakdown of development dollars that go to multilateral, bilateral and Canadian organizations, please?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, MP McPherson.

We next go to MP Epp.

MP Epp, you have five minutes.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the officials for being here.

I want to continue the questioning by my colleague, specifically on the information system, which was flagged by the Auditor General, as you've acknowledged. There were delays. Of the 60 projects reviewed, nine projects had partial information and one had none.

I'm going to ask you to sharpen your answer a little. Is this an information system? From my colleague, I understand that these issues existed five years ago. Is it staffing? Is it COVID? Is it a work location?

When it's flagged by the Auditor General in a report, it gets my attention anyway, so I'm going to ask you to respond.

[Patricia Peña]

Thank you, Chair, for the question.

When the Auditor General's team met with us, we identified proactively with that team that we were looking to address information management challenges. We proactively raised the issue.

Regarding the request for information from the Auditor General's team, we recognize that there were delays in getting them the information they wanted, but all of the information that was requested was submitted to that team—albeit not within the initial.... First, we were given five days to submit the information. We acknowledge that we weren't able to do that within the five days that we were given to provide it, but did eventually.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

All 60 projects were reported to the AG, but just not within the five days. Is that correct?

[Patricia Peña]

There was one project related to Ukraine for which the documents were in Ukraine; therefore, we were not able to provide the information to that one project.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Are the Auditor General's conclusions regarding not having outcome-based reporting available tied to your information system shortfalls, or is that more of an internal process shortfall?

[Patricia Peña]

It is a separate area.

We look at our results reporting on multiple levels. We have projects that have fulsome results frameworks. They have particular indicators that look at activities, but for each project, we are able to look at the actual outcomes of that project. The challenge, as the deputy minister mentioned before, is being able to aggregate some of those, but for individual projects, we are able to look at those outcomes.

We do have, on a sectoral level, some indicators that help us to describe the changes over time, and those are linked to our departmental reporting. The challenge we have is in trying to link the project-level results and to do a better telling of the story as we roll it up. That's something that is a work-in-progress.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I'm going to ask you, or whoever, to comment perhaps on the direction of planning. Three commitments were made in 2017 for three areas of spending, with 15% of the spending targeted toward gender-targeted, 80% toward gender-integrated and then 5% for infrastructure.

Without the lack of outcomes as driving those spending splits and with the information systems, can you comment on the direction of the thought process? Or, am I getting this all wrong and the splits—the 15%, the 80% and the 5%—weren't the drivers of the projects? Were they the outcome of projects and targets? Do you understand my question? Is it going in this direction and we didn't have outcomes, or did we start with our goals and work backwards to what money we spent?

I note that the Auditor General.... Only two of the three pillars of the spending were met. I'm not saying that we spend money for spending money's sake, but we're after outcomes here.

[Andrew Smith]

I'd be happy to respond to that, Mr. Chair.

What I would say is that the targets that are included in the policy are about allocation, so it's allocating the resources to certain types of programming—as you note, the gender-targeted and the gender-integrated. I have to say that I'm not aware of the 5% for infrastructure, so there may be just some confusion there.

However, in terms of allocating resources, that would drive the project choices that we're making, so the projects my colleague has been highlighting in terms of the outcomes and result statements that are developed are framed around the allocation choices we're making.

In answer to your question, the allocation of resources to specific kinds of gender-equality programming determines the broad nature of the projects that are ultimately implemented.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

The minister, in his remarks earlier, talked about hopefully using the Auditor General's report to get to better decision-making, etc. I note that my colleague, Mr. Bergeron, touched on this, where a lot of the spending has occurred historically outside of the surprises—if we want to call them that—with Ukraine.

We've been in Ethiopia a long time. My own history goes back to the beginnings of that. We're after outcomes. I understand Afghanistan, but why have we been so long in Ethiopia, seemingly without...? Are there results to show for that?

[Andrew Smith]

I would say that there are countries in which we can achieve better results in shorter periods. There are countries where the results we achieve are focused more on crisis response and humanitarian assistance.

So, the answer to the question of whether we are achieving results really does depend on the nature of the investments we're making. In a country like Ethiopia, over a period of decades, there would be results achieved in different ways under different contexts. We've seen Ethiopia undergo some significant humanitarian and conflict issues, and we would achieve results in that context—as we would have done previously—with longer-term development investments.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you.

If I could get one more question in....

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

No, I'm afraid you can't, Mr. Epp.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I didn't think so.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

You are considerably over time.

For the last question, we will now go to MP Sarai.

You have five minutes, and the floor is yours, MP Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As we've noticed, climate change is a big factor in the world. How is Canada helping countries that are facing natural disasters and suffering the severe impacts of climate change? Can you tell us what Canada is doing, with respect to its work at Global Affairs, in order to fight climate change?