Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 12th, 2020

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

I want to squeeze in one more question that's in a different vein.

It's about the role of China in the world aid. There are concerns about strings attached, belt and road kind of aid being used as sort of a quasi-colonial project, espionage and all that.

What is your engagement like with the Chinese government and Chinese-backed entities? How do you see their influence in the aid space?

[David Beasley]

That's an interesting question. I need to be careful how I answer this thing.

China gives us a small amount of money. We're making the case to them that if they want to be in the multilateral world, they need to step up more. We're hopeful that they will. I think they've seen mistakes made in their past and I think they're trying to move in the right direction. We'll see. At the same time, what they did on food security in China over the past 40 years is an absolutely remarkable story. Their drive to end food security issues; how did they do it?

They have other issues like we all do, but China just made a major drive to put in place the new director at FAO. FAO is a lot smaller than us, but they're the expertise operation. China is all hands on deck to acquire this position. If the United States, for the west, backs up this much in the UN, China fills it. They've been very strategic.

This new Chinese leader takes over FAO and everybody's like, “Oh my gosh. WFP with a U.S. person there and FAO with a China person.” He and I have really worked hard to say that we must take advantage of the relationships we have from both our countries to try to do what we can to end hunger in countries. We all have a lot to learn from one another. We have a lot of opportunity, so let's not blow this opportunity. Whether you like him being there or not, that's not my decision. That's above my pay grade, but it is my obligation to try to help him be effective. He's a doer. This is a get-it-done kind of guy. We'll see what happens.

Let me give you a good example. I was down in Zimbabwe. I was very concerned and meeting with the leadership of Zimbabwe. You know the issues in Zimbabwe. China had just committed to 400 boreholes in Zimbabwe. I heard about it and I thought that they needed to put those boreholes where we are, so we won't need to be there anymore. I picked up the phone and called him. I told him that since he knows who to talk to in Beijing, how about he get on the phone and tell them to sit down with us and let us overlay our operations, because it's primarily U.S. dollars and Chinese boreholes. We were taking advantage of our relationships and now we're coming together to try to overlap and strategically align boreholes where there are droughts and the need for this type of collaboration.

There are a lot of issues. I think China's struggling with this. A new book that's coming out soon talks about China's past—meaning the last 50 years—and the mistakes they made. It's interesting. It's written by a professor at Tsinghua University. My daughter's in the masters program at Tsinghua.

This is one of the things that I've said to a lot of my friends.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

Thank you, Mr. Beasley. Could you just wrap up in a couple of seconds.

[David Beasley]

We will do everything we can to help any nation, including China, move in the right direction to be a good player in a multilateral world. I think we all can improve and do better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Beasley and Mr. Rugholm.

In this committee, we really appreciate the vast array of information we got today.

You mentioned the severe hunger going from 80 million to 115 million. You mentioned the reasons for that are the instability around the world, whether it's political instability or conflict. We're seeing more need for the World Food Programme. We want to really thank you and your team and Mr. Rugholm for all the work you're doing. We know when there's a crisis or a disaster the World Food Programme is there.

We will take this back to our officials in Canada and make sure that we do what we can to continuously contribute to the World Food Programme.

Thank you very much.

[David Beasley]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Daniel Rugholm, Deputy Director, Public Partnerships and Resourcing, World Food Programme]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

I have two reminders for the committee. Submit your topics of study by 4 p.m. tomorrow, which is Friday. Also, on March 24 there will be a briefing with Cheryl Hardcastle and Sven Spengemann on the current situation in Rohingya.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

It's Rachael Harder.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

What did I say?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Erica Pereira]

You said Cheryl Hardcastle.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marwan Tabbara]

Oh, sorry. She was the member on the previous committee. It was Rachael Harder and Sven Spengemann who visited the region there.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.