Evidence of meeting #18 for National Defence in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was kandahar.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
You mentioned earlier that you're funded through the NEF Mercator Fund and that you're the operational arm. Does the Senlis Council derive revenues from any other sources?
Conservative
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
I am a Canadian lawyer, and I'm a member of the British Columbia Bar.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
So you have lawyer-client confidentiality privileges?
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
I do, but I have no reason to claim any lawyer-client privilege today.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
After 9/11 there were anti-money-laundering rules put into place, I understand. Is it true that law firms and lawyers are exempt from that particular legislation?
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
I'm not familiar with that legislation.
October 25th, 2006 / 4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
I'm not sure that was relative to our study.
I have a couple of questions, but we've got one spot left to wrap up the second round, with Mr. Dosanjh, and then if the committee will allow me, I have a couple of questions before we go on.
Liberal
Ujjal Dosanjh Liberal Vancouver South, BC
Thank you very much.
I want to tell you, Madam, that after I saw you I remembered your name from my days in British Columbia. You are a Queen's Counsel, and that's a distinguished background.
Isn't it true, in some cases, that our CIDA workers are non-existent in some areas, as one would assume, and those who are there sometimes are confined to the bases because it's really difficult for them to travel? If you don't know, you don't have to answer.
Liberal
Ujjal Dosanjh Liberal Vancouver South, BC
The question that I have is on the issue of poverty. You've made a case that poverty exists on a very large scale, and it's found in the neighbourhood of Kandahar, just outside of the city. I saw this video and the children looked emaciated. Tell me, in terms of the Afghan government itself, how much food aid is it able to provide without your assistance or without the assistance of a military to those kinds of camps, if the writ of the government runs in those areas at all?
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
The Afghan government had joined with the World Food Programme in July in asking for the $97 million in food aid, so that was a joint request. I think it would help the Afghan government immeasurably if they were involved in the food aid programs, because we're trying to support the authority of the Afghan government, and when I said that would lower the temperature for the operations of the Canadian military, and put us in a more positive light, it would do the same thing for the Afghan government. Once again, I'm not familiar with the current inner workings and capacity of the Afghan government in Kandahar, whether they could or could not, but it would be a real advantage to them to be seen to be involved in providing some immediate food relief to those camps.
Liberal
Ujjal Dosanjh Liberal Vancouver South, BC
I have one more question. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of the corruption that allegedly exists in government ranks, lower down, or in the middle ranks? If you don't, what do you hear?
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
I think everybody who lives and works in Afghanistan has first-hand knowledge of that. This is an economy that, as we've discussed, is almost an 80% drug-trafficking economy, another thing we haven't spoken about today but that should concern us all.
If you are a policeman or a civil servant and you are being paid a very small amount of money, and they're often not paid on time, and someone comes and offers you the equivalent of three years' salary to be involved in some corrupt practice, and if you do not participate your family will be harmed, you will end up with a police force and an army and people who are working on counter-narcotics who are corrupt. It is a fact of everyday life, at this moment in Afghanistan, that corruption exists from the bottom quite high up.
I don't think it's correct for us to immediately point fingers at every Afghan who's involved in that and say what you're doing is wrong, stop it. Because if you were in their circumstances.... I don't know what their choices are when their families are put at risk.
I don't want to say yes, there's corruption, as a condemnation of the Afghan people. That's what they are suffering from because they have a narcotics-based economy. We're busy registering our organization and doing various things with the Afghan government, and there's corruption all the way up. If you refuse to pay bribes, and we refuse to pay bribes, you can wait a long time to get your work done there. But we refuse and we wait, because what we want to do there is contribute to a proper functioning democracy.
It's very frustrating. I know that a lot of international organizations and companies that operate there pay the bribes. Then we're drawn into it and we're complicit in it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
That ends our second round. Before we get into the next one, I would like to ask a couple of questions.
We've heard from presenters, particularly people who deliver aid, that a person in a uniform shouldn't do that, that it's best not to do that. But on the other hand, you're telling us that in order to win the hearts and minds of these people, we have to show them that our military is not there only to shoot. Wouldn't it be better if.... I'm asking your opinion, what you think of that. What if the military could—and I'm not saying this could happen at all, because they're pretty busy folks—what if the military could be the ones to also deliver the aid? Would that not send a message to the people that we're there to do the right thing?
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
You're not the first person to ask me that, so I think that is an idea that's being considered.
It's a lot easier to go in those villages if you're dressed in what they refer to as normal clothes, which is the type of clothes you see on the screen. When we're working there, we dress as Afghans. I wear Afghan men's clothes, and so do the other non-Afghan colleagues with me who are ex-military.
When I said it's a war zone, that's an area where weapons are prevalent and people are carrying weapons all the time. So most of the people who are out and about are carrying weapons, and the young men carry weapons. So you have to be comfortable with that environment.
An idea that I think could be explored is that part of the military wear local clothes—and you have to wear a beard, because they're all growing their beards back—in which it is comfortable carrying a weapon as part of the food aid distribution, because in the pictures that you saw, when we're doing food aid there are weapons around. You have to find a balance and a way to manage that and manage the risk. The second or third time you go back to a village, you can be more comfortable because they start to protect you.
I'm not familiar enough with how the military is structured, whether it's an insurmountable problem to take them out of their uniforms. I don't understand enough about that. If it were possible...if the military delivers aid, I can see doing it out of their uniforms would help them be more successful and manage the risk to the military who are involved with it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
You'd almost want them to know it was the military, though. That's what I'm saying. If they realized that's who is delivering the food, maybe it would--
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
But they know immediately you're not an Afghan, so they ask you and you say. So they know I'm a Canadian.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
What brings me to that is I don't know if it would work, because one of the cases, and you know it very well, is the case of the suicide bomber who attacked our people who were handing out stuff to kids. How do you combat somebody who thinks like that? Or how do you deliver anything, in a society that thinks that way?
President and Founder, The Senlis Council
Right. That suicide bomber was trained, organized, financed, and sent there by the al-Qaeda that is this part of the Taliban. It's not these guys. He was going there to do that, no matter what the Canadian military were doing that day. So even if the military is in local clothing and doing food aid, they are subject to those risks.
As I said, even though we are welcome in those communities now because they know us and they protect us, we are subject to those risks, because those people will kill any foreigner they can find.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
Okay, I appreciate that.
The third round is five minutes. It starts with the official opposition, government, then the Bloc.
Official opposition?