Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you all again. It's the same old gang.
I'd like to begin with chapter 8, “Strengthening Aid Effectiveness--Canadian International Development Agency”.
I know from personal experience that in many countries around the world, and particularly in Africa, CIDA is the face of Canada, and where CIDA succeeds, Canada is appreciated and recognized. Where it fails, the whole country pays the price in terms of the perspective.
The text of your opening statement says that “donor partners, recipient governments, and program staff are unclear about the Agency's direction and long-term commitment”.
I'd also like to turn to page 6 of that chapter. The last half of paragraph 8.7 says:
On 23 February 2009, the Agency formally announced--with Cabinet approval--its intention to focus its aid on 20 countries.
I'm hoping you can help me here. I'm active on the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, and we recently had an unprecedented meeting with 10 or 12 ambassadors. It's not very often that you get a dozen ambassadors in one room with one message. Their message was about Canada's shift of priority from Africa to other parts of the world. I'm certainly not going to get into what that evaluation is, but they came to us, and their main argument was that given the close relationship Canada has had with Africa and all its 53 or 54 component countries, they've seen us as one of their strongest friends, one of their best friends, one of those on whom they could rely no matter what. Their main message to us came as a result of our shift in priorities, leaving them out in the cold. They said they didn't understand why it seemed as though we were throwing our old friends overboard to make new friends.
As a result, we had a follow-up meeting with CIDA to find out what's going on and why. It wasn't a very good meeting, and I have to say that your chapter helps me understand why we had so much trouble. We've had a follow-up meeting to that, and at one point we finally got down that some kind of analysis was supposedly done about the various countries and the effectiveness of the money. It was the exact thing you're talking about that isn't happening, that kind of evaluation.
What's interesting is what we were told. These were bureaucrats, so they were doing as much as they could do and no more, but their response was that they couldn't give us any of that information because it's contained in advice to the minister. So by virtue of wrapping it in “advice to minister”, it's out of bounds for us and possibly out of bounds for you. I'd leave that to you.
Anyway, my question is whether the lack of focus and analysis that you have found could apply to this whole issue of the refocus that's taking place. Is much of the analysis that we would expect to be done and that we're told is done maybe not as thorough and therefore not as easy to defend as we're led to believe?