Public Accounts Committee on May 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Dewar, you have seven minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests this morning.

I'm just looking at the summary of Ms. Fraser's recommendations and your action plans. Thank you for giving us this information. It's helpful. I'm looking at the spreadsheet for paragraph 8.54, which says:

Recommendation. To achieve greater sectoral focus, the Canadian International Development Agency should

- clarify, for each of its priority sectors, the specific programming areas that it will support in the future as well as those that it will not;

I'm looking to the horizon a bit here, because as a member of the foreign affairs committee, I note, Ms. Biggs, that when you were in front of the committee, you mentioned that the policy of the department with regard to reproductive health and maternal and child health had not changed. To be fair to you and to give you the date, it was May 4, 2010.

We just heard this past week that another maternal health agency, Marie Stopes International, was one that had fallen under the reproductive health restrictions and had received only conditional funding from Canada. That's what was in the press reports over, I think it was, the weekend.

Sorry, I don't know the time--

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

On a point of order, we're here this morning to review the Auditor General's report for May of 2009. My honourable colleague's comments have nothing to do with that. They're on an issue that has transpired, as he mentioned, in the last week--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I think we're in debate. I referenced the--

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

--so I think we should stick to the report, which is the business of the committee.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

--spreadsheet in the report. I understand Mr. Saxon is sensitive to this, but--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I think the performance report deals with the overall general performance of the agency, and I'm going to allow the question. Again, I'd like you to more or less stick with the performance report.

There are questions allowed, Mr. Saxton--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Of course.

With all due respect to my colleague, I was referencing recommendation 8.54 by the Auditor General. I'm sure Mr. Saxton has it there. I have an extra copy if he wishes. I'm referencing the fact that one of the goals is to be very specific in the future. I'm reading from the Auditor General's report. The recommendation is to be very specific in the future as to which program areas the government will not fund. I'm referencing the fact that one of the recipients of Canadian funds abroad when it comes to maternal health has already been told that it will not receive funds if it has to do with certain areas of reproductive health.

My question is very simple. I'm trying to square the policy of CIDA with reports from recipients of funds and with the Auditor General's concerns about being very clear to the horizon in the future about whether this is the case. Are there recipients, as was reported by Marie Stopes International, that have already been told they will not receive funds in the future for certain aspects of reproductive health?

[Margaret Biggs]

I really cannot comment on the specific example Mr. Dewar has indicated. I don't have knowledge of the report he's referring to.

In the children and youth strategy, which is one of the thematic priorities the government has focused on and CIDA is focusing on, there are three elements. The first one is around child survival and maternal health, which is exactly the area of child health, particularly under-five child health, maternal health, and maternal survival, which we're going to focus on for the G-8. Within that, a key element will be child survival in terms of the five major killers of children, particularly what happens with infants, many of whom die before their first month. A big part of that would be building health systems in developing countries, because you need to have the health system to deliver the maternal care and services at the local level.

This is consistent with what we've done in the past. It's an area of some strength for CIDA. We will continue to focus on that even more in our areas of focus where children and youth and maternal and child health are areas of specific focus within the focus of CIDA.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay. I'm referencing a report from the weekend, in which it is stated by Marie Stopes International that CIDA is currently funding reproductive health and HIV/AIDS programs in South Africa. It said it is considering renewing funds for health services to vulnerable persons in Tanzania, but unlike previous years, the grants that they would be receiving are now conditional on the agency avoiding any connection with abortion.

That's why I reference it, and this is news to me. I'm just clarifying the policy. If you're looking at the Auditor General's report, it says to clarify each priority sector. We're about to enter into the G-8 and G-20. The question is, with regard to the department's policies, has there been a change since May 4, when you stated that there had been no change in the policy in terms of provision of safe access to legal abortions? Has there been a change in the policy since that time?

[Margaret Biggs]

No, there hasn't. As I stated earlier in the month, CIDA has never directly funded abortion services. We do continue to program in the area of family planning, and that's an important area within the area of maternal health.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

One of the other things that was suggested is to look towards the focus of certain programs, have certain targets, and that's probably what's been established in the Accountability Act. I'm just wondering, have you been given any sense of how much money Canada will be dedicating towards child and maternal health as we go into the G-8 and G-20? Has there been any ballpark figure about how much money Canada would be investing in this area?

[Margaret Biggs]

Not yet, no, sir.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I think Ms. Biggs would agree that we have funded child and maternal health, and there seems to be a desire by the government, and I would applaud them on it, to focus on child and maternal health. When we're looking at measurable expectations and performance benchmarks, Ms. Fraser, and when Canada is initiating or perhaps putting more focus, would you expect that there would be some ballpark figure of how much money you're going to invest in a new initiative before you get into dedicating moneys and programs to that initiative?

[Sheila Fraser]

Chair, we would certainly expect in any program that there be a good estimate and a good costing done of what the initiative would require over the longer term. Unfortunately, we see in many cases, particularly when it comes to issues like infrastructure, that that long-term planning is not done.

I think it leads to the broader question, which has been studied in this committee and in other committees, about multi-year funding, multi-year appropriations. It raises a much bigger issue about how government finances are appropriated.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Chair, through you to Ms. Biggs, what's happening to your funding next year?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Dewar, your time is up. I'm going to have to shut you off. We'll come back to you.

I'm now going to go to Mr. Saxton for seven minutes.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My initial questions are for Mrs. Biggs. You stated in your previous appearance before this committee that all donor countries have been struggling to try to figure out how best to put their dollars to use. Then in paragraph 8.15, page 8, the report highlights that, “CIDA continues to be influenced by international developments.”

Can you please explain what these international developments are and how they will be or are influencing CIDA?

[Margaret Biggs]

Thank you.

Since 2000 there have been a number of re-evaluations and reflections on what actually leads to effective assistance that actually can garner the strongest results. I think there's a strong evidence base to show that short-term individual projects do not build sustainable results.

Beginning with the Rome conference, the Paris Declaration, and then in 2008 with the Accra Agenda for Action, there has been a strong focus on a number of key principles, and all donor countries are working to align with them as best as possible. That would include, first and foremost, that a country needs to take ownership for the issue and have a plan to address its poverty reduction requirements and its goals in a particular sector. Without that you can't really galvanize and coalesce your assistance efforts.

For donor countries like Canada, there's a strong recommendation that we be more harmonized and more aligned and coordinated on the ground. That leads to an effort towards what we call program-based approaches, which is where you work together as a donor community with the country in question to try to support them, whether it's in their health sector, their education plan, or their economic agenda. That's meant to avoid the individual project scattergun approach that has led to some failed efforts in the past.

I think the section you're referring to shows that all countries over the last number of years—beginning with Canada, with the Auditor General looking at the policy of the Government of Canada since 2002—have been trying to do better at this. In our aid effectiveness agenda, in which we have talked about greater focus, more decentralization, more alignment, we're taking it up to another level.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

In paragraph 8.16, the report mentions both the Paris Declaration as well as the high-level meeting in Accra, Ghana. Following these, several donor countries committed to provide “more predictable and transparent aid that would flow over multiple years”.

Can you explain how CIDA has taken action on these commitments?

[Margaret Biggs]

What we're doing, first and foremost, is being very clear about where we're going to focus our efforts in terms of the geographic concentration and our areas of thematic focus, and then very detailed country programming frameworks that will lay out over the medium to longer term where exactly CIDA is going to be placing its efforts. That will give the agency and also our partner countries and those we work with a greater degree of predictability and clarity about where we're going to be focusing our efforts.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

In our previous meeting on CIDA, toward the end of the meeting, the Assistant Auditor General, Mr. Flageole, said:

Despite everything, we found the action plan prepared by CIDA to be very encouraging. It contains important aspects. Things appear to be moving. However, we did point out in the report that many good intentions had been expressed in the past, but that a certain number of them had never materialized.

Ms. Biggs, could you please address these concerns and explain the measures taken to ensure that under this government real results will materialize?

[Margaret Biggs]

One of the main criticisms of the Auditor General's report was that there had been a policy in 2002 but there hadn't been a clear management plan to give effect to those directions. I believe that in our reforms, which we laid out in December and again today, there has been a clear action plan identified, but the steps we've committed to take have been taken. Many of those had been taken at the time the Auditor General's report was released; some further ones had been completed by the time we met with you in December.

The ones we set out to complete by the end of March--for example, on the country development program frameworks, the CDPFs, the evaluation on program-based approaches, and the development of the specialist cadre human resources plan, which were some of the key commitments for March 2010--were committed and were all achieved on time.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

The audit notes that CIDA has a complex administrative and decision-making process, and CIDA has acknowledged that this is a problem, but the issue still remains. Can you explain what action CIDA is taking to address this administrative and decision-making process?

[Margaret Biggs]

The primary issue, again, is a management issue, where, for a variety of reasons, it had come to take far too long from the conception of a particular initiative to the actual execution of the project. As I indicated in my remarks, we've undertaken a complete re-engineering of our business model and our business processes and have reduced the processing times by 70%. We would now aim, in our countries of focus, in our geographic countries, to have that take place, from initiation to execution, on average around 12 months, maximum 15 months. We have piloted that, we have done it successfully, and we are now mainstreaming it throughout our organization.