Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 13th, 2016

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay.

Moving into the auditor's special report, I go to page 1, item four. I'll read it:

As at 31 March 2015, the Centre employed over 380 people. Of these, 28 percent worked in four regional offices, each serving one of the world's main developing regions....

It goes on to describe those: Cairo, Egypt, the Middle East, North Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, etc., and a number of other countries. Where are the other 72% located?

[Sylvain Ricard]

They're in Ottawa.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay. So in Ottawa, it's 72% administrative in working here to implement programming.

[Jean Lebel]

Administrative programs also: we are structured with program officers who are based in Ottawa, and that's our base, also in our region.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

I'll go on to item six on the same page:

In the 2014-15 financial year, the Centre's parliamentary appropriation was $190 million. Revenues from other sources amounted to $68.8 million, including $66.8 million from donor contributions.

Who are the donors?

[Jean Lebel]

We currently have a set of five or six large donors: the Department for International Development of the U.K. government, Australian Aid, and Norway's government, through their development agency, as well as large philanthropic ones, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Hewlett foundation.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay. I just want to make sure I understand this conceptually. There are other countries that are donating to your organization specifically, to the work of your organization.

[Jean Lebel]

In the way we do our funding, first we have the parliamentary allocation. We use the parliamentary allocation to do our programming, but also as a lever to do joint activities with other agencies, based on our mandate and our strategic plan.

We don't accept money without contributing. If DFID were to come to us from the U.K. and say “we want you to do this” and we were not ready to invest our money, we wouldn't do it. When we do these partnerships, it's always on the basis that it fits with our strategic planning, that it's going to help to achieve our objective, that it fits in with the broader international affairs family of Canada, and that it gives us an opportunity to deliver a greater impact with resources that are channelled together within IDRC.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay.

When I read the report, I didn't get a full grasp of the scope of the projects you do. How small and how large? Can you give me the two extremes?

[Jean Lebel]

The average size of our funding currently for this year is about $700,000 for a project that will last between three and five years. That's the average. What are the lower and the higher ends? The lower end might be a grant of $5,000 or $10,000. They are relatively small in number. Often, they support participation by a researcher in a group meeting and things like this.

At the higher end, we have significant grants. Probably the largest that we currently have is for $15 million allocated to a consortium of five institutions working on the adaptation to climate change in Africa or Asia. There are four of those consortia. It's a carbon copy of a model that has been used in Canada and that we have adapted to developing regions of the world. Five institutions are brought together to absorb this money to do programming in a large territory with a number of institutions. These institutions would do a full segment of operations, from providing support to conduct the research, to providing grants to students to complete a master's or a Ph.D., to developing policy work in order to take the research results to influence policy, and have a lasting change in the life and livelihood of people.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

On the one deficiency that was brought out, it is a weakness about setting performance expectations.

Describe, in terms of your day-to-day operations, why that didn't exist previously?

[Jean Lebel]

It has always existed, but it was not systematic. We have left copies of the strategic plan on your table that describe the process. Now, prior to the approval of the grant, we establish the parameters for reporting by the people conducting the research, our grantees, therefore, absorbing this information, using it, and matching it with the implementation plan of each of the teams. This is a deficiency that was noted and was resolved very rapidly after the examination. It was scheduled to take place. Those implementation plans for each of our programs described indicators of performance relative to the three strategic objectives. They also describe development outcomes that need to be achieved, which is on the higher end, like the reduction of poverty, the health of women, and economic growth.

Now that we have documentation from the project to the corporate objectives, we have the system in place to document how we're going to achieve that. Prior to that, we had it at the project level and we had it at the corporate level, but there was a gap between the two. It was more instinctive than robust, as it is right now.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. Chen. You now have the floor, sir.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

First, I want to compliment our guests today and thank them for being here. I'd like to remark that we've seen special examination reports from the Auditor General before and I'm very pleased to see so many green check marks in this report talking about how well the centre is running. The report has stated that the board is competent, independent, and well-structured. It is providing the broad oversight that the centre requires and that there are good management practices happening at the centre, in spite of a few things that have been mentioned.

I want to echo the comments made earlier by my colleagues that the report does indeed praise the board for being independent of management. That's why I believe it's also very important for us to extend that practice when the centre appears before the committee, so that the board is represented as an independent body.

With that said, there is one issue here, in terms of the performance expectations, that was identified by the AG as one of the weaknesses:

The Centre did not integrate performance expectations into projects. Its project performance indicators were not aligned with corporate performance indicators.

I know there are responses from management in the report. In the broad sense, can I hear from you how you will move forward to make sure that those performance expectations that are set at the corporate level are reconciled with those set at the project level?

[Jean Lebel]

That is an excellent question. When I started my mandate as president of the organization in 2013, we were on the edge of getting a new strategic plan. I've been working for 20 years at IDRC. I indicated to the senior management team that it was time to refresh our vision of the future as well as to integrate the best in terms of deliverology and monitoring ourselves against expectations.

For the strategic plan, this is not a glossy brochure. This is not a pamphlet. This is a strategic plan that was approved by the board. It is simple. It is crisp. It is clear. It's for people to be in their office and to know why they are coming to IDRC to work. They all know why. They have this soft spot. They want to make a change in the world. With this document, you can ask almost any employee at IDRC about the strategic objective. The employee knows it's about impact, it's about leadership, and it's about partnership.

How do you translate this? That was in the making as the special examination took place between August 2015 and March 2016. We had just rolled out our strategic plan in April. We were developing the implementation plan for each team with the indicator that fit with the work that they have to conduct and with the strategic objective. Now if you go to the IDRC implementation plan for each of our programming teams, whether it's on agriculture; climate change; maternal, newborn, and child health; reproductive health; economic growth; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, all of these teams have a quite elaborate set of indicators and targets.

The issue is discussed on at least a yearly basis with the board. In fact, it's discussed on an ongoing basis. We have an annual performance report that is tabled with our board and a report on the progress that we have made on our objectives.

I'll give you an example. On partnership, we have a target to leverage $450 million over the next five years. In the last five-year period, we were able to fundraise $352 million. It's quite ambitious because with the economic turnover, the change of governance and all of this, we need to be nimble and flexible. We need to be able to maintain this relationship with our favoured partners.

Over the first year of the strategic plan, we fundraised $47 million. You say, Jean, $450 million divided by five, that's $90 million a year. You're short on your target. Yes, we are. This is exactly why there is a target. It gives us the opportunity to say, okay, what are we going to be doing now in order to raise our...to pass these...with these partnerships. That then drives some operational decisions, and we might fail to meet the target but we will know why. I think that's why indicators, targets, and delivering results towards measurable impacts are important. I hope we won't fail.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Mr. Chandra Arya.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I concur with the views of our chair and Mr. McColeman on on the absence of your chair. In fact, I had a relevant question that can be answered only by your chair, but not by you.

My question would have been, is this idea still relevant today after 46 years? That was my question. Maybe we will wait for the next time.

How many projects have you been doing in partnership with CIDA?

[Jean Lebel]

CIDA doesn't exist anymore. It is Global Affairs Canada.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I know. We still have the Minister of International Development.

[Jean Lebel]

Yes, true. I couldn't give you the exact number but I'm going to give you the largest....

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

No. Approximately what percentage of your funding goes jointly with the other arms of the Canadian government?

[Jean Lebel]

I would say that currently.... I'm looking to my colleague.

It's probably in the vicinity....

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I have very few seconds. Let me go to the next question.

You mentioned in your speech that the project in India is connecting women-owned local businesses with global supply chains. I'm originally from India, and if this is the project that you have shown here, about empowering women in India, this project is totally different from what you're seeing here. That is point number one.

Number two, on your highlighted project that talks about domestic violence, education, child marriage, you are evaluating a program that is funded by the Government of India. As you may know, the Government of India has stopped accepting international aid. Why are we spending Canadian dollars there when other regions of the world are ready to be much more relevant?

[Jean Lebel]

On what I explained in my talk about the economic growth.... It's with the WEConnect program, and it's currently linking 6,000 businesswomen to global supply chains, including big retailers like Walmart. These are poor women who have the opportunity to participate in global economic growth.

In terms of—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

If I may—