Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this private member's bill on the very important issue of development assistance.
We in this government share a view on the importance of ensuring the government does what it can to help others abroad in alleviating poverty and addressing those issues in developing countries. That is why in our budget last spring we committed to add $320 million to our international assistance funding and that was in addition to already budgeted increases over five years. This puts Canada on track to more than double international assistance from 2001-02 levels by 2010-11 at which point it will amount to over $5 billion per year. It is an important amount, particularly in light of the many competing domestic and international priorities.
However, the bill, unfortunately, although it is very well intentioned, is naive in terms of some of the unintended consequences. I read from the legislation which says, “Development assistance may be provided only if the competent minister is of the opinion that it contributes to poverty reduction”.
Canada's international development assistance has historically, even under the previous government, and I give it credit for this, gone well beyond poverty reduction into other very important areas: democracy promotion; the training of judges on how to run a proper judicial system; good governance support like that; and helping former communist countries translate their statutes into other languages so they can get accession to the European Union. These are all examples of financial support we have given to other countries and they are consistent with Canadian values. They are certainly consistent with the values of this government of promoting freedom, promoting democracy, promoting human rights and the rule of law.
To say that we are going to shut it down so we can no longer promote democracy around the world, to say that we can no longer help countries, which are struggling to develop their institutions, by supporting them in developing good civil service and good governance and by helping train promising new parliamentarians on how a democratic system works and so on, programs we have done in the past to help countries overseas make that advance, all of which we think is very important to make them good, stable parts of the world, none of that would be permitted under this legislation. That is unfortunate.
It is important for Canada to continue to play that important role. Think of all the projects around the world. In Afghanistan, which is our principal recipient of foreign aid, we are involved in things that go well beyond poverty reduction. We are training civil servants. We are helping people develop the institutions they need to run government. We are helping people with schools. Is a school part of poverty reduction or not? Is creating civil servants part of poverty reduction or not?
An argument could be made that those are not strict poverty reduction. The concern is that we will run into realm where that kind of activity to help people develop those institutions simply will not be permitted. For our government, those priorities of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law have to remain paramount.
To illustrate this, Canada has been providing development assistance in some places to help people in civil society, for example to help women become more involved in their community and to defend their rights. That is nothing to do with poverty alleviation necessarily. It has to do with fairness, equality and justice, but those are issues we should be allowed to encourage and continue to support.
Similarly, in countries which continue to have authoritarian regimes that resist democracy, should we not be able to provide support for elements of civil society whether they wish to promote the environment or other democratic development? Should we be allowed, through our development, assistance to give opportunities for people to learn, to study, to acquire education elsewhere so they become more effective when they return home to their countries?
All these are important priorities and part of the tradition of development assistance for Canada and something that we should continue to do in our tradition of promoting democracy, human rights, rule of law and freedom, great Canadian values that should not be ruled out by this well-intentioned, but poorly written legislation.