Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me this opportunity to respond to the question from the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie.
Private sector companies have a vital role to play in advancing Canada's global development objectives. In fact, the question that the member opposite should be asking is not whether we should be engaging with the private sector, but instead how—how can Canada's partnership with the private sector yield the best possible results for the world's poor?
Kyle Matthews is senior deputy director of the Will to Intervene project at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University. He had this to say, reported on November 2 by the Ottawa Citizen:
...we cannot exclude the private sector. The Canadian aid “shake up” is an opportunity to innovate and modernize....
...Canada can open up a space that will allow a whole new generation of international development practitioners and organizations to emerge and strengthen our aid program.
The simple fact of the matter is this: few other sectors are as well equipped to create the sustainable economic growth required to help people go from dependency to self-sufficiency.
Meaningful jobs, better education and training and improved health and nutrition for mothers and children can all lead to an increased likelihood of overcoming poverty. These are all increasingly attainable when the private sector is better connected to global development efforts.
These are not new conclusions. Just last summer, the President of Guinea wrote in an open letter that the future will, for his country, among other things, “...be built on healthy partnerships between government and the private sector...”.
The ever-popular humanitarian and musician Bono agrees: “Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid”.
The same idea applies in other developing countries, many of them where Canada has a strong development presence and where investments from Canadian private industry can make an incredible difference. We must capitalize on that.
With weak domestic private sectors and insufficient tools and policies in place to encourage private sector-led economic growth, many developing countries are losing out on the opportunities that a robust private sector can create. It does not have to be this way.
However, to counter these missed opportunities, to get the best results for the world's poor and vulnerable, we must approach development from a new angle. This means engaging all possible actors to capitalize on the expertise each brings to the table.
Our government's partnership with the private sector has already had positive results for many around the world. For example, our government works along with Teck and the Micronutrient Initiative to support the Zinc Alliance for Child Health. This partnership supports the development of zinc treatment programs to improve nutrition and help save children's lives.
Our government also works with World Vision Canada and Barrick Gold via the Building Collaboration for Sustainable Economic Growth in Peru project, to increase income and standards of living of families working within mining operations.
This will ultimately help to strengthen the new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. Most important, it will help to better define the role that Canada's private sector can and must play to advance Canadian development objectives abroad.
