Foreign Affairs committee  The Minister of International Development has responsibility for climate change projects, as part of the $2.65-billion commitment, that take place in developing countries. Those are the projects that we deliver either bilaterally, country to country, or through our multilateral channels with development banks.

Foreign Affairs committee  Maybe I'll address this. The feminist international assistance policy articulated a number of commitments and spending targets that we do report on. We report on them through our departmental results report as well as through the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act.

Foreign Affairs committee  We provide very detailed accounting of our spending every year through the OECD, which provides the standard for how all of our development dollars get spent. We report through the ODAAA report. We also make datasets available publicly through the international aid transparency initiative as well as on Government of Canada websites.

Foreign Affairs committee  I am Arun Thangaraj, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer for Global Affairs.

Foreign Affairs committee  The funding for the previous maternal, newborn and child health initiative remains within the Global Affairs budget and forms part of these main estimates. As with any priority area—and you see in the feminist international assistance policy the commitments to spending on health, including sexual health and reproductive rights—the forward-spending plans for those initiatives are currently in the early stages of formation.

Foreign Affairs committee  In the main estimates, you have an amount for health. It's remained stable. Currently we're looking at the various priority areas, as articulated in the feminist international assistance policy, as well as the needs that are in the countries that we program in, to determine what the spending level for those interventions should be.

Foreign Affairs committee  We do not.

Foreign Affairs committee  We have had very little experience doing that. Over the last year we've looked at new, innovative approaches, and results-based payment schedules is one of them. We haven't had many proponents who say, “Here's something that we could do results-based funding for.” We have worked with your former department on some of the things they've done to learn from, where they've used either social impact bonds or other results-based mechanisms to see how that applies in the development context.

Foreign Affairs committee  To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any involvement in direct creation. When we do education funding, we often work through large multilateral organizations, such as the Global Partnership for Education, where we are part of the governance and we have a say in how the organization implements projects, for example, in education.

Foreign Affairs committee  That I would have to confirm, but in any project we do, our project officers are responsible, no matter what the subject area. Whether it's education, health, or environment, we have specialists. Before we fund, or before I will sign them off as a CFO, they have to go through that technical review to ensure that they will achieve the development outcomes.

Foreign Affairs committee  I would have to confirm that for you, but to use your example, if there's risk of that happening, it's unlikely that would be the type of education intervention we would fund. We may fund things other than textbooks, but we would look at those types of risks before making a funding decision.

Foreign Affairs committee  I know with certain partners, no matter what project, we do monitoring. Every project that we fund has a monitoring evaluation component. In flight of a project, we do the monitoring. We ensure that the activities that we're funding are the ones that we ought to be funding. I'd be more than pleased to follow up in writing.

Foreign Affairs committee  We do fund a volunteer program. We work with a number of organizations for that. I'll see if I have the numbers here with me, but that's something we could pull out for you if I don't have it on hand. I'd be more than happy to provide it to you.

Foreign Affairs committee  We haven't used a results-based funding mechanism in the sense of a pay-for-results kind of framework. As part of new ways of approaching international development, I think that's something we're exploring. We do know that our American counterparts do that and we're trying to learn from them and from the British and others.

Foreign Affairs committee  The thinking around that is a little bit broader. In budget 2018 there was $16 million announced for cybersecurity. An element of that is international. What Global Affairs will be doing is looking at coordinating international cyber activities. There will be a dedicated unit to do that coordination internationally for us.