Foreign Affairs committee  I think there's a growing problem, and it has to do with the focus the government has placed on accountability. People have to be able to say where every single dollar or cent was spent. Development is an area with considerable uncertainty and not just in fragile states. It entai

Foreign Affairs committee  Focus on poverty and political interference. There were so many decisions made in the past that went into the minister's office, sat there for a year, and then came out changed. For instance, there were recommendations for funding of NGOs. Everybody who knew about the topic and

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely, the obstacles are a problem, and there's no easy answer to any of them. When a civil war breaks out, it is going to hamper your aid delivery and it will increase overhead costs. I think that what happens all too often is that aid effectiveness is not the determ

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely. Canada has shown leadership in the past in development assistance matters. For example, it took the lead on gender equality matters and on ways to support NGOs in development assistance programs in the 1970s to 1980s and maybe in the early 1990s. We have seen some w

Foreign Affairs committee  As far as I know, there weren't consultations, either with NGOs or with the recipient countries themselves. In 2005, when the new list was announced, a number of African countries that were dropped actually found out from the media, which created a lot of tension and might have

Foreign Affairs committee  It might have been 2002.

Foreign Affairs committee  I've been setting the various criteria since the international policy statement of the Martin government in 2005. That government and several other iterations started with the top criterion being where aid is needed. The second one was where it can be used the best, the most effe

Foreign Affairs committee  How long do I have?

Foreign Affairs committee  Is the committee aware of what these six themes are? No? Okay, let me read them. My understanding is partial. I participated in these consultations that were held on Friday. They were aimed at NGOs and consultants in international development. We were given six themes to dis

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I am happy to be here today to speak to you about issues related to development assistance from Canada. As the chair, Mr. Nault, said earlier, I am a professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Political Studies. I have been working on devel

Foreign Affairs committee  I agree with you. NGOs are being pushed into the arms of mining companies if CIDA is cutting off their funds. They're cutting off their funds if they critique mining or natural resource exploitation in Canada and abroad. We've seen a pattern that those are very often the ones tha

Foreign Affairs committee  Can I have a crack at it?

Foreign Affairs committee  You are asking a question about the operations and about who is going to benefit from this kind of support. If you look at the website for the IAMGOLD project in Burkina Faso, you see it clearly. It says there that training the workers will, in part, benefit the mining companies.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sorry, able to demonstrate what?

Foreign Affairs committee  The care, but also that this was a more effective way of using development funds, that they were being used in places that needed it the most, that were based on recipients' needs and not the needs of, for instance, Canadian mining companies to obtain and retain the consent of pe