THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday November 3, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 12:39 p.m. [ET] to examine, and report on, the Canadian foreign service and elements of the foreign policy machinery within Global Affairs Canada.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome, all. I am Peter Boehm, and I’m a senator from Ontario and I am the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Before we start, I will ask our committee members to introduce themselves, starting on my left.
[English]
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo from British Columbia.
Senator Busson: Hello. I am Bev Busson from British Columbia.
[Translation]
Senator Moncion: Lucie Moncion from Ontario.
[English]
Senator Ravalia: Welcome, minister. Mohamed Ravalia from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene from Nova Scotia.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald from Nova Scotia.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia.
Senator Manning: Fabian Manning from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle from the centre of the world, Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
Senator Richards: David Richards from New Brunswick.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I wish to welcome all of you as well as people who are watching us today across the country.
Today, we are continuing our study on Canada’s foreign service. The objective of the study is to evaluate if Canada’s foreign service and foreign policy machinery are fit for purpose and ready to respond to global challenges today and in the future.
To discuss this matter, we are very pleased to welcome the Minister of International Development, the Honourable Harjit Sajjan.
Welcome to the committee, minister. Officials from Global Affairs Canada accompanying you today are Christopher MacLennan, Deputy Minister, International Development; Alexandre Lévêque, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy; and Vera Alexander, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Human Resources.
We also have other officials from the department in the room, and they are Anick Ouellette, Stephane Cousineau and Patricia Peña. You may be asked to come forward by the minister or others. I would only suggest that at that time you identify yourselves before answering a question.
Welcome to you all. Before we hear the remarks from the minister and proceed to questions and answers, I wish to ask members and witnesses in the room to please refrain from leaning in too closely to your microphone or removing your earpiece when doing so. As everyone knows, we have had some technical problems that have led to health problems for our interpreters. Doing this will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff and others in the room who might be wearing earpieces for interpretation purposes.
Minister, we are ready to hear your opening remarks. These will be followed by questions from the senators. You have the floor.
Hon. Harjit S. Sajjan, P.C., M.P., Minister of International Development, International Development: Thank you, Mr. Chair and senators. It is really nice to be here with you. This is actually my first time in the building. It’s quite amazing work that has been done here.
I apologize for being late but when you are in cabinet sometimes things do run a little late. I want to thank you for the work you are doing on this topic. I think it is very important given what we are seeing around the world.
Speaking of around the world, the global development agenda is facing some of its most consequential challenges now. Cascading and interlinked global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate and food crisis and the war in Ukraine have further set back progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Getting us back on course to achieve the 2030 Agenda will take a considerable global effort.
The pandemic wiped out more than four years of progress on poverty eradication and pushed 93 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020.
Increased heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods are already affecting billions of people around the globe and causing potentially irreversible damage to the earth’s ecosystems.
We are facing a global food security crisis. With global food prices at historic highs and hunger and malnutrition rapidly increasing, early predictions find that hunger may impact up to 747 million people this year alone.
Let’s not forget Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression has exacerbated the crisis, with the cost of food, fuel and, especially, fertilizer reaching record levels, which the United Nations Global Crisis Response Group is calling the largest cost-of-living crisis of the 21st century.
High food prices are disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable, who spend most of their incomes on food and just basic needs to live. The results of this war are reverberating around the world but are especially being felt in Africa, where the numbers of hungry and undernourished people are growing faster than anywhere else.
Now, we need to be able to address the root causes of global conflict and instability before they take hold in fragile contexts. This is one area I would love to be able to talk more about and would be happy to answer some of this in your questions.
This means investing in prevention, and prevention starts with making sure that people’s basic needs are met. Beyond basic needs, we also need to expand economic opportunities for low-income countries and take advantage of our partnerships in emerging economies to strengthen the nexus between trade and development, something that Minister Ng and I have been working on for a number of years, even in my previous portfolio.
To meet the unprecedented global challenges we face, we must be united in our efforts to ensure we have the very best tools and expertise at our disposal.
As you know, nearly 10 years ago, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade — DFAIT — merged with the Canadian International Development Agency — CIDA — to form the organization we have today.
An amalgamated department allows development experts to collaborate more closely with our colleagues working on foreign affairs and trade, and it allows international assistance expertise to inform coherent responses to global challenges. But we also need to analyze if the current structure meets the uncertainty and challenges of today and also of the future.
We need to have a more targeted presence abroad, including more boots on the ground in the right places working with local partners and civil society to meet development objectives.
We need to better communicate to Canadians what the issues are, because they do care about what is happening around the world and what we are doing about it, how we are helping and why we are investing in international assistance that makes the world a safer place for all Canadians.
Through recruitment, training and investment, we need to cultivate development specialization and recognize the value of applying this expertise across streams and issues.
We also need to transform our approach to grants and contributions management, and in fact, these efforts are already under way. In order to deliver on this ambitious goal, we have created a five-year program of work and a dedicated team within the department that will touch all parts of how we do international assistance, including looking at our processes, our technology, our people and, especially, our culture. As we advance, we are actively engaging all Global Affairs Canada — GAC — partners.
I welcome the work of this committee and look forward to partnering with all of you in how we can modernize our system and be more effective in helping the most vulnerable around the world.
Thank you. I am happy to take your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, minister.
To members, witnesses and the minister, please be concise with not too much preamble to get right to the root of things. Then we will have a longer period for the question to be answered and a second round if we have time.
Senator Richards: Thank you, minister, for being here. We have soldiers in Poland and we have provided military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Do we have any long-term strategy concerning our aid to Kyiv, or do we have a wait-and-see policy? Is it always in conjunction with other NATO countries? What are our humanitarian capabilities that we have offered?
Mr. Sajjan: Senator, that is a really good question. This is one area that we have actually leaned forward on even beforehand, because of us being a very strong partner in Operation UNIFIER, the training mission in Ukraine. We also used to do training and operations in Poland before we had the battle group in Latvia. That already provided relationships for us to be able to adjust very quickly when Putin accelerated his invasion. Including on the development side, so equally on defence, we were very strong on the capacity building of training, and development was also very strong. So at the time, when I was Minister of Defence and Minister Bibeau was in this role, I would coordinate our work very closely with the development side. In fact, actually she went for her visit in the east and looked at the development projects.
This is where this synergy came in when we saw that the invasion was about to take place. We were able to very quickly adjust a lot of our development programs that we had in place to humanitarian. For example, we were able to move some of the programs into the west and adjust quickly especially when it came to humanitarian and to get ready for it.
When it comes to the response for Ukraine, Canada was very agile because we were already very present. Something we can proudly say is that we had an impact early on. One of the key goals for me now — and it has been very effective — is making sure that we anticipate what the needs are and have the resources there in a timely manner. And we are able to do that. My most recent visit to Lviv has allowed us to do this. We actually adjusted our winterization program because of the strikes that were taking place on power stations.
We will continue to adjust. How we work is by every quarter. I’m happy to explain that further as well.
Senator Richards: Thank you very much.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you once again, minister.
On an increasingly polarized planet, where do you see Canada’s priorities lying on a going-forward basis? Do we need to beef up our presence in parts of the world where perhaps our footprint has historically been somewhat anemic? Given the current economic and political climate, do we have the capacity to impact positively on things like food security in Africa, climate migration and global health issues?
Mr. Sajjan: It is a really good question. Given the significant challenges we have seen in the last two years, where we’d normally see crises in regions where the likelihood of something happening was very low, now we see the likelihood of crises happening in those same regions higher now. We need to be ready for that. That has become the new norm.
Fortunately for us, our international presence has allowed us to adjust very quickly. I can talk quite a bit about what we have done previously in National Defence. I know Minister Anand can talk about the way forward, and she is doing amazing work on this. The defence and development piece is extremely important on how it goes together collaboratively.
Even when I was in National Defence, I would get kudos for Canada in terms of the development work and humanitarian support we would provide. This is why it is so important. We have been able to quickly adjust some of our programming, and because we are an integrated department — I would say because of the personalities and great experience on the team — we were able to move — for example, on the food security crisis — look at putting additional funding, just in the last year alone, in the Sahel and Horn of Africa; in Afghanistan; Syria; around the Middle East and most recently in Pakistan.
What we need to do is understand the complexities that are taking place. Just like in our own country right now as we are looking at supply chain disruption, we are seeing a supply chain disruption when it comes to humanitarian support. We have to look at how the traditional systems are not going to meet the demands of the other crises. One of the key questions for us is: How do we increase our capacity building? We have some amazing work that was done in the past that is already showing some significant advantages for us.
One of the key things we are looking at is with countries right now — and this cannot work everywhere — making sure we provide humanitarian support, wherever there are needs. We are not looking at what type of consultations. We’re going to provide that. We need to increase capacity building on food production. When I say “food production” — and I want to talk about nutrition — we can’t just look at it as increasing food production. This is about putting systems in place where the government can have the technical assistance to have proper cold storage, for example. Right now in Africa, 30% of the food is lost because of lack of storage or transportation.
Right now we are working with key partners to partner up with countries that have good governance and a government that wants to increase their own capacity. Do they have the capability not only to partner with Canada, but other like-minded nations to increase capacity inside the country, very similar to what we are doing with health care systems after COVID?
Senator Ravalia: Thank you.
Senator Manning: Thank you to the minister and the officials for being here today.
Minister, your mandate letter calls on you to increase the annual investment in the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives — CFLI — to enable staff at Canada’s embassies to support the work of feminists, LGBTQ2 activists and human rights defenders. Can you tell us what the total amount of funding allocated globally to these initiatives is and how much of the funding is provided in countries where women’s rights and LGBTQ2 rights are not respected?
Mr. Sajjan: I’m glad you mentioned that. I’ll have to turn it over to my team to get you the exact numbers. When it comes to this work, it is having an impact. An example is Ukraine. One of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates had received funding from Canada through an organization — I forget the actual organization that the funding went to — that started as a grassroots organization, and for the work they did their organization won the Nobel Peace Prize. Similarly, I met organizations in Africa, in places like Ghana, and I met with LGBTQ2 organizations and was helping them work on advocating and also supporting their work. Some of this work is done behind the scenes, based on how they want to work.
I’m happy to give you the numbers, but it is more important to talk about the impact that is taking place. You can talk about a certain amount, but it may not have the certain results. What I always try to look at is what is happening on the ground. My goal, when it comes to human rights, LGBTQ2 rights and, especially, women’s rights around the world, is where we need to, we go very aggressive at sending a strong message. Where we see progress, we want to encourage greater progress. Where we need to sometimes use a stick, we’ll go even stronger. Those are the different mechanisms.
More importantly, this is not just something we want to do. This is something that is requested by them. Some organizations are doing really good work, but they want to work behind the scenes. So how do we get the best results on the ground? Even sometimes $5,000 or $20,000 can have a really strong impact. I want to leave that with you. I’m happy to get you the amounts on it, but we’d love to be able to talk to you more about the results on the ground.
Christopher MacLennan, Deputy Minister, International Development, Global Affairs Canada: We will get you the exact amounts on CFLI, but it is somewhere in the order of magnitude of $25 million a year. It is designed to be, as the minister noted, in very small amounts across a number of our embassies around the world.
We also have something called the Women’s Voice and Leadership Program, which began in 2017-18, and is in the amount of about $30 million a year. Its specific purpose is to provide support to women’s rights organizations, again in smaller amounts. We work with partners on the ground and local partners to distribute it to a variety of women’s rights organizations.
The final element I would mention — and this is a very innovative mechanism and tool that was created by the government — is something called the Equality Fund. So in 2019, the government allocated $300 million to create a fund that would be a permanent organization that would use feminist principles for investment — investments in women-run businesses — for the purposes of creating a return, and with that return, the Equality Fund in turn provides supports to women’s rights organizations in the poorest countries. This would be a self-perpetuating organization into the future, no longer requiring any future government resources.
Mr. Sajjan: Just on the Equality Fund, it is the only fund in the world that focuses strictly on women’s rights. Now other donors have come forward. The Ford Foundation has come forward, as well as many other organizations. Other organizations have not made themselves public yet. There is a lot of interest in this work. When it comes to our development funding that we provide, 95% of it goes towards supporting women.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you, minister, for being here.
Senator Manning’s question segues into mine. I want to quote the first item in your mandate letter, which outlines your commitment to “Implement the Feminist International Assistance Policy and maintain an ongoing focus on gender equality . . . .” I think this is at the core of our work in Afghanistan. To be frank about this, with the Taliban taking over the country, it is pretty much a mission of failure on this, unfortunately. A lot of people were left behind, particularly a lot of women and family members.
There was a CBC story recently about an individual, Sadiq Ibrahim, who served as an interpreter with the Canadian Armed Forces, and he applied to get his family out in 2017, and as of September 2022 — that’s five years — they are still waiting.
Why are we failing so many of these foreign assets and their families? Is it the result of the inadequacies of the civil service, foreign service and the policy machinery around it? Or is there another reason? What is the issue?
Mr. Sajjan: I’m happy to answer that question. To be honest, when you talk about the impact, I am one of the people who knows the impact it has had on Afghans quite personally, especially people I have served with. Some we were able to get out, and there’s some that have not been able to get out. We continue to support and figure out ways we can support them. The work has not stopped. For example, when I was recently in Pakistan to deal with the floods, I spoke with the Prime Minister. There are a number of Afghan refugees ready to come to Canada, but the exit visas have not been sorted out. I’ve asked them to get those things completed. There are families still who have made it across the border and our embassies went to the point of arranging transportation. We’re not leaving any stone unturned here.
We can’t set the trajectory of a country where it’s at. We don’t like where it’s gone. Having served myself, it is very disappointing to see all the efforts that have taken place. One thing that gives solace, whether you’re a diplomat or a soldier or RCMP who actually served there, the number of lives that they touched during their time there did have an impact.
We’re going to continue to support the Afghan people. Since then, from our own portfolio, we have already contributed $150 million in humanitarian support, and we will continue to provide support to them as we try to hold the Taliban to account.
Senator MacDonald: Is it fair to say that we’re having just as much trouble with exit visas from third countries that they have escaped to and that we still can’t get them into the country because of these exit visas?
Mr. Sajjan: Senator, we can’t dictate to a country, just like no other country should dictate to us in how we work. Where there are roadblocks, we take a very active approach in terms of what we’re trying to achieve and continue to support Afghans.
For example, I was there for the floods, but I knew this was an issue, so I raised it directly with the Prime Minister and we’re going to follow up on this. There are Afghan refugees who have also been impacted by the floods. We’re going to make sure there is funding that goes directly to the refugee camps so the vulnerable communities will be supported.
As much as we can’t dictate, we’re going to find every avenue that we can to make sure we are supporting. What gives me hope, senator, is that there have been families who have made it out. As one member who called me said after we got a family out, you can literally make a movie on how they got out.
It drives me further and stronger to make sure we’re not going to stop, and we’ll continue to find every avenue, not just looking at Pakistan but working with Qatar, the U.A.E. and others — whoever has the leverage of influence within the country to support the people who supported us.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you, minister.
The Chair: Colleagues, I just want to remind you, while it is great to have a policy discussion, which this is sort of becoming, I also want to humbly suggest, as I said at the beginning, that the purpose of the study is to look at the department and its fit for purpose in the current challenging environment, as the minister outlined in his opening remarks. If we could start veering a little bit into that area, as your chair, I would be very grateful.
Senator Woo: I shall veer as you instruct. Good afternoon, minister and senior officials. You are from British Columbia, as are Senator Busson and I. We have a population of globally savvy young people, some of whom are first generation and some who are second generation. They would seem to me to fit the profile of what Global Affairs would like to have in your ranks, but there are structural difficulties for British Columbians to get into the civil service generally and maybe GAC in particular.
Can you tell us how we can get more British Columbians who want to be in GAC to achieve that and to overcome some of those structural impediments that they face?
Mr. Sajjan: Senator, you have touched on something that is near and dear to my heart. Global Affairs Canada offers an opportunity for the younger generation all across the country, especially from British Columbia, making sure they represent the actual diversity.
We have had some great discussions. Minister Joly has started the reforms study within Global Affairs. This is an area we’re diving into and administering as well. It’s an area that I have spoken to many clerks about.
I’ll give you a few examples on how to do this. Among some of the things that I’m mostly recently learning, as you know, it’s a fault of my own for not being able to speak French. I can make every excuse, but the challenges are there.
How do we make sure that our youth there get access to French, for one thing? We have made greater investments in B.C. on this. Also, when somebody does qualify, very similarly to the military, how do they get French training first? That way, when you’re in the system, you can start learning when you’re in the environment. Being in Ottawa, for me, it may not seem like it, but my French is considerably improving. It’s not a huge benchmark, considering where I started from, but that’s one of the impediments.
The other thing we need to look at, senator, is something that I’ve spoken to my deputy and others about. How do we use Global Affairs and the diversity of Canada? This is something that we have honestly not done well, but the enthusiasm and the will is there within all officials.
Being in an international portfolio leveraging the diversity that we have right now, this is an area I would love to be able to chat more about. I know we don’t have much time.
Senator Woo: I wonder if it might be possible to rank the intrinsic global savvy and skills that some Canadians have — such as foreign language ability, having lived abroad and understanding cultures around the world — to score these factors higher so that deficiency in French has to be corrected, of course, but it can counteract some of the lower scores they get for deficiencies in French.
I can see why you wouldn’t do that in other departments that don’t have as much of an international exposure, but for GAC, where being internationally oriented is the raison d’être for being in the department, you would think those kinds of attributes would be given a higher score. This is more of a comment than a question.
The Chair: You have run out of time, senator, but it’s something that we can certainly pick up on in the second round.
Senator Moncion: Thank you, minister, for being here. I was at the embassy in Poland just a few weeks ago, and we saw the tremendous work being done there. We also met with the UN and the Red Cross. Although there is a lot of work that is being done, we don’t toot our horns with the amount of effort being made and the amount of work Canadians are doing over there for the Ukrainians. That’s not my question.
My question is about the number of vacant positions that you have for Foreign Service International Assistance — FSIA — officers. It is related to when CIDA was with your foreign services when you started the fusion of your departments.
According to the information that we have, international assistance positions abroad and several positions at headquarters were reclassified to include rationality as a condition of employment. In response to the committee, GAC noted that the selection process to appoint personnel to the reclassified positions started in 2018 and was completed in 2020. According to them, in March 2022, there were 271 FSIA officers and 74 vacant positions in that stream.
Could you explain the vacant positions and what relation they have to the work that we are doing abroad?
Mr. Sajjan: I’m going to pass it to Mr. MacLennan in a second here, but first of all, when it comes to the number of people around the world, this is something that we need to do better analysis on. Even I’m seeing it. When I go to visit, when I sign off on an initiative or funding and the amount of work that actually comes with that, you can make a decision, but you need to make sure you have a balance between how many people we have in headquarters versus people on the ground. Having the right people on the ground with the right delegated authorities is also just as important.
We do need to look at where people are willing to go. This goes to Senator Woo’s question, depending on the type of recruitment that we do and in terms of how we can fill some of those vacancies.
Balancing those pieces is something we’re looking at right now, especially in our portfolio, because we’re doing a lot. However, as you say, you can push all the money that you want, but if you don’t have enough people on the ground, you won’t be able to do the programming.
Mr. MacLennan: This was actually one of the main advantages of the amalgamation of the departments. One of the things that we were able to do was to integrate what had been an entire cadre that went overseas regularly in CIDA, but didn’t do so within the same structure as the foreign service stream, which has its own union, rules, regulations and training. We did it at CIDA a little bit more by the seat of our pants, to be frank.
When the department came together, one of the first things we did was to create the FSIA stream, as you mentioned. It is part of the foreign service stream, and it created 271 positions with 138 abroad. As is the case with all of our foreign service deployments overseas, they take priority. We always ensure that the positions overseas are filled first and we manage vacancies in headquarters second.
The second thing that I would say is, even though we didn’t have the same type of rigour in CIDA in terms of having a dedicated rotational stream, the advantage of not doing that was the entire department was development-focused and we drew down on a much broader swath of the population. What we’re able to do at headquarters when we have vacancies is to draw down on other parts of the development cadre to fill in those gaps. But like every department in the city, we’re dealing with the labour market challenges that we’re seeing across the country.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, minister and guests, for being here today. I dealt for years with CIDA, and was even offered a job there in 1984. I didn’t end up going there. My whole history has been in development cooperation.
There was a big worry when CIDA was rolled in that it would become the poor cousin. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions. Has it become the poor cousin? If not, can you demonstrate to us that it has not. Second, how would you describe the collaboration between personnel from the different streams that are working together, hopefully, in Global Affairs Canada?
Finally, looking to the future, you have said, Mr. MacLennan, that we’re all experiencing these labour market issues. We know it well here in the Senate as well. Looking to the future and the changing world that you’ve described, Minister Sajjan, can you tell us if there are important areas of expertise in that development cooperation area that you are looking for that will help you to be fit for purpose for that future, and where would you be looking for that type of expertise?
Mr. Sajjan: That is a really good question, senator, and having people like yourself with that experience in these roles is very helpful. I’m going to give you a few different perspectives here. One is how I saw development from a defence perspective, both from Minister Bibeau and all the other ministers, including Minister Gould, who work very closely to see how we coordinated that work. Let’s not forget that I served in Afghanistan, where I got to see some of that integration take place. There are always going to be overseas benefits and challenges for both.
Just to let you know how I look at things, we have to, as I stated in my remarks, look at where the world is at right now. We need to be able to deal with where the world is at and figure out where that flexibility will be so that if something new pops up, we are able to flexibly adjust for any additional black swan scenarios.
I am actually quite happy with the integration that has taken place, but I would be remiss if I said that it has been smooth all the time. This shouldn’t be seen as a negative. When you’re trying to integrate a very complex issue, certainly like development, we’re asking about what the challenge is in Burkina Faso. What is the challenge in Mali? How does it relate to the region? Let’s look at the Pacific where we have climate issues and migration issues. When you look at those things, everyone is going to look at it from different perspectives. I would say things do come together. Where I would say I would like to see some improvements, even though I’ve seen some very good work on it, is a little bit more synergy within the different streams. I call them the alphabetical branches because there’s “I” branch, “M” branch and so forth. For me, I want to look at where the problem is and what the solutions are for it.
Having said this, right now, because of the leadership that we have, we’ve been able to bring in what we are looking at doing. I’ll give you a very direct example in the COVID health crisis. We brought in the actual needs, worked with our partners and GAC had a whole-of-government approach. Food security is going to be more challenging.
We’re doing an assessment on how we increase capacity. As we look at humanitarian support in some areas, we need to look at development in others. At the same time, the true pathway for us to help and reach the Sustainable Development Goals is going to be through economic empowerment. It’s creating jobs. The development and trade nexus is very important. I want to put a very strong caveat on this. This is not tied aid at all. For example, when we talk about increasing food production in a country, it is about jobs. I can give you countless examples where we have women’s entrepreneurship projects that I have personally visited having a significant impact for their villages, families and so forth. But what do they do with their food and where do they sell it? Where is the medical facility? Where do their kids go to school? If I don’t see that, that means we need to do a better job of coordinating.
The Chair: Thank you, minister.
Senator Busson: I have to confess that some of my question has already been answered in your answer to my colleague Senator Coyle, but thank you for being here.
My question is around the 2013 amalgamation of the agencies. It has been said that it was a huge challenge to do this, but according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s — OECD — Development Assistance Committee report, this amalgamation has been considered a structural success and has immensely improved the coherence and effectiveness of Canada’s approach to foreign trade and international development.
You’ve described your vision for the future and the things you would like to see done as you take this ministry forward. What would you like this committee to know about the structure of your responsibilities? Do you have any comments about things that we could do or observe that might move this whole project forward and find ways to benefit your department? This is what I would like to know as a member of this committee.
Mr. Sajjan: Thank you, senator. First of all, as a former police officer, I want to say you’re a legend in the policing community, especially in B.C.
I am very fortunate to be one of the three ministers. We work very closely together. As I talked about the right people, those people aren’t going to be there all the time. You’re going to have different personalities that come in. Probably one of the most important things is to get an outside look at what systems we need to have in place for the situation that we have around the world. I think it would be very important for us to have that outward look at how we are structured.
I have my thoughts on it. Obviously, the other ministers and our deputies do too, based on their experience. Having an outside look from your perspective would be very important to see what those structures are. For me, it is looking at geography. I look at where the problem is that is happening in the country, what the affected region is and, at the end of the day, what tools you bring to the table. Do we have an integrated systems approach? Right now, I think that it is somewhat of a system, but sometimes it is a personality. You need to focus on having a proper system in place so that people get trained into thinking this way. I would like to measure it and get other nations to do the same thing. If you want to leverage some of the work we’ve done, get other nations to also do it. It is something I have been trying to champion quite strongly, especially when I was in National Defence. I probably championed more for the development-side integration of this work when I was in National Defence, and I will continue to do this.
The Chair: We’re about to start the second round, but I would like to ask a question, too.
On amalgamation, we’ve seen that since the amalgamation decision was taken by the previous government, there has been greater integration in terms of the policy thinking and hopefully some transfer of expertise from the traditional CIDA side and the other more traditional DFAIT side, as it was then. Other countries have copied this. The United Kingdom has done the same thing, and DFID, which was its aid agency, at least in my time when I was working in international development, was very much the thought leader.
Senator Busson cited the OECD report of the Development Assistance Committee, or DAC, on Canada. In pre-COVID times, there were frequent meetings of the DAC in Paris and other conferences that would bring deputies and ministers together.
With all that is going on abroad at this time, is there time to bring the experts together to do some comparative work? When you see your counterpart from USAID or from the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, or FCDO as it now is, do you have a chance to say, “This is what we’re doing in my department; this is what is working for us. What about you?” Is that element there? This used to be something I valued in my time there.
Mr. Sajjan: That is a great question, senator. I would say it’s happening based on the personalities that are in the departments, not just at my level, but at the official level as well.
Because there are so many great challenges that exist and you need to give direction, trying to bring coherence is not easy. We do have mechanisms within the G7, but to get the fast-forward or accelerated impact that we need, we need to do it even better.
I would welcome something like this to come in that would allow us to discuss these things, because I’ve spoken to my U.K. counterpart and I’ve spoken to many other countries as well, and there are certain things that are done well and certain things that don’t work very well. We have to agree on making sure when we do something — we have the added benefit in Canada that we don’t have the same colonial baggage as other nations. We should not underestimate the power of who we are. That is very important. I hear this regularly, and I probably hear it more, because, if I can say, I’m not White, and people do open up. That’s how we should be using the power of our diversity. The thing is, I don’t do the work; Mr. MacLennan does. That’s how we work together.
What I have found successful is on an ad hoc basis. What I’ve been able to do is build some really good relationships during my time at National Defence, and I’m doing the same in the development space. When I’m talking about a food security plan, I’ve been working on this with other counterparts, finding out who the different ministers are in each country whom we can work with. I’m heading to the U.A.E. because of the expertise they have there.
Coming together could solve a lot of these problems quickly if we did what you just suggested, senator. If anybody thinks we can’t do this for other issues, an example is how we just did it for COVID. In fact, we did it in our own country faster.
When we work as a department, what I want to do is build our plan based on if our own citizens were going hungry. We did a plan based on when our lives were at risk. This is something that the Global South is already looking at. Strike one for us was COVID and that we vaccinated ourselves and didn’t acknowledge the vaccine inequities. We also see what is taking place because of Putin’s war and how Europe has come together, and for good reason; we need to be very strong in our support for this. What they see is there is also conflict in other places.
Imagine if we could take the lessons that we’ve learned in dealing with Russia to some of the other crises and bring greater coherence. I would welcome this.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Minister, I don’t know whether you have time to stay a little bit longer, since we started late.
Mr. Sajjan: Yes, I do.
The Chair: That’s great. Our clerk, Madam Lemay, tells me we can have this room for a few more minutes. I want to get into a second round because we have five senators who want to ask questions. I might shorten the time a little bit.
Senator Manning: Thank you again to our witnesses.
I want to follow up on my earlier question in regard to the funding available for different countries. I wonder about Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, as an example. Could you give us some idea of the investment in the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives that has been spent there? I know you touched on the different groups. I’m wondering how you measure the impact of that. Is there a process where you — there are so many things that government funds all over the world and in our own country, and sometimes it is not followed up on. How do you measure the impact of the funding that goes into that, in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or some other countries?
Mr. Sajjan: When it comes to how we work overall, among some of the immediate challenges that we see, we look at, in a humanitarian crisis, development, and then you get into the trade-development nexus, which would be the economic empowerment. There are funds that have a multi-year plan to them that can be assessed, and I think Mr. MacLennan can probably answer this better than I can.
Mr. MacLennan: For CFLI, which is the responsibility of Minister Joly, it is only in countries that are eligible for official development assistance, first and foremost. Beyond that, for all of the funding that flows through our CFLI program, even though they’re small amounts, we use the same systems for collecting the results that we’re achieving and monitoring and assessing the value of the investments.
Now, the one thing I will say is it’s a very different thing to have a $50,000 investment in a local human rights organization versus a $5 million or a $50 million or a $100 million investment in a big fund like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We do our best to track every single one of the projects. We do an evaluation of the entire program over a number of years. What that enables us to do is look at the trends and the core elements of the program, what is working well and not working as well, not necessarily on specific projects, but overall.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator MacDonald: Minister, if I may, I want to go back to the topic we were speaking about before. I wanted to clarify something for you because I didn’t want to mislead you. I mentioned Mr. Ibrahim. He is in Canada. He has been here since 2017. His family has been in India since 2017. It has been five years since he applied. I’m just curious: Would the Indian civil service be the problem, or would our Foreign Service be the issue for getting his family over here? It has been five years.
Mr. Sajjan: Senator, as a member of Parliament, I also work on a lot of immigration files. It would be hard to say unless I looked at the file itself. For example, in terms of Afghan refugees in India, I have worked on this with the late Manmeet Bhullar from Alberta on bringing the Afghan Sikhs over, and we’ve been very successful working with his family’s foundation to bring them here. I have seen that process and how that has worked, but it’s hard to say exactly because I don’t know the particulars of that file.
Just to let you know, there are both in certain places. There are things that the government there has to do, but there are also responsibilities on the immigration side. There is a combination of that.
Senator MacDonald: Maybe we can get my fellow Cape Bretoner to look into it.
Mr. Sajjan: Because it is from the immigration side, we can point you in the right direction or to the right people in the immigration department.
Senator MacDonald: All right. Thank you.
The Chair: On that point, I can add that we’ve all received messages, or at least I have, on immigration cases. Both for MPs and senators, if there are inquiries, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada — IRCC — is establishing a new system where we can make appointments to talk to an immigration officer and follow up on a case if we have all the details and numbers. I’m just mentioning that for the record.
Senator Woo: Thank you, minister. I want to ask you about the making of international policy from the centre. The Privy Council Office — PCO — has a foreign policy adviser and a national security adviser. There is a sense sometimes that the really important foreign policy questions are decided at the centre.
Can you talk a bit about the role of the centre in making international policy — not just foreign policy — but international stuff that all the departments do? Here is the key question: Do you think Global Affairs should become more like a central agency than it is currently?
Mr. Sajjan: Each government is going to be different, so I can only talk to you about our government.
The PCO plays a very important role in coordinating with all the different departments, as the Office of the Prime Minister does with ministers.
In my two portfolios, from National Defence, obviously, there is a lot of coordination that takes place there, and now in development. What I find is that we have good synergy, because when the Prime Minister gives us our mandate letters, everyone knows exactly what needs to be done. The “how” piece of it is left to us as ministers and how we give direction to the department, and then I trust my deputy ministers to do that work.
Within that, you’re always going to try and bring some coherence to that. Sometimes people see that there are challenges. What I always say is that when you’re running a country, and you’re making significant policies at a national level, you want to be and should be welcoming a wide variety of viewpoints, because you, at the end of the day, want to make sure that you have the best policy decision or best funding decision.
I don’t have a concern with it. Obviously, sometimes there are going to be strong discussions that you have, but that is a good thing in our democracy.
Senator Coyle: Minister, I’m just going to get to the points that you didn’t have a chance to answer earlier. You may have to call on your colleagues to help as well.
One is on the development stream within Global Affairs Canada, looking to the future and looking to your future human resources personnel needs and expertise, given the changing world that you have described and that we all know about; we don’t know what the next changes are going to be, but we can imagine already what’s coming at us. Are there particular areas of expertise that you are looking to recruit into Global Affairs Canada to be able to handle those future issues, and what do you see as sources? We know British Columbia is a great source, but I’m sure there may be other ways, other than geographic ways, of looking at where you find those kinds of people with that kind of expertise.
Mr. Sajjan: I have been very impressed with the expertise that we do have in Global Affairs Canada. For us, when it comes to development, climate is a significant issue, so we do have some very good experts.
At the same time, we don’t just rely on them, or they don’t rely on themselves. We also have the International Development Research Centre — IDRC — and, personally, I think our best sources are the Canadian non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, like the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. When we’re talking about food security around the world, who best to get advice from?
We do have the right expertise, but where we don’t, as both the deputy minister and I have said, for example, we’re looking at capacity building for disaster response in the Pacific. This is an area where we may not have that type of capability, so this is where we can actually, then, get the right person to do an appropriate study for us. We do need to make sure that we reach out and be very broad, making sure that we have the right pool to meet the needs without being afraid to reach out to anybody to get the appropriate advice.
I learn a significant amount when I’m in the field visiting some of the projects and talking to some of the folks, especially from our embassy folks who are there.
Mr. MacLennan: There are two things I would note. There’s a base of skill sets that we know we’re going to need over the long term. The minister mentioned food security, so there are people who are good in agriculture, but also people who can speak to and understand the connections with climate change and agriculture and the connections of climate change and health — health disease vectors and things of that nature.
This ties back into something Senator Boehm mentioned about international development agencies and departments coming together. Over the last number of years we’ve all been very keenly aware of the need to drive more finance into the developing world. Large-scale infrastructure and large-scale supports are needed.
Our ability to work in the part of the development assistance streams that touch on innovative financing mechanisms is something I think the department needs to build up as well. The sources are varied. One of the sources that we’re looking at as well is, rather than just entry level, how can we have mid-career entry into the department where people arrive with established skill sets and can stay for a few years — maybe not a complete career in the public service — but come in, help us and then go and continue on in their career?
The Chair: Thank you. We’ve come to the end. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank Minister Sajjan, Deputy Minister MacLennan, the assistant deputy ministers and the other departmental officials who are here. Thank you for coming. This has enriched our work.
Minister, you can mention to your two colleagues that it’s not so bad to come to this committee. You’re the first of the three, and we’ll look forward to seeing them and, perhaps, having you back in the future as we look at international development issues more in a policy sense.
Mr. Sajjan: I actually enjoy coming here because I love the discussion. Please don’t take this as the only time to discuss anything with me. If you have any project concerns or advice, my door is always open. Especially if you have good initiatives that I don’t know about, I’m happy to analyze it. As some of you know, once we agree with it, I’ll make sure that it gets done.
Thank you so much.
The Chair: Thank you very much, minister.
(The committee adjourned.)