Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance

Issue 14 - Evidence

The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 6:30 p.m. to examine the Main Estimates laid before Parliament for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2001.

Senator Lowell Murray (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: Honourable senators will recall that in a previous session of Parliament, this committee, to whom the Main Estimates are referred, decided to select several government departments and agencies on which to focus. Among those departments and agencies was the Canadian International Development Agency. I believe you had Madam Huguette Labelle, the then president of CIDA, before you, but the study was cut short by prorogation.

We are now in another session and the committee has decided to resume its examination of CIDA and the CIDA estimates. We have a new President of CIDA, who I am happy to welcome here tonight. He is Mr. Len Good. Do not let his youthful appearance deceive you. He has been around here a long time in quite senior and responsible positions in various departments and has represented Canada abroad for international agencies such as the World Bank.

Beyond that, I will not take you through his lengthy and impressive curriculum vitae, unless it becomes an issue, which I doubt.

Mr. Good has given to our clerk a brief opening statement. It is yours to read, honourable senators. He has decided not to read it himself but, rather, to make some brief opening comments, after which I will open the floor for questions and discussion.

Mr. Good, please proceed.

Mr. Len Good, President, Canadian International Development Agency: Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to be here. I am pleased that people are interested in CIDA and the work it does.

As you said, Mr. Chairman, I tabled a statement which deals with the recent budget and its implications for CIDA. It also deals with our minister's social agenda, which we are working hard on these days, and some new directions for CIDA as an institution.

I will now share some thoughts with you which, in a sense, will set the context for development generally.

The Chairman: Before you go further, Mr. Good, would you please introduce your colleague who is at the table with you.

Mr. Good: Mr. Chairman, I have with me Brian Emmett, vice-president of the Policy Branch at CIDA. He was formerly the commissioner for sustainable development and environment in the office of the Auditor General.

The Chairman: A good acquisition for your agency. Please proceed, Mr. Good.

Mr. Good: I will share with you four context-setting comments. I have grouped them under the headings of guilt, politics, lessons learned, and Canadian self-interest. This might set the stage for further questioning.

My first comments relate to guilt. Coming into the agency, having worked at the World Bank for four years, I was struck by the fact that thinking about development has increased enormously over the last 50 years. At the end of World War II and the establishment of the World Bank, countries in the developed world knew nothing about development. That was because most of those countries were former colonies and, in a sense, the word used to describe them would have been closer to "exploited" than to "developed." Thus, development was a new field.

Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or IBRD, or the World Bank, were created. The emphasis in the late 1940s and early 1950s was much more on reconstruction than on development because the goal was to finance the reconstruction of Japan, Germany, and so on. That did not happen. The United States, with its Marshall Plan, came along and did the reconstruction. This very important institution was looking for a job to do and it turned from the "R" in IBRD to the "D," which was the development side.

As I said, it knew little about development. Since it had witnessed the reconstruction of the infrastructure in Japan and Germany that had been destroyed during the war, it thought that the way to go about development was to start building roads, bridges, dams, and so on. That was development in the 1950s and 1960s. There was no sense of social development in areas such as health, education or anything institutional.

As countries gained independence in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, they needed a lot of help. The World Bank was building things. The rest of the world was trying to do its bit, and there were many volunteers. There was Canadian University Students Overseas, or CUSO, as well as the U.S. Peace Corps. People were marching off to help to develop the world. There was a sense of quilt, which is negative. Perhaps a more positive way to put it would be to say that there was a sense of altruism, that we had to help these poor exploited countries. That sense of altruism is still very much a part of the story -- it was a big part of the early story -- and it continues to be relevant. It has always been an element, and it is important, but that is not what drove development as we moved into the 1970s and 1980s.

My second comment is about politics. Development in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was driven, to a degree, by altruism, but much more by the Cold War. The Cold War drove bilateral aid and it significantly influenced multilateral aid. You know terrible stories about the way in which the Cold War affected development and countries' positions, in particular, the U.S. and others. You also know the stories concerning Angola and other countries in a similar situation. The Cold War drove not only the amounts of aid but where it was spent.

When the Cold War ended in 1989-90, all of a sudden the primary rationale for aid and development cooperation disappeared. When that happened, governments asked, if not consciously then at least unconsciously: "Why are we spending what we are spending?" If you look at the numbers for official development aid in the 1990s, you will see that they stagnated. They are at the same level now as they were a decade ago. A significant explanation for that is because the primary rationale for development in the minds of governments across the globe has disappeared with the end of the Cold War. With the actual dollars frozen, of course the ratios of ODA to GNP declined dramatically. That is a reality.

I will return to the question of rationale in my fourth comment, which I will make later.

Third, in the last 50 years, from ground zero, a tremendous amount has been learned about development. As I said initially, we thought it was about building things, infrastructure. We quickly found out that that is not the secret to successful development. In the 1980s, we also found out that it is not just about markets and economics, although there was a strong school called the Washington Consensus, which initially took a market-driven approach to development. That is important but, as we found out, it is not the only approach.

The lessons of the last 50 years can be summed up quickly. First, one must be comprehensive in one's approach to development. We certainly need infrastructure, roads, schools, and so on, but we also need social infrastructure. We must pay attention to health, education and to social safety nets. Most important, we must pay attention to institutional development. We need good courts, good legal systems and good public service. Those are the underpinnings of a successful society. We must pay as much attention to building capacity in those areas as we do to building the bridges and the dams.

The second lesson was that donors have to work together -- for many years, they did not. They worked in a very uncoordinated fashion. Increasingly, we are seeing donors work more closely together.

Third, it was important that the developing countries themselves lead the process of development. We found in situations where they did not, where they were driven by the World Bank or by bilateral donors, their interest and enthusiasm waned quickly and development programs came to nought. All that was left was a big pile of debt, which subsequently had to be dealt with.

We have learned a lot of lessons over the last 50 years, and they are coming together quite nicely. The World Bank and some major bilateral donors, such as the British and the Netherlands, are leading the way. To be frank, CIDA must catch up with a lot of that new development thinking. We are now in the process of doing that. If you are interested at some point, I can talk about some of the things that CIDA is doing.

The fourth and last point I would make comes back to what I was saying with respect to the disappearance of a rationale for development with the end of the Cold War. We may have learned a lot about development, and we know how to do it much better now, but why should we do it? The Cold War is over. Who cares? Always lying beneath the surface is that altruism that we should do it because it is the right thing to do. The Prime Minister has said that on a number of occasions. However, in some sense we must go beyond that, because it was never enough. There is a new rationale.

My fourth comment is about Canadian self-interest in increased development cooperation. There is a genuine Canadian self-interest in expanded development cooperation. By "Canadian self-interest" I do not mean the short-term approach which focuses on markets for Canadian goods or more jobs for Canadians. That is one interpretation, but it is not what I mean. The real point I want to make with respect to Canadian self-interest in expanded development cooperation concerns the fact that the problems which could potentially face Canada's interest in the next 20 or 30 years are not problems that can be solved in isolation. Canada can control domestic areas such as employment, inflation, living standards, quality of life, income distribution and even our environment. In fact, we are doing well in controlling the things that we can control.

Our problems as a country will stem from problems that are global in nature.

With respect to the environment, Canada's problems in the next two or three decades will stem from climate change, ozone depletion, the transboundary movement of chemicals, persistent organic pollutants, biodiversity issues globally, health threats that stem from major pandemics coming from other parts of the world, refugees, drugs, crime and a whole series of issues that are a spillover from what is going on in the rest of the world.

Critically, those issues must be dealt with globally, and many are related to the environment. There are already various kinds of global agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, which deal with the environment.

In order for those global agreements to work, the less developed countries must be at the table. They must help us to solve the problems in every area. They will only help if they are being given assistance to develop at the same time. They tell us that they would like to help us solve these global problems, but they remind us that they have insufficient food, that they do not have safe water, and that they cannot read. They tell us that if we help them to solve those problems, they will help us solve the problems that are important to us.

The new rationale for development cooperation in the years ahead is very much a Canadian self-interest. Altruism will always run underneath, but it is not the primary motivation. We have a new rationale for expanded cooperation. I do not think that is well recognized and I am not sure it is well understood. However, increasingly, as a government, as an agency, we must try to develop that way of thinking about the world and communicate it, and help to address a problem that remains unresolved.

Senator Bolduc: You have a governmental or intergovernmental view. I enjoyed your introduction and what I would call parameters for your own action in CIDA.

Having said that, you did not remake history when you explained the building after the war; the Cold War interest; the new knowledge about development; and, finally, the new rationale for development. That was a good introduction. It is the first time we have heard that. We have heard from representatives of CIDA before, but, without such an introduction, we found ourselves immediately asking questions about the various programs.

In 1995 we had a review of foreign policy within which there was a framework for CIDA. From the point of view of Foreign Affairs and CIDA, are the guiding principles still used at your organization?

There was a joint committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the subject of foreign policy. The mandate of this committee was to outline Canada's foreign policy objectives and policies. The main areas of concern included the essential needs of the people in underdeveloped countries, participation of women, infrastructure services, rights of the people, good government, helping to develop the private sector, and the protection of the environment. We were told that those were the objectives or the framework within you must work. Is that still the reality today?

I ask that because there are various ways of looking at development. That relates to the economic growth theory. For a long time, we were told: "Let's give them money; let's feed them." We know that does not work. For example, we put a significant amount of money into Africa with mediocre results, while we did not put money into Southeast Asia and they developed quite rapidly in the 1990s. Would you agree that the Peter Bauer approach to development is a fairly sound one?

Mr. Good: You were right to refer to the policy and priorities that were outlined for CIDA. The difficulty that I have with those priorities is that they are all important and they exclude very little. The only thing that I can think of that we might conceive of doing as a development agency that is not included in those six priorities is major infrastructure projects. The list does not say "infrastructure," it says "infrastructure services." That is what we actually do provide. We have skilled people going from our electrical utilities to show people how to do things. We are out of the business of building dams and bridges now. That may be as much for financial and budgetary reasons as for anything else. With that exclusion, I have difficulty, to be candid, in finding what else is not permissible.

The priorities to which you referred are a good statement of the kinds of things we do, but they do not in any significant way provide for any operational direction with respect to emphasis. Perhaps at the level of a list of priorities and a foreign policy statement, one need not be so detailed as to provide operational direction. It is a good indication of the areas in which we work.

Senator Bolduc: You say that, within that broad framework and those broad qualities, you can operate your organization. There is no doubt about that.

However, my problem, as a parliamentarian, is that it is too broad, not selective enough, and is not based on criteria that are measurable. I spoke in the Senate about that subject the other day. I said that, in foreign affairs, because the government has a wide margin of discretion, they can do anything. As a parliamentarian, I find that troublesome.

There should be some parameters drawn around government programs. For example, we know that we sometimes give money to dictatorship organizations. I do not think we should. Sometimes we give money to governments that use a large proportion of their budget to buy military equipment. That is embarrassing when it results in, say, intertribal battles in Africa.

I understand that CIDA operates in 110 countries. That is a significant number, especially when we know that the poorest 25 or 26 countries are considered to be "very" poor. For example, we give a large amount of money to Central America. Those are not poor countries. We even give money to Tunisia which is not a poor country. On the other hand, we say that we are helping the poorest. I understand that one must have discretion to operate in international affairs, but, at the same time, is it not possible to have clear parameters?

Mr. Good: It is interesting that, within the six priorities to which you referred, you made no mention of geographical location, that is, where we operate. They dealt more with how we operate within a country. They were quite comprehensive.

To do development well, you need a comprehensive model of development. That takes you through health, education, infrastructure and into institutional bodies such as courts and a public service. It takes you into the development of a market and of the private sector.

The development model is a comprehensive one. Once one is in a country, one chooses to emphasize certain parts of the model, depending on the circumstances. What does the country need the most and, to be realistic, what can Canadians bring to the table to be helpful? Those two things together determine the emphases for the comprehensive development model.

Our minister has chosen to work hard on what we call the social agenda; that is health, education, AIDS issues and child protection. We need the discretion, within a well-articulated development model, to work on the parts of the model that are relevant and where we can be helpful.

The other dimension of your question is where we should work. The agency has been criticized many times in this area, and we recognize that. Our minister has acknowledged that in speeches she has made. We work in more than 110 countries. We are very dispersed. The overhead costs of working in so many countries are very high. Arguably, we do not maximize the development impact of our limited budget.

We can think, in theory, about geographical concentration. We do have, in fact, 30 countries of concentration. The other 70-plus are relatively small programs with high overhead costs. I must choose my words carefully here, but we face a dilemma between the demands of pure development impact considerations, which lead toward geographical concentration, and the demands of politics and foreign policy and commercial issues.

If a new country makes some forward strides, then our foreign policy might be to seek a bilateral cooperation program with that country, however small. There is a natural tendency to expand.

There is another scenario. Not to tell tales out of school, but a member of the house might request a program in a country in which many of his or her constituents have a significant interest.

You talked about some countries which we might leave. Central American countries are still pretty poor. Even in a geographical concentration, we would still be in the Hondurases and the Nicaraguas of the world.

Some of the North African countries are doing quite well, and one could argue that we should not be there. One might argue that it seems we are punishing them for their success. They know they are not up to our standards by any means and they wish to continue to benefit from cooperation.

In the continuum of relationships, we go from the poorest African country where we are clearly fulfilling development purposes, right up to a special program in CIDA called "Central and Eastern European" which we have had for five years now. We are still working with Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They are within a hair of being our equal partners in every way. That is the continuum. We do less work at the European end of the continuum, but we have more sophisticated technical cooperation and sharing of knowledge. By way of example, we are now doing a project in the Czech Republic on flood containment. Our Red River experience is being shared with them.

In that continuum, the question arises: When do we cut off or graduate a country from CIDA's development assistance to being a regular counterpart interacting with the Department of Foreign Affairs? That dialogue continues.

Our minister is keen to have us do a lot of our homework as an agency so that, at some point, the government can, if it so wishes, address again the question of geographical concentration. Be aware that it has been addressed several times in the past. In the final analysis, the notion of development impact, relative to other considerations, has not won out in terms of geographical concentration.

Senator Bolduc: I can understand that it is quite embarrassing because we are a trading nation. We trade all over the world, so we want to have good relationships with every country but, somehow, we are not selective. If, for example, 25 per cent of the money we donate is spent on food, we will make little difference to the development of that country. It seems to me that it is not an adequate way of looking at things.

Bangladesh, I read recently, is one of the poorest countries in the world. We imposed tariffs on their products into Canada of about $372 million. We gave them a bit less than that in foreign aid. Perhaps it would be better not to give any help but to remove the tariffs so they can export freely.

The Chairman: The other issue which arises from Mr. Good's response and one which should concern us is whether the CIDA budget is looked upon as a pool of funds to be accessed by other departments or agencies of government for their own legitimate diplomatic, political or commercial reasons. To some extent, that speaks to the nature of parliamentary control over the form of the Estimates and what it is that we are approving when we approve the Estimates.

If you want to comment on that, you may. If you do not, I will understand.

Mr. Good: With respect to the roles of other departments, to be candid, as important as Canada's commercial interests are, we do not consider that to be our job.

We are interested, however, in engaging other departments with respect to development. We are finding that almost every department now has an international dimension to its work. Whether it is the Department of Agriculture or Justice or Energy, they have important knowledge, more than funds, to contribute to development.

We are looking, much more than in the past, to work closely with other departments to get development impact, but less so when they talk to us about doing this in order to open markets up for Canadian exporters.

I hesitate to say that because that work is critically important. I acknowledge that, but I do not think it is our primary role as an agency.

With respect to trade, to come back to Senator Bolduc's point, as an agency and in terms of new directions for CIDA, historically we have not focused much on trade. We have focused on our development projects. Increasingly, we are recognizing exactly what you said, that is, there is little point in spending $5 million to develop this or that project in a developing country if, at the same time, on the trade front, we are denying access to Canadian markets. We recognize that a small increase in access to our markets for developing opening countries would do more for development that any number of our small projects.

Historically, we have not been close to that issue as an agency. However, with our minister and with the current Minister of International Trade who himself is a former minister of CIDA, there is a meeting of minds and a recognition that, increasingly, CIDA and the development impact of our trade positions is something we work on together, in part driven by the kinds of things I mentioned but more substantially driven by the fact that trade discussions -- and think back to what happened at Seattle -- are being significantly influenced by an array of issues much broader than anything that we have seen in the past. For example, labour, environmental and developmental issues are now an integral part of discussions on trade. That is inevitable. We must deal with it, and we would like to do that going forward.

Senator Finestone: May I ask a supplementary question on that?

Mr. Good, I listened to the exchange with respect to Seattle and Washington and now we have Windsor coming up. At what point do you see the importance of the work that you are doing and the need for more comprehensive input by legislators and parliamentarians? If civil society and NGOs are to be the voice that will carry the concerns of general society, then the people who are closest to those voices are the elected parliamentarians. They come from constituencies. They are subject to tremendous pressure by certain groups, as are many senators. I find that there is a lack of input and requests for information and, perhaps, understanding on the part of the executive with respect to the bridging role and the important input role that legislators or parliamentarians can play.

Has that ever been examined with respect to what is going on world wide with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and institutions of that kind?

Mr. Good: On the one hand, it appears that there is a tremendous interest. You talked about public reactions at Seattle and in Washington. I was in Washington, too, and I saw that live. There is a tremendous interest. However, on the other hand, it is interesting to note that CIDA and its work is barely known in Canada. I have been struck by the public opinion polls which show that most people do not have much idea about what CIDA is or what it does.

Senator Finestone: Does that not send a message?

Mr. Good: Exactly. I return to your point. Any help we can get in terms of bridging that gap is enormously important. There is also the gap that I talked about in my introductory comments.

Senator Finestone: I am sorry I did not hear them.

Mr. Good: The development model is changing. Historically, we tended to think about areas like development, trade and the environment as being quite separate and compartmentalized and everyone did their own thing. Increasingly, they are merging in a way that is making them quite inseparable. It is forcing us to change the way we operate as an institution. It is an integration that is complicated and requires explanation.

To return to your point, the role that legislators can play in terms of explaining the reality of that quite sophisticated model to people and explaining why it is in Canada's self-interest to help countries develop so that they can help us deal with some of the complex problems in the global environment, among others, is critical. In a convoluted way, I am supporting what you said.

Senator Cools: I should like to welcome Mr. Good to our meeting today. This is his first time before us. I would also extend my welcome to Mr. Emmett.

I assume that you have taken the opportunity to review the testimony of your predecessor before this committee some months ago. I move on the assumption that you have become acquainted with some of the concerns, even though some of them were expressed in a somewhat fledgling way. I move on the premise that you are aware that the committee has taken an interest in the work of CIDA. I am pleased to see that you welcome this interest, because you are absolutely accurate when you say that most Canadians do not know about the work of CIDA. One could also say that most members do not know of the work of CIDA. To that extent, I welcome the study that we are undertaking here today.

Perhaps I should give you a chance to tell us about CIDA's involvement with what I would call the "judicial apparatuses" of the world. In particular, I am looking at a document before me in respect of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, which is your Project Z011060. It is described as a project involving the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs. I understand there is quite a clutch of such related activities funded by CIDA.

Perhaps the best way to proceed would be for the witness to tell us about these projects, including the dollar amounts of money and the conceptual framework behind these projects.

The Chairman: What is the document that you have there, senator?

Senator Cools: I was looking at a copy of the memorandum of agreement with the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs.

The Chairman: We do not have that. If someone directs us to the item in the Estimates, we could then ask Mr. Good to address that.

Senator Cools: I would be happy to go to the Estimates, Part III, under the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs. At page 10, for example, there is quite an extensive explanation of the work of the Commissioner of Judicial Affairs and its involvement with CIDA. This is at Part III of the current Estimates, 2000-2001.

The Chairman: That is the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs. We do not have that before us either. For the benefit of senators, I wish to know where it is in the Main Estimates.

Senator Cools: Go to the Main Estimates either under CIDA or the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs. You will see them described there.

The Chairman: Let us stay with CIDA. Where is it, Mr. Good? Do you know? Can you help us?

Mr. Good: I think I can help you in the sense that I do not think we will find this number.

Senator Cools: That is what I am trying to find out.

Mr. Good: Generally, the kinds of projects the senator is referring to are projects that fall under one of the priorities referred to by Senator Bolduc earlier, which is good governance. Good governance covers many topics, including everything to do with judicial systems and criminal law reform.

What happens in CIDA, senator, is that our different geographic branches, in Asia, Africa, the Americas, Central and Eastern Europe and in our partnership branch, develop these kinds of good governance projects, including more specifically the ones dealing with judicial reform. They become part of our project portfolio, but they are not split out in any way in our Estimates. The Estimates will, at most, tell you about the amount of money that is going into each of our main branches, Africa, Asia and so on, but it will not break out the numbers by project conglomeration. You will not find that.

The Chairman: To keep us focussed and on track, I think you know the nature of the program -- in effect, you have just described them to some extent -- that Senator Cools was talking about. In particular, she was speaking about a program with the Russian Federation. She asked for a conceptual justification of this kind of program. Would you like to try to address that? You did in your opening comments somewhat, but please continue.

Mr. Good: I did say in my opening comments that of some of the lessons we have learned over the last 50 years, one of the more recent ones in the last decade is that institutional development in a country is a critical foundation of its capacity to build and to develop. That was part of the development model that was ignored.

We have come to recognize that institutional foundations, good courts, good regulatory bodies and a good public service are critical building blocks. There is not much point about talking about market development and letting markets work and letting direct investment in a country lead to its dynamic growth over time if you do not have good contract and other kinds of laws.

If you have laws, they must be robust. One needs enforcement capacity, and part of that enforcement capacity is traditional police forcing, but it also includes our entire legal system and its judges.

Many of the judicial systems in lots of these centrally planned and socialist economies were, for many years, just an arm of the government. They were not in any true sense of the word judicial systems enforcing a well-understood and transparent body of laws.

If we now establish markets in these countries and they liberalize their energy sectors, their health sectors, their markets and so on, all of a sudden, we will be dealing with people in positions who are supposed to be doing things and they have absolutely no capacity to do.

The kind of knowledge and information that people in our judicial system, among others, can transmit to help them build the capacity they need to make that part of their economy work is a significant contribution, and we have the expertise in Canada to help. That is an important part of what we call the good governance approach.

I cannot give you an exact number, but I can tell you that I am looking at a page here which has at least a dozen and perhaps closer to two dozen projects that fit under this general heading of "good governance." I would guess that is probably in the order of magnitude of $20 million a year.

The Chairman: Is that figure for the entire item?

Mr. Good: It is perhaps more -- $20 million to $40 million.

The Chairman: How many of those projects would relate to judicial systems, or can you tell that?

Mr. Good: If I could provide you with an example of the titles, perhaps that would be helpful.

The Chairman: Would that be helpful, Senator Cools? I do not mean to interrupt your line of questioning.

Senator Cools: No, this is quite extensive. I am interested in the fact that you began by talking about the social development agenda and you talked about altruism, and so on. I believe everyone supports a concept of international altruism. However, one must wonder, when one looks at developing what I would describe to be institutions of the state or institutions of the body politic, one has moved beyond altruism and one is actively engaging in what I could call political development or politics.

If one were, for example, to look back to previous eras, the phenomenon of the developing courts, and what I would call the state apparatus, was definitely a political role that was assigned to colonial governments as they developed these structures in "the colonies."

What I am attempting to grapple with is: How, where and when does CIDA move into association, collaboration or the financing of Canada's judiciary to engage in these so-called international activities?

What I cannot comprehend is how the Judges Act or the act that creates the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs conveys any role whatsoever in international development or any international role. The authority behind the judiciary is an extremely jealous and domestic one. What I am trying to grapple with is the conceptual framework as to how Canadian judges can suddenly become authorized to be involved in international activities.

Mr. Good: Senator, I was told of your interest in this issue. I will repeat what I know you already know.

Senator Cools: I understand.

Mr. Good: The Judges Act prohibits judges from engaging in any occupation or business other than judicial duties. However, as I understand it, this notion of "in any occupation or business," is actually referring to occupations or businesses for which they receive remuneration.

Senator Cools: The concept is two-fold.

Mr. Good: In doing what they do for CIDA, in the kinds of projects that we have spoken about, all that happens, from a financial point of view, is we pay their expenses. There is no remuneration, as such. Therefore, we believe we are not in conflict with the Judges Act. In that sense, we believe that we are legally whole.

Senator Cools: I am not questioning that. I am looking for information. I think what the witness is referring to are sections 54, 55 and 56 of the Judges Act, which are scripted carefully to ensure that judges are involved in no other kind of business other than the judicial function.

For example, a judge of Canada simply cannot go and serve on the board of directors of Dupont International. In the development of Canada, the treatment of the judiciary and judges has been extremely special and cautious so as to protect what they used to call the "integrity of the bench" from corruption. In other words, to prevent judges from seeking out the highest employers. I am sure the history of this is well-known to the witnesses.

What I am trying to grapple with is the connection between CIDA and the Commissioner for Judicial Affairs. I am trying to figure out how that money flows, the authority for that money and, in addition, the purposes for which those dollars are used.

The Chairman: We will read some of the projects. That is a good idea.

Typically, would the request or the idea come from the recipient country to CIDA, or would it come through the Department of Justice, the Commissioner of Judicial Affairs, or some other department of government?

Senator Cools: We have been trying to understand some of these issues for the past many years. I say to the witnesses that CIDA is a mystery. CIDA and its financing is a mystery to most of us. We are trying to learn a bit more about CIDA, especially since most of us know that CIDA is constituted still, 50 years later, simply by an Order in Council.

The Judges Act has severe and strict constrictions on the funding of judges. The BNA Act is explicit, in the sections on the judicature, about how judges should be funded. I think the words are "fixed and provided by Parliament."

I grapple with how dollars flow from CIDA to judges. The Judges Act creates the Office of the Commission of Federal Judicial Affairs. How does that act confer upon the commissioner any authority to receive that money and to disperse it to judges?

Mr. Good: I will not reply to your last point. Concerning the channel for funding, I will refer to my brief again. CIDA funds reimbursement of travel costs for sitting judges -- and that is all we are talking about here -- and the funds are channelled through the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs by administrative arrangement. Those funds do not go directly to the judges.

I also refer to other Canadian organizations responsible for the implementation of projects. One is the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute.

I do not want to suggest to people who are not familiar with this subject that all of these projects are being done by full-time sitting judges. Many of the judges are retired, supernumerary or emeritus-type judges. They may work with other organizations such as the University of Montreal or McGill or the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice. Another body is the Commission internationale des juristes. There are many related international institutions.

Senator Cools: Some of this subject matter is quite new to some senators. Can the witness describe the program?

Mr. Good: I will give examples of the projects and then come back to how they are initiated.

In Eritrea, a judicial sector capacity-building program is being carried out by the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute. In Mali, a justice reform project is being carried out with the justice ministry there. China has a CIDA project related to the training of judges, carried out through a consortium composed of the Universities of Montreal and McGill and the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice. Yugoslavia has a CIDA project to support the establishment of an impartial and independent judicial system carried out by the Commission internationale des juristes.

Projects can be started in a number of different ways. Contacts may exist between our Department of Justice and a developing country, perhaps through their participation in international justice fora.

That is how networking works. A relationship is begun with a developing country and the Department of Justice asks how it can help. A project is designed between them. Then they will ask CIDA if it is the kind of project that CIDA is willing to fund. We will look at programming framework and analyze the country's needs. If good governance is included, and if the project is supportive of our goals, we may help them to fund the project.

We typically call that a responsive project in the sense that others initiated the request.

The Chairman: I was part of a Speaker's delegation to China a few years ago with Senators Beaudoin, Carstairs and others. Our meeting there with senior judges was extremely enlightening. They are making some headway in adopting concepts that we regard as rather rudimentary, such as the presumption of innocence.

I suspect some delegates made representations upon our return because Foreign Affairs, our other voice, is making very strong representations to the Chinese about how they should conduct themselves in human rights matters. Dr. Good's response seems to fit with that one case, at least.

Senator Cools: I think we can all say we support the Government of Canada in its international initiatives. That is not my concern. My concern is the transportation of our judges because the development of such infrastructure is a political issue.

I am pleased that the various departments are involved in making representations and assisting these countries. That is very different from our judges, under the Judges Act, going abroad themselves to perform functions which are explicitly political.

The Chairman: We will talk to the Department of Justice. See how far you can get with the president of CIDA.

Senator Cools: Mr. Good, you named some of the projects that you have been funding. You cited the one in Eritrea and a few others. Perhaps you could provide the committee with a list of the projects that you have funded through the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs. Perhaps that list could also include the quantum of money involved, as well as the names of the Canadian judges who have been involved.

The Chairman: The sitting judges?

Senator Cools: Yes, the sitting judges who have been involved in those programs.

Mr. Good: I believe we can do all of that, and we will do that. Can you permit me one slight sliver of space with respect to the last point on the names of the sitting judges? I do not believe there should be a problem with that, but once in a while one runs into various reasons why one can or cannot do that. I should like to take a close look at that one point.

The Chairman: Let us know how many.

Mr. Good: Certainly. Absolutely. I believe we will be able to supply the names, but I should like some slight space in case I find out from Justice itself or my own lawyers that for whatever reasons, privacy concerns or whatever, that it is not the sort of thing that I should be doing. Having said that, they are funded by the government, and I would have thought that any funding that the government provides to whomever should put us in a position to provide those names, as well as all the other information that you requested.

Senator Cools: I would think so.

I have here a particular newspaper clipping dated August 29, 1997. It is an article in The Lawyers Weekly. The article is written by a Cristin Schmitz, and it is headed "Canada's new global role: `Juges sans frontières'." The subheadline is, "Judges from around the world turn their eyes to Canada's justice system." In the body of the article, we find the following statement:

Mr. Goulard coordinates a growing number of highly successful international judicial cooperation projects, many of which are financially supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

If one were to continue in the article and drop down a paragraph or so later, the article continues:

"Juges sans frontières" or "Judges Without Borders" is how Chief Justice Antonio Lamer smilingly refers to his brainchild.

There are a number of press statements on the record to this effect where then Chief Justice Lamer speaks supposedly in glowing terms of his brainchild and the financing by CIDA. This topic has been very much written about in the media. In this particular instance, we are told that at least one or some or part of these projects originate in this particular way.

Anything that you can give to us would be gratefully appreciated. My interest in the matter concerns what I see as safeguarding the peculiar and the particular role of judges, whom it is our duty to protect.

[Translation]

Senator Ferretti Barth: I have always been somewhat intrigued by CIDA. In the past I have worked in the community and social fields where we had to deal with societal problems. I wondered how we could have an organization that was so helpful to other countries but that did not seem to help the people in our own country. I read the reports and what I found really striking was the $435 million above and beyond what you had allocated in aid to these countries in your 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 budgets. What criteria did you use to reach such a specific figure and what countries will benefit from these new monies?

Mr. Good: In fact, we have not yet decided upon the amounts. This money comes from the Minister of Finance and it is up to him and his colleagues to decide how much more will be allocated to the budgets of various departments. So we were lucky to be given $435 million more for those three years. It was not our decision.

Senator Ferretti Barth: I find that very interesting. Even in your report, on page 15, under the heading "Future Orientations," you say, and I quote:

Canada will be forced to develop better-targeted strategic approaches by emphasizing poverty reduction.

I wonder, of the countries that are on our donor list every year, if this is the end of their requests for project funding, for very specific projects, because they come back, if we open the door, to request more funding to reduce poverty and social problems. Also, I wonder whether, over the past 32 years in the life of the organization, there has been any kind of monitoring in certain countries to see if the amounts that have been given them were used for the purposes for which the money was requested.

Mr. Good: With respect to the use of additional funds, I would say that for the most part, in fact almost all of the money goes to what our department now calls the "social agenda."

Our Minister, Ms Mina, will deal with that next week. Within the next two weeks the official launch of a project called "the social agenda" will take place. Moreover, it is mainly up to the Agency to decide to spend more money in certain areas, particularly for AIDS, education, mainly primary education and the protection of children and particularly children involved in civil wars. Therefore, it is in these three areas that we will be spending more of the CIDA budget in the future.

We are at this time undertaking discussions with the minister on the changes in budget allocations for these areas so as to bring them up to the level of the other spending areas. We have decided to spend the supplementary funds.

Senator Ferretti Barth: At the end of the one or two-year grant period, once the program or project is finished, is there a committee of parliamentarians or independent persons who might visit the area to see what happened to the Canadian taxpayers' money, taxpayers who are not very well aware of CIDA? You know that there is a great deal of corruption in some countries, we have seen this lately in the media. The organization will not tell us if some countries are taking advantage of our grants. Is that right? You receive an application for a lovely project; you give them the money, and that's the end of it?

Mr. Good: No.

Senator Ferretti Barth: Two years ago I asked for a report on at least one of these files, something that would indicate how the money had been spent and what results there had been, if any.

Mr. Good: We receive those reports in March.

Senator Ferretti Barth: But we never received it. My request remains unanswered.

Mr. Good: I will send you the series of reports that we have. We draft all kinds of reports. You might have seen in the news, two or three months ago, that our minister answered a number of questions in the House concerning internal audits; we call them internal audits in English. We undertook these audits of all our programs and many of our projects. We sought to determine after the fact if the programs were properly carried out, and if not, we asked ourselves why. We made changes to the process. We even have a process that asks all the questions that you asked.

For example, we know there is a Canadian organization, the Canadian Executive Agency. For our project, we have a contract or agreement with them and the authorization indicates clearly what their responsibilities and ours are. We have discussions with those organizations about our projects. If a problem comes up, we will usually find out about it a few weeks or, at most, a few months after the project has begun. We try everything to solve the problem and we may even reconfigure the project. If it is impossible, then we put an end to the project. I have seen few projects cancelled since I have been at CIDA because of the unsatisfactory way the project was going.

Senator Ferretti Barth: I understand that you will be sending me a few copies of some countries' files where the projects were a brilliant success and even some where that was not the case to give a balanced view.

If there are countries that cannot pay back their debt and ask us to lend them funds, then you are telling us that you have agreements where you ask them to make a commitment to improving the environment. Is this information correct? How can they take care of the environment if they cannot pay back their debt?

Mr. Good: We do not authorize loans for those countries, we just give gifts. We are not asking for the money given to those countries to be paid back any more. It is true that we did make loans in the past, but in most cases, we forgave the debts.

[English]

We forgave the debts of virtually every country in Africa. We forgave over $1 billion worth of debt in Africa in recent years. You are right that $1.5 billion is still owed to CIDA, but it is not from the poorest of the poor. Basically two-thirds of that is from India and Pakistan -- about $500 million-plus from India and a little less than $500 million from Pakistan; and a certain amount of debt from countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Again, even there, if countries have difficulty repaying, we will reschedule the debt. I recall, as recently as a couple of months ago, our minister approved the rescheduling of Pakistan's debt based on the state of its economy, and so on. It has been a number of years now that we have not made any loans. We only make grants to countries so that we do not leave them in the position of having to repay.

[Translation]

Senator Ferretti Barth: It is true that at that time, when they had all those debts to pay back, Canada did tell them: "You cannot pay us back but at least promise that you will make improvements to your environment." That is information that I have. I am wondering how they can undertake environmental projects if they do not have any money to pay Canada back with.

Mr. Good: Senator Bolduc mentioned a list of Agency projects including the environment. It is a very important area for the Agency and we have all kinds of environmental projects with those countries. We are working together on a project in a country and we agree on what has to be done. So we find a Canadian organization that can serve as our agent. We are working on all kinds of projects in that area.

Senator Ferretti Barth: I understand. I am satisfied. To get back to my question: Is there a committee made up of independent people or parliamentarians or others at other levels that are involved, even in your Agency, to oversee those countries after they have received their grant and when the program ends? Are we concerned enough to go to those countries and find out if the project was brought to term after they have asked us for money for three hospitals, one school or a road network, for example?

Mr. Good: At the end of a project, we do an analysis report to see what the results were. The report exists. After the report has been drawn up, from time to time, we engage in an internal audit. That means a second analysis of the project and its results. All these documents are available for all Canadians. If your committee wants to examine those reports, you are free to do so.

Senator Ferretti Barth: You know that we do business with countries where North American currency is important. The situation is never transparent in those countries when they get those sums and maybe part of the money goes to the project it was earmarked for but the rest goes elsewhere. According to our latest information, we have seen that those funds were used for other purposes than the people's well-being. How can you trust a black on white report? It is a bit of a doubting Thomas affair.

Mr. Good: I understand. However, the CIDA process decreases these corruption situations to an absolutely minimum level. I will explain why. We do not give money to the governments of those countries. We do not do it. What we have is an agreement on a project. Let us say, for example, that we are working on an education project and maybe we will be getting into training teachers, in that case we employ a Canadian Agency and maybe our agency deals with the Canadian University Association and we hire the teachers directly to give this training. So we are giving our money to a Canadian association. They indicate clearly what they have done or will do, who will be involved in the process and who they will be sending. The funds go directly from CIDA to Canadian associations. These funds are never in any foreign government's hands. From our point of view, that decreases the risk of corruption tremendously when we talk about building schools, hospitals and so on.

It is true that for construction projects there are far more possibilities of getting into this kind of situation. As I was telling Senator Bolduc earlier, we do not do that kind of project any more. We have dropped infrastructure projects. We do not have the money we need to do it.

Senator Ferretti Barth: How many years now since you have not done any construction projects?

Mr. Good: I do not know; 10 years or so.

Senator Ferretti Barth: Ten years or so?

Mr. Good: Yes, I think the government program cuts started in 1994. Those cuts were continued for five years. CIDA's budget decreased by over $3 billion. It is now less than $2 billion. We suffered a 50 per cent cut to our budget. The result of these cuts was to eliminate infrastructure projects from our plans.

[English]

The Chairman: I will not detain you with this now because I want to turn to Senator Finestone for further questions, but I was looking through the documentation and I cannot find information on this. At some time, it would be interesting to know -- and I do not think you have those figures with you this evening -- the break down of, first, bilateral Canadian aid to other countries as distinct from contributions to multilateral agencies. Within bilateral assistance, I should like to know how much goes directly to governments and how much goes to non-governmental organizations or contracts to Canadians to go to do the kinds of thing you were talking about in your answer to Senator Ferretti Barth.

The second thing that interested me was -- and I do not know whether you know this right now -- those fairly large numbers that you mentioned in debts to CIDA from India and Pakistan. Were those accounted for by one or two large projects, or is it the result of an accumulation over the years? In particular, I presume you can assure me that CIDA was not involved in such matters as advancing money to those countries to buy nuclear power plants, and so on. Was CIDA involved in advancing funds to them to buy CANDU reactors, for example?

Mr. Good: I would be highly surprised.

The Chairman: So would I.

Mr. Good: The funds we have at our disposal are small relative to the funds required and disbursed across many projects.

The Chairman: They owe you about $500 million each. That is what caught my attention. Is that not what you said?

Mr. Good: That is true. I did tell you that.

The Chairman: That peeked my interest.

Mr. Good: We will have to come back to you on both those matters.

Senator Finestone: Mr. Good, I wish to follow up on the answers you gave to Senator Ferretti Barth. Are you suggesting that corruption, bribery and nepotism is not impacting on any of our projects?

Mr. Good: The way our project processes work, we have much less chance that corruption will, somehow, siphon off some of our funds than, perhaps, some other countries who either get involved in major construction projects or go about their programming differently. Our main approach to programming is to agree on the nature of a project with the developing country, and then to engage a Canadian partner to do it. The funds go to the Canadian partner, and then we track them closely. That is very different from the way some countries disperse aid. They will put money straight into the budget or into the central treasury of a developing country and then ask for assurances that the money will be used in a certain way. That process of proceeding is much more susceptible to corruption than the way we do things.

Even with the relatively safe process that I describe, a couple of projects that we have been involved in had some corrupt practices that led us to terminate them. I recall one situation in an African country where we tracked down the local fellow who was implementing the project. However, he managed to get away with a certain block of funds before we could shut the project down completely. I think we ended up recouping a good chunk of those funds.

The Chairman: That sort of thing happens at home, Mr. Good.

Senator Finestone: That was not the focus of my remarks. I have seen CIDA projects in about 15 to 20 countries and I have been impressed with every one of them. One of the things that has frustrated me, however, is the lack of collaboration in many areas where we could be doing things together with, for example, IDRC, for example. I remember clearly in Peru there was a development related to how to catch and trap clouds to divert rain from the mountain tops down to the plains. Other countries wanted to be involved, but those other countries were getting help from CIDA. There was no transfer. There was a battle, and I think we won. We moved that project and we worked in collaboration on it. However, that is not my view of winning. My view is there was short-sighted interaction between structures, some within governance and some at arm's length. All of these structures are part of the consolation of services we are able to deliver as a country, in whatever form they are financed through our government funds.

To what degree is there collaboration between our agencies and our ministries that are involved in international work? For example, I know that Heritage Canada and Foreign Affairs recognize it is important for people to understand the nature of and be exposed to the expertise of Canadian creative arts, whether visual arts, the performing arts, or books. To what extent is there collaboration between yourselves, Heritage Canada and Foreign Affairs in this area?

I do not even want an answer. I am giving you some examples of things that I have seen that frustrate the life out of me. I have seen the world's worst presentation of books and art in Chile, and we were responsible for it. It was a joint project. Who is supervising the quality of the art going out of the country? One performance was a mime show. We could have been training people in set-building or in other helpful fields. That is perhaps going to the extreme in the arts where it is not needed. When we go with a business undertaking, we can transfer skills in much more creative ways.

How do you measure the input and the output?

When was the last time CIDA reviewed the percentage of distributed funds and the number of projects in the various geographic locations?

In connection with AIDS and HIV, when do we say it is beyond our capacity to address this particular horrendous virus? Is it better for us to finance education and the development of vaccines? Is it better that we look at the horrendous water shortage which, I have read, can impact 300 million people. Is it better to intensify efforts toward desalination of sea water or brackish water to provide water for agricultural development?

I hope I am wrong, but if we are there to provide primary health care, and if the African nations are facing this unbelievable scourge of AIDS, what is better? Should we be putting our money into research and vaccines?

Mr. Good: AIDS is a subject which is dear to the heart of our minister. We are devoting a huge amount of effort there. Tomorrow the minister begins a two-day conference on AIDS. Specialists will come together and look at the lessons learned. She is also launching an AIDS action plan.

Senator Finestone: Your minister is superb. She has a better understanding than almost anyone with whom I have dealt in the last 16 years. She has more compassion and a better background than many. I am also sure that Dr. Good will do a thorough and long-overdue review of our CIDA spending, but that was not my question. I am waiting to hear your answer.

Mr. Good: You asked where we should be putting our money. We fund the research for an AIDS vaccine through IAVI, the International AIDS Vaccine Institute. This week the minister will announce another $5 million toward a key international institution which is researching an AIDS vaccine.

We also put goodly amounts of money into United Nations AIDS, another key international institution coordinating AIDS work on the ground throughout the world, particularly in Africa. We have 20 or more of our own AIDS projects on all continents. We have the ground covered. Again, we would be pleased to send to the committee a copy of our new AIDS action plan of which we are very proud.

Senator Finestone: You have now an interesting program in three different spheres of activity, but did you build in a measurement scale for outputs?

Mr. Good: The question of targets is very tricky. We are a relatively small donor country, facing a pandemic. It is a presumptuous notion to target, say, a specific lower AIDS rate based on our contribution. It is unrealistic.

We tend to focus on the dozen targets developed by the OECD four years ago in a document called "Shaping the 21st Century." The time frames range from 2005 to 2015. In areas like health, they have some desegregated goals.

We see ourselves as contributing to those goals but, as a general proposition, we try not to establish numerical goals for ourselves in these broad areas simply because they are hard to defend.

Senator Finestone: Mr. Good, that is a very fine thing, but are you working collaboratively with other countries like Norway, Sweden and Holland? The Inter-Parliamentary Union just produced, with the International Red Cross, an excellent document on how to work with AIDS and on prevention education. A lot of work is going on in that field, but is there collaboration? Who has joined you in this enormous effort? I do not expect you to count heads of how many children's lives or parents' lives you have saved.

I asked about output. We are a small but a well-loved and highly respected player. Are we getting the best bang for our buck with the personnel involved? We do wonderful work but it seems to be spread too thin. There is not enough concentration.

Frankly, I was disappointed with the amount of CIDA funding and the pitiful 1.5 percentage increase compared to the 5.7 per cent increase for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Export Development got 7 per cent and IDRC got 6.7 per cent.

Senator Bolduc and I figured that, on a GDP of $1 trillion, if you received 0.7 per cent you would get about $5 billion. You are very short of money. You should look at how to get that $5 billion out of Paul Martin.

Senator Bolduc: They received about one third of 1 per cent of the GDP. That ranks us as sixth or seventh in the world. Sweden and a few others give more. I have the statistics right here.

The Chairman: Countries put all kind of numbers into their foreign aid figures that they should not.

Senator Bolduc: I suppose Scandinavian countries do their budgeting process as well as we do.

Senator Finestone: You do not know if they put their blue berets in there. That was part of my question. How are these figures made up? How much of the World Bank's heavily indebted poor countries' trust funds is in the CIDA budget versus the Foreign Affairs budget versus the International Trade budget, and how much of the IMF funds are really theirs or ours?

Mr. Good: The funds to which you refer are in the Department of Finance's budget. They are responsible for our relationship with the World Bank, so those particular contributions go directly.

Senator Finestone: If we added up what we put into that trust fund, that is, what we attribute to debt reduction and what we attribute to the IMF, might we get to 0.3 or 0.4 per cent?

Mr. Good: Those things are already included, and it is 0.29 per cent. Even though they go through the budgets of other departments, they still count for official development assistance, and they are part of our ratio.

There is a certain degree of discipline in the counting of official development assistance across countries simply because the OECD is the official recipient of the numbers. They do a pretty good job in terms of keeping track of legitimate ODA as opposed to non-legitimate, and the definitions are quite tight. The numbers are reasonably comparable across countries.

The Chairman: The U.S. used to include in their overall number all the money they were spending in the Middle East for assistance to Israel and then to Egypt and now to other countries. I do not know whether they still do that or whether the OECD would allow them to do that.

Mr. Good: The OECD is tough, and they must be, because the U.S. has one of the lowest ODA-to-GNP ratios in the world. We worry about being at 0.29 per cent, but they are at 0.1 per cent.

Senator Finestone: Do you think we are doing all right?

Mr. Good: No. I did not say that. I said we are doing better than the United States.

Senator Finestone: Could you address some of the other matters I raised?

Mr. Good: You talked a great deal about a review of the geographic distribution. CIDA has not done that in a number of years. As recently as yesterday, the minister told me that she is hearing the kind of comments you are making more and more frequently. One of the things she would like to do in the months ahead is talk to her colleagues and ask whether, as a government, we are prepared to look at this question of geographical concentration.

As we were saying earlier, in terms of development impact and coordination, for all kinds of good reasons, concentration would seem to be a good thing, but there are a whole series of other reasons that stem from foreign policy, from politics, from ministerial trips, and from visits from foreign countries to Canada. Those reasons sort of drive you in the direction of whatever country we happen to be dialoguing with today. The difficulty is rejecting those that are not part of the group. It is tough to do that, so it is very much a ministerial-government decision that is taken, and it is not a easy one. It has been addressed several times before. The decision to concentrate has never been taken.

Senator Finestone: The six points that I have -- basic human needs, gender equality, infrastructure services, human rights, democracy and good governance, private-sector development, and environments with an underlying gender focus -- are the priority areas, but they have not been reviewed, upgraded or evaluated, have they?

Mr. Good: There are two kinds of concentration. There, of course, you are referring to the concentration among sectors in which we work. Most of the discussion has been about the countries in which we work.

Senator Finestone: I would be interested in the review potential of the sectors.

Mr. Good: The minister is, in fact, making some decisions by saying, as she will say over the next little while, that we will significantly increase the share of CIDA's budget that goes into social programming -- health, education, and children's protection. In the next few weeks she will talk about the increase in the share of our budget that will go into those areas over the next several years. She is in effect saying, "Here is where we will concentrate." She is starting to significantly address the sectoral concentration issue.

The geographical concentration issue is a question that involves many other ministers -- obviously the Minister of Foreign Affairs and her colleagues. That is a question she would have to address to cabinet and the government. It is a more complex question to address than the sectoral concentration.

Senator Finestone: I had an experience that demonstrated to me why it was time to do both the geographic and the sectoral evaluation. It related to Mongolia. As a child, it was always a place that seemed so far away and, when I went there, I expected to see Genghis Khan go galloping across the steppes or the Gobi Desert. A group of us attended an international meeting in Mongolia and I discovered that the country that I thought was gigantic is now much smaller. It is stuck between two giants -- Russia and China -- and is struggling to develop its personality and independence. It was in need of Canadian wheat because of the components of protein found in our particular hardy wheat.

I wanted to find out why we cannot help this little country that needs our assistance. The country is coming into its own in terms of democratic rights. A new democracy is evolving. I found that no protocol had been signed with us, and that it was not on our list of priorities. It struck me that we should be actively involved.

That was two years ago. Since then, we have become actively involved, and I thank the minister for that. I would also thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the very tenacious chair of IDRC. I would include in my thanks your predecessor, Mr. Good.

Why did it take me and Senator Jack Austin getting upset by the fact that we did not have proper protocols and this, that, and the other before anything was done? How did you measure the quality and the quantity of the effort and work? Was the measure based on the amount of trade they had with us? Did they not have enough trade with us? How could they trade with us if they are just evolving as a democracy and becoming more independent? How do we know what is going on if we do not have any contact? They do not even have the money to have an embassy here, although, by the way, they are about to do that.

In two years, we have seen Canada become vitally interested in that country. We have been involved in the development of hospital and health care. We have gone in and helped the street children. We helped when their animals died because of freezing conditions. We have also assisted in teaching democratic principles to members of their government staff. It is incredible that we were able to move things forward by a simple meeting.

How do we develop our criteria? Why was nothing done before two certain people visited this country and came face to face with the needs of the people? I am certain we could do something to encourage a sense of participation in our colleagues who are involved as legislators and as parliamentarians in overseas work. Parliamentarians are constantly asked for assistance. At what point do you ask them for their input? When did you ever consult a parliamentary group? CIDA has been around for a long time. Have you ever invited parliamentarians to sit down to have a chat with you on their return from a trip? Is there something they could perhaps bring to your attention? It might be a way of arousing their interest if you showed some interest in their opinions. It does not mean you have to apply what they say, you just have to be prepared to listen.

Mr. Good, a new broom sweeps clean. You might want to think about that.

Mr. Good: Senator Finestone, you will be pleased to know that we are developing an increasingly close relationship with IDRC. I had a long meeting with Maureen O'Neil yesterday, and we will be working together on dead issues in developing countries, and we are developing a joint team for such a purpose. I agree that IDRC is an extremely strong institution. We will be working more closely with them.

We have a good project portfolio coming along in regard to Mongolia. We will be starting a major project on biodiversity there this summer.

Senator Finestone: Mongolia also needs some help in regard to law reform and regulations. That should be included in the project.

Mr. Good: Part of the reason that we may have been less responsive as an agency to starting new programs in the last two or three years is that our total budget went down from $3 billion to less than $2 billion. We had a 50 per cent contraction in the budget. It is difficult to reconcile expanding the number of countries in which we are working when cutting back by 50 per cent. That is why you have seen more reluctance than you might otherwise.

With respect to your comments in regard to parliamentarians, I absolutely agree. We should take advantage of people's experiences abroad. Our minister's office, however, would likely be the main organizer of that kind of an event.

The Chairman: Mr. Good, as you have seen, there is a great deal of interest around the table in the activities of the agency. As you will have also seen, the interest tends to be focussed on specific areas depending upon the senator asking the questions.

Nevertheless, I hope you feel, as I do, that this has been an opportunity for you to give us a good overview of what you are doing and what you are trying to achieve at CIDA for which I and all members of the committee thank you very warmly.

Mr. Good: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Although there are a many specific messages, one conclusion I take away is that we have strong support here.

The Chairman: You do have strong support at the Senate.

Mr. Good: That is very much appreciated, because we need it.

The Chairman: I do not know whether, in the course of our study of CIDA, we may wish to invite others in, and in particular the minister, whose leadership has been mentioned several times tonight. Before we are finished, we may wish to extend an invitation to her as well.

The committee adjourned.