THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 10, 2021
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 11:30 a.m. (ET), to study matters relating to foreign or Commonwealth relations generally, as described in rule 12-7(4).
Senator Peter Harder (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Colleagues, due to the unavoidable absence of Senator Peter Boehm, I, Peter Harder, deputy chair of the committee, will chair this meeting today.
Welcome, honourable senators, witnesses, Senate staff, and people who might be watching across Canada, to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
[English]
Before we begin, I wish to introduce the other members of the committee participating in today’s meeting. I’m not going to do this in alphabetical order but on the basis of the screen, because not everybody that I expect to join us has yet joined.
Senator Ngo from Ontario is the deputy chair of the committee; Ratna Omidvar from Ontario; Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia from Newfoundland and Labrador; Stephen Greene from Nova Scotia and also a member of the steering committee; Gwen Boniface from Ontario; Marty Deacon from Ontario; Mary Coyle from Nova Scotia.
As we are conducting a virtual meeting of the committee, I’d like to remind members to please keep your microphones muted at all times unless recognized by name by the chair. Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the clerk. We may need to suspend during these times to ensure that all members are able to participate fully.
Today is our second meeting in relation to our special study on Canada’s international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first hour of our meeting today, we welcome the Honourable Bob Rae, Ambassador and Permanent Representative-Designate of Canada to the United Nations in New York. Thank you, Mr. Rae, for taking the time to appear before our committee. I will also introduce the officials joining you from Global Affairs Canada: Joshua Tabah, Director General, Health and Nutrition, Global Issues and Development Branch; Andrew Smith, Director General, International Assistance Policy.
Welcome, everyone. Following Mr. Rae’s opening remarks, we will proceed to questions from senators.
Ambassador, the floor is yours.
Bob Rae, P.C., Ambassador and Permanent Representative-Designate of Canada to the United Nations in New York, Global Affairs Canada: Thank you very much, Senator Harder. I greet all my colleagues, and I’m very pleased to be with you today.
[Translation]
First I will speak in French, then I will continue in English. Thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak about Canada’s work with international partners, including the UN, the World Health Organization, and other donor governments, to respond to the pandemic and promote a global recovery.
The government’s work to help those most affected by the pandemic, including women, displaced and vulnerable communities, is at the forefront of Canada’s international assistance response.
As Minister Gould noted in her appearance before this committee last week, Canada has mobilized more than $2.5 billion in international assistance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant part of this funding has been through multilateral organizations like the UN, including for both humanitarian and development assistance.
I took up my post as ambassador in the midst of this pandemic, and I have been thoroughly impressed by the speed, vigour and seriousness of the UN’s response to this crisis. Both in-country and at the international level, the UN and its agencies have marshalled their best analysis and people to respond and find solutions to the health and socioeconomic impacts of this crisis.
[English]
The successful operationalization of the ACT-Accelerator COVAX Facility proves that when the world does come together, anything is possible. This has been unprecedented in terms of how quickly it has mobilized global support for its mission. To date, COVAX has shipped over 80 million COVID-19 vaccines to 129 participants. This will only grow and will only get larger.
The rules-based system is essential to helping us accomplish together what no one country can accomplish alone. The importance of strong multilateral institutions and of the UN system cannot be overemphasized.
An important part of this is to support countries that have not been able to mount the economic response that our own government has led here in Canada. Many of the world’s developing countries have been hit with what can only be described as a perfect storm scenario, whereby they are buried under high levels of debt service payment combined with a sudden drop in revenue from tourism, manufacturing, remittances from overseas or otherwise. This has meant many low- or middle-income countries have quickly become no-income countries. This is the challenge we are now facing.
That’s why it was so important that our Prime Minister joined his counterpart from Jamaica and the UN Secretary-General in leading the Financing for the Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond Initiative, which focused on finding solutions for a large scale, coordinated and comprehensive multilateral response to the COVID-19 emergency, building on existing commitments and engagements.
If I may add a personal word here, Mr. Chair. I came to New York in August when the city itself was in the middle of lockdown. I was really impressed with what the financing for development meant to the UN system and what I think, frankly, if I may be immodest, what it meant to the world. We showed a nimbleness, an ability to respond and a determination to break down barriers between different institutions. I have to say that I am extremely proud of my predecessor, Marc-André Blanchard, and I’m frankly proud of everything we’ve been able to do since that time to continue to keep these issues at the focus of what the global system is doing. We’re still doing it.
We need to understand that political will is what is required. Senators, we know intellectually, because we say it all the time, that no one is safe until everyone is safe. However, we also have to admit that the actions of the international community have not yet lived up to this motto. Notice I say “not yet,” because I believe the glass is partly full, and that’s how we have to see it.
What are we doing? Well, we’re working closely with our international —
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Rae, the five minutes for opening comments are up.
Mr. Rae: Okay.
The Deputy Chair: We’ll go to questions. I hope, in the questions, you can articulate the points on what you are doing.
Mr. Rae: I will absolutely do that.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you so much, ambassador. Before I open the floor up to questions, I remind senators to use the raise hand function in order to be added to the list of questioners, which the clerk, Gaëtane Lemay, will manage. I also want to inform members that for this portion of the meeting, you will have a maximum of four minutes for the first round. This includes questions and answers.
Therefore, members and witnesses, please be concise in your questions and responses. The clerk will make a hand signal to indicate that time is up. I’d ask you to pay attention to that, and I, of course, will intervene as appropriate.
Senator Ngo: Thank you for your participation. In your report to the Prime Minister on humanitarian and refugee issues, you said that Canada needs to allocate additional resources in support of the global COVID-19 response. As part of the broader effort by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to respond to the global social, economic and financial crisis, more international assistance and humanitarian funding will be needed to support these responses over the coming years.
The challenge is, as you know, that the government has accumulated more than half a trillion dollars, and the provincial and municipal governments have accumulated additional sums. We understand why you recommend additional resources, but the obvious challenge is where the money is coming from. As you often state, the money can be found and what tradeoffs do you see when we’re talking about this urgent domestic priority?
Mr. Rae: I’m pleased to say, senator, the government has responded to my urging, both on the health side, where we’ve done an extraordinary amount allocating dollars to COVAX and going beyond that, and on the humanitarian side, where we increased our humanitarian and development response.
When you ask me what the tradeoffs are, I would say we need to see our international commitments as being critically important for Canada’s own prosperity and Canada’s own health protection. It’s a false equivalence to say, “Oh, we’re doing that for someone else, so we’re not doing it for ourselves,” or “If we give it to another country, that means we can’t give it to our own citizens.” We have to look at our global responsibilities as part of our national budgets. We have to understand that we will only become more prosperous once the whole world is out of this mess we’re in. If we see this as a zero-sum game, which is, respectfully, the premise of your question, we’re missing the point. This is not a zero-sum game. We need to have a global perspective to deal with national problems. That’s the lesson of COVID-19. It’s very clear.
Senator Ngo: Thank you, ambassador. You recently made the following comments about the United Nations:
It is not a nimble institution. It’s lumbering and hard to move without consensus. It’s very difficult for things to happen quickly there.
Given the challenges you have outlined that the world is facing, are you optimistic that the UN as an institution is the right institution to address them?
Mr. Rae: I think it’s one of them. Frankly, in many respects, it’s the main one, but it’s certainly not the only one.
Going back to my earlier statement when I talked about nimbleness, did we wait for the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council? No. We didn’t wait for that to happen. We created the Group of Friends on SDG Financing together with Jamaica and with the UN Secretary-General. It was the first time we had a three-way partnership, led by the heads of government — I was pleased to represent that effort here in New York — and it worked. It actually worked in generating options, plans and ideas. It got a debate going within the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and all the other global institutions, and it put the UN at the centre of that conversation. I think Canada demonstrated remarkable leadership in that, and we continue to do so.
The point is we have to learn how to use these institutions. We can’t just rely on the formal structures to do it. We need to create more nimble ways of responding. That’s what Canada is trying to do. COVAX is a new institution. We helped to create it. We were one of the founding funders of COVAX. It’s a good idea, and it’s going to work much better as time unfolds. These are ways to create new methods of responding, not just by waiting for these formal institutions to pass a resolution. We can’t afford to take that approach.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you, ambassador, for being here with us today.
My question focuses on Canada’s work with its partners in the international community to ensure that people in conflict settings are able to obtain vaccines safely. Given the fact that there are multiple factors that pose challenges to building confidence in vaccine recipients in conflict settings, I’m wondering what work Canada is doing in that regard. Thank you.
Mr. Rae: We’re active in working with the institutions on the ground in areas of conflict, providing them financial support and doing everything we can to make sure that the most vulnerable people in these parts of the world are actually getting access to the vaccine. We’re also working with institutions like the UNHCR, when people are in refugee camps or UNICEF, which has a lot of strength on the ground in terms of making sure that younger people get access to the vaccine.
That’s a significant part of what, I think, is rightly called our feminist foreign policy, because the purpose of the feminist foreign policy is to focus on the most vulnerable, particularly in our aid programs but also in our conflict-prevention programs. That is uppermost in our minds as we look at how to deliver the money we need to get to those places to physically distribute the vaccine.
Senator Ravalia: My final question focuses on how aid is distributed. Are we ensuring that most of the aid is going through non-governmental organizations and international aid agencies, as opposed to directly to government coffers, given the vulnerability of states that have autocratic or other institutional powers that limit the distribution of vaccines to people who really need them?
Mr. Rae: Absolutely. As a general matter, we do not give money to governments. We give money to multilateral agencies and to NGOs. That’s how we distribute it. We watch carefully where the money goes, and we want to make sure it gets to the people who need it. We don’t give a lot of state-to-state aid. That’s not what we do.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you, ambassador.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you for being here, ambassador, officials and all of our guests this morning.
My question concerns what you’re observing and sensing as the mood internationally when it comes to globalization and multilateralism. The last year saw closed borders, a degree of vaccine protectionism and some loggerheads at the World Health Organization when it came to the origins of COVID-19 and other aspects of its reactions to the pandemic.
I have some concern that there’s been possible damage to the multilateral system that a mid-sized country like Canada relies on. From your seat at the UN, what are your observations or opinions? Are our traditional allies ready to get back to business as usual — back better — when it comes to trade and international cooperation, or is there an underlying worry that we might see some pulling back from globalization as we start to emerge from this crisis?
Mr. Rae: That’s an excellent question, and I’ll try to be brief. There are a couple of critical issues forcing us to come together. One is COVID-19. The other is climate change. Another is emerging, which is extremely significant, and that is the digital divide — the fact that some of us have access to this technology and billions of people do not. These things are not artificial. That’s one of the things that’s forcing people to recommit and to re-engage.
Has the system been wounded? Absolutely. Are the wounds fatal? I don’t think so. I believe we’re healing from some of them. I hope we’ll see — in terms of the G7 meetings, the G20 meetings, the COP26 meeting in Glasgow dealing with climate change — a more positive spirit of the steps we need to take and things we need to do together to get through this. But we’re not going to get through this unless we create stronger multilateral responses. That’s an essential feature of our future.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you. I will ask a question I thought of as you were speaking. Dressed down, it’s almost like, Mr. Ambassador, how are you doing? Really what I’m wondering about, in the time you have entered the UN, frankly, the building, the presence, the New York opportunities when we bring people from the world together, there is a facility there that’s aspiring and inspiring and it’s an amazing think tank. When the pandemic started, I was on my way there for four days of what I was very exited about in the way of international meetings.
I’m wondering from your perspective, coming into this role, what you think and see the UN represents in New York and what you might see as some surprises or opportunities as we do move forward from the times that we’re in right now?
Mr. Rae: The UN is one of those institutions that doesn’t really work in theory, but it actually does work in practice. Many healthy things have been happening on the ground. The UN has been able to deliver services perhaps more effectively than even they felt was possible. That is extremely positive.
The continuing challenges we have at the Security Council are in terms of the frozen nature of that institution on many issues. The fact that we haven’t been able to have many in-person meetings because the impact of COVID-19 has obviously made our lives as challenging as it has made your lives, and not easy. We’re seeing that start to change. The thing for me is whether this be a place of creativity and get people to think in a more innovative way of how to do things.
Canadians are great pragmatists. How have we succeeded internationally diplomatically? It’s by being creative and innovative. We’ve shown that in New York in the last couple of years, as I’ve tried to point out. These are things we’ve demonstrated can be done and I’m positive about that.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you, ambassador, for being with us today. You referenced refugees briefly in your remarks. I’d like to know from you about the penetration of COVID in refugee camps, in particular Cox’s Bazar and places in Colombia. My reading is that in Cox’s Bazar, with 900,00 refugees, not a single needle has gone into an arm. Is that correct? What needs to be done? What can the UN or Canada do?
Mr. Rae: I don’t know whether Josh can answer the question exactly. I believe it would be fair to say that not many needles have gone into arms in Cox’s Bazar, which is extremely troubling and problematic, but it’s something we’re trying to address along with a number of other donors.
With the pandemic wave in India that we’ve seen in the last two months, the spreading of that wave in the neighbourhood will be significant and deeply troubling. This is one of the reasons why I think it is really urgent that we increase our international efforts to get vaccines into other countries. That’s absolutely essential. The Delta variant, as it’s called, is now widespread and it’s something that is having an extremely negative impact. It’s just not good. That’s all I can say.
Joshua Tabah, Director General, Health and Nutrition, Global Affairs Canada: Senator Omidvar, I will note that we share your concern and are working with operational partners in Bangladesh and in Colombia to help them develop their plans further so when COVAX has sufficient supply to meet the expectations we have set through the humanitarian buffer, those doses will roll out effectively to the populations in need in those camps.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you, Mr. Tabah.
Ambassador, you referenced that the UN as a multilateral institution must be more creative and nimble in working with other multilateral institutions. There is a call out for waiving the TRIPS requirements and obviously that rests with the WHO. Canada has not yet taken a stand on this. In your view, is such a waiver the right way to get needles into arms?
Mr. Rae: Canada is keen to get to a discussion at the WTO about this. From what I understand of our position, we have never said we were opposed to the TRIPS waiver. What we need to understand is that the TRIPS waiver can only be part of a broad range of things that need to happen to increase production.
COVAX is great, but COVAX isn’t a producer. COVAX is a distributor, it’s a purchaser and it distributes. This, again, is where we’re going to need to be creative and Canada needs to be very constructive in these instructions. We need to be more creative about how we get companies to work and partner more effectively together, and how we can see an increase in production.
I know some of these issues will be addressed and discussed at the G7 meeting coming up, and they will also be discussed at the G20 meetings that are also coming up. I’ve talked to the secretariat about these questions, about how we need to be more creative about getting the private sector working together.
Senator Housakos: Welcome, Mr. Ambassador, to our committee. Prior to being appointed ambassador, you served as the Special Envoy on humanitarian and refugee issues of the Prime Minister. In that capacity, you produced a report for the Prime Minister in which you noted that the current global crisis requires a global response. You pointed specifically to the situation coming out of World War II, where Canada joined with other nations to try and establish a new international architecture. But in the latter 1940s and 1950s, many of the efforts in the UN failed because of the onset of the Cold War. It meant that Canada and other Western nations had to work together outside of the parameters of the UN because of divisions within the UN.
I want to get your perspective on the situation today. We seem to be entering a new Cold War era, this time with China. In that regard, how do you think that will impact the global response? What would be your advice on that?
Mr. Rae: Senator, when you think about it, what we’ve done in the years since 1945 has been quite remarkable, in that we have not put all our eggs in one basket as a country. We created NATO and other institutions, we’re still an active member of the Commonwealth, La Francophonie. You go down the list and Canada is part of almost any international network and that’s my definition of multilateralism. It’s not just the UN, it’s how we function as a country that depends on partnerships.
With respect to China, the challenges the world faces with a country that has an enormous economic role to play, but it nevertheless is an intensely authoritarian country, not even remotely democratic, and seeing a greater recentralization of political control at the heart of the country, we can’t address the issues that we face dealing with China — the two Michaels and other situations which are very difficult — if we just do it alone. We are working actively with our partners in making sure that we express solidarity.
The Prime Minister of Australia was making that point in a speech he gave this week in the U.K. He’s joining the G7 discussions.
We need to express strong solidarity. We need to use the WTO effectively to deal with where we think China is not treating countries fairly, as they single out countries one by one with trade pressures and so on.
Yes, we have to work creatively together. I think we are doing that.
Senator Housakos: I have a question with regards to COVID-19, ambassador. Of course, Canada has had its challenges in dealing with COVID-19. In the process, we’ve racked up unprecedented debt and deficits. We know that if we’re really going to get to the finish line, this is a global problem and pandemic. Underdeveloped countries are going to look to G7 nations like Canada to provide assistance and support.
Are you optimistic that we will be able to participate, given the ever-growing debt and deficit in this country? What choices do we as Canadians have in participating in what I think is going to be an important global effort?
Mr. Rae: I think we can do it. If you look at comparative numbers — our situation compared to all the other countries in the world — we’re in a position to participate fully in what I think is a very necessary international action that will benefit Canada. We should see what we’re doing as an investment that will benefit us, because the safer, healthier and more prosperous world we will get will help us a lot when we get there.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, ambassador.
Senator Coyle: Welcome, ambassador. It is wonderful to have you and the senior officials from Global Affairs Canada at this committee.
My question is with regard to Agenda 2030, nine years out. We know that, prior to the COVID pandemic, quite a few countries had made progress toward meeting the 2017 sustainable development goals. Can you tell us where we are now and what the global community will need to do to ensure we do not lose momentum completely, given the big setbacks with COVID-19?
Mr. Rae: Thank you. We were already behind the eight ball before COVID came. We made some progress but not as much as we had hoped to. COVID has knocked everybody off their game. We need to understand that this is a huge setback for the global economy and global health care. But how long these linger — how the length of the economic tail of COVID-19 is — is up to us. It is up to the wealthier countries, in particular, to lead the way and say that we need to rebuild.
One of the great post-1945 things we did was the Marshall Plan. Led by the United States, there was a commitment to rebuilding the entire economy of western Europe. Now we have an even bigger task ahead of us, which is rebuilding the economy of the world. Connected to that economy are the sustainable development goals. This is all connected.
It is really up to us, senator. It is up to Canadians, Americans and everybody else to decide: Are we ready to do this, or are we just going to think small? If we think small, it will be very, very bad news for the global economy, global health care, global conflict and all the other things that we know are related to each other.
We have the choice: Are we going to build back together, or are we going to fall back together? That’s the choice we are facing.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much, Ambassador Rae. Could you speak specifically to some concrete actions Canada could take to help get us back on track, given how far back we already were and how much further back we are now?
Mr. Rae: The first thing we need to do is get the world vaccinated. That’s going to be a major effort. We have to do it as quickly as possible. We don’t have enough production, so we have to assist in production. We don’t have good enough distribution, so we have to help in that. That’s the first task.
The second task is to look at other needs that are in place — infrastructure needs and so on — that will help us do it in a way that’s truly sustainable.
Finally — and when I say this, I make some colleagues in the department a little edgy when I do — I don’t think we can retreat from the better place we have arrived at in terms of our own contributions. If we were to retreat the way some countries have done, I think it would set us back considerably, and I think it would give a signal to other countries that, “Well, Canadians are doing less; it’s a chance for us to do less.” We have to stay the course, because I do think it is in our own interests to do that.
We have to stop seeing this as charity or doing things for other people. In doing things for other people in this circumstance, we are actually doing things for ourselves.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, ambassador.
Senator Boniface: Welcome, ambassador. Congratulations on your post in New York. I am envious of being in New York and of the work you will do.
I had the joy of working at the UN prior to coming to the Senate, so I know the environment in which you work in terms of the speed with which things move.
No doubt, the vaccine is a major issue worldwide. Is the UN looking at all the issues that flow from what is essentially instability worldwide? I am in particular thinking of organized crime, which has been able to be quite nimble through COVID-19. I am wondering whether discussions are taking place there and whether Canada has been encouraging that discussion for the sake of countries that might find themselves more unstable than they were prior to the pandemic. Thank you.
Mr. Rae: It is good to see you, Gwen, if I may. You are well remembered here, as everywhere else. It is great to see you in your new post.
The answer is, yes, people are aware, absolutely. Regarding a question I got from a senator on refugees, refugee camps become centres of human trafficking, drug transportation and everything else. There are major issues associated with the deterioration of states.
We will be looking at a number of failed states in the not-too-distant future. We will be looking at increased levels of conflict, unfortunately. We see that all over the place.
Is it something the UN thinks about? Yes. The member states think about it, the secretariat thinks about it and the UNDP thinks about it. We will need stronger efforts on fighting crime and fighting the human consequences of what is happening.
We just need to pull all these things together. You look at the elements — the health crisis, the social crisis, the economic crisis — and with your background in policing, you know what that means. It means we end up with more crime and more bad things happening to people who are very vulnerable.
Again, to go back to the Feminist International Assistance Policy, it’s important to understand that the women of the world are in the front line when it comes to corruption, crime and exploitation, in ways that are not good, often because they are so vulnerable. We have to see these things as being very well integrated.
I would say the mood in New York is one of great concern. The real concern is whether enough people are listening out there, or do they think that, if they solve their own problems — as we may be on the verge of doing in terms of vaccinating sufficient numbers of people in Canada, the United States, the U.K. and other countries — does that mean everybody will say it’s time to relax and go back to normal? The new normal is very different from the old normal. We are not going back to anything. We have to go forward and face the human consequences that you described.
Senator Boniface: My next question swings to DPKO. From a peacekeeping operations perspective, is that one area you think will look for an increase in terms of operations throughout the world?
Mr. Rae: Yes, I do. I can’t give a short answer. I know Senator Harder wants me to, so the short answer is “yes.”
The Deputy Chair: Then we can go to the second round.
Mr. Rae: You’re on my case, Peter. It’s okay.
The Deputy Chair: I will put Senator Boniface on the list. For second round, I have Senators Omidvar, Deacon and Boniface. Before I call on Senator Omidvar, I wonder if I might ask a question. Ambassador, with the G7 starting, what will make you happy with a G7 conclusion?
Mr. Rae: Well, I think a couple of things. One is that I hope we can reach some agreements that will signal that the G7 is back in a position of leadership and that people will be constructive on things like climate change and climate finance. On the vaccine question, I think we’ve seen the President’s announcement. There will be a lot of announcements coming out before this thing starts on Sunday.
I’m hoping that our own government will have some positive announcements to make to indicate what we’re prepared to do but also the new steps that can be taken.
I’m actually quite optimistic about the positivity that I’m hearing about and feeling in talking. I just came off a broadcast with some other people from different countries being interviewed by the BBC. I think that there is a better mood about how to move forward. I’m hoping that we can make some progress. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to it, as I am to the G20. There are going to be other countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others in there. It’s going to be difficult, but I think there are some positive things we can do.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you, Ambassador. My question is about money, and it has two parts. One is about donations by Canadians to COVID relief overseas. The second is about remittances. As you know and appreciate, Canadians are generous people. Many have been providing donations to NGOs and services overseas in developing and other countries. Do you believe the Government of Canada should match these donations in the same way they have matched donations in times of other crises, most recently when Canada matched donations to Lebanon as a result of the Beirut explosion?
My second question is about something you referred to in your remarks, which is the drop in remittances. We know that remittances to certain jurisdictions exceed the amount of foreign aid we may be giving. These have dried up. Can you describe to us the impact of this on countries that have been affected by the pandemic?
Mr. Rae: On the first one, I would just say that I would not be unhappy if the government said they wanted to look at what impact this kind of incentivization of greater personal donations would be. I would not be unhappy with that at all.
On the second one, it is interesting. The remittance thing is very uneven. A lot of people were expecting that, globally, this would be a big problem. If people who are listening don’t know what a remittance is, when people work in other countries, they often send money back home. First of all, we have to take steps to make sure we’re not allowing the banks and other financial institutions to charge too much to let that happen. We have to deal with some of those financial barriers to continuing with remittances. We also have to understand something that I said in my opening talk. The ambassador from Fiji is the one who gave me this line. He said, “We have gone from being a middle-income country to being a no-income country.” So much of what Fiji has is based on two things. One is remittances and the other is tourism. When those two things just go flat, it becomes very hard.
But there are places like Haiti, for example, where the Haitian community in Canada, the United States, France and elsewhere is actually a very stable diaspora — very well-employed, hard-working people. They are continuing to send a lot of money back home. The same thing is true for a lot of people who come to the United States or to Canada. They are sending money back. But where you have foreign workers like, for example, foreign workers working in the Gulf — from Bangladesh and a whole bunch of other countries — not only are the remittances stopping, but those workers are being forced back to their countries. When they go back, they have nothing to do. For a country like Bangladesh, the country is being asked to support people who were previously supporting their families and the government of Bangladesh. It is changing the political dynamic in ways we can understand. The global economy is a very complex thing.
The informal economies that are such an important part of how countries work in many parts of the world are completely devastated by lockdown and by people simply not being able to move out of their countries. These things tend to build up, and then we get explosions. I think that’s where a lot of observers are concerned about what happens to peace and stability when these significant lifelines are taken away. It is a big problem.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, ambassador.
Senator M. Deacon: My first question was about success at the G7, so thank you, Chair, for asking that question.
Ambassador, I would like to come back to something you said a few moments ago. You were listing what we do moving forward. Of course, the first priority is ensuring the world is vaccinated. Then you talked about sustainable structures and not retreating from the better place that we’ve gotten to. I just want to ask if you could unpack that and give us a little more detail, particularly for those who might be observing the meeting this morning.
Mr. Rae: Let’s look at it. First of all, vaccinating the whole world is a huge, huge project. However, we can do it if we have the willingness to think about what we need. Well, we need enough supply. Then we need to support the distribution. We need to make sure it’s getting to places that require particular cultural and other sensitivities in order to be effective. Look at the challenges we are facing in getting all of Canadians vaccinated. There are some people who don’t want to be vaccinated; others can’t get it quickly enough. On a global scale, the population of the world is well over 8 billion now. We have to think about how that gets done. That’s an easy thing to say, but not easy to do.
For Canadians, we need to understand that we have increased the level of international engagement or assistance, in a variety of ways, by about $2.5 billion. This is a significant increase from where we were before. However, if we think that this is just a one-off — that we’ll do that and we won’t do any more — what I was trying to suggest in my responses to Senators Ngo and Housakos was that we have to see this as an integral part of our budgets. We have to understand that it’s not doing something for somebody else. It’s doing something for us. That means engaging in what is going to be the reconstruction of a lot of economies. A number of countries are going to go, effectively, into bankruptcy. They will go into what they call refinancing — restructuring — of their whole public sector. It is a painful exercise. We know that from what we see of the depression in our own lives. Many countries are going into deep depressions.
We have to figure out globally how to respond to that in a way that’s actually going to encourage those countries to become more productive. Having a productive country is better than having a bankrupt country. Having countries that are contributing to the world economy is important. I think we can do it. I think we are up to it. We don’t do it alone. We don’t do it by ourselves. We do it in a way that’s responsible. We don’t just throw money at the problem. However, we have to recognize that there are going to be more demands on all of us to contribute than there have been before. That’s not a bad thing.
I think it was the first mayor of Toronto William Lyon Mackenzie who said, “Charity doesn’t stop at the front door.” Neither does justice. We should no longer see these things as simply being nice to other people. We are actually being nice to ourselves when we do these things.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
Senator Boniface: Ambassador, I thought I would give you an opportunity to finish your answer on peacekeeping.
I am always perplexed about people’s perception of peacekeeping versus what Canada’s contribution actually is and what that effort is. I am wondering, given our goal as we move into the future, what is your sense of what role that may play?
Mr. Rae: Peacekeeping is changing. We did peacekeeping in Korea. It wasn’t called peacekeeping, but we sent a lot of soldiers who lost their lives in the conflict in Korea. We then had the experience of peacekeepers in the Suez, where effectively we were keeping a peace. We were policing a truce. We’ve done that in Cyprus. We have done that in other places.
That may be the picture in some people’s heads, but when you look at the various peacekeeping missions that we had, most of them in Africa, they are big operations. They involve thousands of troops, and there is no peace to keep. We are dealing with conflict, with terrorism, with various forms of violence which are particularly affecting women and children, and UN troops are involved.
Canada is providing more training, logistical and financial support to that than ever before, but we’re not providing that many troops. Although, we do have a number of police officers who are doing a lot of really important work. We did very important work in Haiti, for example, over many, many years on the policing side. We are also doing it in a way that makes it clear that women are as much a part of our police and military presence as men.
So we are looking at that, and we are constantly looking at where we could play a role. Where could we play a bigger role in training, for example? Where could we play a bigger role in leadership positions? That’s something that we do here at the mission quite regularly in our conversations with the UN, with DND and with Global Affairs Canada, or GAC, and with the folks in Ottawa.
That, I think, will continue to be an ongoing discussion about how we go forward in this area. It is not the same as it was. It is not the picture of the soldier in the blue beret who is just providing a police service to keep two fighting parties from going at each other. It is not like being a referee anymore. It is much, much more complicated. That is what we’re wrestling with when we look at where our troops can be deployed.
Our troops are deployed in many parts of the world. What they do is not necessarily under the heading of the UN. In Latvia, for example, a major contingency of our troops are protecting the security of Latvia in the face of being on the border with Russia. We need to be there; we are doing that with NATO. We are doing things with other countries that are done bilaterally. We are active. We are just active in different ways at different times.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, ambassador. I’d like you to now maybe turn the focus to climate. You, yourself, have mentioned a couple of times but haven’t had a chance to go into much detail. We have COP26 coming up in November in Glasgow; it’s a year late, so actually two years of work should be going into that effort.
Could you speak about Canada and the leadership role you hope or expect to see Canada play, both in terms of its domestic commitments that it will be bringing to COP26, what it will do with its peers — countries, G7 and others, peers — and the advantages of working together at COP26?
Third, what is the role that Canada can play in helping others who are finding it very difficult to get to the table and meet climate commitments because they are no-income countries or they have really been hit hard? Can you speak about those three things for us?
Mr. Rae: Yes. Very briefly. Those are all the elements, right? It is what we do. Those decisions on targets and how quickly one reaches targets, those are decisions that are beyond my pay grade. But they are very important because, unless we walk the talk, then we’re in trouble, and our credibility is diminished.
The other factors are very important. One of them is ensuring that countries, particularly poorer countries, actually have the financial capacity to make the investments that will assist them to adapt, that will mitigate their emissions, if any, but more realistically, help them to adapt to the existing impacts of climate change.
Because all the targets we talk about are 2050, sometimes people think, well, we have to do something before that date. Climate change is happening right now. Climate change is not a future issue; it is a present issue. We have to do more to help countries adapt to the impact that climate change is having on them.
A number of countries are at risk of disappearing — island states. Small island states are threatened by rising sea levels and will be immediately affected. We need a strategy to help them, together with others. We need a strategy that will effectively help us to reduce emissions in a significant way, sufficiently quickly to send signals to the market.
One of the things that we’re up against — and here I’m really quoting Mark Carney, but I just want to stress that I think he is absolutely right on this one point. He says if governments are not able to show credibility in meeting their own targets, the private sector will not believe them. The market is going to be a significant part of the solution to this problem, and the only way we can get the market to respond is if the market respects the public decisions that governments are announcing. If you announce targets and then don’t meet them, the market will not respond well.
We really have to work together, governments, rich and poor, and companies of all sizes, right across the board. We also have to take into account that our sustainable development goals are about sustainable development. Both words are important and equal sides of the equation. We are not asking countries to choose poverty. We need to take, as much as we can, a message of increasing prosperity, increasing potential growth, but done in a way that’s sustainable and doesn’t rob from future generations. That’s the key thing.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, ambassador. That brings this panel to a close. Ambassador, I want to thank you and the officials who have worked with you for appearing here today, as well as for the ongoing work that you do. Good luck. We will all be hoping for the best out of the G7 and the G20 and other fora in the months ahead. Thank you again.
Mr. Rae: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I hope that it will be possible for our next meeting to be in person. I look forward to that opportunity.
The Deputy Chair: That would be great.
Honourable senators, we will now transition to our next panel. First, from Plan International Canada, we welcome Nadine Grant, Vice-President, International Programs and Business Development. We also welcome two academics, Valerie Percival, Associate Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs here at Carleton University; and Stephen Brown, Professor, School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.
Welcome to all of you and thank you for being with us. Ms. Grant, Professor Percival, and Professor Brown, you each have five minutes to make your opening statements.
Why don’t we begin with you, Ms. Grant? Over to you.
Nadine Grant, Vice-President, International Programs and Business Development, Plan International Canada: Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to set back decades of progress for girls’ rights and exacerbates pre-existing inequalities. At the same time, as Ambassador Rae noted, we are now witnessing overlapping global crises, including COVID-19, climate change and protracted crises.
This year, an estimated 117 million children will need humanitarian assistance, which is a 40% increase from 2020. According to UN Women, the pandemic has exponentially increased levels of sexual and gender-based violence. An additional four million girls will be married in the next two years as a result of the pandemic. An additional 11 million girls may never go back to school. Women and girls are taking on additional unpaid care work at home due to school closures. Growing food insecurity in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel are putting more children, and especially girls, at unprecedented levels of risk.
In this context, Plan International has redoubled its humanitarian and development efforts to protect the rights of girls in crisis. Plan International launched a campaign — Stop the Setback — aimed at stopping the reversal of women and girls’ rights.
Working with our local partners, we have reached over 80 million people since last March. Our focus is on those most truly left behind, and we promote their voice at the table.
Canadian leadership and assistance, aligned with Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, is needed now more than ever. We need to accelerate, not reduce, our investments in addressing COVID-19 everywhere with a focus on three urgent issues: one, strengthening health systems and public health measures and ensuring last mile coverage including vaccine equity; two, ensuring education systems are rebuilt and made more resilient, context specific and gender responsive so that a generation of children do not fall through the cracks; and three, supports for those most vulnerable populations facing multiple crises, conflict, food insecurity, displacement and COVID-19.
Turning to health, as we learned here in Canada, to combat the pandemic, we need to address both the direct public health needs — PPE, vaccines, treatment and handwashing, for example — as well as strengthen gender-responsive health systems to ensure help reaches the poorest and the most vulnerable.
The Canadian government made an unprecedented commitment to women, children and adolescents’ health of $1.4 billion annually to 2030, which includes SRHR and health system strengthening. Canada should continue to be a leading voice and supporter to ensure health systems are resilient, well prepared to combat COVID-19, and address systemic barriers and biases faced by women, youth, LGBTQI communities, Indigenous populations, and those in remote areas.
Turning to education, with school closures comes isolation, increased risk of violence, early marriage, and learning losses. Plan International’s study of girls in 14 countries revealed that it was the loss of education which was their most profound impact of COVID-19. The Canadian government must increase its support for more inclusive, resilient and gender responsive education systems. Solutions for helping girls to catch up, return, learn and thrive in school are possible, but require political will. We ask that the Government of Canada endorse and finance the G7 Declaration on Girls’ Education and commit to helping 40 million more girls in low-income countries enroll in school by 2026.
Finally, turning to food security, according to the UN, there is evidence of increase in violent conflict and human rights abuse since the onset of COVID-19, while global food insecurity has increased by 87% in the past year. Food insecurity is threatening an already complex emergency in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere. The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief said:
Women and girls are being hit hardest.
They are the first to miss meals – and they represent 70 per cent of the world’s hungry.
These complex emergencies don’t fit nicely into our development architecture of development, peace building or humanitarian buckets. Global Affairs Canada needs to commit to address these looming crises and be more nimble in its approach.
We have four recommendations for the Government of Canada: One, be a leading voice and supporter of global vaccine equity, including investments in local production of vaccines; implementation of the TRIPS waiver; technology transfer; and support for equitable access. These investments should be above and beyond ODA.
Two, endorse and fund the G7 Girls’ Education Declaration.
Three, meet the $1.4-billion per year commitment to health system strengthening and SRHR immediately and ensure those investments reach those most in need.
Four, support predictable funding for the FIAP and response to COVID-19, by relaxing CRA direction and control rules, adopting more nimble instruments, and ensuring local organizations and governments are empowered.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Your time is up, and I’m sure we’ll come back to those issues in questions. Professor Percival, please begin.
Valerie Percival, Associate Professor, Carleton University, as an individual: Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and to share my views on the global dimensions of COVID-19 and Canada’s response.
I’m going to take a bit of a higher view of the global dimensions of COVID.
A recent article in Foreign Affairs labelled COVID-19 the “forever virus.” Its mutations threaten the long-term efficacy of our vaccination programs, make COVID more dangerous and its global impacts more consequential. As we’ve heard, the pandemic has devastated economies and thrown tens of millions into poverty. It reversed hard-won development gains; the poor and marginalized will continue to be the most affected.
Politically, governments are using COVID as a cover for increased repression, and China and Russia are strategically using vaccines as leverage to achieve their foreign policy objectives.
Instead of bending towards justice, the arc of human progress threatens to begin a downward trajectory to a world with more inequity, repression, violence and conflict.
We can bear witness to this downward spiral from the perceived safety of our vaccinated cocoons, or we can try to stop it. This is really a defining moment, and such defining moments require leadership. Canada is falling short.
Health used to be a marginal component of foreign policy. The pandemic has catapulted it to the top of the foreign policy agenda of every country around the world. Yet Canada is ill-equipped to effectively engage and respond. Yes, Canada remains a reliable partner in multilateral initiatives; it signs cheques and communiqués. Yet, there are few signals we are fully aware of the threats posed by the global dimensions of COVID and are prepared to galvanize an appropriate response.
How do we move forward? First, we need to articulate Canada’s foreign policy vision in the age of COVID. What kind of world do we want to emerge from the COVID pandemic? What is Canada’s place in that world? What is the role for Canadian foreign policy to help achieve that vision?
This pandemic has revealed in stark terms our deep interdependence. It has shown how inequities within countries and around the world ultimately make us more vulnerable, diminish us and reduce our shared potential. Yet it is ironic that our foreign policy seems to reflect a narrow view of Canadian self-interests. Actions by this government suggest its focus is overwhelmingly on a stronger Canada, not Canada contributing to a stronger world.
So COVID is an opportunity for a foreign policy reset to anchor our foreign policy in the vision of a more equitable world where individuals can live in dignity, fulfill their human potential and be as secure as possible from threats of violence, intimidation and repression. Such a vision will serve us well in the challenging years ahead.
Second, we need a transparent public plan to achieve this vision and the ability to implement it. I’m not calling for a foreign policy review; we have no time for that. Instead, we need a foreign policy road map.
Stopping the pandemic must be our first priority. Health must be front and centre of our response. How will we support public health capacities in affected countries and communities, including the rollout of vaccines? Instead of taking vaccines from COVAX, how and when will we share our vaccine supply, and how will we facilitate the productions of vaccines in affected countries?
Structural bureaucratic changes are needed to firmly entrench health within our foreign policy response. In the past, I’ve argued for a global health secretariat at the Privy Council Office. Without this kind of permanent bureaucratic entity, there will not be a powerful actor at the table ensuring that health is centred in our foreign policy response to COVID.
We then need to ensure that our bilateral partnerships and multilateral engagement is able to respond to the devastating social, economic and political impacts of COVID. In short, we need active and effective diplomacy. We need to utilize our diplomats to identify needs and gaps, advocate for affected populations and roll out programs quickly, efficiently, and effectively.
Third, the Canadian government needs to facilitate and deepen its connection with experts. The one bright spot in this pandemic has been the role of knowledge networks. Networks share diverse scientific expertise, research and experiences implementing COVID on the ground. They increase the efficacy of policy, practice and advocacy.
In engaging with these experts, Canada must welcome and encourage criticism and debate as essential to the policy response. The role of the challenge function in avoiding groupthink and promoting effective policy is well established in theory; in practice, not so much. Government officials must be willing to engage with their fiercest critics. With a vision and plan, and by mobilizing networks of expertise, Canada can help turn this critical moment into an historic inflection point, one that utilizes this opportunity to increase global equity and well-being. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Stephen Brown, Professor, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. Since I have only five minutes for my opening comments, I’ll zero in on just two things.
First, our domestic vaccine procurement decisions have negative consequences abroad. Canada has been locking up vaccine supply. We have contracts for five times what we need to vaccinate all Canadians and we’re still trying to get more. Now, this is doing good for a lot of Canadians, but in the context where vaccine supply is a zero-sum game, we are actually indirectly doing harm to other people in other countries by depriving them of access.
To date, only 2% of Africans have been vaccinated with even one dose, and in several countries it is less than 1%. I think I saw yesterday that in Haiti it’s 0%.
COVAX has great potential, but donating more money to COVAX is not a sufficient solution. There aren’t enough supplies for COVAX to spend that money on. They just can’t get the doses, especially since India has stopped exporting. But Canada is refusing to state what it is going to do with what will inevitably be an excess of doses. Many countries will have to wait until next year or even 2023 to carry out mass vaccination.
I am happy to have been vaccinated once and I’m looking forward to my second dose. However, there is something absurd about the fact that I was vaccinated before health care workers in Nepal and Argentina. I don’t know how I would explain to anyone in a developing country why that was right and why I deserve to get that vaccine before vulnerable populations or health care workers.
This will have a boomerang effect on Canada. In the short term it’s great for us, but in the medium and longer term it will prolong the pandemic, impede Canadian travel and investment, and promote the emergence of new variants. All of that is contrary to Canadian self-interest.
Let me make my second point, which follows from the first. This is a point that has been made before, including by Nadine Grant but also by Ambassador Rae.
Expanding global vaccine manufacturing is crucial to beating the virus. We need to share recipes, manufacturing processes, technology and ingredients. To do so, we need to loosen intellectual property rights. We need to do specific things like incentivize voluntary licensing. We need to approve involuntary licensing. That is permitted under Canadian law.
Bolivia has requested that a Canadian company manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine through compulsory licensing. That is currently being reviewed by the Canadian government and that’s the sort of thing that should be approved.
We need to promote a TRIPS waiver, among other things. The world has noticed that Canada is a vaccine stockpiler and has criticized us for it. They’ve noticed that we are obstructionist when it comes to the TRIPS waiver, even after the U.S. came out in favour of that waiver. Canada’s reputation is suffering abroad. It is reducing our credibility and hindering our soft power.
By way of contrast, other countries have already started donating doses, even though they haven’t finished vaccinating their own populations — countries like France, New Zealand and Norway. As my colleague Professor Percival mentioned, other countries — such as China and Russia — are carrying out very active vaccine diplomacy.
It’s not too late for Canada to redeem itself and take a leadership role for the expansion of vaccine production and distribution. This would include, now that the U.S. is on board, helping to convince recalcitrant European countries to loosen the intellectual property regime. I think France is about to announce that they’re in favour of a TRIPS waiver.
Things might feel like they’re getting back to normal here in Canada, but we need to do more to end the global emergency, which will not go away anytime soon.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions and comments.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, professor, and thank you to the panel.
Colleagues, we will now go to the first round of questions. I ask that you use the raise hand function. Again, we will have a four-minute limit for questions and answers. Please indicate to which of our panel members you wish to address your question, or to which ones if it’s more than one.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you, witnesses, for being here with us today.
My question is to Mr. Brown. You talked about the TRIPS waiver. We heard from Ambassador Rae about the TRIPS waiver as well and we asked him some questions about it.
My question is around the efficacy of a TRIPS waiver as opposed to securing local manufacturing capacity. A TRIPS waiver will transfer intellectual property rights, but it won’t do anything for the manufacturing capacity. I wanted to know what your thoughts are on that.
Mr. Brown: I absolutely agree that the TRIPS waiver by itself won’t solve everything, but it is one important step and one that will permit others — building more capacity to manufacture, producing more needles, things like that. Russia is currently helping to build factories in Brazil and Argentina to produce the Sputnik V vaccine. We can do more things like that in collaboration with the TRIPS waiver.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you. I’m happy to hear that we’re not razor-like focused on one intervention that may not be the complete intervention.
I want to pivot to Professor Percival or Ms. Grant, as the case may be. I’m going to cite something from a May 2021 World Bank report that talks about the cost of remittances. We just heard from Ambassador Rae that remittances are another way by which we get aid or resources to other parts of the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of sending $200 is 8.2%. As you can imagine, that leaches a whole lot of money away through this kind of informal way. Do you think the time has come for the world order to think of another institution — be it the World Bank or the IMF — to facilitate the transfer of money from Canadians to other people in the world?
Ms. Percival: Thank you very much for that question. Yes, I believe that it would be a very important initiative to reduce the costs of remittances. At one point I had a student who looked into corporate earnings of Western Union and found that it was one of the highest-earning companies globally in a certain time period. One of the reasons for that was that it secured profits on the backs of people who were sending money to their families. I think that definitely it’s something we need to address.
Ms. Grant: I agree that remittances are an important part of how families in Canada and the rest of the world send back money. I don’t know the finer points on the issue of remittances, but it is quite a high ratio, particularly given that many families that are sending their money overseas are themselves struggling. If there were a coordinated effort to reduce that high fee, it would be very much welcomed.
Senator Omidvar: People have mused about using cryptocurrency as a way to facilitate the transfer of funds from person to person without the intermediary costs. Any thoughts on that?
Ms. Grant: It’s not my area of expertise, but I think there should be more research into options. I can’t say beyond that. I’m afraid it’s not my area of expertise. I hand it over to the other speakers.
Ms. Percival: I don’t know anything about cryptocurrency, so I will defer that question. But I think that exploring different options makes a lot of sense.
Senator Ngo: Thank you to all of you for participating in these questions.
My question is for Ms. Percival. You have been highly critical of Canada’s COVID-19 response. Last October, you wrote that
. . . missteps and mismanagement plagued the response, which was underpinned by an overconfidence in flawed institutions and a narrow group of experts.
You have spoken about acute structural flaws, overreliance on the World Health Organization’s officials, and an unprepared and weak public health agency. When we compare our response to other countries such as Israel, New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan, the gaps are even more apparent.
Can you explain the root causes of where we went wrong and where we should look, in terms of the responses of other countries, as we consider how to fix things for the future?
Ms. Percival: Well, that’s a very big question. Thank you very much for that.
I think in terms of where we went wrong, I would start with the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada and its explicit focus on a domestic mandate, rather than effectively incorporating global health in both the mandate of the institution and the mandate letters that are issued to the ministers. What this did was make bureaucrats have to justify any kind of global health activity from a domestic lens. I think that was challenging. This idea also trickled into funding agencies like the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It was notoriously difficult, for many years, to get funding for global health research, particularly the type of social-science research that I do, so I would argue that was a critical misstep.
One of the things I advocated for long before the COVID pandemic was the idea of a global health secretariat within the Privy Council Office. At one time, the idea of having a global health ambassador was floated.
Another challenge we’re seeing in Ottawa is when we have senior officials together talking about foreign policy priorities, if you don’t have somebody at the table with that health expertise, other things edge it out. For example, Vincent Rigby, National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister, gave a speech the other day about national security in the era of COVID, and he didn’t talk about health in the slightest. Instead, we see pet projects, which are important, like democracy building, but we need to focus on health at the highest levels of our bureaucracy.
I would also argue that there’s a reluctance to engage these networks where people who are critical of the government — and I used to work for the government — are able to engage constructively with government officials to share their concerns.
Our G7 presidency didn’t include a health ministerial. I raised this, and it was difficult for me to get any traction on that important issue.
The Deputy Chair: Senator, do you have a supplementary? You have 20 seconds.
Senator Ngo: My question is going to be for the professor again. We have the issue of a potential leak from a Wuhan lab. Do you believe this matter can be effectively investigated without the sincere cooperation of China, and what advice do you give to the government with respect to that investigation?
The Deputy Chair: You’re going to have to be quick because the time is expired, and I don’t want to use Senator Housakos’s time.
Ms. Percival: I think we’re framing the problem wrong. Instead of the lab-leak hypothesis, we should focus on finding patient zero. That will be difficult because so much time as elapsed, but when we find patient zero, we will know whether it was from an animal source or a lab source. Was that quick enough?
The Deputy Chair: Yes. Thank you.
Senator Housakos: My question is also for Professor Percival. Unlike the chair, I’m going to be more benevolent and give you another opportunity to dissect that issue further.
We now have the issue of a potential leak from a Wuhan lab. We know it. It has been pretty well documented. Do you believe this matter can effectively be investigated without sincere and transparent cooperation of China?
What advice, professor, would you give to our government with respect to the investigation of this issue?
Ms. Percival: Thank you very much for that question.
In terms of the lab leak hypothesis, I think it’s important to remember that this is just one of many hypotheses in terms of the origins of COVID-19. It shouldn’t be ruled out, but the only support that seems to exist so far — and it will be interesting to see what U.S. intelligence reports uncover — is just the correlation of COVID-19 starting in the same place that this very sensitive lab existed. Having said that, it’s completely possible that the lab-leak hypothesis is true.
It’s been a year and a half, and I would argue, as I mentioned before, that instead of framing it as the lab-leak hypothesis, which obviously is sensitive to the Chinese government, to frame it instead as the search for patient zero. That would help us understand if it was a lab leak, how and when it occurred and what the mechanism was. However, if it was an animal-human interface, we would learn where and how that occurred. I think that’s critical for policy.
I would take a step back and try to depoliticize it, increase the scientific discourse and talk about where patient zero is, but that will be difficult a year and a half on.
Senator Housakos: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Senator Housakos, do you have a supplementary?
Senator Housakos: I do have one for Professor Brown.
You talked about how multilateral approaches will be critical in resolving the problems generated by the global pandemic. We have to recognize and highlight that we live in an era of disruption, growing nationalism and competition between states for a variety of reasons. How does that undermine the multilateral approach that you’re advocating? Do you have any recommendations on what the best approach is? In other words, if there was less international cooperation, as there seems to be right now, and more conflict, are there other ways to fill those gaps?
Mr. Brown: I know you have four minutes for your question and my answer. I apologize in advance for not doing it justice.
I think there are two issues underlying your question and its answer. One is the question of what to do with the multilateral institutions we have. For example, the WHO is essential. If it didn’t exist, we’d have to reinvent it, but it’s also flawed. There are things we can do to improve it, including giving it more core funding. If I remember correctly, only 18% of its budget is core funding and the rest is discretionary. Some years, states may give more or less, and that’s not a way to run an international organization. Then —
The Deputy Chair: Professor Brown, your time is expired, but perhaps Senator Housakos will want to come back in the second round, because it’s a very important question, and I thank you for it.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to all of our witnesses for your testimony today. My question is for Professor Percival, at least my first question is anyway.
Your third point in your concluding comments was that government should look at the important inflection point we’re in and that it should deepen its connections with experts. This would be a way of helping us through the problems of groupthink, which doesn’t actually advance our thinking. We just get comfortable in thinking the way we think, and think everybody else thinks the way we think.
Could you talk a little bit more how you would see the deepening of connections with experts taking place?
Ms. Percival: Thank you very much for that question. In Canada, unlike in other countries, we don’t have the same kind of tradition of continuous engagement with experts, academics and scientists. There are a bunch of different ways to envision how this would happen.
There are opportunities for formal mechanisms, where you bring people together in a formal setting. That would help facilitate the second mechanism, which would be more informal relationships.
Research clearly shows that the connectivity between experts, both inside and outside government, is really critically important for pushing the policy curve to one that’s more effective.
I’m not sure if that answered your question.
Senator Coyle: It does, to a certain point. Can you give us examples — models perhaps — where you’ve seen this done well in other places, or are there examples even in Canada where there are glimmers of this sort of thing happening?
Ms. Percival: I can give you a personal example from when I worked at the Department of Foreign Affairs on the HIV file. At that time, it was in advance of a high-level meeting on HIV. The department began a series of consultations, and not only did we invite the regular folks, but we made an effort to go out and find academics, particularly academics and experts who were critical of us.
It needs to be deliberative and part of the foreign policy culture. That’s been lost a little bit in Canada in the last 10 years.
Senator Coyle: Where are models where you see this working well in other countries, and what can we learn from them?
Ms. Percival: I am involved in a commission that’s run by the journal The Lancet and the Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation. One of the things that’s interesting about that commission is that, on the panel, we have a number of commissioners and policy-makers. We have frequent interactions with the Swedish foreign ministry. Anders Nordström was our key interlocutor. He was taken off of it for a while, because he was participating in a WHO independent panel.
But that’s the kind of model where you set it up from the beginning to have mechanisms and you bring in people.
I have just one additional point: It is really important to not just have experts from the global North.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, professor.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you all for being here today. It’s a great group. I appreciate it.
I will ask my first question to Ms. Percival. I came across the article that was referred to a little earlier, which you wrote last year about what Canada and the world can learn from our failings on COVID-19. One line in particular stood out for me and that is how we can “Canada-splain” — how the world could be a better place if only others would adopt Canadian values.
Something similar has been on my mind, particularly since the terrible discovery in Kamloops recently, and how Canada leads, travels abroad, and promotes respect for human rights and the rule of law when we have yet to address the demons of our much-too-recent past. Today, I hope you can elaborate on the idea of how we can do a little more listening and a little less preaching as we look around the corner on the pandemic and what this could truly look like in practice.
Ms. Percival: Thank you for that very interesting question. In terms of how we could do a little more listening and less preaching in practice, the first thing I would suggest is that we move away from a discussion of Canadian values and promoting Canadian values on the world stage, and instead focus on universal values. Nobody beside Canadians really care about Canadian values. If you go to Mozambique, where I lived last, that’s going to ring hollow.
One of the things I referenced in my comments is the importance of an experienced diplomatic corps. And part of being an experienced diplomat is that you have lived in places before, particularly as you are working your way up the foreign service. As part of that, you learn that you really need to almost marinate in local culture and local history. You need to understand the country you are in and meet with as many experts from that country as possible, and gain an appreciation and respect for local values and traditions.
That would kind of fall in line with what I was arguing in that article — that we need to ensure that our diplomatic service abroad listens as much as it preaches.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you very much.
I have a question for Ms. Grant. It concerns vulnerable peoples abroad and how the pandemic has affected our work against evils like modern slavery and human trafficking.
Have closed borders and other public health measures impeded our efforts to monitor and react to those harms abroad? Also, are there secondary effects of the pandemic that we should be looking out for in the near future in these areas?
We know about India; a number of children have lost both parents as a result of the recent wave of COVID infections, leaving them very vulnerable. I can’t imagine India will be the only country where we will see such outcomes.
I would like to hear your comments on that today, if I could.
Ms. Grant: Thank you for the question. Into my inbox today came a report about increased child labour. That’s an additional indirect impact of the pandemic. As more children are out of school, as I mentioned in my address, they are more vulnerable to child labour, including exploitative forms of child labour, which often lend themselves into trafficking.
In terms of monitoring —
The Deputy Chair: I’m afraid the time is up. I would encourage Senator Deacon to participate on the second round so you can get your question in.
The last questioner on round one is Senator Ravalia.
Senator Ravalia: My question focuses on areas outside COVID work. We have had a disproportionate emphasis on COVID vaccinations, while at the same time, other vaccine programs are being left vulnerable, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. I also think of the polio vaccine campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, in particular.
In what ways can we ensure these programs continue to be vibrant and effective, given the fact that COVID has sort of wedged in and become the priority?
Ms. Grant: Thank you.
The interventions I was talking about around health system strengthening really speak to this more fulsome response. When we were treating Ebola, teenage pregnancies and malaria cases went up. We need a fulsome approach that addresses the capacity of health systems, so that decentralized and the most remote areas can respond to the variety of public health programming.
We do a lot of work with the Global Fund. We receive additional funding from the Global Fund to address COVID-19 on top of the TB, malaria and HIV/AIDS programming. They understand that these diseases are at risk of increasing during COVID-19, so they have added additional funding to implementing partners, such as Plan Canada.
This has been a really effective approach. We need to be bolstering our health systems in a preparedness way so we are ready for the next pandemic, while not decreasing funding for polio and other childhood disease vaccination programs. It is really about bolstering that system in a more fulsome manner.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you. I have a quick follow-up question.
The other thing I am concerned about is the vulnerability that minorities in many countries have faced in the face of COVID. While they have been historically targeted, COVID has given governments an excuse to further clamp down on minorities and impact negatively upon their lives. What can we tangibly do in response to this?
Ms. Grant: I agree that there has been an increase in impunity. We just came out with a report on the northwest-southwest anglophone area of Cameroon. It shows an undeniable increase in the operations of non-state actors in the region of the northwest-southwest minority group. We’ve been trying to get global attention on these issues. Most importantly, the human rights defenders on the ground need bolstering — these women’s rights organizations and actors that are working on the ground.
The best way to support them is to encourage their monitoring and documentation in a safe manner, so that global attention can be provided. There’s a huge risk of human rights violations during COVID-19, as I also mentioned in my report, but there is not a simple solution. I would be naive to say that, but I think there are some actions that we can take by supporting those on the ground.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you.
Senator Coyle: My question is for Professor Brown. I note that you are with the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, and we all know of your good work. You spoke of the negative impacts of Canada’s vaccine program and the boomerang effect where, if we don’t concern ourselves with the vaccination of others, particularly high-priority groups in other countries, then it is going to bite us at some point down the road when we hoard these large numbers of vaccines. You are in the department of political studies. This is a political issue. We are probably going to have an election this year. And I suspect this is not just a Canadian issue.
How does one build political will in a country like Canada — or any other country, for that matter — that enables the leadership to do what you would say is the right thing, that is, not to vaccinate all Canadians, necessarily, before we share what we have, our bounty, with other countries? I would like you to address that real political conundrum that our government and others find themselves in.
Mr. Brown: That is a very good question. Of course, there is huge pressure from the electorate, from the provinces and from the media to roll out these vaccines as quickly as possible. Other countries have done it, like I mentioned earlier, France and Norway. If we are clear about what our objectives are — why this is the fair and right thing to do — the Prime Minister has already said that vaccine equity is extremely important, so let’s put our money where our mouth is.
Senator Coyle: I don’t know the situation in those other countries that have actually shown this important leadership that you describe. I don’t know if they are in a minority parliament situation, and I don’t know if they are likely to go into an election this year at some point. So let’s talk about our reality. What would your advice be to our political leadership in this country at this time in terms of doing the right thing, as you have described it?
Mr. Brown: I would say if you want to be a leader, be a leader. Don’t be a follower, don’t just look at opinion polls; convince people that it is the right thing to do. I focused during the first part on the vaccine rollout in Canada, and in the second part, I talked about other things that we could do in terms of waiving intellectual property rights and other measures that wouldn’t involve reducing or slowing down the supply. Even if we are unwilling to do the first thing, there is a lot we could do on the second thing that would redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world as far as not having done a good job of the first thing.
Senator Coyle: I will switch to both Ms. Grant and Professor Percival. You both spoke about strengthening health systems internationally and resourcing those systems, as I understand it. I am curious about the sustainability of the resourcing of those health systems. Yes, they are inadequate. Yes, help them get going. We know there is also a big economic problem in many of the countries we are dealing with, that has just been exacerbated by COVID-19.
The Deputy Chair: Senator, your time has expired.
Senator Coyle: Okay. I didn’t hear much about the economy.
Senator Housakos: Our chair is being very economical, at least with our time, if not with the economy. I will try to be succinct and I will try to give Professor Brown an opportunity to revisit the question from the first round, regarding his view on it being essential for a multilateral approach in dealing with COVID-19 and other challenges that we face. I pointed out earlier that we are in an era of disruption. We are facing some degree of nationalism brewing around the world, and we are seeing a growing lack of confidence in some of our traditional institutions by populations around the world.
Can you give us more of your perspective on multilateralism and if there are other alternatives to it? Are there limited groupings and other ways of approaching these challenges?
Mr. Brown: Thank you for coming back to me on this one. I will try to be more succinct. We covered the existing universal multilateral organizations, but there are more selective ones like the G7 and the G20. My perspective on that — and I think it is Ambassador Bob Rae’s perspective too — is to use the ones you can use. Be pragmatic.
It is also important to point out that there are regional organizations like the African Union, where the African Centre for Disease Control has been highly effective. If we could do more to support them in their research, in vaccine procurement and so on, we would be doing a lot of good, not only for Africans, but for strengthening at least the regional version of multilateralism.
Senator Housakos: I have another question for Professor Percival. Professor, earlier you called for an expert-driven foreign policy, the importance of cutting through the bureaucratic process and for swift action. I totally agree. I think we all agree. We also agree that our system is far from nimble, as you know. Particularly at Global Affairs, they are anything but nimble. It requires real political will and leadership. How optimistic are you that this government has the policy focus and the will to actually lead such an effort, and do you think that it is likely?
Ms. Percival: Sometimes we turn bureaucratic problems into political problems. I am wondering about the extent to which this is a government issue, and the extent to which this is a bureaucratic issue. I won’t tell you how many years ago it was, but when I worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs and I would do briefing notes, they would be signed off by my deputy director. My husband is still a diplomat, and briefing notes are now signed off by assistant deputy ministers. That kind of over-bureaucratization robs people of the time to be effective and efficient. It reflects a real risk aversion, and a lack of trust in our bureaucrats and our bureaucratic institutions. We should not necessarily turn this into a political issue, because I think it transcends political parties. We’ve seen it develop over time.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. To be clear, I left the department in 2008.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you very much. I want to clean up a little bit here. Ms. Grant, you started to respond to my question, and I would like to give you a chance to finish that, and I would like to see if we can respond to my colleague Senator Coyle’s question for this block in time. Ms. Grant, do you need me to reframe, or do want to carry on?
Ms. Grant: I recall the question about child trafficking. What was the second part of the question?
Senator M. Deacon: Looking at any possible secondary effects of the pandemic that we should be looking out for in the near future in these areas.
Ms. Grant: Child labour has gone up for the first time, as I mentioned. In order to combat trafficking effectively, we actually need people on the ground. Now, for many organizations, those people are already on the ground. The border issue around monitoring has been less of an issue in the sense that CSO organizations have local staff on the ground and, for the most part, have been able to do monitoring within their borders. Cross-border, however, does get complicated, to your point.
There are increased risks of the COVID-19 pandemic secondary impacts on, as I mentioned, child marriage, child trafficking, child labour, as well as sexual and gender-based violence, as I mentioned in my opening remarks. Unfortunately, Bangladesh and Nepal are at risk. We’ve seen devastating impacts in India. Nepal and Bangladesh already have high child-trafficking cases. Those are countries that I think we have on a watch list in terms of secondary impacts.
Of course, there is the whole loss of income for young people, their livelihoods, which is not a protection issue, but it can fall into migration, exodus to Europe. Then they can fall into the hands of traffickers and what have you.
The economic loss for young people is enormous. They have fallen out of school. Now they can’t find a job. They may decide to take the long trek through the desert or over mountains to get to Europe for an opportunity. There are lots of secondary impacts in that sense.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you for that. Senator Coyle had an earlier unfinished question. I defer.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, Senator Deacon. That is very generous of you.
Ms. Grant, you just mentioned youth livelihoods as a concern. My question was to both Ms. Grant and Professor Percival. We hear you, absolutely, that the strengthening of health systems is absolutely critical. We have seen the fallout from not having those strong systems, even in our own country, but around the world, just devastating situations. I am curious about the ability of countries to sustain what is needed in their health systems, and what needs to be done on the economic side of the equation to help countries and communities to ultimately sustain those themselves. Is that something that you are looking at?
Ms. Grant: There is a long game to be played in terms of increasing domestic investment in health systems. On domestic financing, there is a whole agenda into increasing domestic financing and to address issues of offshore corruption and movement or accumulation of wealth by the elites in some countries.
I completely feel like that’s part of the solution. There are other solutions and mechanisms within the financing for development solutions which involve outcomes-based financing, where you get social investors who, instead of investing in a bond over in Canada, want to have a social outcome. That outcome might be a health benefit.
Different solutions are within the tool box, none of which are immediate, but I think we need to experiment more in a range of options to address domestic financing. At the end of the day, it needs to be the Ministry of Health that’s in charge, not ODA.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much. Professor Percival?
Ms. Percival: Thank you very much for that really interesting question. There is no doubt that the economic impact of COVID both on donor countries and recipient countries will pose significant challenges for health financing. I would make a couple of points. We need to recognize that funding health and health equity has very direct economic outcomes. Not only does the economics influence health, but health produces a more inclusive economic growth. I would hope that, in the COVID response, we’ve learned enough from previous global initiatives that we ensure that our efforts to respond to COVID flow through national health systems and strengthen them, rather than create parallel structures. There are ways to do health-system building more cheaply. That’s through direct funding of national organizations, national universities or public health agencies within countries, rather than always going through the expensive route, through multilateral organizations. Thanks.
The Deputy Chair: Thanks. Honourable senators, that brings this panel to a close. On your behalf, I want to thank all of our witnesses for their presentations and for their candour in responding to our questions.
I remind you that our next meeting will be held a week today, Thursday, June 17, at 11:30 a.m. EST. I look forward to our ongoing conversation on this important subject.
(The committee adjourned.)