THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 8, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 4:03 p.m. [ET] to conduct a study on foreign relations and international trade generally.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: I am Peter Boehm and I am a senator from Ontario. I am also the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
[English]
Before we begin, I wish to invite committee members participating in today’s meeting to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Amina Gerba from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Ravalia: Good afternoon and welcome. Senator Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Greene: Steve Greene, Nova Scotia.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia. Welcome.
Senator Boniface: Gwen Boniface, Ontario.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Housakos: Leo Housakos, Quebec.
The Chair: Thank you. I wish to welcome all senators as well as anyone across the country who might be watching us on SenVu today.
Today, we meet under our general order of reference to mark International Development Week, which traditionally takes place in February. This year, it’s from February 5 to 11.
For the first part of our meeting, we are pleased to welcome in person with us today Kate Higgins, Chief Executive Officer of Cooperation Canada. Joining us by video conference is Liam Swiss, Acting Associate Dean of Research and Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, as an individual. Welcome to you both. Thank you for being with us.
Before we hear your remarks and proceed to questions and answers, I wish to ask members and witnesses in the room to please refrain from leaning in too closely to their microphone or removing your earpiece when doing so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff and our interpreters who may be wearing earpieces for the work they do.
We are now ready to hear your opening remarks, which will be followed by questions from senators.
Our witnesses have five minutes each. Ms. Higgins, the floor is yours.
[Translation]
Kate Higgins, Chief Executive Officer, Cooperation Canada: Thank you and good afternoon. I am happy to be here with you today. Thank you for the invitation. I would like to honour and express my gratitude towards the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. We are meeting today on its unceded and unrelinquished territory. I would also like to state that we are meeting during Black History Month and recognize the harm committed through the racist and oppressive colonial practices of many actors, including civil society, throughout the world in the name of development. Those of us who work in international development and humanitarian aid must seriously reflect on this, evolve and take steps to do better.
I have the honour of heading Cooperation Canada, which is a coalition of nearly 100 Canadian international development and humanitarian aid organizations working throughout the world. As international cooperation’s independent national voice, we work with our members and other partners here in Canada and elsewhere in the world to create a more just, secure and sustainable world.
As I am speaking before you today, my thoughts go to the victims of the devastating earthquake this week in Turkey and in Syria. Members of Cooperation Canada are working with their partners in Turkey and in Syria as well as with international networks to provide immediate aid.
[English]
As you all know, and as the chair just said, it is International Development Week, which is an opportunity for us to really shine a light on Canadian contributions to eradicating poverty, tackling inequity and supporting rights, peace and prosperity around the world.
This week, Cooperation Canada members are working from coast to coast to coast to engage thousands of people. They are in schools. They are in universities. They are in libraries, indoor farmers’ markets, cinemas and even at big hockey games. We were here yesterday on Parliament Hill, talking about the life‑saving and life-changing difference that Canadian international development and humanitarian assistance are having around the world.
These discussions are happening at a time when the world faces multiple crises that compound and exacerbate each other and when the world feels more insecure and uncertain than it has in a long time.
This year, in 2023, some 339 million people are estimated to need humanitarian aid. This is a 25% jump over last year. At least 222 million people are food insecure, including some 45 million people facing starvation in what the United Nations is calling the largest global food crisis in modern history.
These records are fuelled by a slew of colliding crises, which we’re now calling the four Cs: the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, the climate crisis and now inflation and cost.
In Canada, we are not immune to these challenges or crises. They directly affect our economic prosperity, they impact our security and they go against our values and beliefs in human rights, gender equity, democracy and fairness.
With that, I have three brief messages for you today.
First, Canada must see international assistance as a smart and strategic investment. It is not a handout. It is an investment in supporting democracy and development in countries where rights, especially for women, girls, gender-diverse people and minorities, are really under threat.
It ensures basic services at a time when many countries are struggling with debt loads and defaults. It gives us diplomatic and foreign policy leverage and influence by matching our words with investment and action. It helps us broker agreements that align with our values and our strategic interests. It is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. The government recognizes this. It has, in fact, committed to increase Canada’s international assistance every year towards 2030 to realize the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
Second, Canadian international assistance works. It is making a difference in millions of people’s lives around the world. Canada has been a leader in the fight for women’s rights in Honduras, refugee protection in Ukraine, freedom of the press in South Sudan, the protection of the Rohingya minority in Bangladesh and Myanmar, inclusive democratic governance in the DRC or Democratic Republic of Congo and, as I said earlier, Canadian organizations are mobilizing right now with their partners to provide life-saving, humanitarian aid following this week’s devastating earthquake.
And while I am making the case that international assistance works, and am calling for bold Canadian engagement globally, I also acknowledge that the world is changing fast and that global development and humanitarian system must change too.
We need to unlock new sources of finance to do everything we can to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. We need to change the ways we work, as governments, as civil society, to shift power, resources and decision making to those bearing the brunt of these compounding crises.
We need to sharpen the way we operationalize global engagement and action across the various pillars of Canadian foreign policy, act in ways that acknowledge that in the places where these crises are most acutely felt diplomacy, security, trade, peace operations, development and humanitarian action are all necessary, complementary and intertwined.
My third point is brief and simple. People in Canada support Canadian global engagement and international assistance. We feel and see the impact of converging crises and understand that international assistance is an investment in the world we all want.
Indeed, in an Abacus poll conducted just last week, 63% of people polled said that given the state of the world right now, it is important or very important that Canada continue to invest in supporting development and human rights abroad.
Yes, we are looking ahead to a challenging fiscal context. Yes, there are challenges we need to address here in Canada. But I trust that those of us who are fortunate enough to call Canada home can appreciate that a country like ours needs to, and can, address issues here in Canada while engaging beyond our borders.
We can care about Canada, and we can care about the world. It is the right and smart thing to do. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Higgins. We will go to Professor Liam Swiss, please; you have the floor.
Liam Swiss, Acting Associate Dean of Research and Professor, Memorial University of Newfoundland, as an individual: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak to the committee today and bring greetings from Newfoundland and Labrador.
I am a professor at Memorial University and study international development policy and programs and am happy to make some comments here in a personal capacity. Before I do so I want to acknowledge that the lands on which Memorial University campuses are situated, and from where I speak to you, are in the traditional territories of diverse Indigenous groups and acknowledge with respect the histories and cultures of the Beothuk, the Mi’kmaq, Innu and Inuit of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
It is heartening to see your committee convene today and tomorrow to hear from development experts like myself and Ms. Higgins about development challenges and innovations to address them in support of global development and the SDGs.
As you do, I hope to encourage you and the committee not to think too narrowly when considering these issues.
While the development community faces many crises, climate, COVID, conflict and often chases the latest vogue or innovation and hops from crisis to crisis in hopes of solving it, it sometimes overlooks the bigger picture.
I want to frame my remarks today around this and focus on two key facets that I think should inform Canadian foreign policy related to development moving forward. Those are coherence and principle. Following that I will provide just a brief example using the case of immigrant remittances to underscore how a coherent and principled stance may enable approaches to development that might allow us to rethink and address issues that have received somewhat limited attention as matters of development previously and perhaps reorient Canada’s engagement with development globally.
First, I want to speak to coherence.
As Ms. Higgins already indicated, challenges to development are complex and manifold. But to better react to those development challenges, I would argue that our Canadian foreign policy and approaches to development need to have greater coherence. For many years, approaching development in Canada has largely been focused around issues of international assistance.
This, I think, needs to change. Defence, foreign policy, trade, immigration policy, Border Services and international assistance, all of these affect Canada’s contributions to global development.
But for too long global development has been viewed as something that happens over there rather than something to which all of our governments and all Canadians may contribute here in Canada.
Part of this is because I feel that Canada has lacked coherence among its policies in this respect and would do well to try to think more in an interconnected fashion when assessing when and how its policies and programs have development impacts here in Canada and beyond.
By thinking coherently in this way, we can take a step to developing approaches to development that are enmeshed in all government policies and programs, in a way that would advance attainment of SDGs here in Canada and abroad, but at the same time understand that the things that we do here that may not necessarily have immediate development impacts may, indeed, impact global development significantly.
One aspect of that coherence that I think needs to be reemphasized is basing Canada’s engagement in development in all policies and all programs in a principled and ethical fashion. Canada took a really important first step to do this when it issued its feminist international assistance policy in 2017. This was a start and had provided initial indications that we might take more bold steps to centre this sort of feminist approach in all of Canada’s foreign relations and foreign affairs.
That hasn’t panned out in the way that some in the policy analysis community had hoped. The current government appeared to take steps down this road but seems to have lost the will to move further on it.
A foreign policy that was squarely centred in feminist principles and that accounted for the coherence that I discussed above but did so in a way that prioritized feminist analysis of intersecting and overlapping inequalities be one way to anchor a bold, cohesive engagement of Canada with the world on development issues in a much more nuanced fashion than maybe has sometimes previously been undertaken.
Canada has the reputation and ability to lead on a feminist approach to foreign policy in a way that the current approach perhaps has stopped short of.
In taking a coherent and principled approach to this engagement with development issues in all of our foreign-facing policies and practices, we can think about different ways of engaging on development issues that perhaps have fallen by the wayside previously.
One that I want to focus on today is the question of international remittances. Certainly, we’re probably all aware of international remittances. These are the personal flows of money from country to country by migrants, immigrants both longer term and temporary and the World Bank in 2022 estimates that the global flow of remittances to low-and middle-income countries should be more than $630 billion. Migrants to Canada, for their part, were estimated to have sent more than $7.20 billion U.S. via remittances in 2021. These numbers dwarf both the global flow of aid funds and the flow of Canadian international assistance funds.
Yet, they remain relatively under the radar as far as a potential untapped source of development financing.
The jury is still out on the full potential of remittance flows as a form of development funding, but Canadian policies and programs have done relatively little to address or encourage remittances apart from limited commitments by previous governments to reduce the cost of remittance sending.
The Chair: Professor, I am sorry to interrupt. I gave you an extra minute-and-a-half, as I did for Ms. Higgins as well. Some of those other points that you would like to make will, no doubt, come out in our question and answer period.
Mr. Swiss: Certainly, that is fine. My apologies for going over time.
The Chair: That is okay.
We will get right into questions. I have a list.
[Translation]
You each have four minutes for the first round, including the question and the answer. I would ask both senators and witnesses to be concise. We can always do a second round if time permits.
[English]
Senator Housakos: My question is for Ms. Higgins. I think all of us understand that climate change has to be dealt with and is an existential crisis, as is poverty, and you highlighted the Canadian government’s commitment to supporting both of those challenges.
We see that the United Nations has never hit their environmental targets. We see that this current government has never hit its environmental targets that they set for themselves, neither when it comes to climate change nor when it comes to poverty. We see poverty becoming, globally, more and more of a problem while, of course, our own economic challenges here at home become more challenging. We see the anemic growth in the economy that we’ve had over the last few years.
How much longer will we continue to invest in a strategy that is clearly not working? Will we change the strategy to something that might have more potential for success, or will we continue to augment? That seems to be the reflex — we need to do more, we need to spend more. But sometimes you have to look at the model and ask yourself, if you are spending $10 million, will $20 million or $50 million help? I put that question to you, Ms. Higgins.
Ms. Higgins: Thank you. I think that you are asking a really important question. The state of the world, as it is — we have these compounding crises. We are facing a climate emergency; we have massive conflict. You are right to note the poverty numbers. It is not something that I mentioned, but over the last two years we have seen for the first time an increase in extreme poverty. We have also seen for the first time an increase in extreme wealth. Extreme wealth and extreme poverty are rising at the same time.
Do we keep engaging? My argument is, absolutely, is yes, we keep engaging. Our international assistance and our work in global development are having a huge impact. I think there are things that we need to think about. What is the global international assistance and economic infrastructure and are there changes that we need to make? I have not spoken a lot about debt, but we have a number of countries that are really facing the pressure of debt. Are there things that we can be doing? Can we think of concessional loans in the global financial system? The Prime Minister of Barbados has launched the Bridgetown Agenda. I think he is very brave and courageous, and it could be transformative.
I think that there are things that we can do. You are right, it is not just about increasing the money, it’s also about increasing the effectiveness. There is a lot of work, to the credit of Global Affairs Canada, that they are trying to do to modernize and enhance the effectiveness of the work that we all collectively do. It is fantastic work. That is something that we need to continue to engage in.
To your question of whether we just step away, I do not think that we step away at all. I think that it is time to continue to engage and acknowledge that it is important from a values perspective to engage, but also from a strategic perspective. I do not think that the system is broken, but I do think that the system needs to reform. Whether it is in the global financial system at the debt level or enhancing the effectiveness of our international assistance, there is plenty of work for us to do.
Senator Housakos: I will be more precise with my question. Is the problem the structure of the institutions, or is the problem that the targets we’re setting are not realistic?
Ms. Higgins: I think that the targets, particularly on climate, we have to meet, and we have to work really hard to meet that. The climate crisis is very real, and the emergency is very real. I would say that is one target that we have to meet, and we need to do everything that we can to do that. A lot of Cooperation Canada’s members are engaging actively on climate finance. The government has made bold investments in climate finance. We must go there. I do not think that the target on climate is unrealistic. We have to meet it.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you to both of our witnesses. I will address my question to Ms. Higgins as well. I was just wondering how we could best coordinate efforts with competing global needs, including acute crises, in a more proactive than reactive way.
There are a large number of aid agencies on the ground. To what extent is coordination happening? To what extent are we meeting the needs of places that historically get lost when there is an acute crisis? There has been much criticism in some parts of the world about the disproportionate amount of aid getting to Ukraine while countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea have remained, perhaps, disenfranchised?
Ms. Higgins: I think that you have asked me two questions in one, but I’m happy to answer both of them.
On the coordination side, that is a really important question. To go back to the previous senator’s question, one of the things that we’re all really trying to engage in is what is called, in development jargon, “nexus work.” To talk a little bit more about that, the way that we have typically programmed our work is that we have a humanitarian stream, a peace operation stream and a development stream. But if you think of the context on the ground, people are not living in that way. They are not living in humanitarian, peace and development silos. They are actually living their lives. So we, as a development community and as an international assistance community, need to get much better at ensuring integration and coordination across those different silos to ensure that we’re being as effective as we can at reaching those communities where they are at with the support that they need. On your question of coordination, I would see work on nexus as being a really important nut for us as a Canadian development community and as a global development community to crack.
Your second question is around how we balance the multiple crises in the world. We have Ukraine, Afghanistan, Africa, Yemen. It is a really challenging context. Our position is that we need to continue to engage in Ukraine. We need to be solid allies to Ukraine, but we cannot forget these other crises. As I said, if we look at the horn of Africa, they are seeing the worst famine in 40 years. It is absolutely tragic, where things are at. We do need to not be too singularly focused on Ukraine and take a much more global perspective on what we do.
Of course, these crises are connected. One of the key reasons we’re facing the food security crisis, which I’m sure that you all know and have discussed, is because Ukraine is one of the breadbaskets of the world. Taking a global approach to this work, but also not taking our eye off those hot spots that can sometimes be ignored, is critical.
The Chair: Colleagues, I remind you as well that we have Professor Swiss with us. I am sure he is eager to take some questions and make some comments.
Senator Boniface: Thank you very much. My question follows on the other two senators.
In the minister’s mandate letter, one of his commitments is to improve the way we manage and deliver international development assistance to ensure greater responsiveness, effectiveness, transparency and accountability. Obviously, it is a very generalized commitment. One of the criticisms I hear from people who try to work on development here in Canada is that you make an application in a black hole to get funding to continue, and then you do not hear anything forever.
How is Canada faring when it comes to greater responsiveness, effectiveness, transparency and accountability in delivering this type of assistance? The professor can go first, and then I will involve Ms. Higgins.
Mr. Swiss: I fear that Ms. Higgins is better positioned to answer that specific question, so I will cede my time to her in that regard.
Senator Boniface: Back to you.
Ms. Higgins: This is a really important question, so thank you for asking it. You’re right, there are frustrations around how long things take to move forward within the bureaucracy and concerns, frankly, that sometimes the needs are immediate and they are very real. Partners are ready and mobilized to act, and it takes quite a substantial amount of time to move through the system.
There is some really exciting innovation happening within Global Affairs Canada that we are really embracing and partnering which is also jargon, so excuse me, this afternoon. It’s called the grants and contributions transformation process. That process is trying to look at where the bottlenecks are, how we can increase efficiency and transparency, and the times it takes from an announcement to a commitment to the work moving forward on the ground. That is very exciting. I think it’s really a once-in-a decade opportunity.
We are a civil society and as Cooperation Canada are embracing that work with energy and excitement. It’s very critical.
As we look for efficiencies and transparency, it is important that we do that in the context of the changing nature of the world and think through, for example, as we increase efficiencies and as we try to reduce red tape, how we can ensure that we get power, resources and decision making to the people on the ground who are actually doing the work. It’s called the localization agenda. It’s about how we shift power, but I think it will be critical that these processes are complementary and integrated.
Senator Boniface: Do I have time left?
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Boniface: On your reference to “localized,” that’s been a “big piece think,” where many countries are moving in terms of assistance and trying to get it down. Are you observing that risk assessments and template-type work is being done to make sure that the money going into that sphere is well accounted for in terms of outcomes and stuff like that? At the local level, they often don’t have the infrastructure in place to be able to support even the reporting requirements of some of these processes.
Ms. Higgins: That is also an important comment and question. For Cooperation Canada members, accountability and public trust is absolutely essential to what we do and believe in. It’s absolutely critical.
The key is identifying what we really need from an accountability perspective to ensure that we’re being transparent and accountable and having impact, as well as identifying the red tape and the burdens that we’re placing on local partners, for example, that are not actually resulting in heightened transparency or in heightened impact. That’s the job, namely, to ensure how we balance transparency, accountability, but effectiveness and impacts.
The Chair: Thank you on that segment.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to both of our witnesses. We’re finally in an area that I have spent my life in. I used to be on the board of Ms. Higgins’s organization. It’s great to have you here and wonderful to have someone from the East Coast as well with us here, Professor Swiss.
I have so many questions, but my first one is really about this concern that many of us have about how crises need to be responded to. You have outlined the various crises going on in the world. We are acutely aware of them. There is only so big a pot of money. I know you were talking about the nexus between the three streams. That’s great in theory. Hopefully, there are good models of that working in practice, but resources to respond to crises versus resources for creating local capacities, resilience, sustainable, local ability to get along without support over the longer term.
You see so much having to go in what used to be called the humanitarian stream and coming from the same source in many cases, then what is left over for the longer term, capacity development, community building, institutional development, et cetera, that is required for the local response to be strong and durable?
Ms. Higgins: I will be brief in my response.
The Chair: You have to be. Two minutes.
Ms. Higgins: I’m on it. This is why at this point in time we need to maintain that commitment to year-on-year increases in international assistance because the crises are there. They are not going away. At the same time, we need to build the resilience of those communities to be better positioned to respond and to move forward on their sustainable development priorities, but also to be positioned to respond when those crises occur.
Senator Coyle: Great. This is for both of you. Both of you mentioned looking creatively at innovative sources of resources because it’s not going to come from the Government of Canada or from the governments of other countries. You also talked about looking at new ways. You mentioned the Bridgetown Agenda. We have heard about the remittances. There are lots of creative ways that we need to think about getting more money flowing to help us get to those outcomes that Senator Housakos was talking about, not just in terms of climate, but in all the other areas that we’re committed to with the SDGs by 2030, which is just around the corner.
The Chair: We’re cutting close here, but could we go to Professor Swiss for a quick comment?
Senator Coyle: Sure.
Mr. Swiss: The need to tap into other sources of resourcing for development finances is a key thing. Remittances are just one example of that. The other part of the point here is that so much that needs to be dealt with in terms of poverty, equality and the protection of rights isn’t actually about money. It’s more about building and changing institutions in ways that can be done beyond the scope of purely international assistance-oriented solutions. Going beyond aid is smart, but I think it’s also thinking beyond aid as well.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Simons: Thank you to our witnesses. I’m a guest at this committee, but I am the Deputy Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Not long after I took up that position, I had an eye-opening meeting with the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations that sent a delegation here. They expressed to me their own frustration that oftentimes with their own organization there is such a focus on food aid and not enough on agriculture aid. They said, “We need to be having practical aid to build sustainable farming and regenerative agriculture that helps to combat climate change.”
I wanted to ask each of you — and, in fairness, I will start with Professor Swiss — is there more that Canada could be doing to help with that kind of ag-tech transfer? That is, the rebuilding of farmlands that have been destroyed by war, famine and drought? What could we be doing beyond exporting food, but exporting our food expertise?
Mr. Swiss: That is a really important point because it goes to building capacity, reinstating capacity that has been harmed by conflict and what not. Food aid doesn’t do that, right? Food aid might respond to an immediate crisis, but it doesn’t actually build that ability to respond to crisis internally in a local context.
One of the issues that emerges here is the notion of the focuses of Canadian assistance. For many years, we heard that maybe Canada’s been pulled in too many directions and doing too many things and should focus more. Yet, if we focus too much, then maybe something like agricultural expertise falls by the wayside? This is part of where responding in highly localized ways to localized needs is really important. Connecting Canadian expertise to those localized needs in appropriate manners is the way to go.
I agree with you whole-heartedly that simply providing food aid is not going to solve longer-term agricultural development in many contexts.
Ms. Higgins: I would say that in Canada there are several organizations that have a huge amount of expertise around sustainable food systems and climate resilient agriculture that work as a coalition — a very effective coalition — and who also have links with the domestic agriculture sector. Canada is really well positioned to lean in to this issue, and there is a lot of Canadian expertise in this space.
Senator Simons: Professor Swiss, you are very keen to talk about remittances, so I want to come back to that point. I come from Alberta. There are large diaspora communities, and there are temporary foreign worker communities sending huge amounts of money back home to countries like the Philippines, Lebanon — all over the world. But that often goes under the radar because it’s a very individual, familial transaction. Do we have any way of tracking those dollars? Do we have any sense of research into what the impact is when family members send that money back home?
Mr. Swiss: There is a fair amount of research under way in this regard. Global Affairs Canada in conjunction with Statistics Canada actually mounted a survey of immigrants and migrants to Canada from low- and middle-income countries in 2017. I’m in the process of a project analyzing that data to look at the extent to which immigrants and migrants to Canada from aid-eligible countries are sending money back. As I indicated, the RBC Royal Bank estimates it’s about $7.2 billion from Canada in the past year, which far exceeds our actual international aid flows.
Obviously, not all of this can be tracked readily. Not all of this can be readily linked to specific outcomes for families and communities that are receiving these funds, but there is significant research that shows that the impact of remittances in communities and societies can have significant developmental benefits even if they aren’t necessarily linked to development programs or policies. So Canada, being a land of immigrants in large part, is well placed to think about creative ways that we could amplify and leverage the significant efforts of our own residents to contribute to the well-being of communities in low‑ and middle-income countries around the world. That goes beyond our usual aid programming.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Let’s go back to the question asked by my colleague, Senator Simons, in light of the answer given by Mr. Swiss.
Right now, African countries do not want aid anymore, they want partnerships to develop their continent. I have worked with many international organizations. You have no doubt noticed that many countries are now going to African nations to help them with their development, whether that be infrastructure, agriculture, which we have been talking about, or new technology, amongst other things.
Indeed, the current thinking is that international aid has not helped at all. African nations have resources, both human and financial. Some of the 55 African nations are saying that they do not need money, because cash is flowing into the local economy, such as remittances from their diaspora, and let’s face it, it has become difficult to transfer money internationally. African nations have money: there’s cash in the local economy and grants are being provided locally. They need projects to develop.
I would like to know what you think about Canada’s intention to provide aid through multilateral organizations, which would not give any visibility to the support provided by Canada. What are other countries’ best practices that could inspire us to support African nations in their development when they are looking for technology such as ours?
There is a lot of talk about agriculture. Over 70% of Africa’s arable land can be developed. We have all this technology in Canada. Is there a way to contribute to development in a sustainable way that creates fair partnerships?
The Chair: Is the question for Ms. Higgins?
Senator Gerba: It is for all the witnesses, but starting with Ms. Higgins.
The Chair: Ms. Higgins, over to you.
Ms. Higgins: I will be brief. Thank you.
[English]
Let me be clear, aid and international assistance is not everything. That is why, as Mr. Swiss said, we need to have a coherent strategy. We’re actually excited and hopeful that the Canadian government may lean into an Africa framework or an Africa strategy. That’s my first point.
My second point is that when you’re talking about durable solutions and equitable partnerships, whether it’s in technology, agriculture or infrastructure, they can be financed through international assistance partnerships. There are a lot of ways where we see that. Sometimes we think that aid is around humanitarian crises, but aid is also supporting, for example, excellent partnerships around agricultural technology.
The third thing I would say is that there is a lot of excitement around ideas of innovative finance where we can use different financing mechanisms to try to build partnerships that end up generating and supporting the private sector and supporting business.
We need to take a coherent approach to this. I think international assistance is one part of a broader foreign policy strategy, and international assistance can be leveraged to build and sustain those durable partnerships that you have referred to.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Richards: This is very admirable, but I’m wondering if you ever run into problems in developing countries because of the influence of other countries such as Russia and China. There must be great pressure by certain countries around the world that might preclude Canada’s best intentions and affiliations. Do we run up against the wall in any way because of this in development by a parallel but sometimes opposite influence or a more political ambition by these countries? How does that stymie us or does it stymie us? Thank you.
Mr. Swiss: International assistance in general is an inherently political and politicized process, regardless of whether it’s government-to-government or operating through non‑governmental organizations. There will, obviously, be competing interests from other donors and other actors in places. I can’t comment on any specifics in this regard. Perhaps Ms. Higgins might be able to provide more specific examples.
Clearly, when you’re operating in, for example, a situation like Syria where you have multiple competing factions, some of which are supported by different external actors, these sorts of political issues play out regardless of the extent of the crisis.
Ms. Higgins: This may be a better question for our Global Affairs Canada colleagues tomorrow, who have much more oversight and understanding of the diplomatic context on the ground.
My brief answer would be that this is why we need to have a coherent foreign policy approach, so that we’re ensuring our international assistance, our trade, our peace and our foreign policy engagement in countries is really integrated and strategic.
Senator Richards: Thank you.
Senator Greene: I would like to know, in your area of work, how do you measure success?
And secondly, how do you know that in a given situation you’re not providing too much assistance?
Ms. Higgins: That’s a tough question, but thank you for asking it. How do we measure success? I mean, I think that we have pretty strong frameworks and models for projects and initiatives that we engage in that identify what we anticipate success will be. So that might be around agricultural productivity. That might be around more women’s income. That might be around more girls going to school. That might be around increased vaccination rates. So that’s how we’re measuring success. We’re looking at what our initiative is, what we anticipate the impact can be with the budget that we have, and tracking that very carefully to see whether we have made the mark or not.
I think if we overstep and overachieve, maybe we would be reflecting about whether there is an overinvestment, but we do try to have a strong accountability framework to ensure we are able to track whether we are having the impact that we want.
Mr. Swiss: Obviously, tangible measures of success linked to specific interventions are the sorts of things that Ms. Higgins just mentioned. I always liked the framing of success in development that is borrowed from Nobel Prize economist Amartya Sen who conceptualized this notion of supporting development as helping people live the lives that they choose to value. That quite subjective. But at the end of the day, I think all of these things that we’re talking about here today are generally about improving the well-being of peoples around the world and helping them obtain whatever it is they view as success in that sense. So it’s a very wishy-washy answer, but one which I think should be at the core of all development interventions.
The Chair: Thank you, professor. We’re about to go into round two. I just wanted to make a comment, not necessarily ask a question. I think some of the themes that are being teased out here starting with Senator Housakos’s references to aid effectiveness, new approaches we have heard about, including remittances, the ongoing multilateral versus bilateral debate and how to get development assistance down to the grassroots, the point that Senator Gerba made about the importance of investment and not just Official Development Assistance, or ODA, for ODA’s sake, particularly in Africa. I think that makes a lot of sense.
I wanted to also come to Senator Richards’s point about other actors who do not necessarily sit in the development assistance committee at the OECD who are active and are doing development and influence their way. Of course here we’re talking principally about China and the Russian Federation. All of this has, I think, a certain resonance with our larger and ongoing study of the fit for purpose nature of Global Affairs Canada. I think we’re absorbing a lot.
Senators I would ask you please to keep your questions precise so we can have all senators participate. The same goes to our witnesses — precise answers, probably two minutes each if we’re lucky.
Senator Housakos: To both our witnesses, as you can see many of our colleagues would like to know what the benchmarking is. It’s great to have enthusiasm when it comes to international development. They are all noble targets and noble causes, but at the end of the day you have to make choices if you want to be effective. And quite frankly, I haven’t heard much in terms of our benchmark.
The second question I have is: The truth of the matter is Canada, among the G20, is the worst polluter per capita when it comes to the greenhouse impact, especially in our agriculture sector. So my question is: Shouldn’t we be focusing to clean up our own house and try to hit targets here in Canada because the truth is, as the greenhouse emissions of our agriculture industry continues to grow, we’re still having difficulty producing enough affordable food right here at home, and we’re having our soup kitchens over the last year and a half growing at exponential rates and we have an infrastructure system in Canada thirsty to upgrade their infrastructure? They don’t have enough money in order to respond both to the service needs of the country, but also to their attempt to become greener.
Ms. Higgins: I’ll be super quick with a very specific example. Actually, on Friday, we will be discussing a Global Affairs Canada report, which is looking at a 10-year investment in global women’s health, and there is some really clear evidence of an impact on that.
So, for example, $49 million has been spent on family planning, and that has resulted in 3.2 million people receiving contraception, 1.1 million unintended pregnancies and over a thousand lives saved. So that is the sort of tracking we’re engaging in, and we take it seriously and I think we are tracking the impact that these investments have.
Super briefly, should we fix things at home rather than focusing on the external? I think senator, with all due respect, I have made my position pretty clear, which is I think that we do need to do both and that not engaging globally does have implications for our well-being, our prosperity, our stability here in Canada.
Senator Coyle: Just the second half of my question, Ms. Higgins, regarding alternative financing and specifically if you could speak to the Bridgetown Agenda. Not everybody knows what that is.
Senator Ravalia: My question will be directed to Professor Swiss. Would you comment on macro level globalizing influences by donor nations in the context of micro-level social processes that work within aid agencies? Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Is it possible to find a way to involve the various diasporas in the development of their home countries?
[English]
Mr. Swiss: I’ll try to keep it brief. Diaspora is already really heavily involved in the development of their home countries, in many instances. We only have to look at this week’s example of the Turkish-Syrian earthquake crisis to see that diaspora groups here in Canada have been quick to respond on that front. That also happens I think in longer-term development. In the aid agencies, there are ways to build on that. I do think there are other ways to capitalize on those existing strong ties and ways to connect those communities to communities in developing countries that Canada should look at exploring in greater fashion.
Ms. Higgins: I think Professor Swiss has answered the question. To talk about alternative sources of financing, the Bridgetown Agenda, in brief, is a proposal around how to reform the global financing system, particularly around debt, to ensure that countries are able to be providing public services, to be able to be investing in infrastructure, to be doing those things that Senator Gerba spoke about in a way that makes sense and builds their sustainable and durable development rather than focusing on repaying and servicing loans globally that are relatively, not relatively, that are extraordinarily challenging.
So we have a context where many developing countries are using a huge portion of their resources to service debt and loans in a context of global inflation, in a context of high interest rates, in a context of a strong U.S. dollar rather than investing in public services and infrastructure in their country.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I would like to thank both our witnesses, Ms. Higgins, Cooperation Canada, and Professor Swiss for being with us today, enriching us with your comments. We appreciate it very much. So, thank you.
Colleagues, we will now move to our second panel. We are very pleased to welcome via video conference Jean Lebel, President, International Development Research Centre; Julie Shouldice, Vice-President of Strategy, Regions and Policy, International Development Research Centre; and I believe that we also have with us Dominique Charron, Vice-President, Programs and Partnerships, International Development Research Centre.
And John McArthur, Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Brookings Institution in Washington.
Dr. Lebel is joining us from Brazil, if I am correct. Welcome to all of our witnesses, and we are ready to begin.
[Translation]
Jean Lebel, President, International Development Research Centre: Can you all hear me? I am in Brazil. Mr. Chair, I would like to thank you and the committee for inviting me to speak to you today.
[English]
I am speaking to you from the field in the city of Alter do Chão, which is the traditional land of the Borari people in the Amazon.
[Translation]
It is an honour to participate in this session during International Development Week, and I thank the committee for taking a look at how Canada can help overcome global development challenges.
Today, I’d like to talk to you about how research is fundamental in overcoming global development challenges, and how Canada plays an important role thanks to IDRC, the International Development Research Centre.
These past few years, we’ve seen the risk of global development progress being reversed due to global crises such as COVID-19, climate change, the impact of the war in Ukraine and global inflation. These crises mean that it is vital that development interventions be targeted, locally led and evidence‑based.
Research is key to achieving this goal and in particular, research done by institutions and leaders embedded in the regions where these challenges are being faced.
As a Canadian Crown corporation, the International Development Research Centre is uniquely placed to advance Canada’s international assistance priorities by funding the research and innovation that makes these interventions more impactful.
[English]
I would like to share two examples that demonstrate the power of research to overcome global challenges.
First, access to quality education is vital to development. Yet, it is under threat from crises such as conflict and the pandemic.
Canada is an important supporter of the Global Partnership for Education, GPE, which provides funding and support to more than 70 countries worldwide struggling to educate children and youth, often under fragile conditions.
Global Affairs Canada plays an important role in stewarding this work. The International Development Research Centre, or IDRC, adds value by managing the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange platform, which works with those 70 countries to provide research and evidence needed to implement effective education policies. This initiative facilitates learning and sharing of results so participating countries can more quickly pivot and end up with good practices. The result is better educational outcomes for children.
The second example comes from our investment in climate adaptation research. Initiatives that bring together funding from Canada, the U.K. and the Netherlands are using research to improve the ways in which low-income countries plan for and adapt to climate change to protect the most vulnerable.
For example, we funded research in Bangladesh that developed an inventory of adaptation options for more than 120 million people living in the Bengal Delta, which has informed the Bangladesh National Adaptation Plan on how to build contingency plans for how vulnerable, low-income coastal communities can anticipate and deal with climate impacts in the coming years.
This work has amplified the impact of Canada’s dollar through partnership and ensures that growing investment and adaptation are informed by evidence.
Canada has an important role to play in overcoming pressing global challenges to achieve development ambitions and realize a vision for a world where no one is left behind.
The role for Canada is enhanced by a development model that puts research at the forefront to ensure that aid is invested effectively and to enable local actors to identify and implement innovative solutions.
[Translation]
Once again, thank you to the committee for providing this opportunity to present how Canada adds value through IDRC’s approach, and for convening this timely discussion on how Canada is adapting to new challenges and opportunities in global development.
I would be happy to provide more information if committee members have questions. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lebel.
[English]
We will go to our well-known Canadian at the Brookings right now, John McArthur.
John W. McArthur, Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Brookings Institution: Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and distinguished senators.
[Translation]
First of all, thank you for the honour of meeting you today. It is a distinct privilege to be here with Jean Lebel, Julie Shouldice and Dominique Charron, exceptional leaders who have contributed enormously to IDRC’s global leadership.
[English]
My remarks today will focus on three points relating to the Sustainable Development Goals: current status, unpacking some gaps and recommendations.
First, current status: Although the SDGs, as they’re known, have become increasingly common as a reference point for societal aspirations, they simply have not yet achieved escape velocity to stimulate widespread progress.
It is a testament to the goal’s success that we’re meeting today even to discuss them. Agreed in 2015 under a Conservative government in Canada and pursued by subsequent Liberal governments, their nonpartisan nature is central to their staying power in Canada.
However, more than seven years after the goals were adopted, their global impact remains “largely discursive,” according to a recent meta study in the journal Nature Sustainability.
The same paper found the following: “More profound normative and institutional impact, from legislative action to changing resource allocation, remains rare.”
Second, a few types of gaps to help explain where we are, and there are some gaps in understanding. For example, many people misunderstand the Sustainable Development Goals as something the UN came up with and told the world to care about, when in fact what they are is what the world told the UN not to forget about. Many people misunderstand the goals as an “over there” issue, abroad, when they are equally an “over here” priority within Canada.
Many people overlook the fast-shifting geopolitical context. Many advanced economies are worried about protecting a rules-based international order. But for many emerging and developing economies, it looks more like a two-sets-of-rules-based international order, one that protects rich country flexibilities while hindering poor country’s core interests in sustainable development. It also includes financing gaps.
Developing countries, by latest estimate, need more than a trillion dollars per year of new international financing to invest in common global priorities for climate and sustainable development. Addressing this gap means dramatically revamping and expanding old institutions like the World Bank.
So what does all this mean for Canada?
Well, here are some recommendations. In 2018, Margaret Biggs and I wrote a piece called, A Canadian North Star: Crafting an advanced economy approach to the Sustainable Development Goals. I believe the logic still applies from that piece, including seven questions to help guide Canada’s fulfillment of its global responsibilities.
But in recent years, I have become convinced that much of SDGs success will boil down to groups taking next-step actions in the spaces where they already live or work. This principle has been core to the 17 Rooms initiative that I co-chair with fellow Canadian Zia Khan of the Rockefeller Foundation. In that spirit, I offer six next-step recommendations — three domestic and three international.
Domestically, first, create a user-friendly online data dashboard that tracks for each province, territory and postal code progress on all relevant SDG targets within Canada.
Second, create an all-party parliamentary committee on SDG implementation, a standing body to review evidence and debate options for better progress.
Third, create an annual 17 Rooms Canada national process to forge next-step actions for each SDG, each year.
Fourth, internationally, create a parliamentary committee to consider Canada’s public and private investment strategies for long-term challenges, say, up to 2050 to start.
Fifth, champion updated purpose-driven multilateral investments to match SDG scale, such as a trillion-dollar World Bank, a new fund to end extreme poverty.
Sixth, explore new types of international institutions that can empower and connect bottom-up group action around shared global priorities.
The 17 Rooms initiative is just one innovation; others could quickly follow suit. Three actions at home, three actions abroad, all towards the universal imperative of achieving sustainable development for all. Thank you for having me.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McArthur.
Colleagues, we will go to questions and answers.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to both of our witnesses here with us today.
My first question is for Mr. McArthur. We just had a session with Cooperation Canada and with an academic from Memorial University. We were talking about this issue of alternative financing and reform — nobody said it, but I think that you are going that way — of the Bretton Woods Institutions, in particular. I would like to hear more unpacking of what you think should be done in terms of reform as well as the creation of a new style of financing mechanisms, which was your last point, I believe.
Mr. McArthur: Maybe I will address the latter first.
Senator Coyle: Thank you.
Mr. McArthur: Thank you for the question. On the new style, I am of the view that we need purpose-driven multilateral mechanisms. The World Bank, for example, has had as its headline for objective, for literally ten years now, the end of extreme poverty by 2030. I have looked with my colleague Homi Kharas at many of the country-level programs and discussions in the countries with the greatest concentrations of extreme poverty, and there is no discussion I can find on how to help those countries end extreme poverty. That is an institutional failure, in my view. It is a shortcoming when we think about half of the world’s extremely poor people — people living on less than $2 a day — probably being concentrated in five countries.
This is much more practical than people think. We have dramatic improvements in technology that allow for competition of ideas on how to help people get out of extreme poverty. Agriculture and investments in agriculture are an essential piece of this, most likely.
But with the advent of mobile telephony and technology for even direct cash transfers in the poorest places in the world, hyper targeted at low cost, efficiently, even in the middle of the pandemic, countries like Togo were pioneering rapid scale-out to help people in greatest need. This is a viable proposition, in my view, to end extreme poverty by 2030 still, but if The World Bank is not going to do it, even with its headline objective, we need other institutions that will.
When we talk about reform and full disclosure, I have colleagues who are deep in this, and I’m not the world’s expert on multilateral development banks; I would not pretend to be. There are many issues here around lending ratios, headroom, capital replenishment and capital adequacy. There is, I think, a conventional wisdom that the banks are not doing all that they could today.
There is a big debate on how to expand their lending capacity through different lending ratios. There is a bit of an absent debate on how to add capital to these banks. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has been very vocal in calling for the need to expand the capital on a multiplier basis on how much gets unleashed. Of a trillion dollar financing, there is a huge amount that could be done through the IBRD, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. That is a low-cost financing option that is both for helping countries get out of extreme poverty or reduce general poverty but also for the low-cost energy investments that are crucial for the world’s climate objectives.
There are also investments in adaptation and resilience — I only caught the last few minutes of the previous session — but these investments to stop the drag on economic prosperity that climate change is already causing in country after country is crucial and under attended to.
There is both an anti-poverty investment question and there is a sustainable development question, but in practical terms, they are the same thing.
So this is where the trillion dollar question is now. It sounded big until you think about it being 1% of the global economy, and it is actually a very modest increment for what the world really needs.
The Chair: Senator, I will assume a second round question for you. We will move on.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I would like to welcome today’s witnesses.
My question if for Mr. Lebel. Mr. Lebel, promoting education and access to education, especially for girls, is of critical importance to IDRC. In your statement, you said that the pandemic and all the other situations are going to make that access more difficult for over 24 million young people in the world. As you said yourself, we know that girls are already penalized in terms of access to education.
How did IDRC set up a system that guarantees access to education for young girls? Do you think that international aid in its current form allows for the development of technology that can help these young girls who are far from urban centres, especially in Africa?
Mr. Lebel: Thank you, Senator Gerba; that’s an excellent question.
It’s obvious that one of the fundamental measures taken by IDRC that guarantees the success of its research activities is to work with local researchers and institutions where the problems are being felt. The first step is to avoid imposing a model, but rather help people understand a model and integrate it into their practices.
If we can do that, it will take a certain amount of time and also require change within societies. Education is the first level of intervention in order to bring change for women and girls, but also boys, so that they understand the issues, that is to say that a society cannot work when it treats two groups of its citizens differently.
I think that Canada has shown leadership by applying feminist policies in matters of development aid, but also because it always supports the rights of women and girls when working with organizations.
In the area of education, that can mean by something as simple as separate latrines in schools for girls and boys that are safe. It can also mean education programs that are shared with the community so that communities are often able to see what children are learning in order to acquire skills.
The secret to success is playing the long game. We need to work with communities, and we need a research process that is evidence-based. Afterwards, the big challenge is integrating all this into national policy. As in the case of the Global Partnership for Education, this means that the request has to come from the countries themselves. IDRC will respond to the request by supporting research activities that are defined by researchers in the requesting countries. That is critical to ensure success.
However, we have to be realistic. This requires a long-term effort, and the work is incremental. Often, we would like to have its impact felt a billionfold, whereas the ripples can be counted in the tens, hundreds, thousands and millions.
[English]
The Chair: This is just a technical observation, Mr. Lebel, but we are having some difficulty with your connection in terms of interpretation services. We will see if it persists, and if it does, you might want to shift comments to your two colleagues who have kindly joined us. We will see how things proceed.
Mr. Lebel: Okay. Thank you.
Senator Simons: As we are speaking with you today, my inbox is — and I’m sure my colleagues’ inboxes are — filled with hundreds and hundreds of letters from people who are convinced that Canada is signing away its national sovereignty and putting us under the dictations of the evil World Health Organization. This marks a change from the hysterical letters of two months ago, which were convinced that the World Economic Forum was making puppets of all of us.
There is this populist hysteria around global institutions of all kinds, much of that stirred up by malicious, bad actors. Some of it, I think, is rooted in real cynicism.
What do we need to do to restore the confidence of Canadians in some of these big, international actors? Mr. McArthur, do we need a new generation of international actors that do not come with all of the — I hate the word “negativity” — but the loss of confidence that some of the traditional players in the rules-based international order seem to have about them?
Mr. McArthur: Thank you, senator. It is a wonderful question and is at the core of so much.
Perhaps I will give a three-part answer.
One, institutions need to speak to the problems that people see and feel. If they can’t do that, they don’t maintain public trust and the legitimacy to keep carrying forward. That is part of the deep, underlying challenge of the Sustainable Development Goals. If someone sees it only as “over there,” and they are confronting deep issues in their own community to which no one is paying attention, then that makes it a lot harder to care, as altruistic as a person might be. At the same time, people don’t want international actors in their space all the time. They want their own community in their space, and they want accountability through their own local or national political systems.
That is why my final recommendation, the sixth one, is really about bottom-up mechanisms of international cooperation on shared global interests. We have so many issues around the world. I go into room after room since August 2015, asking people what the single biggest problem in the world is; “say it to the person next to you.” I have found time and time again that it does not take a very big room to get the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or an approximate version, from the room. The issues that people care about in communities around the world are the Sustainable Development Goals.
That is why it is so important to think about bottom-up action as a centrepiece to collective change.
That is just the first bit. People need to connect. As I say, in a TikTok world — TikTok, the social media app — one shouldn’t be thinking about a New York Times press release. You should be thinking about who is creating the story, who is telling their own story and how they are sharing it with others. Policy needs to do that, too, in my view.
A second question is this, though: What needs to happen with the large institutions that have responsibilities? Some of them need to be updated around honest, regular assessments around what their purpose is and whether there is an independent assessment of technical review.
My single favourite institution in that regard is The Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Twenty years ago, that institution was created with a new model where countries would apply with all country actors coming together to come up with their own national approach. They would submit to that multilateral body for support, and then, crucially, there was an independent technical review to look at what makes sense and what doesn’t. It wasn’t all about politics; it was about what might work.
That is how more multilateral efforts should work, in my view. That is a 20-year-old innovation that we have not applied to other issues. It has been a massive breakthrough in global health infectious disease. It has not been carried over to other fields.
Then the third issue embedded in your question is that there are bad actors. There are people trying to spread narratives for reasons that have nothing to do with the evidence. That needs to be confronted through proactive messaging from public leaders of all stripes, not just politicians. I put business leaders in this responsibility category, I put academic leaders in this responsibility category, and I put young leaders in this responsibility category. It is all about a collective conversation that needs to — back to the first point — connect to the problems that people see. Thank you.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you to our witnesses. My question is for Mr. McArthur as well. I was just wondering how the current fiscal situation in developed nations may impact the rapidly increasing demands of global aid. Are we reaching a point where there may be further vulnerability for those most in need? Thank you.
Mr. McArthur: Thank you, senator. The simple answer is, yes. I think there are multiple things happening at once. The total aid budget is now getting close to $200 billion a year globally. It’s $170 billion or $180 billion. Those are rounding estimates, but it’s in that order of magnitude. Much of that, however, amid the crises in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe is redirected towards refugee resettlement because that counts as aid, too. Many countries have actually had their fixed budgets set to other purposes — not bad purposes, very laudable purposes — and that means something got cut in supporting people on the ground.
At the same time, we have many of these investments — the so-called trillion dollar gap. Maybe another $200 billion of that needs to be so-called concessional finance or aid resourcing, so we’re only about halfway where we need to be. That’s for health, education, food, agriculture, infrastructure and adaptation support.
The infrastructure is actually a little more on the lending side than the donor side. But what we are seeing is that — and this is where the double standard comes in — advanced economies were able to borrow often up to 10% or more of GNP just to get through the crisis almost at the drop of the hat in the past few years, whereas many developing countries are facing constraints even at a much smaller percentage of GNP and told not to borrow more, that the interest rates are going up, the costs are going up and there is no more money. That’s led to a slow down of growth in those countries because they can’t make the needed investment. The slow downs in growth are leading to fewer fiscal revenues on their own side, and that’s leading to a negative spiral, making it harder to make progress.
We are seeing these knock-on dominoes of the fiscal, monetary and geopolitical situations in the advanced countries having tremendous negative consequences for many countries, especially in Africa and Latin America. The big exception is the large economies of Asia, in particular, that have very high investment rates and very robust foreign exchange reserves. Those countries have been less affected. They have had less inflation for a bunch of reasons, and they have had a more stable path, which is not to be confused with the deep challenges that many of the low- to middle-income emerging economies have been facing.
Senator Boniface: Thank you very much to both witnesses for being here. My question is actually spurred by Senator Ravalia’s question. In addition to inflation and some of the disinformation we see out there around international organizations, there is also a rise in protectionism. I’m thinking of the United States and the United Kingdom but also other countries as they look forward to spending within their own boundaries. I wonder how much you think that will play into future plans and how goals will be impacted by that.
Mr. Lebel: Thank you, senator. That’s a very good question. In my field of research, we are lucky because research is known to be an endeavour in a world where if you go alone you won’t accomplish much. The Centre has a Parliamentary allocation of $149 million a year. We’re using this as a lever in order to gather money from other sources — the Brits, Sweden, Norway, Australia and Israel, you name it.
From time to time, there are fluctuations related to domestic settings in those countries, but the trend is for those collaborations to continue. The impact of this in non-negligible and linked to something that is often forgotten in Canada. We tend to see the big picture. Mr. McArthur is great in the field. He has been on our board and I like him, but think about the investment of Canada in the ebola vaccine to stop the spread of Ebola during the last West African outbreak. Four agencies — Global Affairs Canada, Canadian Institute of Health Research, Public Health Agency of Canada and IDRC — came together with very limited funds to stop spread. In the field, people who were doing the research and the intervention were local people. For example, Malians helping people in Sierra Leone. That’s very important.
Another aspect that, in my view, the big picture might be the limitations that countries are imposing. But when you go to conferences, for example, on climate change, you almost cannot find a single negotiator in sub-Saharan Africa who has not been trained through grants made by IDRC and the U.K. government together.
When you look at women’s agenda and climate change, this is a journey of IDRC. If you look forward, the most important network on artificial intelligence in Africa is supported by IDRC funding thanks to Canada’s support, and by the Brits and by Sweden’s Sida.
All this together tells me that, yes, there are moments, there are highs and lows. But as a research organization, we have to buffer this by expanding our level of partnership and developing relationships with organizations at the time that are doing better or countries that have more resources to compensate for the loss in other fields.
I would add to this last element that the future is a lot about private sector engagement. I’m here in Latin America, and I participated in a meeting yesterday with a set of actors from the private sector. They are not discussing bringing money right now. They are discussing how we have a challenge in this field. Can researchers help us? We have local researchers over here that are building these ties in order to have the compensation of funding that comes from multiple sources in order to grow the pie and continue the work. That has led to very important change where Canada is recognized in the field.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We won’t go to John McArthur on that one because we are out of time on the segment, but we can later on. We are about to start the second round. I just wanted to ask both our witnesses some questions. Full disclosure, I know both witnesses very well from my previous life.
My question for Mr. McArthur is actually a blunt one. With all of the change and churn that is happening and in the wake of the pandemic, food security, looking at trying to attain the SDGs, is the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD still the place where donors can coordinate to best effect? Or should there be other ways and means of doing it?
My question for Mr. Lebel is: You have been the head of the IDRC now for several years. Your focus as an organization is technical. It is grassroots in the research community, as you have told us. Are you coordinating in any sort of policy-thinking way with other organizations in donor countries who have similar mandates and interests?
Mr. McArthur: Maybe to blend the answer to yours and the previous question, Mr. Chair, the OECD DAC is a crucial place in my view for like-minded supporters. As you would appreciate in a G7 context, the G7 had a different responsibility and role when it was two thirds of the world economy, then it was 40% of the world economy. Proportionally you need to pay attention to different actors in different ways.
I think the DAC is the same principle in motion. It matters hugely. Even if it’s a plurality of a lot of development assistance, it matters, but it can’t be exclusive. It needs to be partnering. It has to be with countries not just for countries. It needs to be thinking very strategically about all the forms of resources, private, blended and otherwise, that are coming from many more countries.
The debt crisis is a version of this right now where there has been a distinction between how China is approaching this is well understood by those involved in negotiating the old Paris Club creditor agreements, so there is a big issue, but I think the deeper point is this sense of removing the two sets of rules.
Developing countries heard a lot about “trade not aid” for a long time. Many advanced economies were very surprised when they didn’t just line up to support them in the conflict over Ukraine. They have been very surprised that people got so upset about advanced economies hoarding all the vaccines, these miracle technologies that no one else had access to, even if there were these extraordinary breakthroughs which before the pandemic would have literally been the textbook example of something you make sure everyone gets as quickly as possible.
We’re seeing this crucially in the climate debate where countries with maybe half the population having access to basic electricity is being told, well don’t invest in hydrocarbons, we won’t permit you to get financing for any hydrocarbons while we’re having flush profits or public revenues amid surging oil prices.
Those double standards are the type of thing that holds perceptions of the DAC back, but I think they get to the previous question on how much of it is us versus you and how much of it is truly all of us in this together.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Lebel: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, IDRC also has a mandate for research that makes a difference. That’s through the policy and the public policy stream.
How do we do this? We do this with organizations that have a policy mandate and rallying our forces together. Let me give you an example, the one I gave you on climate change. In Bangladesh, our research community has linked up with the environment department in order to establish the adaptation plan. In the one health, linking environment and health, Dominique Charron has been part of the group that is defining the parameter for absorbing one health results into policy development for a country. I could go on education. GPE is largely composed of people that are coming from the policy stream.
Probably at the top of our agenda was a think tank initiative that we have had for many years, and it’s pursuing its work without our funding. Where the goal was essentially to do research that was linking directly to policy to make a change, reform of the constitutional law of Canada and the election process. I could go on and on.
Ultimately, the answer is, yes, our research doesn’t sleep on a shelf. Our research linked to the policy is shared and is translated in order to have a greater impact on the population we are working for. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Coyle: This question is for Mr. Lebel. I’m a big fan of IDRC, as you know. I also was on the IDRC board for many years. It’s good to have you here.
One of the things that IDRC has been really good at over the years is building and investing in local research talent, that research policy nexus as you have described it. In today’s world, where talent is so globalized, where people move, where you may have made an investment in this team in Bangladesh and you were hoping that the talent was going to stay in Bangladesh and continue to have an impact in Bangladesh or any other country, for example, or region.
I’m curious what today’s thinking is around the development of human talent and how does an organization like IDRC see it in today’s world, which is very different from where the world that IDRC started out in?
Mr. Lebel: Thank you, Senator Coyle. Pleasure to see you. I remember my youth at IDRC when you were a governor, and that’s almost 20 years ago for me, so incredible.
Senator Coyle: Yes, it is.
Mr. Lebel: Time goes by.
You’re referring to the brain drain. This is something that has been often cited. Talent that is developed elsewhere will migrate elsewhere where the conditions are more favourable. It’s always present. But the reality is that the global problems that we are facing can only be tackled by global solutions. In order to have global solutions, you need to have the global voice. The global voice is not the voice of the expert coming from Canada and the U.S. or wherever necessarily; it’s the voices that are coming from the field.
One anecdote is speaking. I’m here in Brazil going back to the villages where I did my PhD 30 years ago. The researcher that is accompanying me was cutting fish and analyzing core sediment as a first-year undergraduate. He was my field aid. He is now a full-tenured professor in Brazil and leads a research centre on environment and health. That’s an anecdote.
IDRC has been continuously sponsoring through its program PhD-level researchers that are in the field and are in their own institutions. Often in my tenure as president, I have been saying, listen, if we have been building and supporting capacity and development for the last 53 years in this institution, we need to now shift the mindset.
That’s what we’re doing with what we call the Science Granting Councils Initiative, support to 16 countries in sub‑Saharan Africa that are developing their granting councils with proper strategies, selection of grantees, and we are transferring the funding there. These people do the work, innovate. Face shields in Nigeria through the pandemic developed through grants made by the granting council of Nigeria through this mechanism of the Science Granting Initiative. Something to celebrate in Canada.
Senator Coyle: Wonderful. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I also have a question for Mr. Lebel.
IDRC’s vision for 2030 targets five research areas. I would like to know how you will ensure that the results of your research are disseminated and integrated into developing countries’ policies.
Mr. Lebel: That is an excellent question. I thought you were going to ask me how we had established the five research areas, and I would have told you to ask Mr. McArthur, because he was one of our board members and was involved in the process. But your question is about the way we measure the impact of our research.
Reviews are carried out periodically and in various ways to ensure that results are indeed integrated into policies and applied. These reviews can be done at any point during a project or program and are also carried out periodically every three years, when we look at the centre and its strategy as a whole.
This strategy is targeting three simple things to create a more inclusive and more sustainable world. Firstly, continuing funding for quality large-scale research using the best resources, all the while accompanying developing countries. Secondly, sharing the knowledge; not only through articles or reports, but also through the expertise of the centre and our research community, to generate ways of quickly explaining how policy should be established in order to improve not only funding, but also peoples’ living conditions. Thirdly, we have to work in partnership with our financial backers, obviously, but also our stakeholders in the research networks.
Essentially, if there are global problems, we need global solutions, which means engaging all stakeholders worldwide, i.e., researchers from the southern and northern hemispheres. Indeed, we no longer make that geographic distinction: They are simply international researchers to us. Thank you.
Senator Simons: Mr. Lebel, I would like to ask you the same question that I put to Mr. McArthur.
[English]
What do we do in a world where people have lost confidence in global institutions, where the very word “globalist” has become a slur and an insult?
Mr. Lebel: From my experience, and from the experience of 52 years at the centre, there are global institutions, but there are people that are populating those global institutions, and there are people outside of these institutions.
By supporting researchers on the ground, in the field, early in their career, throughout their career, we are giving them the means not only to speak research language and I have often seen researchers become good communicators for policy actors. It’s much stronger to have a researcher in Peru that speaks to the Peruvian authorities than to have a Canadian that speaks to that authority.
The model of IDRC of empowering people means that we are supporting them to move their knowledge, they own the knowledge, and to move it to the place where they think it’s going to make a difference. For that, we are helping. It takes a constellation.
Let me give you a very concrete illustration of a constellation of actors. In Kenya, in order to calm down the misinformation, a startup put together an application that was reaching different stakeholders into the election process, curbing the disinformation and the lies that were said, an application consulted by hundreds and thousands of people that were able to verify if this was a rumour or a fact in real time.
Sharing information rapidly, sharing the information in a format that makes a difference, sharing the information at key moments, is part of the research and what some researchers are doing.
We have done the same during the Arab Spring with violence against women. We did the same in educating youth in Chile after the dictatorship on how to learn to vote when no one had voted for over 25 years.
Senator Simons: Thank you for speaking to us today from Brazil, where a right-wing populist government was defeated in a free and fair election, the results of which were not accepted by a lot of people. You can see from right where you are the implications of this.
Mr. Lebel: Indeed.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I would like to thank our witnesses, John McArthur, Jean Lebel, Julie Shouldice and Dominique Charron for being with us today. Your comments have enriched the discussion that we have had on international development, recognizing it’s also International Development Week.
Mr. McArthur: Forgive me, but since I don’t get the privilege, can I make one final point?
The Chair: I guess you can.
Mr. McArthur: On this last debate, it’s so central it’s worth clarifying two things.
First is the difference between actions and institutions. Institutions only work when they are delivering actions that people feel, which is why the notion of “so what” needs to be reinvigorated for many global institutions.
The second is, at the other end of the spectrum, long-termism. So much of the way the world works today is different than it was 20 years ago, and it will be extremely different in another 20 years. That’s where I think a body like this one — so distinguished, so thoughtful — can play a crucial role to elevate some of those long-term strategic investment questions that not only Canada but the entire world really needs. Thank you for indulging.
The Chair: Happy to indulge you with comments like that about this body. That’s terrific. Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)