:
Colleagues, I'd like to convene this meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. This is to deal with the main estimates.
I will go through this process for you one more time, because at the end of this meeting we'll move some motions to go through the different votes. The main estimates for 2018-19 are votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, and L25 under Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development; vote 1 under International Development Research Centre; and vote 1 under International Joint Commission (Canadian Section).
Before us today to speak to the estimates and to make a presentation is Minister .
Minister Bibeau has been a regular at our committee, and we very much appreciate that. As always, colleagues, we'll let the minister make some opening comments, and then we'll get right into questions, which will run for an hour. Then we'll turn it over to officials after that.
Welcome, Minister. The floor is yours.
[Translation]
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am here today to present you the Main Estimates.
I am accompanied by Mr. Arun Thangaraj, the Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer. Our Deputy Minister, Diane Jacovella, should be joining us any minute now.
When I was appointed Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, the gave me the mandate of refocusing international assistance on the poorest and most vulnerable people, and on the fragile states.
I was also tasked with holding consultations with Canadian stakeholders from international organizations dedicated to international and humanitarian assistance. The aim of these consultations was to create a new framework for policy and funding, to guide the government's decisions on the assistance it provides, to promote community empowerment, and to support strong, lasting growth in developing countries.
I am very proud of Canada's feminist international assistance policy, which was launched last June after one year of consultations. The policy aims to eradicate poverty and to build a more peaceful, inclusive and prosperous world. It has been proven that promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls are the most efficient ways of reaching this objective.
The fifth sustainable development objective is promoting gender equality and empowering all women and girls. It is at the heart of Canada's approach in implementing the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Gender equality will lead to progress with all the other objectives.
To this end, Canada is taking action.
[English]
Since Canada's feminist international assistance policy was launched last June, the Government of Canada has committed to a three-year, $650-million investment to scale up the number of women, adults and girls, who have access to sexual and reproductive health and rights services. This will help make contraception available to 120 million women and adolescent girls. This funding also supports organizations that help to prevent gender-based violence and harmful practices, such as child, early, and forced marriage and female genital mutilation—cutting.
We also announced $150 million to strengthen women's rights organizations and movements through the women's voice and leadership program. We want to reach the poorest and most marginalized women, and reach more women at the grassroots level. This will help ensure that more women take part in leadership and decision-making. In some cases, women are putting themselves in danger by speaking up. Canada must support the efforts of these women and girls, and give women the platforms, tools, and protection they need to make their voices heard.
Beyond these efforts, we will also increase the number of girls who complete elementary and high school. How? First, last February, I announced funding of $180 million over three years for the Global Partnership for Education. We want to improve the ability of women-owned businesses and farmers to be part of the value chain. We also want to enhance women's land, labour, inheritance, and property rights.
We will also support initiatives that bolster resilience to climate change and increase the number of people working in green technologies and climate smart agriculture, increase the ability of women to hold leadership positions in public life, and transform Canada's humanitarian assistance to a more gender responsive way.
[Translation]
I share your concerns and those of Canadians for the situation faced by many people in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, the Middle East and Asia. Let's take the Rohingya, for example.
The humanitarian situation faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar is absolutely horrible, and catastrophic from a security perspective. Canada was one of the first countries to respond to this humanitarian crisis. Since the start of 2017, Canada has given $45.9 million in humanitarian assistance to address the needs of those affected by the crisis. Last May, we also launched a multi-year strategy, which includes a contribution of $300 million over three years to address humanitarian needs and to promote stability and development in the region, in a timely and coordinated manner.
Making our humanitarian assistance more gender-aware is one of the goals of our policy, which has been concretely implemented in Bangladesh and Myanmar.
[English]
For example, when I visited last November, there were only two specialized centres to help survivors of sexual abuse. We decided to support the provision of information services in 20 more. Our actions helped to mobilize additional support within the international community. Today there are a total of 39 safe spaces for women in Cox's Bazar.
[Translation]
I would now like to return to the international assistance envelope, which supports the whole-of-government approach to delivering humanitarian assistance.
Sixteen departments and federal agencies are collaborating to achieve the international assistance priorities. The 2018-2019 Main Estimates include funding of $3.9 billion for development, peace and security programs: an increase of $80 million to facilitate quick responses to unforeseen global crises, an increase of $108 million for the 2015-2020 strategy for maternal, newborn and child health, and an increase of $36.7 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
[English]
I'm pleased to report that budget 2018 provides additional funding to support the implementation of the feminist international assistance policy, including an additional $2 billion over five years, starting in 2018-19, to strengthen the impact of Canada's feminist international assistance policy and advance our international leadership in key areas, and $1.5 billion in funding over five years, starting in 2018-19, in support of innovation in Canada's international assistance.
Recognizing that government donors cannot meet the needs of the sustainable development goals, or SDGs, alone, our government will continue to explore new partnerships and innovative approaches that will mobilize private capital for sustainable development.
To conclude, through Canada's feminist international assistance policy and the significant investments announced in budget 2018, Canada is better positioned to both help the poorest and most vulnerable and contribute to building a more peaceful, inclusive, and prosperous world.
Mr. Chair and colleagues, thank you.
:
You answered the question better than I could.
The departmental plan is based on the new departmental results framework. In setting up the departmental results framework, we went to each result area. One of the areas we were targeting is enhancing the empowerment and rights of women and girls. As soon as we'd do that, we'd say, now how best do we measure that?
We established a performance target, as you said, of what are the organizations we target through our programming that represent and advocate for that. Right now there is no indicator. We don't have the data. As part of setting that indicator up, we've set the data sources, our financial system, as well as our project management reporting tool, where we can capture that.
What we are doing now is trying to find what the baseline indicator is for that specific performance indicator. Once we get the baseline, we can set the target.
:
That's what leads me to be concerned.
To be honest with you, it seems like....
Before I say that, I think there were initiatives before, a Muskoka initiative, for example, in terms of newborn, women, and mothers, that established some base. I don't think you've done much different since then, except for changing the labelling of the whole thing.
I hope that this is not a political calculation of any kind, because after two and a half, almost three, years, we're expecting those measures to be in place and we expect some results. Taxpayers need to see, and we need to know, where we're going with this policy that the government has been talking about for the last two and a half or three years.
Minister, Canada and Ukraine have a very strong bilateral relationship, and we've been among the most steadfast international supporters of Ukraine's democratic and economic reform processes. Since Russia's military invasions of Ukrainian territory in 2014, Canada has contributed $240 million in development assistance and $400 million in low interest loans. Much of Canada's aid intended to bring relief to eastern Ukraine—that's where it's mostly directed—towards the 1.8 million internally displaced, 3.5 million dependent upon aid, and 250,000 children living in an active war zone, one of the regions of the planet with the most land mines.
These are astoundingly large numbers. There are 250,000 children living in an active war zone in Europe. Let me humanize it. Last week, Daria Kazemirova, a 15-year-old girl, did a series of social media posts and soon afterwards she was hit by a Russian artillery shell and was killed. Last year, I welcomed on the Hill Mykola Nyzhnykovskyi, an 11-year-old boy who the Montreal - Shriners Hospitals for Children brought to fit with prosthetics because he lost both legs and an arm—and he lost his brother when they picked up a grenade just outside of their town. That's the real human cost, and the numbers are astounding.
Canada must continue to help the people of Ukraine. Canadians have called upon the Government of Canada to commit to maintaining the funding for international development assistance to Ukraine at the present level of $50 million per year and increasing funding when necessary.
Could you please provide us with an update how the government will meet this particular goal?
:
Yes, thank you, and I know that you are a strong supporter for the Ukrainian community, and I appreciate it.
Yes, you're right. We are amongst the strongest international supporters of Ukraine, and we intend to continue to be, to implement the democratic and economic reforms.
We are in the process after the policy of looking at all the countries where we are and the vision for each of these countries. I can reassure you that Ukraine remains on the top of the list, and we will keep strongly supporting the country and their reforms.
We are just about to launch a call for proposals. There will be different possibilities for the organizations, international and Canadian, to provide proposals as long as they're really well aligned with a feminist policy, and mainly the good governance, gender equality, and all of these priorities.
Actually, I intend to visit Ukraine next month. This is also to show you that we stay strongly committed to this country, and we will continue in terms of development and assisting the government as well as providing humanitarian assistance for those you were talking about.
:
Currently, Canada spends 0.26% of its GDP on international development. When I held consultations, our partners asked for three things: good policy development, leadership and more money.
On policy, I feel that we are very satisfied with Canada's feminist international assistance policy. On leadership, we're providing it at different levels. We are doing a lot to safeguard the rights of women, girls, and, more specifically, adolescent girls. Canada was one of the first countries to respond to the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh. We presented a plan that is now triennial. We are ensuring leadership on this front as well.
We agree that official development assistance remains a crucial part of fulfilling the sustainable development goals. We committed to adding $2 billion over five years to carry out the priorities of the feminist international assistance policy, and to investing $1.5 billion for innovation initiatives in development.
In addition to that, we created the Canadian Development Finance Institution, or FinDev Canada, located in Montreal. The institution presented their first project recently. This money does not come from the official development assistance, but it still consists of Canadian funding that serves to lever private investments for development.
We also supported an initiative of the World Bank, called We-Fi, that encourages female entrepreneurship. Canada invested $20 million in this initiative that will seek out $1 billion. The first call for proposals has reached $1.6 billion.
We recognize that official development assistance is fundamental, but we're trying different ways of leveraging funds.
There is a minister responsible for each division: trade, foreign affairs, and development. It's the same thing for us deputy ministers. At the next level down, all of the managers in the department try to take the various challenges into account when giving their recommendations, but we have nonetheless maintained expertise in trade, development and foreign affairs, so that our projects continue to yield good results.
Let me give you an example. In trade, Canadian companies say that it's very important to have a favourable environment, in order to ensure that the rule of law applies and that the rules are followed. We do the same thing with development, by making sure that the countries have systems of governance.
It's often easy for us to work together to see what's keeping us from investing in countries. If the countries in Africa would get more investments, they would experience greater economic growth.
We care about inclusive economic growth, and we work very closely with our colleagues to achieve it. Given what's going on in South Sudan, for instance, it's impossible to talk about development without talking about peace and safety. We are trying to harmonize our messages, whether they are about politics or development, in order to make sure we're going in the right direction.
We need to make sure that the expertise of the officials at CIDA is still excellent within the new department.
:
Thank you very much, Minister.
My question is specifically about the estimates.
I noticed that in the estimates there is no specifically designated line item for international election observation. I know there are one-off projects. We can do it through embassies, through international assistance, through the peace and stabilization operations program, and yesterday the minister was very clear that we are planning on funding the Ukraine and other elections.
However, there used to be a program called the multilateral elections observation program, MEOP, under the old CIDA. When it was amalgamated, when Mr. Baird was the minister of foreign affairs, he actually cancelled that program and created a section under the stabilization and reconstruction task force, but there was no money and no human resources. At that point, there was no money specifically set aside, and there hasn't been since.
We changed it in 2016 to the peace and stabilization operations program, PSOP, but since it wasn't really a fit, it actually isn't there anymore, which means it's a bit orphaned.
It really is a development type of thing. We also know that in terms of outcomes for women and girls, if there is full political participation, free and fair elections, it is a precondition to the sustainable development goals. It's a way of ensuring that we have democracy and free elections so that we do increase marginalized groups' outcomes.
Would you be willing, especially with the increase in our feminist international assistance envelope, to use some of that funding to re-establish a program that's specifically designated, with the expertise, the in-house knowledge, and the coordination? Election observation isn't something you can just do. You do have to have that type of expertise in-house. Would you be willing to reconsider re-creating some type of program similar to the original MEOP?
:
Thank you for making the effort to ask your question in French.
Canada was one of the first countries to respond, last August and September. Thanks to the matching fund, the contribution now amounts to $46 million, on top of the $12 million that Canadians donated to the matching fund.
As you know, we recently announced a three-year plan. The first time we did this was for Syria. So, we are doing this a second time, to respond to the Rohingya crisis, because providing our partners with potential work, over a few years, is good development policy.
It amounts to $300 million over three years. Of course, a large part of this money will go to humanitarian assistance for the Rohingya community in Bangladesh, but also for the host community.
I was there. I visited Cox's Bazar. I met Rohingya women and I talked with them face to face.
It is a critical situation. There is a lot of violence. Even in the refugee camps, life is still extremely hard. The refugee camps are overcrowded. There are also dangers related to potential heavy rainfall and mudslides. The situation is extremely serious.
As I was saying, we need to provide basic care and meet the basic needs of the people in Cox's Bazar, among others, but also of the Rohingya communities still in Myanmar, and of the host community.
There is another aspect related to rendering justice and providing assistance with the fact-finding mission. The fact-finding mission is paramount if we want to respond to the recommendations of the reports written by Kofi Annan and Bob Rae for the return of the Rohingya.
There is a whole aspect on justice. Those responsible must be brought to justice so that people feel that justice has been served. Contributing to these missions is a key aspect of our support.
Then, there is the whole issue of international cooperation. I'm happy to tell you that we had this discussion last week, during the meeting of the G7 finance and development ministers. We agreed that we will use this crisis to work together and implement our commitment to an approach that is more focused on sex-specific development, that is more gender-aware, on gender equality and on empowering women in humanitarian contexts.
Beyond providing funding for shelters, water, food and basic needs, we really need to pay particular attention to the needs of women, adolescent girls and girls. We cannot only see them as victims or recipients. We must also find find ways to work with them, consult them and let them participate in the decisions. We need to help them develop skills and leadership, so that they can contribute to living in this community and gain new skills before going back to their regular lives.
:
Thanks for recognizing that most of the humanitarian and development workers are there for a good reason, and are really dedicated, putting their health and even life at risk sometimes.
When this event came back into the media—it was something that happened in 2011—I immediately reached out to Oxfam-Québec's and Oxfam Canada's CEO to investigate and see what the situation was, if we were involved. They knew about this fact, and they had already taken significant measures to improve their procedures to prevent, to train, and to act in such cases. I was reassured to start with. The same week I called for a meeting with 10 or 12 of our main Canadian humanitarian organizations to have this discussion, to share best practices, to identify the gaps, so we can close these gaps. We are working on these gaps with them, with the department, to see how we can share these best practices and identify the gaps.
The other step will also be to make sure the small and medium organizations also have the resources to undertake such preventive action, have these procedures, have a line where someone can call in a safe way, how to support the person who called, and how to prosecute the one who's facing allegations.
I was reassured that we were already in a good position, but we can always do better. I'm not blind. I think in every industry we have people who behave inappropriately, but we are in a situation where we deal with the poorest and the most vulnerable, so we have to be even stronger. We also had this conversation at the G7 again, and we agreed to share practices to support the UN secretary-general, because we all share the zero-tolerance approach.
One thing that is a bit difficult is to find how we will avoid having one predator being hired by another. We cannot work with a blacklist because of our privacy law, so we are thinking about other mechanisms, such as a humanitarian passport. We want to work together internationally because humanitarian and development workers work for one another. We are all working very hard, especially the U.K. and us, Canada. We're taking the lead on this situation because we don't want this to happen.
First of all, Minister, I just have a comment. I think you know that Rona Ambrose in particular, but other members of the previous government, were very actively engaged in the promotion of women's rights around the world. It was minister Ambrose's initiative, our former leader—not at the time but later—who championed the creation of the International Day of the Girl Child. She was very vocal on issues like early and enforced marriages, and supported economic opportunities for women. I appreciate that much of this work is a positive example of continuity over the course of governments. I think it serves all of us better when people don't try to turn that into a partisan issue. I think we do have a consensus when it comes to advocating for women's rights around the world. I'm proud of the fact that it's part of a legacy that all of us are involved in. Certainly, I know you wouldn't want to diminish the good work on these issues by people like Rona Ambrose.
I want to ask you a question about UNRWA. I had an opportunity recently to visit an UNRWA school in the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. I was there as part of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group. I know that the previous government had concerns about some of the things that were happening through UNRWA. Your government has taken a very different approach with respect to UNRWA.
What struck me in visiting this school was that it is geographically extremely close to an Israeli settlement. We asked the students there if there is any contact that takes place among the students at that school and children, students who are close by. They told us no, they didn't have that contact. They didn't want to have that contact. The teachers were nodding along approvingly while these comments were being made. I don't fault the children for the feelings they're having in this situation. Obviously, it's a very tense situation, but people want to know, in terms of curriculum, in terms of programs that encourage peaceful coexistence and pluralism, whether the messages people are getting, and schools that are funded by Canadians, are encouraging intercommunal harmony, peaceful coexistence, goodwill towards each other, or whether those students are getting messages through their school that are maintaining or even enhancing those tensions.
I wonder if you could comment on that, with respect to UNRWA. What steps has the government taken to ensure that Canadian tax dollars are actually being spent in a way that is fully aligned with Canadian values?
:
Thank you for the question.
I think we all recognize that UNRWA is working in a particularly difficult environment. I understand your concern and we share your concern. We are in very close communication with UNRWA on its direction. It's at least on a weekly basis, if not even more, because we really want to follow up, especially on the school curriculum because we know it's an issue in this particular environment.
We have to remember as well that when we support UNRWA, yes, a part of it goes to education, health, and basic services. It's not only in Palestine; it's also in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. As I said in the beginning, my mandate is to focus on the poorest and the most vulnerable. Definitely the Palestinian refugees are among those.
Yes, I'm following up. I'm very attentive to the matter.
:
Minister, in following up on the theme of my previous question with regard to democratic development, as we mentioned, we know that women thrive and the sustainable development goals are achieved when you have open, pluralistic, inclusive democratic processes. A lot of the expertise that Canadians have, which we are particularly good at doing, is in institutional development—parliaments, rule of law, making sure we have strong democratic institutions around the world. In my past that was one thing I was doing abroad
The all-party democracy caucus recently had a forum where we brought in experts, former UNDP people from around the world who work in this field, the Parliamentary Centre and others, who said that at the moment only 2% of ODA goes to institutional development for democracy. I don't know if this is true.
I'm wondering if that's something we might be able to consider.
We know that the feminist international assistance policy doesn't mean that we stop doing things like democracy promotion and electoral observation. It just means that we want to have more women participating, and included in and designing those kinds of programs. The programs themselves actually achieve the kinds of outcomes for women and girls that we're looking for.
I'm not asking for an answer right now in terms of the percentage, but just in general, in terms of the inclusive governance that you're doing, would you be willing to take a look at the percentage? That's not for civil society participation, but specifically for institutional development on democracy.
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I'm trying to think of any examples. None of them really come to mind.
At the time of amalgamation, what essentially happened is that two departments were stitched together. There were certain programs, for example, electoral observations, that might have fallen in the peace and security area. However, the development programs that were very clearly development, stayed intact.
What was done, in terms of how we managed our finances, was we created a special fund for anything that was tagged against development. We can monitor and track development expenditures to ensure they continue to be used for international development purposes, that they continue to be counted as official development assistance.
There were internal financial structures to ensure not only the grants and contributions but the FTEs, so that the same amounts of operating expenditures were maintained for that purpose.
:
Speaking of the grants and contributions and the FTEs, one thing I'm hearing from civil society is that over the years, not recently but over the last decade, more and more it's not contribution agreements but it's moving more towards contracts and short-term one-offs. The length of time for project proposals to be approved is increasing. Of course, these are the types of things that are very difficult for Canadian organizations. Often their staff is funded through the different projects. Very few of them have core funding.
I'll go back to democratic development. Very often you don't know what's going to happen in a country. You might plan for electoral assistance but the election is delayed, or you might plan for a long-term parliamentary program and then the parliament is dissolved or something happens. Then, in certain areas, you need to go in quickly. Venezuela right now would be an example where there's a tremendous need very quickly. Sometimes it's less predictable even than that. There have been suggestions made of having more long-term agreements, say 10-year agreements, which would be very flexible, which would allow rapid response within certain parameters but allow these Canadian organizations....
That is another issue: a lot of our support should be going to organizations that are based in Canada and local partners.
Is there a way that we could move more towards providing that type of long-term, sustained support, particularly so organizations don't have staff hired, and then a gap of three or four months where they have to lay off the staff, and then bring the staff back because now they have another project? Is there a way to provide that longevity, both because it's good for NGOs but also because it's good for development assistance, for those partnerships, the local partnerships on the ground? Especially in politics and democracy, the political partnerships that are made are so vitally important. They're very easily lost if you withdraw from that country and then try to come back again. Thus, is there a move towards that?
I would like to return to an issue Ms. Vandenbeld touched on, something called results-based management, or RBM. I tend to agree with her on this subject. We were wondering how we evaluated, in terms of RBM, the fact that many international partners were successful in avoiding civil wars. I know that many people are questioning these kinds of procedures that are sometimes quite complicated, and that risk, as I like to say,
[English]
to confuse accountability and accountancy, which are two different things, basically.
[Translation]
This particularly impacts the small organizations set up in northern Saskatchewan, which are often associated with one religious group or another.
Are you considering special mechanisms for these small organizations?
:
I'll bet you that 46-page document was written by me. No, it wasn't.
As I said before, what we want to do is make sure that we enable organizations of all sizes to deliver on development projects and work with the department, but that we don't overburden them unnecessarily.
We are looking at how we can streamline our requirements. How do we write them in plain language? How do we look at the contribution agreements that we have with them and use standard contribution templates as much as possible so they're easy to follow? It's doing capacity building and initial visits with these organizations, so they understand our expectations, and when they fill in a report, either on results or for a quarterly financial report, they're able to do that.
With respect to provincial councils, I'm probably not the best person...that would be one of my colleagues who's not here. We are working more with, and targeting, provincial councils to look at their members, and to see how we can make our processes a bit simpler and more easy to use so they can access and even work through some of those councils.
:
Thank you very much for being here this afternoon.
I want to ask a question about something that I read in your departmental plan. If you look at priority number two, advancing Canada's feminist policy, you can see that it dovetails nicely into sustainable development goal number five, but one of the main points you have there is that 50% of bilateral assistance in 2020-21 will be going to sub-Saharan Africa, because you're tailoring the funding to the poorest.
When we look at sub-Saharan Africa, we see a lot of other players: other countries, other NGOs, and other CSOs. You see la Francophonie, the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. There are a lot of entities working there, so my question is a bit broad in response to that.
If we're going to apply our efforts in that part of the world, how are we going to discriminate? Where Canadian funding is going to be applied, how are we going to make sure that Canadian programming is going to be applied? How are you going to discern which partners to work with, which ones not to work with, which countries to go into, which countries don't need the help, and which countries need the help? How will you figure out those parameters and come up with some road map going forward, since 50% of the funding will be in that part of the world?
:
Thank you very much for that.
The other thing I wanted to say was that in 2010, I was managing a global project for women, for women in politics. I had staff on five continents.
My regional coordinator for sub-Saharan Africa Skyped me one day and said, “You Canadian women are hypocrites.” I stood back and asked, “What do you mean?” She said, “I studied at McGill and I know that Canadian women have reproductive rights, but it's not good enough for us African women.”
She pointed out a clinic in her hometown. It had been Canadian-funded for 40 years. It was providing needed medical services in a conflict-affected area. It provided sexual and reproductive health support for young girls, 14-year-old girls, who'd been gang-raped by militias. Because one of the things that the clinic offered was abortion services, their funding was actually cut by the Harper government. As a result, that clinic—with almost no notification and after 40 years of working with Canada—lost all of their health services.
What I'd like to ask—because we are very clear that we support women's reproductive health and choice—is how are we rebuilding those broken relationships? How do you go into a village where the doctors and nurses lost their jobs, the clinic shut down...how do you go back in there and open that clinic and ask them to trust us again? Is there a way we can restore and rebuild the trust that people, particularly women in developing countries, had in us?
:
Colleagues, that will wrap up our session with the officials.
Officials, I want to thank you very much. You don't have to run off, but you can.
We're going to do the votes now. Then we'll go to Mr. Aboultaif's notice of motion. Then we have one or two other things, but very shortly, depending on how it all goes.
As per how the estimates work, I will read it out for you.
DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT
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Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$1,706,736,559
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Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$135,243,378
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Vote 10—The grants listed in any of the Estimates for the fiscal year..........$4,219,944,467
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Vote 15—Payments made..........$50,779,000
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Vote 20—Pursuant to subsection 12(2) of the International Development (Financial 1 Institutions) Assistance Act...........$1
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Vote L25—Pursuant to subsection 12(2) of the International Development (Financial 1 Institutions) Assistance Act..........$1
(Votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, and L25 agreed to on division)
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE
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Vote 1—Payments to the Centre..........$139,338,189
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
INTERNATIONAL JOINT COMMISSION (CANADIAN SECTION)
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$11,267,974
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
The Chair: Shall I report the main estimates 2018-19 to the House?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: On division.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That was the hard part for today.
Now, I'd like to go to Mr. Aboultaif's notice of motion. He'd like to present it to committee with no debate, as it is a notice of motion. There will be no debate, as it relates to this, because I understand there's no unanimous consent to waive the notice of motion.
I'll turn the floor over to you.