MENZIES SPEAKS TO JUNIOR TEAM CANADA YOUTH AMBASSADORS

July 03, 2007

OTTAWA – Ted Menzies, Member of Parliament for Macleod and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade and to the Minister of International Cooperation spoke to an audience of 60 Young Canadians that have been actively involved and engaged in their communities. This National Youth Ambassador Caucus is part of Global Vision’s Junior Team Canada.
The youths visited Ottawa to discuss global issues and the importance of good governance. With top young Ambassador’s receiving an award.
Below is the full text of Menzies’ speech:

Good afternoon.

As I look around the room today, I am excited for you, as you anticipate your trip to Vietnam and Malaysia. I understand that for most of you this will be your first visit to a developing country, and I know it will change your lives, as my trips to developing nations have changed mine.

Three months ago I traveled to Afghanistan in my role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation Josée Verner, who is responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA.

It is remarkable how great an impact that trip had on me, personally, as I was able to see first-hand the results of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.

As you may know, through CIDA, Canada is committed to reducing the number of people living in poverty by half by 2015.

But this will not be possible without rapid economic growth that give the poor the opportunities they need to improve their lives. The private sector drives growth, creating income and employment opportunities for poor women, men and children.

When about one-fifth of the world’s citizens live on less than a dollar a day, we cannot afford to overlook the opportunities that private sector development can offer for global economic growth and poverty reduction.

Canada is a country that can bring experience and world-class capacity in several areas of private sector development, including building the policy, legal and regulatory frameworks that underpin successful economies.

In developing countries, as elsewhere, the private sector is comprised of micro, small, medium and large enterprises.

These include rural and urban entrepreneurs and enterprises, cottage industries and cooperatives that are engaged in market activities.

These enterprises continue to face barriers posed by complex and inefficient regulations, difficulties in accessing financial services, skills, knowledge, and technologies, and obstacles to selling goods and services in national, regional and international markets.
There are major obstacles to the growth of the private sector in developing countries.

Women entrepreneurs are particularly at a disadvantage.

They find it more difficult to obtain access to credit, ownership, education, training, and technology. We are helping them to find the necessary tools.

Our strategy is to create an enabling environment, promote entrepreneurship and connect to markets.

There is no doubt that a dynamic private sector and strong markets that engage the poor are essential to achieving the kind of growth that creates employment opportunities and real income for the poor.

We know that the private sector drives job creation, innovation and growth.

In many developing countries, entrepreneurs have the potential to contribute significantly to growth and economic activity, but are still operating at the margins of the formal economy, unable to bring their goods and services to wider markets.

Addressing the barriers they face will go a long way toward reducing poverty.

As I’m sure you are all aware, the Government of Canada emphasized the importance of ensuring “a more effective use of Canadian aid dollars” in the Speech from the Throne.

And Budget 2007 confirmed the government’s commitment to grow ODA by eight per cent per year, which means that international assistance is expected to double by 2010-11 from 2001-02 levels.

Canada’s presence in fragile states like Afghanistan and Haiti is helping to bring these countries the stability their citizens have longed for. In the global marketplace, countries such as these also represent an opportunity for Canadian business—not only by working with donors in reconstruction efforts, but also through investment and trade.

In Afghanistan, the largest recipient of our official development assistance is the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan, or MISFA.
Financial services to micro businesses have benefited some 335,000 poor people, primarily women.
No bank would have shown these people any confidence, yet 98 percent of them are repaying their loans with interest. Canada is this program’s largest donor.

Let me tell you a little story that I think illustrates the limited perspective that we in Canada have of Afghanistan.

On our last day in the country, Minister Verner and I travelled outside Canada’s military base in Kandahar, or ‘outside the wire’, as the Canadian media terms such trips.

Our goal was to visit Canadian aid projects to assess the progress being made.

We travelled by military convoy to the town of Sola Kalay, about 25 kilometres from the Kandahar Base, where we sat down with a local community council to discuss the irrigation project they were undertaking, with the help of Canadian funding.

Across the field were workers—men, women and children who had stopped to watch the arrival of our military convoy and who seemed curious about our purpose for being there.

We asked our escorts if it would be possible to meet these local Afghans and to talk to them.
When the Canadian soldiers approached them, I was amazed by how fast the children began running to our troops.

One boy held out his hand and in English said, “ball.”

Canada’s military personnel are known for providing balls and toys for the children of Kandahar to play with.

While I am well versed in Canada’s role in Afghanistan and the names and types of projects our aid dollars fund, Canadians often hear the word millions, when we talk about Afghanistan.
Millions of dollars spent on this project or that; millions of children going to school, millions of people fed.

It is important to never lose sight of the fact that behind those millions are individuals, like the children I witnessed befriending our troops and that our aid dollars are changing their lives for the better.

And it’s important not to lose sight of these people whose lives are changed by development projects, when we talk about things like private sector development or governance—two areas I understand you will be focussing on during your trip.

After all, private sector development is often a one-person business that supports a family.

How well it succeeds determines whether or not the children are well-nourished, and whether they get the education that will build their futures.

In Asia, we have supported private sector development in countries like India, Thailand and Vietnam, helping these countries to achieve economic growth, raise income levels, reduce hunger and child mortality, and improve equality between women and men.

The term “governance” is really about safety and security, democracy and freedom in a country that is free of corruption and follows the rule of law that protects the rights of its citizens.

It is important to see these links, and I know you will.

Security is something we take for granted in Canada, but this is not the case in many other countries.

Rule of law means that rulers don’t rule—laws do, and this principle is fundamental to modern governance systems.

CIDA’s governance programs help ensure that laws are both just and arrived at democratically.

They support independent, effective institutions that enforce those laws, so that everyone can feel safe in their communities and homes.

On a broader level, one practical way to express our economic solidarity with developing countries is to support their integration into the global trade system, and to help them to take advantage of economic opportunities.

I’d like to tell you about CIDA programs in Malaysia, but in fact, our relationship with that country has changed—we no longer have aid programs there, and that is a sign of the successful economic development, built on years of sustained support and that country’s own efforts.

As a middle-income country, Malaysia is now emerging as a donor, itself.

CIDA’s main interaction with Malaysia today is through ASEAN—the Association of South East Asian Nations—where Malaysia and Canada are both member countries who are donors, and Vietnam—the other country you will be visiting—is a recipient.

CIDA has spent more than $375 million in development assistance in Vietnam.

About three quarters of this aid is country-to-country or bilateral program, and the rest is through Canadian partner organizations and multilateral channels like the United Nations programs.

The strategy in Vietnam responds to the priorities developed by the Vietnamese government and its socio-economic development plan, which focuses primarily on democratic governance, private sector and rural development, and basic education.

Overall, Vietnam wants to see more equitable growth along with more transparent and accountable governance, improved rural livelihood through agriculture and rural development, and better access to quality basic education, especially for the rural poor and disadvantaged girls and boys.

For example, we are fighting poverty by supporting a dairy cooperative in the coastal province of Soc Trang, where we are reducing poverty among ethnic minorities.

This program, run by the Canadian NGO SOCODEVI, has helped almost 2500 families buy dairy cows and learn how to care for livestock.

They have also benefited from advice from animal heath consultants.

In fact, Vietnamese representatives visited a dairy cooperative in Canada, which later provided the equipment to refrigerate the milk, as well as a truck to the processing facility.

This has now become a model for other parts of Vietnam.

CIDA is also working with small-scale, multi-donor initiatives that share the objective of improving core government systems such as procurement, management of official development assistance, anti-corruption, and public administration and overall aid effectiveness in Vietnam.
Donor harmonization is helping to leverage the impact of Canadian resources through partnerships.

Sometimes the challenge is to build a country’s capacity in an area that Canada has expertise in. For example banking reform in Vietnam.

This support will, over time, mean that the banking system will gradually be able to enable private sector development.

In the area of governance, we are supporting improvements to the judicial system and regulatory environment, as well as creating policies that will make Vietnam more economically competitive, helping its chances of successfully becoming a member of the World Trade Organization and supporting overall economic transformation.

I know that CIDA has been working with Global Vision to arrange for you to see some development projects first-hand.

I also know that this will be more persuasive than anything you will read, and hopefully, it will inspire you to use your education and experience to help realize the dreams of some of the people you will meet, as well as your own.

I am certain that all of you will come home with stories of experiences that touched your hearts, which you will share with friends and family, inspiring them and helping the to appreciate the true value of Canada’s aid programs.

Thank you.