Both the Senate and House internal economy bodies voted last week to have the Joint Interparliamentary Council take another look at whether Canada should pull out of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. They suggested that it also scrutinize other international parliamentary groups to which Canada pays membership fees.
The Joint Interparliamentary Council is a group of MPs and senators that effectively acts as a subcommittee of the internal economy bodies and deals with divvying up parliamentary money to about a dozen bilateral and multilateral parliamentary groups.
It had recommended to both internal economy bodies in April that Canada pull out of the IPU. The council gave the Canadian branch of the group only enough money to get by over the next year.
The IPU was established in 1889. Canada, which has been a member for more than 100 years, hosted a major summit in Quebec City last year featuring Foreign Minister John Baird.
Canada has been paying about $400,000 each year to maintain its membership in the group, which tops the list of fees paid to the international secretariats of multilateral parliamentary associations.
It’s too much for some members of the Conservative-dominated Joint Interparliamentary Council to swallow, although the groups allocated money have generally left more than $500,000 unused at the end of each year. Dealing with a 20 per cent funding drop for parliamentary groups and generally static membership fees, the council found it was eating into groups’ activity budgets.
While several Conservative members of the council said they thought Parliament’s money could be better spent elsewhere, some NDP members disagreed, pointing to what they saw as the IPU’s unique value in bringing together parliamentarians from around the world rather than governments.
Fees to go down
After receiving the council’s recommendation, the House Board of Internal Economy discussed the issue and decided to pass it back to the council “to reflect on its decision regarding the IPU.”
The board suggested in its decision communicated to the council co-chairs June 5 that they review fees paid to other multilateral groups “so that a consensus can be established concerning not only the IPU but all the parliamentary associations that require membership fees.”
While the council had already looked at other groups paying membership fees, more information has since come to light. Eric Janse, the council’s clerk, told the Senate internal economy committee June 6 that the council, when it was deciding future IPU funding, didn’t know what Canada’s membership fees would be for next year.
A letter from IPU president Abdelwahad Radi to the House and Senate speakers later indicated they are going down, said Mr. Janse. Canada is currently set to pay about $387,000 next year (the equivalent of 352,000 Swiss Francs), down 10.4 per cent from what it was charged some four years ago, Mr. Janse told the Senate committee. Other parliamentary groups to which Canada belongs can’t claim that reduction rate, he said.
Mr. Janse said the council also didn’t know during its decision-making process that the Canadian International Development Agency gives money to the Ottawa-based international secretariat of ParlAmericas, a group of 35 countries in the Americas region.
The Senate committee was working under the assumption that CIDA has given $555,000 a year to ParlAmericas on average over a number of years.
In 2011-12, Parliament gave the Canadian branch about $15,000 in membership fees to pay to the international ParlAmericas body, according too the council’s annual report.
“ParlAmericas gets, from the Canadian taxpayer, way more money than the IPU does,” said Liberal Senator Joan Fraser during the committee meeting.
But ParlAmericas spokesperson Thaïs Martín Navas wrote in an email to Embassy that the group’s international secretariat doesn’t get any core funding from CIDA.
“[R]ather, ParlAmericas and the Parliamentary Centre are jointly implementing a multi-stream project, for which, over the course of five years, CIDA has allocated a maximum of $2,677,266, plus $100,000 to conduct an evaluation,” she wrote.
While Ms. Fraser said she’s not going after it or other groups, she didn’t see why the IPU should be the only target.
Having experience in the IPU, she said she would “strongly object” to leaving it.
“This is the largest interparliamentary organization in the world in which we have played, for many years, a much remarked leadership role across a broad range of policy and action areas. The IPU goes directly to some of our foreign policy priorities—the promotion of democracy and the promotion of human rights—and it does so not just through sitting around and talking, but through action on the ground,” said Ms. Fraser.
It gets parliamentarians out of jail in tyrannical countries, she said, promotes the role of women in parliaments, and is a forum in which people like Israeli and Palestinian parliamentarians who otherwise wouldn’t be able to speak can do so.
Conservative Senator Noël Kinsella, the Senate speaker, said he supported Ms. Fraser’s arguments on the importance of Canadian involvement. But he flagged problems he said he encountered with the IPU’s central secretariat while helping to put together the Quebec City congress last year.
In one case, he said his signature and that of House Speaker Andrew Scheer were on the bottom of an invitation written not by him or his staff but “someone in the secretariat in Geneva.”
Mr. Kinsella said he and Mr. Scheer “were not amused.”
He said Canada should take the opportunity to “help clean up that secretariat.”
The IPU has no knowledge of that incident, spokesperson Jemini Pandya wrote in an email. “[F]ollow-up is needed to clear up what must be a misapprehension as the IPU Secretariat is a professional body of staff governed by a strict code of conduct.”
The IPU president, in his letter to the House and Senate speakers, offered to bring Canada’s concerns to the attention of the IPU finance subcommittee and ask for new reductions.
“Let us pick up on that invitation...to negotiate something better,” said Mr. Kinsella.
He suggested allowing the executive of the Canadian IPU branch to try to get a 50 per cent fee drop. Ms. Fraser said 50 per cent might be a bit too steep, but she said the concept was good.
The Senate committee agreed to send the issue back to the council for review and another look at other associations. It also appeared to recommend that the council pursue fee reductions, as Mr. Kinsella suggested. The final text of the Senate committee’s recommendation, however, has not yet been made public.
The head of the IPU Canadian branch, Conservative Senator Salma Ataullahjan, was waiting to speak publicly about the internal economy committees’ decisions until after she met with other members of the IPU Canadian branch, scheduled for June 11.
Original Article
Source: embassynews.ca
Author: Kristen Shane
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