Bridging
Some Hemispheric Gaps
Speaking notes for Hon. David Kilgour, Secretary
of State (Latin America and Africa) and
MP Edmonton Southeast
at the inaugural celebration of the Latin
American Management Program (LAMP) Capilano
College
April 28, 2000, Capilano Country Club, West
Vancouver
It is a pleasure
to join you tonight for your inaugural celebration.
I congratulate all the students and faculty
who have worked so hard to make this program
such a success. I hope that LAMP graduates
will use skills and knowledge acquired here
to become leaders in job-creating businesses,
governments and development organizations,
including the NGOs which light so many candles
so to speak, throughout our hemisphere.
Canadians
already have strong connections in Latin
America and the Caribbean that are reaching
new levels as we pursue an increasingly
active role in many of the 33 other nations
of the hemisphere. I might stress here that
virtually all generalizations about the
region are false; what is true about one
nation is not about another.
OAS General
Assembly
In five weeks,
for example, Canada will host the General
Assembly of the Organization of American
States (OAS) in Windsor (Ont.). As there
are some misconceptions about the nature
of the assembly as being "only a trade
meeting," let me say a little about
it. Looking at my notes from the assembly
last year in Guatemala City. Recently, I
was most struck by the intervention by one
delegation which went essentially as follows:
- Approximately
one quarter of the adults in Latin America
and the Caribbean have had virtually no
formal education at all,
-
Our hemisphere has the world’s most
uneven distribution of income and it has
worsened (in virtually every one of our
countries) in the ‘90s, and
-
One in three children in this hemisphere,
live on less than $3 per day.
Canadians want all members of our "gran
familia" to lead fulfilled lives. Human
security or ‘putting people first’,
will therefore be the major focus of the
upcoming Assembly. This implies a number
of concrete priorities, including:
- democracy/human
rights and deepening of them everywhere,
-
much more effective inclusion of the marginalized,
for example, children, women, the disabled,
indigenous peoples and small states,
-
access for all to health and education,
-
sustainable development,
-
the strengthening of civil society in all
of our countries,
-
addressing the chronic problem of income
inequality, and
-
freer trade but always with a human face
(a child in the Andes or Northern BC must
share directly in the benefits of economic
growth).
Another feature of Canada’s human security
agenda is combatting international crime,
which was discussed in Guatemala City last
year at some length. No one on the lower
mainland needs to be told what cocaine and
heroin from Latin America and Asia are doing
to people across this country. Thanks in
part to a Canadian initiative, the Foreign
Ministers’ Drug Dialogue, CICAD (the
Inter-American Abuse Control Commission
of the OAS) has developed a mechanism (the
Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism -- MEM)
to allow each nation to evaluate their own
performance in combatting drug trafficking
and money laundering against criteria accepted
by all member states. You might be interested
to know that Bolivia and Peru have accomplished
much in recent years to eliminate the production
of coca.
In short,
we hope that the upcoming Assembly will
prove a model of inclusion for the peoples
of the hemisphere generally.
In April
2001, Canada will host the next Summit of
the Americas in Quebec City, which we expect
now to focus primarily on three subjects:
democracy, prosperity for all, and realizing
human potential. Persuading other governments
to accept our concept of human security
has been a major accomplishment of Prime
Minister Chrétien and Foreign Minister
Axworthy.
Many changes,
of course, have taken place in the hemisphere
during the past twenty years. Today 33 of
the 35 countries in the hemisphere have
democratically elected governments, a far
cry from twenty years ago when there were
only four democratic countries across South
America. We can thus work together now to
find better solutions to human development
issues for all our of our peoples.
Education
in the Americas
One of the
issues facing the Americas is something
that you educators and students know well.
At the 1998 Santiago Second Summit of the
Americas, the Heads of Government created
a Plan of Action on education. By the year
2010, there is a commitment to universal
access to, and completion of quality primary
education for 100 percent of all of our
children. At least three quarters of our
young people, under the plan, should be
able to access quality secondary education,
with increasing percentages completing secondary
education, and others will have opportunities
for life-long learning.
Quality Education
It is hard
for Canadians to fathom living where there
is not universal access to quality education,
yet that is the reality in much of this
hemisphere. Private schools are available
for those who can afford to attend, but
that only works for about one in five of
children. Most across the hemisphere do
enroll in primary school, but many drop
out before finishing. Entry to secondary
school has been improving but quality and
access are still problems. Only children
from high-income families have the privilege
of attending pre-school in most nations.
And low-income students find it difficult
to get into university and technical training.
A 1998 Inter
American Development Bank (IDB) report on
economic and social progress in Latin America
notes that for Latin America as a whole,
the top ten per cent of the population has
12 years of education; the second ten per
cent 9 years; the third ten per cent 5 years.
That reality, of course, shrieks for reform.
Poor children
in rural areas generally in the Americas
are likely to attend even lower quality
schools and are more likely to drop out.
This discouragement often affects the decision
they make about their own children’s
education. When given the opportunity to
put their children in school or have them
go to work to subsidize family income, parents
often must choose work as a simple matter
of survival.
Let me here
mention something from the Declaration of
Young Inter-American Leaders which was drafted
at the very successful Model Organization
of American States, which took place a month
ago in Edmonton. Over 400 students from
11 countries around the hemisphere, representing
37 colleges and universities attended the
MOAS; held outside the United States for
the first time ever. Their statement is
to be presented to the Foreign Ministers
at the OAS General Assembly in Windsor.
On education,
they called upon the governments and educators
of OAS member states, along with the private
sector, philanthropic organizations and
NGOs to implement dynamic and long-term
strategies for education throughout the
OAS member states; to provide at least primary
education for all children, especially from
disadvantaged groups and living in isolated
areas; provide secondary school education
for all children and recommend the transfer
and integration of technology for educational
purposes, and develop educational standards
for qualified teachers that meet the needs
of each OAS member state.
Their declaration
is additional evidence of the lack of quality
education in the hemisphere and the pressing
need for change.
Economic
Importance of Latin America
This pattern
persists in a region, which is an increasingly
important destination for Canadian exports
and investment. Our two way merchandise
trade with Latin America and the Caribbean
grew from $7.2 billion in 1991 to $19.4
billion in 1998. Our exports to the region
grew from $2.6 billion to $6 billion in
the same period. There is now an estimated
$29 billion worth of Canadian investment
in the region. Over 700 Canadian companies
have invested in Mexico alone. Canadians
were the leading investors in Chile two
years ago and there are so many Canadian
firms in Santiago that driving into the
city from their airport looks a bit like
coming into Vancouver. Canada's trade and
investment have increased in all areas,
with some of the most impressive gains in
areas beyond merchandise trade, including
banking and financial services, transportation
and energy infrastructure, telecommunications,
professional services, educational services
and tourism.
Income Disparity
The income
disparities in Latin America remain higher
than anywhere else in the world. For example,
in the case of Guatemala and Brazil, the
richest 10 per cent of the population receives
fully half of the national income, and the
bottom half survives on less than 10 per
cent. One of the main reasons is the grossly
uneven access to education.
The IDB has
identified education as its key entry point
for consideration of the growing income
gap in the region, both to explain and understand
current levels of inequity and to begin
to reverse the trend and improve basic fairness
in the future.
Will education
reforms alone reverse the uneven distribution
of wealth in Latin America? Certainly not,
but at least education is now increasingly
seen by many as the most important catalyst
for development and progress.
Asia and
Latin America
Consider
here for a moment the very different experiences
of Latin America and East Asia with education
in dealing with both inequality and economic
growth. In post-war East Asia, some governments
initiated land reform, public housing and
above all high-quality basic education for
all. The result was low-inequality and rapid
economic growth based on a strategy of higher
and higher quality exports produced by highly
trained workforces. In Latin America, most
were not nearly as well educated, and the
result was much slower growth and huge differences
in family incomes.
Canada has
much to share with our hemispheric neighbours
with respect to distance education, the
use of Internet technology, multicultural,
indigenous and second language education,
and workforce development. As the Swiss
are to international banking, we have the
means to do the same in a number of these
areas.
Throughout
the hemisphere, Canada, along with civil
society partners, is helping meet some of
the challenges of education reform, and
is committed to working to fulfill the goals
set out in the Plan of Action for Education.
Last year,
the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA) contributed more than $1.2 million
to education as part of the Santiago Plan
of Action follow-up. In cooperation with
NGOs, CIDA also supports various education
projects throughout the region such as one
in Ecuador that works with over 400 schools
to create healthier and better quality schools
for children 6 to 12.
Let me end
properly on an optimistic note. Several
years ago, while visiting some Canadians
resident in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), I
sat opposite a graduate, in her mid-20s,
of the international business program of
this College at lunch, Peggy Peacock. She
said she had used her training here to attain
a position in Bangkok, Thailand. A few years
later, she was hired by an advertising agency
in Ho Chi Minh and was when we met the manager
of the 20-25 person office. As we all left
the air-conditioned restaurant in the heat
of the afternoon guess who was the only
one of the group to get into a waiting air-conditioned
car? The temperatures are perhaps cooler
across the Americas than in Vietnam and
northerners don’t always need air conditioning!
I’ve
seen men and women already making valuable
contributions in many of our 34 hemispheric
neighbours in a host of areas. I wish all
of you success there or wherever you decide
to go in the future.
Thank you.
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