Building Bridges and Business Through International Development

Dr. Rafi Mustafa
President, IDRF (International Development and Relief Foundation), Financial Institutions Canada
Building Bridges and Business Through International Development
Chairman: Charles S. Coffey
Third Vice-President, The Empire Club of Canada
Head Table Guests

Bart J. Mindszenthy, APR, Fellow CPRS, Partner, Mindszenthy & Roberts Corp., and Immediate Past President, The Empire Club of Canada; Joshua Furlonge, Senior Student, Monarch Park Collegiate Institute; Dr. Fuad Sahin, President, Islamic Society of Niagara Peninsula, and Founder, IDRF; Azba Hathiyani, Grade 11 Student, Islamic Foundation School; Harold Brathwaite, Executive Director, The Retired Teachers of Ontario, and Chair, Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund; The Hon. John McCallum, MP, PC, BA, PhD, Constituency of Markham-Unionville; Kamal Hassan, Director, The South Asia Group Ltd., and Director, The Empire Club of Canada; Yasmin Ratansi, MP, Constituency of Don Valley East; and Mohammad Al Zaibak, Chair and CEO, HelpCaster Technologies Inc.

Introduction by Charles Coffey

Rafi Mustafa

Distinguished guests at the head table, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour for me to be here this afternoon, and I am thankful to the Empire Club of Canada for this opportunity. I would also like to thank HelpCaster for sponsoring this event.

Let me tell you a little bit about IDRF, especially for the benefit of those who are not familiar with this organization.

The International Development and Relief Foundation or IDRF was set up in 1985 by the Council of Muslim Communities of Canada, and its mission is to help the destitute of the world, regardless of race, religion or colour. Even though IDRF still relies heavily on the generosity of Canadian Muslims for its funding, the list of its supporters includes donors such as the Mennonite community, various church groups, corporate donors, the federal and the provincial governments, and many, many individuals, organizations and foundations.

Over the past 20 years, IDRF has gone from country to country in Europe, Asia and Africa, setting up schools, creating jobs, digging wells, and providing food, medicine and basic health care to the needy.

This was a brief introduction to IDRF. Let us now come to our topic and examine how we can build bridges and business through international development. This afternoon, I would like you to meet a man from the other side of the globe, whose life has been touched by the people of Canada. He is a 37-year old fisherman, who lives with his wife and a 12-year old son, named Murshid, in a coastal town in Bangladesh. There was a time when he used to spend his entire day on the boat, but he was never able to catch enough fish to provide an adequate living for his family, until one day, when he got a loan from IDRF to buy a fishing net, which he did. His daily catch went up, he had more money available to look after his family, and soon he was able to pay off the loan. He even started sending his son to school and gave him five takas every day as pocket money.

Those five takas were enough for little Murshid to buy a packet of roasted chick-peas, a popsicle, and a pack of chewing gum, and he still had some change left over--or with five takas he could buy a can of Coke, which he had never tasted before. He did not want to spend all his money on a can of Coke, so he resisted the temptation for a few days until he could fight it no more.

One day, during the school recess, he ran to the nearby store, and threw his five-taka coin on the counter. Moments later, for the first time in his life, he was holding in his hand an ice-cold can of Coke. He opened the can and took his first sip, then another sip and then another one, until he had a big belch. He put his hand on his belly and laughed. He thought that it was a drink from heaven.

Little Murshid had suddenly become a consumer. He had acquired purchasing power, and had used that power to buy for himself a can of Coke.

I can't tell you precisely how that five-taka coin was distributed. Obviously some of it went to the local retailer, some went to the Government of Bangladesh in taxes, some went to the employees of Coca Cola, some went to the suppliers of raw material, some came into your pocket if you were a stockholder of Coca Cola, and some went to the Government of Canada when you cashed your capital gains.

A little intervention from IDRF had put money into so many pockets and in that process it had created a market, and had empowered the consumer.

The government, the corporate sector, and the individual donor form the three corners of an equilateral triangle, and the NGO sits at the centre of that triangle. The NGO gathers its resources from the three corners and returns the dividends to them. The government gets paid in taxes, the corporate sector gets paid in market growth for its products and services, and the individual donor gets paid in tax benefits and spiritual gratification.

International development is good business and that is why countries invest in it. In 1970, 22 of the richest countries in the world, including Canada, pledged to spend 0.7 per cent of their gross national income or GNI on official development assistance or ODA. Thirty-six years later, five of those countries have even surpassed their 0.7-per-cent target, but Canada is not one of them. Countries like Norway and Sweden are now approaching the 1-per-cent mark. Unfortunately, Canada still sits close to the bottom of the list. Last year we spent only 0.27 per cent of our GNI on development. Incidentally, the United States sits at the very bottom of the list, just above Italy at 0.17 per cent. Can you imagine what the world would be like if the U.S. were spending 0.7 per cent of its gross national income on development. Today, the whole world would be drinking Coke instead of water.

If we want to be relevant in the global village we have to learn how to do business.

Apart from creating markets and empowering consumers, development generates tremendous goodwill for the donor country. Let me give you the example of Afghanistan. Not many of us are aware that parts of Afghanistan have gone through seven years of drought and famine. The farmers stopped cultivating the land as they went through the rainless years. Their livestock was wiped out due to disease and starvation, their communities disintegrated and their villages were abandoned as people became nomads and started wandering through the land in search of food and water. Finally, when the rains started coming, it was already too late. The farmer had no seed to sow and no ox to pull the plough. At that time IDRF undertook an initiative with CIDA funding to revive agriculture in that area. The farmers were brought back, fresh livestock was acquired, and seed banks were set up.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity of spending some time with a farming community in the province of Balkh and Faryab in Afghanistan. I noticed that whenever our interpreter introduced me to the people, he mentioned the name of Canada and they came forward to embrace me with a smile. When I asked the interpreter why they were so excited when they heard the name of Canada, he told me that during the previous year the farmers were given the seed provided by IDRF, and they had a bumper crop of wheat. The price of wheat came tumbling down, and bread was selling at less than half the pre-harvest price throughout the province. When people were told that the seed was given by Canada they found out that there is at least one country in the world beyond their borders and it is called Canada.

This is what the global village is all about. Humanity has a common destiny, and we have no choice but to join the world for our own survival, because our survival depends on the survival of others. We must ensure that our markets are not demolished and our trading partners are not destroyed by waging wars and promoting conflict. Canada has always been known for building bridges, and we must stay on that path if we want our future generations to survive. If there is fire in one corner of the global village, we must dispatch fire engines from other corners, otherwise the fire will sweep through the entire village.

I would like you to meet another man from the other side of the globe. I met him in an earthquake relief camp in Pakistan. As I talked to the people around me, I noticed that he stood silently behind the crowd, listening to our conversation. I wanted to talk to him but he did not come forward. Finally, as I was leaving and the people were departing, he came forward and shook my hand. He asked me where I had come from and I told him that I was from Canada. He said to me, "You know, I was a school teacher here before the earthquake, but now, I don't have anyone left to teach. All my pupils are dead. My whole family died. My parents, my wife, my children, my sisters are all gone, and I am left all alone in the world. At first, I was devastated and wanted to end my life too, but it is people like you, coming from thousands of miles away to help us, who have given me the will to live. I have met Americans and Russians and the Chinese and the Japanese and Indonesians and Turks. The whole world is here, and this has strengthened my faith in humanity. I want to hug each and everyone of you, and tell you that I have decided to live, so that you won't be disappointed. I have come to the realization, that in spite of all the wars and bloodshed around us, we are all one--and we can feel the pain of one another, as if it is our own pain."

Thank you very much.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Kamal Hassan, Director, The South Asia Group Ltd., and Director, The Empire Club of Canada.