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The following is excerpted from Stephen Brown's op-ed Foreign aid: More of the same?
Stephen Brown is the editor of the recently released Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid
Canada's contributions to reducing global poverty are rarely a priority topic for debate in the House of Commons. Foreign aid is an important tool for supporting international development, but it will likely attract less attention now that controversial international co-operation minister Bev Oda has resigned.
Sadly, in the past year, Parliament and the media focused all too often on her personal extravagances and not enough on how the Harper government is progressively undermining the ability of the Canadian International Development Agency to fight poverty—which the 2008 Official Development Assistance Accountability Act defines as the primary purpose of foreign aid.
In particular, the government froze and then cut Canada's aid budget, while Oda micromanaged CIDA staff and cut off NGOs that criticized government policy. The government also increasingly aligned aid with narrow Canadian interests, especially those of the private sector, rather than with the needs of the world's poor.
The new CIDA minister, Julian Fantino, appointed in July, has said that he won't take any bold new initiatives for now. So we should expect more of the same: more generally empty rhetoric about transparency and accountability, more intolerance of criticism, and more use of aid money to support Canadian foreign policy and commercial interests.
One of the first things Fantino promised was to "ensure that every nickel…of tax dollars that come out of our good Canadian people is not squandered." Though the statement could be interpreted as a swipe at Oda's personal spending habits, it is probably no more than a new formulation of the Conservatives' mantra on accountability. Though such assurances sound good, they are in practice impossible to keep.
Further Reading
Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid
Edited by Stephen Brown
Presenting a range of work by scholars and practitioners, Struggling for Effectiveness offers the most comprehensive examination of CIDA's efforts in over a decade. Contributors explore recent trends in Canadian foreign aid, including topics such as its place in Canadian politics, gender and security concerns, advocacy and public engagement, the complexity of CIDA policies, and CIDA's relationship with non-governmental organizations. The perspectives assembled in Struggling for Effectiveness bring clarity to the issue of foreign aid while judiciously gauging Canada's record and offering concrete suggestions for strengthening CIDA's efforts to help people living in poverty.
To learn more about Struggling for Effectiveness, or to order online, click here.
To arrange an interview with the author, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
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