August 3, 2010
Not satisfied making Canada a foreign aid laughing stock among its G8 and G20 peers, the government, led by CIDA minister Bev Oda, is now hunting down any organization it doesn’t like, and is doing whatever it can to put them out of business. The latest victim is the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, the well-respected umbrella organization that represents the interests of hundreds of Canadian organizations delivering aid programs to poor countries. CCIC’s failing? It went to bat for some of its members – such as Kairos and Match International — that have already been axed because CIDA didn’t like what they had to say about human rights in the Middle East or their work with women.
CIDA has used an insidious methodology, one it has perfected over the past year with NGOs it doesn’t like. It allows funding to run out, says nothing for months while the organization eats up its reserves, and then the Minister says, often as an aside in a media scrum, that the organization in question doesn’t “fit” with CIDA’s priorities. CCIC, which has been a CIDA “partner” organization for more than 40 years, was treated a bit better. It was given an extension on its funding from April to July this year while CIDA ostensibly carried out a review. If there really was a “review” it was never shared with CCIC. Instead, the minister told CCIC in July that its funding was now at an end. CCIC could reapply to CIDA if and when it had some overseas programs for consideration.
When a minister of the Crown makes a suggestion this daft, one hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. Any hope that the Prime Minister might call the RCMP again came to nothing.
CCIC has laid off more than two thirds of its staff, and its office building is up for sale. An important coordination body and a respected voice, one that speaks not just for its members but for the poorest of the world though efforts like its “Make Poverty History” campaign, has been attacked and damaged. Another important Canadian institution is being brought to its knees.
Some say that organizations like CCIC should be funded by their members, not the government. That’s fine, but after 40 years of support, don’t give them that message 24 hours before the “partnership” is cancelled.
In July in Krakow, Foreign Minister Cannon addressed the Community of Democracies’ high-level ministerial meeting. He also opened the session of the Working Group on Enabling and Protecting Civil Society, which Canada chairs. Under the circumstances, it is hard to imagine what he said. His website, which is chockablock with Cannon speeches, leaves this one out – perhaps because what Canada says about civil society in the world is very different from what the government is doing at home.
The logic of what Stephen Harper, Lawrence Cannon and Bev Oda are doing to Canada’s aid program and to courageous, hard-working NGOs makes no sense. They are hurting Canadians who are trying to help and they are wrecking Canada’s once-deserved good reputation. More importantly, they are reducing the Canadian potential for good in many very poor countries to rubble.