July 18, 2013
At the end of June, the day of the official name change at 200 Promenade du Portage, the CIDA headquarters sign—in darkly Orwellian fashion—was covered up with some garbage bags. The seamless transition promised by then Development Minister Julian Fantino wasn’t quite ready for prime time because the new signage had not arrived.
Within a day, however, the new lettering was up and the CIDA President had been sent away, replaced by an associate deputy minister with no experience in the area for which he has been given responsibility. The building is now a branch of the not-so-cleverly renamed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. We have a new acronym now. Not one of those astute formulations that roll so easily off the tongue, like IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), or PRISM (Planning for Resource Integration, Synchronization and Management). We’re now stuck with DFATD, which Ottawa wags are pronouncing variously as “dee-fat-dee”, “defeated”, “defatted” and “deflated”.
Where the agency-previously-known-as-CIDA is concerned, the “deflated” version is the most appropriate, because in addition to announced cuts to the foreign aid budget, it now turns out that hundreds of millions of dollars—at least 13% of CIDA’s 2012 budget—were unspent. In a June speech, Julian Fantino said, “Being accountable and transparent is our government’s priority.” When asked directly about under-spending, however, he steadfastly refused to answer, saying that he was not about “shovelling money out the door”. So much for accountability and transparency. Now he is gone too, and in addition to a new departmental boss, there is a new minister with additional duties. It would be hard to imagine more effective ways of marginalizing and minimizing Canada’s aid program.
Google “CIDA” now and you will be sent to the new DFATD website where the “development” tab is located between “trade” and “assistance to travellers”.
So many diplomats and pundits have lauded the “folding” of CIDA into DFAIT that it seems churlish to keep banging on about a train that has left the station, its destination obscured by stirring speeches about business, prosperity and transparency. For those who want sympathy, it can be found in the dictionary between swill and synovia.
The task now is not lamentation for an institution that was too often, in any case, a loyal auxiliary for Canada’s sometimes narrow diplomatic, trade and security interests. The challenge is to think more seriously—perhaps under the auspices of a different government some time in the years ahead—about how the development of poor countries can be advanced by policies that really do bring Canada’s trade, development and political agendas together in the interest of genuine poverty reduction.
The reasons for that should be clear. The number of people living in absolute poverty today is, according to World Bank statistics, almost exactly the same as it was in 1980: 1.1 billion people. In relative terms that represents a decline, but in real terms it does not. Rich countries like Canada should tackle poverty abroad as we do at home. It is the right thing to do. But there are other reasons. Poverty is a fertile breeding ground for disease, pollution, violence, despair and extremism. And these spread their contagion much faster today than ever before. If we think only of Canada’s short-term self-interest, we ignore the longer-term self-interest that is inherent in ending poverty.
Perhaps those in charge of the new dispensation at DFATD understand this. Whether they do or not, however, the reality of the challenge ahead won’t change. So let’s hope that when Christian Paradis, the new development minister, is at the same table with his trade and foreign affairs counterparts—the agreeable image of synergy and policy coherence used to justify the merger—he will take with him a strong development agenda. Sadly, that is something his predecessors failed to do with the institution whose demise they supervised.