McLeod Group blog, October 29, 2019
Now that the dust has settled after the election, it’s time to look at what a minority government might mean for Canadian foreign policy and the role of aid in development cooperation. Unfortunately there were not many signs from either the campaign, where foreign policy was scarcely mentioned, or in the parties’ official platforms, which were short on details. Indeed, the Conservative Party promised to cut aid by 25%, but provided no sound justification for doing so except to fund boutique tax cuts.
After the election of a Liberal majority in 2015, the official line was that Canada was back on the world stage. However, the action has not matched the rhetoric. When it comes to aid spending, Canada is at an almost historic low.
The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, which monitors foreign aid spending, put it more delicately in its 2018 review of Canadian aid: “It is important [for Canada] to set out a path to increase aid volumes to add weight to Canada’s global advocacy role”. In other words, we talk a good line on Feminist International Assistance Policy, meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and supporting developing countries to address the climate crisis, but we don’t deliver.
A recent example: At a meeting in Ottawa in August this year, other donor countries such as Germany and France doubled their contributions to the Green Climate Fund to make up for the loss of US support for a fund that is central to multilateral responses to climate change. Canada contributed a mere $300 million, the same amount it contributed in 2015. We do not have, and will certainly not have, credibility in our international relations, not least on the all-important climate agenda, without major increases in our international assistance budget.
We need a reset.
In its second mandate, we need the Liberal government to actually deliver on its statement that Canada is back. We need a renewed role for Canadian international assistance with coherent policies and programs backed up by substantial new resources, increasing the International Assistance Envelope by at least 10% a year for the next decade. We need a dedicated international assistance minister with a mandate to defend and promote the importance of Canada’s international engagement. And we need the Green Party and the NDP, who both promised to increase aid, to step up and advocate for that increase as was done by the NDP in 2005 when they negotiated a substantial increase for aid in return for supporting Paul Martin’s budget.
Official development assistance (ODA) is not international charity. It is a unique and crucial public resource for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. It is the only resource that, with political will, can be fully dedicated to reducing poverty and inequality abroad, including fighting gender inequality and promoting women’s empowerment.
It is sometimes argued that other financial flows from the private sector, remittances and development finance institutions can play a more important role, reducing the need for ODA. They can make a contribution, but they often do so with other purposes as their primary objective. Without leadership from government, backed up by a significantly boost to the aid budget, other channels will not contribute significantly to poverty reduction and greater equality and address the climate crisis.
ODA leads not only in investment in poverty reduction, but also in setting norms for other actors. ODA has qualities that give it a unique role. The purposes and activities of ODA are set by public policy, are concessional and flexible, and can be directed where they are most needed in health or education or marginalized communities within countries.
It is a key resource for supporting multilateral institutions and partnering with civil society organizations. As a public resource, it is monitored and traceable and citizens and parliaments can hold their governments to account. These characteristics mean that ODA can play a unique role in transforming the living conditions and enhancing opportunities for people affected by poverty, marginalization and discrimination.
As an integral part of Canadian foreign policy, ODA is crucial not only for a more just world, but also in directing the urgently needed resources in a growing climate crisis that will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of vulnerable people around the world.
We call on all the parties in this new parliament to work together to ensure that Canada does play a strong and principled role in addressing the challenges of global poverty, equality and the climate crisis. They could start by taking the OECD-DAC’s advice seriously and set out a path to increasing aid volumes by 10% or more a year for at least a decade. Only then will Canada’s global advocacy have any weight.