McLeod Group blog, June 29, 2020
Julia Sánchez served as President-CEO of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) from August 2011 to July 2018, a tumultuous time for international development NGOs in Canada. A few days before she took up her new position as Secretary General of ActionAid International on March 1, 2020, the McLeod Group sat down with Julia to talk about her reflections on that period.
When Julia took over the position at CCIC, relations between the government and development NGOs were at their worst ever. In May 2011, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had won a majority in Parliament. Bev Oda was Minister of International Cooperation and had, in the previous year, cut the government’s $1.6 million contribution to the CCIC budget, as well as ended funding to CCIC members such as Kairos and MATCH International.
Oda also launched an initiative to fund partnerships between NGOs and Canadian mining companies working in developing countries. The program created divisions within CCIC when some members entered into these partnerships and others adamantly opposed them. By July 2012, Oda had resigned, brought down, in part, by a handwritten “not” on a contract and a $16 glass of orange juice.
Julian Fantino, a former police chief, became the new Minister for International Cooperation. He boldly stated that foreign aid should benefit Canadian companies. He was succeeded in 2013 by Christian Paradis, whose briefing book would have included a copy of Harper’s enemies list, which likely included CCIC. In the 2013 budget, Conservatives announced the merger of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
The impact of the Harper government on CCIC was traumatic. Its budget was cut, and its members were worried about their own funding and frightened by the advocacy chill. There were conflicting views within the membership about what should be done.
Enter Julia Sánchez, a long-time development worker, who had spent years working in programs overseas, had management experience and was trilingual. Julia said that when she arrived at CCIC, it was like being the captain of a sinking ship where members were trying to jump off: “My first job was to stop them from jumping off and then to stop the ship from sinking”.
Her new position involved, on the one hand, working with the CCIC members, listening to their concerns, and trying to increase collaboration and confidence within the membership and build a shared vision of what CCIC could become. On the other hand, she needed to establish a relationship with the government, particularly with CIDA.
Julia says that she saw no point in trying to meet with Bev Oda. But when Fantino started attacking NGOs, she felt they needed to respond. She published an article challenging his view of NGOs. The CCIC leadership eventually met with Fantino to try to unblock CIDA funding for NGOs that had been announced but was not forthcoming.
According to Julia, the situation changed significantly when Christian Paradis became minister. His experience in previous ministerial portfolios working with stakeholders was helpful. When he discovered the broken state of the relationship between CIDA and one of its main stakeholders, the NGO sector, he set out to fix it. This allowed CCIC to rebuild a relationship with the government.
In thinking back over this period, a moment of pride and satisfaction for Julia was the launch of the We Can Do Better campaign in February 2015. After years of concern and fear of speaking out, CCIC members came together in their first major campaign since the 2011 election. They carried signs on Parliament Hill, they met with the caucuses of the three major parties and advanced three major themes: climate change, women’s rights and inequality.
Something Julia would have liked to do was to broker among CCIC members a clear shared position on the private sector and more specifically on the mining sector. She said, “We made strides, but we had so many differences that it seemed like it would be too hard to reach agreement. We got some consensus but that last mile just kind of fizzled”.
Julia said that “the most important thing I learned was that I could work with Conservatives. I was shocked. I did not think I could do that. I thought we were just going to fight these people the whole time”. With Minister Paradis, despite major disagreements on policy, CCIC was able to agree on the rules of the game and then to find some areas on which they could work together.
One important initiative was the joint work on the Civil Society Partnership Policy. At another point, Paradis was seriously considering closing CIDA’s Partnership Branch, which works with NGOs. However, through dialogue with CCIC, he was persuaded of the value of the Branch.
Julia describes herself as both radical and pragmatic. On many issues, she is able to put aside her own views to do her job, which she saw as being the convenor of the network of NGOs who were CCIC members. She said, “We needed to stop the cuts, stop the bleeding, and rebuild the relationship with government, but we also needed to assert who we are as a sector”.
And they did. The CCIC membership under Julia’s leadership came up with a new plan and vision, funded mainly by the members, which allowed CCIC and the sector to survive this politically difficult period.
While the times and issues are different today than those facing CCIC in 2011, the challenges are profound. Canadian NGOs face fundamental questions about their place and role in a changing global context, which requires continued leadership from CCIC and new forms of engagement with members, government, Canadians, and southern CSOs.
Julia’s views on those challenges are the topic of Part 2 of this blog, which will be published tomorrow.
Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press.