McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, March 29, 2023
The government has repeatedly promised to “increase Canada’s international development assistance every year”, including in the Minister of International Development’s most recent mandate letter. Newly released Budget 2023 repeats the commitment to annual increases, while simultaneously breaking that promise. There is not a single new cent for foreign aid or humanitarian assistance.
Worse still, the new budget has actually cut international assistance by 15% or $1.3 billion, when compared to Budget 2022, according to calculations by Canadian civil society organizations, a fact that is not made clear in the new budget document. No wonder that when the Minister of International Development promoted Budget 2023 on Twitter, he never mentioned its impact on his portfolio.
Since the budget document cannot brag about any new international assistance, it treats readers to feel-good jingoism about “standing up for Canadian values” on the global stage and “Canada’s leadership in the world”. What little it does say about foreign aid is highly misleading.
In particular, the budget document recognizes that “Canada has an obligation to take steps to protect the most vulnerable and help to build a safer and more prosperous world for people everywhere”, while walking back on that very responsibility. It boasts that “Canada has delivered high levels of international assistance”, whereas Canada is in fact less generous than the average of its peers – and not even halfway to the target of spending 0.7% of GNI on development assistance to which Canada committed over 50 years ago.
This budget bodes very poorly for Global Affairs Canada. The department has been hollowed out and is struggling to demonstrate the impact of its development program, as noted in a very critical report released by the Auditor General on the day before the budget dropped. Depriving the program of resources will make things worse – and definitely not help showcase “Canada’s leadership in the world”.
The Canadian government claims to have a “feminist foreign policy”, even though it has still not defined what that means in practice. How feminist is it to increase spending on national defence by $55 billion over 20 years, as Budget 2023 does, but not provide any additional funds for foreign aid? More money, not less, is required for “supporting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable”, as the budget document promises to do, including to improve the lives of women and girls in the Global South. However, Ukraine – which does indeed require urgent support since the Russian invasion last year – seems to be monopolizing the government’s attention. Africa, the continent that has the highest levels of poverty, is mentioned only in passing in the budget document.
The world is facing a serious convergence of urgent crises. Canada should keep its promises, step up and – at a minimum – do its share to help countries in the Global South face these multiplying challenges. Instead, the Canadian government is pretending to be doing more while actually doing less.
Stephen Brown is Professor of Political Science at the University of Ottawa and currently an International Fellow at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany. Image: The Canadian Press/Justin Tang.