McLeod Group blog, April 23, 2018

Outdated regulations at the Canada Revenue Agency and Treasury Board are undermining Global Affairs Canada’s goal of supporting local women’s organizations in developing countries, but easing the restrictions isn’t a government priority. What should Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau do about it?

In announcing its new Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), Global Affairs Canada (GAC) said it will “advance a more flexible, innovative and integrated approach toward achieving gender equality”. A key part of ...

McLeod Group blog by Laura Macdonald and Megan Pickup, April 19, 2018

Justin Trudeau rushed home early from the Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru on Saturday to attend what was for him a more politically relevant summit – the one between Alberta premier Rachel Notley and B.C. premier John Horgan on the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Simultaneously, the summit in Lima was also overshadowed internationally, in this case by the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump to bomb Syria in ...

McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, April 16, 2018

The preliminary aid statistics for 2017 are now out. What do they tell us about global trends and Canadian foreign aid?

Globally, official development assistance (ODA) from traditional donors has held steady. The total amount, US$147 billion, is down slightly compared to 2016, but only because the amount spent on resettling refugees in donor countries has dropped. (Accounting rules allow donor countries to count certain forms of assistance to refugees ...

McLeod Group Blog, March 21, 2018

The initial reaction to the February 27 federal budget was “two cheers for development,” with the announcement of an addition of $2 billion over the next five years to the International Assistance Envelope (see our previous blog). Now that the excitement has died down, and since the budget is as much a policy statement as a fiscal document, several questions are emerging. These questions are worth examining in light of the government’s claims of “global ...

McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown and Hunter McGill, February 28, 2018

If you watched Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget speech in the House of Commons yesterday, you had to be paying close attention to catch the one sentence that refers to foreign aid: “We will also do more to help vulnerable people around the world by making the largest new investments in international assistance in more than a decade, including greater support for the world’s women and girls, through ...

McLeod Group Blog, January 26, 2018

When Global Affairs Canada (GAC) announced the Women’s Voice and Leadership program to support its new feminist aid policy, with a budget of $150 million over five years, observers hoped for the creation of a fund with a clear purpose, approach, and implementation that would support women’s organizations in developing countries. Canada already has experience with this type of fund, as it established regional gender equality funds in the period after the Beijing World Conference ...

McLeod Group Blog, January 22, 2018

Every year, heads of government of the G7 member countries (United States, France, Japan, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Canada) get together for a day or two to discuss global issues and matters of mutual concern. This year, it’s Canada’s turn to host, in Charlevoix, Québec, during the first week of June. What will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bring to the table by way of agenda and initiatives, and what commitments will he be asking ...

McLeod Group guest blog by Douglas Roche, December 7, 2017

Not long before the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winners gather in Oslo to celebrate the progress made in nuclear disarmament, North Korea successfully tests a new long-range missile considered capable of a nuclear attack on the U.S.

How disjointed can the world become?

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work in the development of the new Treaty on the Prohibition ...

McLeod Group blog, December 4, 2017

When the Liberal government announced in June of this year that there would be an additional $62 billion over the next two decades for defence, but no additional funds for the much trumpeted Feminist International Assistance Policy, response was muted. There were several articles in the media, international development organizations expressed disappointment (again), but little response from the broader public. In short, there seemed to be no political cost to maintaining the aid ...

Blog by Stéphanie Bacher, November 29, 2017

At the 2017 Canadian Council for International Co-operation’s Annual Conference, Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau unveiled Canada’s new Policy for Civil Society Partnerships for International Assistance (also called the Civil Society Partnerships Policy). To justify the updating of the policy, which replaces the one adopted by the Conservative government in 2015, Minister Bibeau cited the need to incorporate inputs from civil society organizations (CSOs) and to redefine the relationship between the ...