McLeod Group, August 20, 2020

Dear Minister Freeland,

Please accept our sincere congratulations not only on being appointed Minister of Finance, but also for being the first woman named to that post in 153 years of Confederation. The road to gender equality is a long one indeed, and your name is in the history books. Bravo!

We write to you today to give you some unsolicited advice. Since you have been a Cabinet minister before, you will already have received lots of unsolicited ...

McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, August 10, 2020

Long before the COVID-induced recession slashed Canadians’ contributions to charities and the WE scandal threatened to undermine Canadians’ confidence in NGOs, there were deep-seated problems in the way that Canadian registered charities got funded. Canadian international development NGOs do well if they do child sponsorship or work in humanitarian emergencies, but ...

McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown and Laura Macdonald, August 5, 2020

The voting for the next head of the Conservative Party of Canada has begun. The winner, to be announced on August 21, will become the Leader of the Official Opposition. In the midst of the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic and the headline-capturing WE scandal, the leadership race has attracted very little attention – and the candidates’ respective policies even less.

It’s worth paying attention, however, ...

McLeod Group guest blog by Rebecca Tiessen, July 29, 2020

The WE scandal has raised serious concerns about the WE organization’s links to the Trudeau government and questionable decision-making processes that led to it being designated the only organization able to carry out an ambitious volunteer program for Canadian students. In the midst of the evolving WE scandal, the group’s co-founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, announced the organization would put WE Days on hold and return to ...

McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, July 20, 2020

Collateral damage from the WE student volunteer program scandal continues to pile up: allegations of racism and white saviourism, a board in meltdown, questions about “complex” and “unusual” organizational structures where money flows from the charity to the privately held for-profit business… The situation is so dire that WE’s founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, ...

McLeod Group blog, June 30, 2020

Julia Sánchez, the former President-CEO of the Canadian Council of International Co-operation (CCIC), recently took up her new position as head of ActionAid International, a major global development NGO that fights poverty and inequality through a combination of program delivery, research and advocacy. As she was getting ready to leave Ottawa, the McLeod Group interviewed her about her past work at CCIC and upcoming challenges. Yesterday’s Continue Reading →

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 ...

McLeod Group blog by Stéphanie Bacher and Stephen Brown, June 24, 2020

It is shameful enough for a Canadian museum to deliberately hide its LGBTQ2+ content from certain visitors. However, when the museum in question is dedicated to human rights, such a decision is ten times more offensive and actually betrays the museum’s raison d’être. The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity ...

McLeod Group blog by Hunter McGill and Lauchlan T. Munro, June 22, 2020

To no one’s great surprise, Canada did not win a seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2021-2022 term, losing out to Norway and Ireland. A flurry of prime ministerial phone calls, visits from cabinet ministers, and even the announcement one week ahead of the vote of $16.5 million in new aid money for women affected by COVID-19 and ...

McLeod Group blog, Hunter McGill and Lauchlan T. Munro, June 15, 2020

Amid the masses of reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian media have shown little interest in the consequences of the pandemic in developing countries, especially those already experiencing humanitarian crises. The United Nations humanitarian office (UNOCHA) reported at the beginning of the year – before the global COVID-19 outbreak – that 160 million people would be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2020 and that US$28.8 billion ...