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OECD: Two Cheers for Canadian Aid

June 27, 2012

The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has just released its most recent Peer Review of Canada’s foreign aid efforts. Led by France and the Netherlands, DAC member countries (the 24 leading traditional aid donors) made some useful and pointed remarks about how Canada is seen internationally. Interestingly, they do not share the view expressed by Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda that Canada is a leader in global development cooperation efforts.

Among other things, Canada is faulted for not ...

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Hey, Big Spender: Budget Cuts at CIDA

May 15, 2012

There is a curious juxtaposition between CIDA Minister Bev Oda’s sense of personal entitlement – a room at the Savoy, $1000-a-day limousines – and the ruthlessness with which she has presided over cuts to CIDA’s operational budget. It isn’t just the luxury spending on herself as compared with how many children might have been inoculated with that $1000. It seems that no amount of bad behaviour on her part will go unrewarded by the Prime Minister.

By reappointing her ...

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Transparency, Secrecy, and Crystal Balls at CIDA

April 25, 2012

In 2011, Canada joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative, a global standard that aims to make information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand. The move was timely (although there is still no implementation schedule, four months after signing), not least because obtaining meaningful details on CIDA spending has always been difficult.

But transparency, it seems, will be limited to “where” and “how much”. The “why” will continue to be elusive, as will predictability and consistency. When ...

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Defanging The NGOs

March 12, 2012

“Defanging”—that’s what one observer has called it. “Wrecking” might be another term for what CIDA is doing to Canada’s once vibrant, once independent NGO sector. A survey of 158 organizations just released by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC) and its seven provincial/regional counterparts has confirmed what many already suspected: that CIDA’s new rules of engagement have weakened the credibility and the capacities of NGOs, added to their costs, damaged or disrupted their overseas programs and put ...

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Aid Transparency: It’s About Time

January 6, 2012

On November 28, CIDA announced that Canada was joining the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). This is a welcome move.

In recent years there has been a growing demand for greater transparency in foreign aid: how much is being spent, where, on what and for whom. And of course, taxpayers want to know what effect it is having. The problem is that while governments do publish annual statistics on aid-giving, data is often general, incomplete, out of date ...

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Haiti: More Announceables

January 3, 2012

It has been two years since the devastating earthquake in Haiti that killed over 300,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless. In January, on the anniversary of the event, Canada’s Minister for International Cooperation, Bev Oda, paid a visit to Port au Prince, with the customary blizzard of press releases.

One is hard-pressed to imagine the joy of Haitians at yet another visit from the Honourable Bev, who has made multiple trips to the country during her tenure ...

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Transparency and Accountability in Foreign Policy: Not

December 1, 2011

Three events in recent weeks underline the lack of transparency in the way the government is implementing foreign policy. Everyone agrees that the government has a right to frame foreign policy. “But it should make these changes in full public view with a full public explanation. The paper-shuffling, obfuscating and insinuating have to stop”. (The Citizen, Dec. 20, 2010)

Kairos: Bev Oda tied up in “nots”

Just before Christmas some things in the Kairos saga became clearer. CIDA President ...

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Asbestos and Harper: When Facts Don’t Matter…

September 7, 2011

Friedrich Nietzsche once said “there are no facts, only interpretations.” With that in mind, let’s try to discern what Prime Minister Harper is thinking with his latest embrace of Quebec’s asbestos industry and its ridiculous assertion that the “safe use” of asbestos – outside of Canada, of course – is not some deadly joke on the world’s poor. Some “facts.” It is impossible to find a reputable, independent, peer-reviewed international medical research or workplace health and safety ...

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On Libya, Environmental Protection and Canadian Prisons Twelve O’Clock High

August 2, 2011

So, another Canadian foreign minister has visited China, presumably to sell more Canadian raw materials – as if that were a problem. The media seems satisfied that John Baird mentioned human rights – though what he said is left to conjecture. And who might care is another matter entirely. There was also the ritual nod to Canadian values, whatever those might be these days.

In a hawkish July 5 Maclean’s interview, Stephen Harper did talk a bit about Canadian ...

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Two Cups of Tea: Miracle Cures and Other Development Snake Oil

June 12, 2011

A recent 60 Minutes investigation found that best-selling author and philanthropist, Greg Mortenson, may not be all he has cracked himself up to be. The ex-mountain climber has told the story many times of being rescued by Pakistani villagers and discovering how terrible their educational facilities were. One thing led to another and he eventually built them a school, and that school led to hundreds more around the country. His books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools have sold millions, and his ...

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