Posts Tagged 'CIDA'

HomeTag: CIDA

CIDA’s Dead-End Merger

May 18, 2013

Is the CIDA amalgamation another flawed move?  Can this latest political manoeuvre yield better outcomes for the poor? Or is the promise of policy coherence and effectiveness a mirage?

The costs of the transition, ranging from the mundanities of new business cards and the switch-over of all software protocols to the further losses of morale and skills as staff are shuffled out or into new roles, will be high.  It might seem that the hidden goal is budget savings, ...

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The Good News Budget Bill

May 2, 2013

So, the verdict is in. Pundits, academics, even the troublesome NGOs seem to like Bill C-60, the Harper Government’s omnibus Budget Bill that, among many, many other things, “folds” CIDA into DFAIT.

When the merger was announced, John Baird—perhaps trying to alleviate the concerns of those who saw aid budget cuts ahead—said it had nothing to do with money. Which makes you wonder, then, why the merger was squeezed into a Budget Bill. But we’re getting used to that, ...

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Goodbye to All That: The Death of CIDA

Goodbye to All That: The Death of CIDA

March 23, 2013

The execution of CIDA has been applauded by at least two former foreign ministers (Barbara McDougall and Lloyd Axworthy) and proclaimed to be reasonable “in principle” by a wide variety of academics and journalists—pointing to Scandinavian models for evidence, deploring CIDA’s past mismanagement, and citing the need for a coherent foreign policy. A common story line for many commentators, most of whom don’t know any more about the Paris Declaration than Julian Fantino, is that aid never worked ...

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Fantino’s Fantasy: CIDA, Israel and all That

February 7, 2013

In September, Canada and Great Britain signed an agreement that will see the two countries sharing embassies abroad. The idea is to extend each country’s diplomatic reach while cutting costs. The move has been criticized because it could compromise Canada’s independence and its foreign policy. Canada and Australia already have this kind of arrangement in some 26 countries, but let’s face it, Britain isn’t Australia, and the Brits have issues and image ...

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Haiti and Canada: From Bad to Perverse

Jan 10, 2013

Readers of McLeod Group blogs will know that the relationship between Canada and Haiti is an important issue for us.  As we approach the third anniversary of the January 2010 earthquake that killed 225,000 Haitians and made over one million homeless, it is critical to take a look at the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country and largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid.

Let’s take stock. While most of North America – certainly the media – was fixated on the effects ...

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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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