Posts Tagged 'Harper Government'

HomeTag: Harper Government

Policy Coherence for Development: Putting it into Practice

Policy Coherence for Development: Putting it into Practice

McLeod Group Blog by Stephen Brown, June 23, 2016

Providing foreign aid is only one among many things that countries like Canada can do to promote international development. Official development assistance (ODA) on its own is not sufficient to help developing countries radically improve the lot of their poor and marginalized people, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by the 2030 deadline.

A government’s policies beyond aid – including agriculture, fisheries, trade, investment, immigration, climate change, security and intellectual property ...

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TRUDEAU SHOCK SENSATION: “AID TARGETS TOO AMBITIOUS”

TRUDEAU SHOCK SENSATION: “AID TARGETS TOO AMBITIOUS”

McLeod Group Blog, May 12, 2016

According to a recent article in the Toronto Star, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has “acknowledged Ottawa has no intention of meeting the international goal to spend .70 per cent of gross domestic product on foreign aid anytime soon.” The article goes on to say that he is “scaling back Canada’s support of a key UN goal to boost international aid spending, calling it ‘too ambitious.’”

In fact what Trudeau said—a bit deeper into the article—was, ...

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Not Wanted on the Voyage

Not Wanted on the Voyage

McLeod Group Blog, December 21, 2015

Like a bunch of month-old puppies, the media are all over the Syrian refugee story, unsure whether to focus on missed deadlines or new ski jackets for kiddies getting off the plane. There isn’t much talk, however, about those left behind: the 4.3 million Syrians in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and the hundreds of thousands of Afghans, Somalis, Iraqis, Eritreans, West Africans and Asians trying to make it across the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean.

Of the ...

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Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead!

Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead!

Ding dong, the merry-oh!

Too mean-spirited? Ask Zunera Ishaq, the former English literature teacher and mother of four whose name (but not her face) was dragged through the courts and the media in the Harper government’s mean-spirited attempt to score anti-Muslim points as it limped into the home stretch earlier this month.

Ask Canada’s Aboriginal people, struggling with the issue of murdered and missing women, poor housing and water, bad health care and inadequate education.

Ask demoralized civil servants and Canadian diplomats who ...

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September Song: Political Will and Political Won’t

McLeod Group Blog, Sept. 24, 2015

 Oh, it’s a long long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

—September Song, Maxwell Anderson, 1938

In May, the NDP published a policy paper entitled ‘Canada cares: Our vision for international development cooperation‘. The overall policy was very good. Among other things, it pledged to reverse the dramatic cuts made by the Harper government. ‘Under the Conservatives,’ the paper lamented, ‘Canada’s ...

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So Long and Thanks for the Surplus

So Long and Thanks for the Surplus

McLeod Group Blog, Sept. 18, 2015

Through its most excellent management of the economy, the Harper government finally discovered, after six years in the red, how to balance the budget.

The surplus in 2014-15, we are told, amounts to $1.9 billion. This is seriously good news for a Conservative election campaign that seems a bit like a dump truck rolling downhill without brakes.

So how on earth did they finally do it? They did it in three ways. The first was asset-stripping. ...

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Coalitions: Realities and Constitutional Practices

Coalitions: Realities and Constitutional Practices

McLeod Group Blog, Sept. 10, 2015

[Second of three McLeod Group blogs on the subject of Coalitions]

With a federal election in the offing and polls showing no party likely to win a majority, there is renewed talk of a coalition government. Canadians look back nervously to the fumbled efforts to create a coalition in December 2008, and some basic questions arise. What is constitutionally legal? What is allowed under Parliamentary practice?

The basic rules of government-forming in Canada are informal, derived ...

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Canada Balancing Budget on Backs of World’s Poorest

Canada Balancing Budget on Backs of World’s Poorest

Guest blog by Liam Swiss, April 22, 2015

Liam Swiss is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University in St. John’s. He teaches courses on development, gender, globalization, and research methods.

The latest foreign aid numbers were released on April 8. Globally, aid remains at near record high levels (US$135 billion). This is good news for the global fight against poverty. The numbers tell a rather depressing story, however, if you are Canadian. In the past ...

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Inconvenient Charities

McLeod Group Blog, January 26, 2015

What do birdwatchers in the Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists Club and human rights activists in Amnesty International have in common? Well, they are Canadian charities and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) seems to have all of them in their sights for their political activities.

Shortly after the bird watchers wrote a letter to two federal cabinet ministers complaining about government-approved chemicals that damage bee colonies, they received a letter from CRA objecting to political material on the ...

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Haiti Five Years On: Canada Loses Interest

McLeod Group Blog, January 19, 2015

 January 12 marked five years since the earthquake that devastated Haiti, killed over 230,000 citizens and rendered over three million people homeless, almost 30% of the country’s population. Since 2010, Haiti has received a great deal of media attention, been the subject of many promises of help (some of which have been honoured). It also experienced two major hurricanes in 2012 as well as an outbreak of cholera, believed to have been introduced by a ...

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