Where is Canada going in its somewhat reluctant role as a development donor? The announcement in last week’s federal budget of the absorption of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) is a curiosity.
What is curious is the a) necessity of the takeover — CIDA was always a Crown corporation attached to DFAIT and b) the seeming lack of understanding in the Pearson building that taking over CIDA means that they will now be consumed by the development business at some cost to whatever global political agenda they may have.
Maintaining the flow of development dollars trumps diplomacy every time. DFAIT is now trapped into becoming a CIDA writ large. The Pearson building now will have to dedicate its energy not to foreign relations, but to the health of pregnant women in distant lands. The commandeered CIDA budget in short will dictate their overall priorities. And that, depending on your point of view, may be for the better.
But let’s start with the status quo ante.
DFAIT has been living off past glories for a long time. Modern communications and an ever expansive foreign policy role for the Prime Minister’s Office (both under Liberal and Conservative governments) have long restricted any meaningful policy role for DFAIT.
Truth is foreign affairs officers manage buildings in countries in order to provide a workable space for, in order of importance, Immigration, CIDA, and department of Defence officials. As to development issues, they know something, but not more other than the CIDA budget is four times the size of DFAIT’s.
CIDA was created because the mandarins of External Affairs thought they were wasting too much time on third world countries, time better spent in Paris, London, and Washington.
On the other hand, on the international stage, CIDA punches above its weight. The problem is its weight is about 85 pounds.
As Canada was never a colonial power, it has never felt any post-colonial guilt, and the development budget reflects that, even if it was Lester Pearson who came up with the fairy dust target of 0.7 percent of western country budgets dedicated to aid.
There is no doubt that the agency is beset by numerous design flaws, not the least of which is a scandalous reluctance to hire and promote immigrant Canadians who actually speak the languages and understand the cultures of the countries in which CIDA operates.
It’s also beset not by the absence of clear development objectives and accountabilities, but by a proliferation of them over the years.
In its early days, CIDA fed a host of Liberal-friendly domestic NGOs, although recently it has been far better balanced between local pork and real international assistance. Maternal care as per the Muskoka Declaration is now the key priority, but not much thought has gone into the question of how do you assist kids you have helped keep alive after they are five.
The complete untying of aid under Bev Oda is a policy landmark for which she received scant credit. Since then, CIDA has paid far more attention to Canadian businesses abroad (who are investing sustainable money and creating jobs), than DFAIT.
The cynic in me suspects what is really behind this budget move is that DFAIT has not so secretly coveted CIDA’s budget. Conferences are held in Bali on development issues not on keeping pigeons out of the rain gutters of embassy buildings. The UN wants to talk to Canadians about its annual contribution, currently funded by CIDA, not what we think about peace in the Middle East.
The current political flux, with a caretaker minister at the helm of CIDA and a powerful minister of foreign affairs, makes this move look like a well-timed bank heist.
That said, the optimist in me hopes that the move, as done for example by the US in realigning USAID and the State Department, will give development a higher political priority within the Harper government.
Development, intelligently done, should be a major policy concern for any Canadian government, and not just a plaything for bureaucrats looking for UN jobs and NGOs after a steady stream of airline tickets. A lot of serious thinking has gone into development economics much of it on governance and education as the key drivers of change, all of which has yet to appear seriously in official policy.
The reason development has a reputation for ineffectiveness is largely because the scope of the challenge was grossly under-estimated and the means to address the obstacles to growth largely misunderstood.
Ask yourself if we have failed in a hundred years to address poverty on First Nations reserves, why would anyone think Canada could succeed in an African or Bangladeshi village?
In recent years, CIDA has made progress towards greater international and domestic relevance but not enough to satisfy a suspicious political establishment and a skeptical public.
In his book, While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World, Andrew Cohen does a good thing in lamenting and trying to correct Canadian apathy about the rest of the world.
I do not share Cohen’s vision of Trudeau internationalism, but when hundreds of people wash up on our shores clearly we cannot afford the complacency of thinking we live in Fortress North America. And, at the risk of sounding like a scold, somewhere in the mess of development there is a simple moral duty to help those in need.
Whether the development portfolio now sinks into obscurity or whether it leads Canada’s engagement with the emerging countries of the world, remains a question.
Canada could do with a serious re-thinking of its development plans. The UK and Sweden have done it, and are making some worthwhile new initiatives.
A bright idea might be to make the merged organization into the Department of International Development and Foreign Affairs. Perhaps this takeover will spur just that.
