The Canadian Council for International Co-operation, a kind of trade association for development aid agencies, believes CIDA decisions are being driven by economic interests.

“They see it (development) more and more as a tool to promote Canada’s interests — business interests — overseas,” said CCIC spokeswoman Chantall Harvard. “And geopolitical interests as well.”

That’s no way to run a development policy, said Harvard.

“The first objective of ODA (Overseas Development Assistance) is not to promote Canadian business,” she said. “The Official Development Assistance Accountability Act, endorsed by Parliament in 2008, clearly states that ODA money should contribute to poverty reduction, take into consideration the perspective of the poor and follow all human rights objectives and standards.”

CIDA insists it cannot tell The Catholic Register how or why it decided to slash D&P’s funding from $44.6 million between 2006 and 2011 to $14.9 million between 2011 and 2016.

“CIDA does not discuss publicly the specifics of individual proposals, but does provide feedback to the applicant organization upon request,” has been the CIDA response to questions.

Feedback to D&P came in the form of a letter stating: “Project components in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Indonesia, and the Philippines were assessed as most likely to deliver strong, sustainable results.”

The CIDA letter did not address deficiencies in D&P’s proposals for other countries.

Ideology and election strategy are other factors contributing to CIDA’s recent funding decisions, said Liberal international development critic Mark Eyking.

“There’s a lot of ideology in how they’re choosing, that’s for sure,” he said. “And then we’ve seen a bunch of new ones from out West get approval. They have a different religious bent and their philosophy of how they’ve done things.”

Quebec-based NGOs like D&P (headquartered in Montreal) have faced major cuts or outright refusal while new agencies with a thin track record headquartered in Western Conservative ridings have done very well, Eyking said.

NDP international co-operation critic Jinny Sims believes the long-term goals of development assistance are being undermined.

“Our government is turning away from long-term sustainable change. It seems that their only criteria is immediate, short-term results that may have no long-term impact,” she said.

Though D&P was assured its proposal for a five-year funding agreement would be judged under CIDA rules and priorities in place before the agency went to a blind, competitive bid system in 2011, answers from CIDA’s media relations department seem to indicate new priorities were in play.

“Funding decisions by CIDA are determined by a variety of factors, including alignment with current thematic and geographic priorities,” said one email from CIDA’s media relations team.

If CIDA wants to focus aid by spending more money in fewer countries and allow non-Canadian agencies to vie for funding, those are good development policies, said Pritchart. Developing countries have requested that approach. But Pritchart said the problem is implementation.

“The reality is that the Canadian aid agency, CIDA and Canadian development assistance more broadly rates consistently very poorly in cross-country ratings,” Pritchart said. “That’s a verifiable fact on the ground.”

Part of the problem is an increasingly short-sighted, almost naive set of assumptions about what development assistance can and should do, said Pritchart.

“Good development outcomes are essentially grounded in politics,” he said. “It’s not good enough to just dig the well. . . . The long term goal of development has to be to create sustainable capacity, sustainable political leadership in developing countries to deliver those services so NGOs don’t have to play that role.”

The new application process practically guarantees a short-term focus on service delivery, according to Harvard.

“There is a difference between working with development organizations and hiring a firm to build a bridge,” she said. “You cannot expect deep changes in two to three years.”

The bid system, which D&P will now be forced to rely on for future CIDA funding, not only devalues long-term relationships between Canadian agencies and NGOs based in the global south, it wastes time and resources, said Harvard.

“It costs between $10,000 and $30,000 just to prepare one proposal,” she said.

The new competitive bid process has left aid agencies scratching their heads as they try to figure out what criteria CIDA is using to judge bids.

CCCB president Archbishop Richard Smith, vice president Archbishop Paul-André Durocher and general secretary Msgr. Patrick Powers are waiting for word from CIDA about a possible meeting to discuss the D&P funding decision.