“(The Canadian Catholic Organization for) Development and Peace awaits the implementation of this decision with some concern,” said a D&P release that followed the federal government budget announcement that CIDA would be absorbed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Government reorganization doesn’t really concern D&P members, said council president Pat Kennedy, as “Governments reorganize on a continuing basis.”
“It’s not going to change how we as an organization work with them,” Kennedy said. “It’s not so much the administrative piece as the political direction from the government. Development and foreign trade could work very well together. Our concern is if the foreign trade piece overtakes the development piece.”
When CIDA began redirecting funds to partner with Canadian mining companies in Latin America and Africa two years ago, D&P questioned how Ottawa is using foreign aid dollars to prop up Canadian commercial interests. Poverty reduction, perspectives of the poor and human rights are the priorities written into the Overseas Development Assistance Accountability Act which governs what CIDA does.
In December D&P asked for a meeting with International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino to discuss the trade versus aid conflict. They have been told Fantino is too busy but they can meet with CIDA staff. That meeting with CIDA staff was to take place March 28, but Kennedy wants a higher level discussion.
“I asked for a meeting with the minister and I’m holding out for a meeting with the minister.” Fantino has said the reorganization “will have no impact on Canada’s international assistance budget.”
The government demands that the aid budget “deliver tangible, sustainable results and advance Canada’s long-term prosperity and security,” said Fantino.
No change in the foreign aid budget is not exactly good news from the point of view of the Reverse the Cuts campaign, a coalition of independent, volunteer- based aid agencies. The 2012 federal budget cut CIDA’s budget by $319 million over three years. By 2015 Canada will be at the bottom of the list of donor countries, contributing 0.25 per cent of the country’s gross national income to aid. That contrasts with Canada’s United Nations commitment to raise its contribution to 0.7 per cent.
The Canadian Council for International Co-operation — the trade association for development organizations — is happy to see the CIDA budget become the responsibility of one of the most important federal government ministries. But like D&P, CCIC is worried about how Canadian interests are being confused with the interests of poor people in the global south.
“Given the recent tendency at CIDA to associate overseas development assistance to Canadian commercial interests, there is reason for concern,” it said.
CIDA emerged from the old Department of External Affairs in 1968, at the same time that it began partnering with D&P. By being folded back into Foreign Affairs, it joins countries such as the United States and Norway that administer foreign aid budgets through the same government department that is responsible for diplomacy.
Rather than worry about what department gets the budget, D&P’s 13,000 members are concerned with how and in whose interest the budget is spent, said Kennedy.
“It’s about how it’s going to impact on the poor of the world.”