The Canadian International Development Agency is bungling the job of international relief and development.
To start on a long list of problems, consider that long-term relationships have been broken because Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to drop a number of countries, among them some of the poorest in the world, from the list worthy of Canadian help.
Second, although Harper can boast that he has increased spending on international aid, toomuch of it has gone to the wrong people and places. The greatest corruption is involved in country-to-country projects and in multi-national agencies’, such as the World Bank, projects.
Third, agriculture keeps falling off of the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) list of priorities.
Fourth, CIDA recently began requiring aid agencies, such as the Mennonite Central Committee, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, The Presbyterian World Service and Development., etc., to competitively bid for projects. This approach scraps decades of relationships and experience by these agencies and their partners overseas and replaces it with the political whims of people in Ottawa, including members of Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office.
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who has been working for the United Nations on aid issues and knows far more about the issues that Harper and his political advisors ever will, says we’re missing the boat by failing to help farmers boost food production, especially in needy countries.
Sachs says that money spent on research and development to boost food production would do far more than military might to quell unrest in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sachs says focusing on smallhold farmers helped lift China and India out of hunger.
What a novel idea: support for family farmers and rural communities.
This is precisely the kind of community-development work that Christian organizations have been doing for decades, and some of them have recently lost their CIDA funding. There has been lots of media attention to the “not” that CIDA Minister Bev Oda had her staff insert to reverse a staff recommendation on renewing funding for KAIROS, but the media have missed similar funding reversals for the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, the Presbyterians and others.
Millions of Canadians faithfully support these Christian organizations. CIDA used to, often somewhat reluctantly, chip in some taxpayers’ money to supplement the donations.
But CIDA bureaucrats never seemed happy with this situation. It was certainly never one of their top priorities. They seemed to prefer hob-nobbing with the powerful and rich in Geneva, so their
priorities have always been making big deals with governments and the likes of the World Bank.
The track record there is abysmal, featuring corruption and failures. Dambiso Moyo in her book, Dead Aid, details the reasons why billions of dollars of this type of aid has not only failed, but also been counter-productive.
I have often written to cabinet ministers in charge of CIDA to urge them to reduce the percentage spent on this type of aid and to increase the percentage devoted to support for Canadian organizations such as the Mennonite Central Committee and Doctors Without Borders. Bev Odo, Min. Resp. for CIDA
They have consistently ignored the advice.
Whoever wins this election needs to recognize that Canada’s spending on international relief and development needs radical reform. It should start with increased support for the agencies with proven track records for honest, integrity and effectiveness.
Besides, this would be politically astute. After all, millions of constituents are donating to these agencies. They might be easily swayed by candidates who promise to support these wonderful organizations and their compassionate work.
