United States President Donald Trump’s cut to food aid has impacted a number of overseas projects supported by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
“Cutting aid in the way it’s been cut is going to cost tens of thousands of lives,” said Andy Harrington, executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
He said it is impacting some projects that are funded both by US AID and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
Trump put a 90-day freeze on funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development — the agency responsible for foreign aid, including funding humanitarian organizations.
“What we can do will be a drop in the bucket, to be honest, but we do want to keep our programs running,” Harrington said.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will cut “wasteful foreign aid” and not allow funding to go to “dictators, terrorists and multinational bureaucracies, the Canadian Press reported. Poilievre said he would use the money for defense.
Canada spent $11.3 billion on international aid in 2023.
