May 2, 2013
So, the verdict is in. Pundits, academics, even the troublesome NGOs seem to like Bill C-60, the Harper Government’s omnibus Budget Bill that, among many, many other things, “folds” CIDA into DFAIT.
When the merger was announced, John Baird—perhaps trying to alleviate the concerns of those who saw aid budget cuts ahead—said it had nothing to do with money. Which makes you wonder, then, why the merger was squeezed into a Budget Bill. But we’re getting used to that, and after all, this Budget Bill includes a lot of other stuff about immigration, new controls over the CBC and such like, so why worry needlessly?
The Bill doesn’t mention the existing ODA Accountability Act—which requires the government to devote aid to poverty reduction—and many commentators take this as a good sign. Maybe, having ignored it consistently for five years already, the government didn’t see any need to tamper with the Act. Great! An excellent starting point for a whole new positive approach to development! The Minister for International Cooperation, now retitled Minister of International Development (no “Royal”), at last has a job description: “to foster sustainable international development and poverty reduction in developing countries.” Whew! What a relief—nothing there about mining companies. Just something about Canadian values and priorities. Developing countries will welcome the Canadian values thing—many are tired of having nothing but German values and Swedish values to contend with.
The position of President at CIDA will be downgraded somewhat. Instead of being responsible to the minister alone, there will be an über-deputy minister who will somehow coordinate aid, trade and foreign policy, but that’s no bad thing, right? Maybe another level of decision making will speed things up in Mr. Fantino’s shop. It couldn’t get much slower than it already is. And Fantino will be required to perform his job with the “concurrence” of Foreign Affairs Minister Baird. Terrific. No red flags here, to use NGO terminology. Why would you not want John Baird’s concurrence? In fact why don’t we have a look at the past five or six years of aid spending under Bev Oda and Julian Fantino and pull out for examination and some good old-fashioned recrimination the things that DFAIT didn’t like. The slashing of aid budgets, maybe? The closing of programs in Africa? The endless delays in funding for most of Canada’s international development NGOs?
Meanwhile, in another part of this blizzard of good news and positive reaction, there is a small question about lapsing aid funds. When NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdière asked in the House how much money CIDA was going to lapse in 2012-13, Minister Fantino’s parliamentary secretary gave a little speech about how proud Canadians can be about the stellar work CIDA has been doing (even without Baird’s prior concurrence). When asked again, directly, how much money was lapsing, Minister Fantino’s parliamentary secretary gave a little speech about how proud Canadians could be about the stellar work CIDA has been doing.
Efforts by Postmedia News and others to get a straight answer to this question have been met with a stone wall of silence, but estimates are running between $800 million and $1 billion. If true, that would be quite a whack—something between 20% and 25% of what had been budgeted. When asked about this, Julian Fantino suggested that it’s OK to lapse funds. “We’re focussed on results, not shovelling money out the door,” he said. Wonderful! That would mean that the rumours about CIDA shovelling money out the door in March to the World Bank and UN agencies in order to avoid such a huge lapse are not true. It would also mean that Canadians should have no worries about CIDA’s ability to budget properly in the first place. If Mr. Fantino and his department can’t plan properly, then the money simply won’t be spent. So what if there’s a backlog of unsigned projects on his desk? So what if there are fewer and fewer projects in the pipeline? So what if trusted Canadian suppliers are feeling the pinch and have given up on CIDA? So what if NGOs wither along with Canada’s international reputation? We’re focussed on results, not shovelling money out the door.
The really good news in all of this is that Julian Fantino won’t have to take all the heat himself anymore, because he will have the concurrence of John Baird in everything he does. How could it get any better than that?