McLeod Group Blog

Mr. Harper’s Maternal and Child Health Summit, Part 3: Delusions about International Leadership

McLeod Group Blog, May 27, 2014

Once again Canada’s development cooperation policies are being driven by domestic interests, not the development outcomes and the results the government claims to be seeking. We are going it alone and indeed this time even pretending that everybody else is following our lead. In truth, maternal and child health has been both a global and Canadian priority for decades, with an accelerated focus on reproductive health and rights following the 1994 UN Population conference in Cairo.

We started waving a bigger cheque-book when we chaired the Muskoka G8 meeting. This was welcome news in a largely bleak scene for Canada’s development contribution. But we were just playing catch-up on most other bilateral and key multilateral donors, except now we pretend to be the leader.

All this grandstanding perplexes many other donor agencies and our partners in the G7. It also conceals our cuts on family planning and access to safe abortion. In these days of tight aid money, people are too nervous to push back. However, our aggressive noise actually undermines donor cooperation in this area. We even sent DFATD officials to block multilateral policy statements that reconfirmed old agreements on reproductive health.

For Canada itself, that distorted policy framework means that the several billion dollars we are spending misses key targets. We rationalise that other donors will fill the gap. But our approach undermines the effectiveness of the very health clinics we fund. We harm women, including those who are victims of forced marriages or rape as a weapon of war, by blocking safe abortions or the supply of emergency day-after contraceptives.

Maybe worse still, by our bullying and financial ‘leveraging’, we are blocking others – civil society organizations and international agencies – from providing such help. We distort programming by UN agencies such as UNFPA and WHO, forcing them to alter priorities in the delivery of maternal and child health services.

Why does our government behave so callously? We condemned backstreet abortions as barbaric in our own society many years ago. Family planning services should be available to all. The distortions we impose are essentially ideological. They are not due to the budget cuts or the confused cost-effectiveness that shapes much of Canada’s diminished aid profile.

Many would say the explanation lies in domestic political opportunism. Crudely put, women and girls are dying in developing countries to appease the still strong anti-choice lobby amongst the grassroots ‘core’ of Conservative supporters. We moralize globally about sexual practices via our aid programs. We boast publically of having policies led by principles, but we practice the opposite, making the poor, women and girls, the innocent victims of residual puritanism in small segments of our population.

We have today the perverse reality that the large team of Canadian officials organizing Mr. Harper’s maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) ‘summit’ have struggled to find people from major international agencies who can be ‘safely’ invited, people or organizations that will not raise the topic of reproductive rights. It seems opposition MPs fall into the same ‘don’t invite’ category. The few NGOs, some perhaps attracted by new funding offers, which have helped mobilize this event, were told that agenda items had to be screened to avoid the gaping Canadian policy flaws around providing safe abortion or basic contraceptive services.

The ‘summit’ is in truth a show designed for Canadians. A few world leaders are being rolled out to acclaim Mr. Harper as a leader who cares. But those guests are expected to avoid controversy. The agenda is being managed to leave little scope for criticism. Their dilemma is whether to expose the inconsistencies in Canada’s stance. Or will these guests risk going back to their own domestic audiences and be asked to justify attending a ‘summit’ at which they failed to reiterate the key role of sexual and reproductive rights for vulnerable women and girls?

 All this has created a new absurdity in our relations with the United States. For decades, under the Republicans, the US government routinely blocked reproductive health funding for UNFPA and groups such as Planned Parenthood, despite criticisms by almost all other donors, including Canada. Now the roles are reversed. The organizers hesitated to invite Hillary Clinton, a likely next US President, for fear she would again attack the Prime Minister’s position at his showcase event. Her words last time were: “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health which includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions.” They worry whether star guest Melinda Gates will again publically criticise Mr. Harper’s policy stance. No doubt to his chagrin, Canada has no leverage over her independent and well-funded foundation.

Whatever their decision, Canada will not emerge with much advantage, not even new Conservative votes. It will be either egg on our face or private condemnation by those we wish to have as friends and partners. Nothing we do can retrieve the lost lives and damaged bodies of poor women and abused girls that our policies on reproductive rights have ignored so far.