McLeod Group Blog

Canada’s Development Assistance: Johnny Flunks Grade 4

Canada’s Development Assistance: Johnny Flunks Grade 4

McLeod Group guest blog by Ian Smillie, October 23, 2018

Every five years or so, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducts a “peer review” of its members’ development assistance programs. This year, it was Canada’s turn again, and the OECD report card was, as it almost always is, generally positive and constructive in its gentle criticism.

There was polite applause. The McLeod Group wrote, “Overall, the report gave Canada good marks for adopting a Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) last year, being a good humanitarian donor, completing the untying of its aid, updating its policy for civil society partnerships, and applying a whole-of-government approach to fragile states and countries in crisis.”

More effusively, in an email to its members, the Canadian Council for International Co-operation said, “We join the OECD Peer Review Team in congratulating the Canadian government for showing a renewed engagement in global development and acting on the many recommendations of the last review in 2012. Notably, Canada has laid out a clear vision and focus in its program with the Feminist International Assistance Policy and by bringing greater visibility to gender equality. The OECD report celebrates Canadian leadership in humanitarian assistance, and in the pursuit of improved support to local organizations.”

Good marks, congratulations, even “celebrations”. And always, leadership. We love to be leaders. There was a bit of grousing about lack of progress in moving towards the 0.7% of gross national income target, but generally, it was kudos all round. And not a moment too soon, because the Prime Minister was off to New York a few days later, where he publicized Canada’s leadership on the rights of women and girls, and the creation of a $20 million office in Toronto to promote private-public partnerships as part of Canada’s putative leadership.

In fact, however, Canada’s aid program is as unpredictable and as inconsistent as it has ever been. The FIAP arrived after two years of widespread consultations that were, as far as can be seen, generally ignored by the government. The substance of the new aid policy, laudable as it is, could have been written in a couple of weeks without such inordinate delay. A year after its release, its programming implications remain vague, except that if you don’t have a clear gender equality-related purpose in your next proposal, you can kiss any thoughts of approval (and money) goodbye. You can probably kiss the money goodbye anyway, because there isn’t any.

Well, that isn’t quite true. Frequent ad hoc announcements are made – like a $650 million “investment” over three years in sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and girls. This won’t be a bad thing if anyone can figure out how to get through the unrelenting morass of paperwork required to loosen the titanium purse strings at Global Affairs Canada.

But the $650 million isn’t new money. Nor is the $20 million for the office in Toronto. It’s money that comes out of existing budgets. Clawbacks in current programming have become commonplace in what is now Canada’s lowest ever development assistance budget. Sticklers will say that at 0.26% of gross national income (GNI), we’re still a hair above our lowest ebb, but in fact a decade or so ago Canada spent about 5% of its aid on humanitarian assistance; now we’re spending almost 20%. So as a percentage of GNI, the development pot is smaller than ever.

As for Canadian leadership on public-private partnerships, if we truly are leaders in this area we should be ashamed of our progress. According to an OECD study, between 2012-2015, US$81.1 billion were “mobilized” from the private sector for development, almost half through loan guarantees, three quarters of which went to middle-income countries. Even without looking into what the money went for, this amount represents considerably less than 20% of global official development assistance (ODA) during those years. Even if the amount were to be doubled, or tripled, or quadrupled, it still wouldn’t come close to the old-fashioned kind of ODA.

Meanwhile, OECD member countries have been pushing to rewrite the definition of ODA so that more “private sector instruments” can be included in what’s counted as aid or, as it’s now being called, Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD). The point here seems to be how to increase what can be called development assistance, without actually increasing it. And without actually paying much attention to what it might be spent on (such as poverty reduction).

But I digress. The OECD peer review of Canadian aid is like a teacher’s comment on a grade 4 report card: “Johnny works well with classmates in group work and often takes a leadership role, but is having a difficult time in certain areas of math.” The fact that the largely absent Johnny is actually in grad school and still can’t read is politely passed over.

Most DAC peer reviews are like this: lots of praise along with gentle encouragement to do better. Some government officials may find the grade 4 report card approach useful. Canadian observers perhaps feel, especially after the Harper years, that any forward movement warrants congratulations and “celebration.” But if development assistance is to gain any traction in its pathetically slow progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, mollycoddling governments that favour smoke and mirrors over genuine action will not help much.

Ian Smillie is a development professional and foreign aid critic.