Posts Tagged 'Accountability'

Whatever Happened to the Aid Effectiveness Agenda?

Whatever Happened to the Aid Effectiveness Agenda?

McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, November 29, 2016

In the early 2000s, Western donors finally recognized that they were partly to blame for foreign aid’s often disappointing results. The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, adopted in 2005, was the result of that soul-searching.

The Declaration was based on five core principles, including recipient countries’ ownership of their poverty reduction strategies, donors’ alignment with this vision and harmonization among donors. A total of 138 countries (donors and recipients), 28 international ...

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THE ODA ACCOUNTABILITY ACT: WHAT HAPPENED?

THE ODA ACCOUNTABILITY ACT: WHAT HAPPENED?

McLeod Group Blog by Ian Smillie, July 26, 2016

When Canada’s Official Development Assistance Accountability Act became law during the first minority government of Stephen Harper, there was hearty applause from the international development community. Introduced as a private member’s bill by Liberal MP John McKay, Bill C-293 won the support of all parties and received Royal Assent at the end of May 2008. According to Global Affairs Canada (GAC), ‘Its purpose is to ensure that all Canadian official ...

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Better Data on Foreign Aid: Not the Same as Better Transparency

Better Data on Foreign Aid: Not the Same as Better Transparency

Guest Blog by Brian Tomlinson

May 7, 2014

 The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), launched in 2008 in Accra, aimed to make information about foreign aid spending easier to access, understand and use. It was and remains a noble ambition, well worth pursing for several reasons. First and foremost, access to information on the use of public resources for development cooperation is a citizen’s right. Understanding of the trends and policies affecting allocations of public resources for aid, including resources raised from ...

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Guile, Ambiguity and the Cult of Mediocrity

Guile, Ambiguity and the Cult of Mediocrity

January 21, 2014

On December 5, 2013, Canada’s International Development Minister (yes, there still is one) Christian Paradis spoke to the Montreal Board of Trade about the Harper Government’s approach to foreign aid. The speech was chock-full of myth, urban legend, half-truths and what can only be described as a bunch of whoppers.

Mr. Paradis began by saying, “I want us to be recognized as a world leader in poverty reduction and humanitarian assistance.” That may be what he wants, but ...

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Aid Accountability that Matters

April 27, 2011

For many years CIDA was a proud beacon of Canadian vision and values in international development. In the early 1990’s the Official Development Assistance budget became one of the few federal pots for discretionary funding. Canada’s use of those funds as a tool for creating a better, more secure world unraveled into a tool for the domestic policy agenda. It became a constituency builder for the party in power. With the Harper government, it got worse. He tested ...

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Not Speaking Truth to Power: Another Side of the Oda Affair

March 22, 2011

The Oda affair has dominated the attention of Parliament and the media in recent weeks. The mysterious insertion of the word “not” in a document and the contempt charge against CIDA Minister Bev Oda have been the focus of considerable media interest. The McLeod Group weighed in on this matter in a letter to Speaker Milliken. (That letter can be found on this website.)  Experts, such as David Dacherty of Sir Wilfrid Laurier University and Ned Franks of ...

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