Posts Tagged 'DFATD'

HomeTag: DFATD

Policy Coherence for Development: Putting it into Practice

Policy Coherence for Development: Putting it into Practice

McLeod Group Blog by Stephen Brown, June 23, 2016

Providing foreign aid is only one among many things that countries like Canada can do to promote international development. Official development assistance (ODA) on its own is not sufficient to help developing countries radically improve the lot of their poor and marginalized people, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by the 2030 deadline.

A government’s policies beyond aid – including agriculture, fisheries, trade, investment, immigration, climate change, security and intellectual property ...

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So Long and Thanks for the Surplus

So Long and Thanks for the Surplus

McLeod Group Blog, Sept. 18, 2015

Through its most excellent management of the economy, the Harper government finally discovered, after six years in the red, how to balance the budget.

The surplus in 2014-15, we are told, amounts to $1.9 billion. This is seriously good news for a Conservative election campaign that seems a bit like a dump truck rolling downhill without brakes.

So how on earth did they finally do it? They did it in three ways. The first was asset-stripping. ...

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Foreign Aid: Think of it More as a Dating Site

McLeod Group Blog, June 24, 2015

If you’re in favour of foreign aid, there is good news: Development aid from the world’s industrialized countries remained steady at US$135.2 billion in 2014, after an all-time high in 2013.

If you think aid should go to the poorest countries, however, there is bad news: They only got 28% of the total, a drop of 16% in a single year.

Among OECD member countries, the ten least generous—all at less than 0.2% of gross national ...

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The One We Would Write: A Mandate Letter for Canada’s Next Development Minister

The One We Would Write: A Mandate Letter for Canada’s Next Development Minister

McLeod Group Blog, June 16, 2015

You will serve as Minister of International Development Cooperation, with full cabinet membership, reporting directly to me as Prime Minister. As Minister you will:

Policy

  •  Rebuild Canada’s capacity to be a strong global development actor after a decade of institutional neglect and distorted priorities.
  • Develop programs within a broad made-in-Canada framework that does not rely on norms and precedents of G7 and OECD member states. Engaging the South is critical to Canada’s future well-being, its economic, political and ...
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REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK

REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK

McLeod Group Blog, April 15, 2015

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD), has come up with a novel idea: asking Canadians to board a train that left the station months ago.

The ‘train’ is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that have been under negotiation at the UN and around the world for the past two years. The SDGs will build on the 2000-2015 Millennium Development goals and will establish the most comprehensive set of development plans ever conceived. ...

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The Economy, Jobs and a Smart Foreign Policy

McLeod Group Blog, March 18, 2015

Every election since the beginning of time, it seems, has been about the economy. And a large part of that is about jobs. When politicians talk about jobs, they usually means jobs at home, but in today’s world, creating jobs across the street may depend on helping to create jobs across the world—not jobs that reduce Canadian opportunities, as so often has been the case, but jobs that do the opposite.

Lost in the din of ...

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Foreign Funding Charity Shock Sensation

Foreign Funding Charity Shock Sensation

The Harper government set tongues a-wagging and jaws a-dropping when it started attacking Canadian charities for accepting donations from other countries. The row began in 2012 when Joe Oliver, then Natural Resources Minister, accused ‘environmental and other radical groups’ of taking money from ‘foreign special interest groups’ in order to influence hearings about a possible tar sands-to-BC pipeline. Environment Minister Peter Kent said that ‘There has also been concern that some Canadian charitable agencies have been used to launder ...

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Canada’s ‘Signature Projects’ in Afghanistan: not so bad after all?

Canada’s ‘Signature Projects’ in Afghanistan: not so bad after all?

Response by Ron Schatz to a guest blog by Nipa Banerjee

February 2, 2015

 On January 5, 2015, we posted a guest blog by Nipa Banerjee that was critical of Canada’s aid program in Afghanistan. Ron Schatz, who was CIDA’s Development Director at the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Kandahar city from September 2007 to August 2008, has a different point of view.

I met with the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan when they came to the PRT in late ...

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Haiti Five Years On: Canada Loses Interest

McLeod Group Blog, January 19, 2015

 January 12 marked five years since the earthquake that devastated Haiti, killed over 230,000 citizens and rendered over three million people homeless, almost 30% of the country’s population. Since 2010, Haiti has received a great deal of media attention, been the subject of many promises of help (some of which have been honoured). It also experienced two major hurricanes in 2012 as well as an outbreak of cholera, believed to have been introduced by a ...

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Ignorance is Strength: Good Financial Management at Work

Ignorance is Strength: Good Financial Management at Work

McLeod Group Blog, December 22, 2014

According to George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ In the Harper government’s brave new world, bad financial budgeting is good financial management.

That’s the only conclusions you can draw from government departments that planned and over-budgeted so badly in 2013-14 that they were able to return $7.2 billion in lapsed funds to the treasury. Treasury Board President Tony Clement calls this incredible mess ‘a sign of good ...

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