CIDA Swallowed by Foreign Affairs: At Least now you will see the Puppeteers
By Bernard Wood
Throughout most of its existence since the 1960s, Canada’s international development agency has been a puppet of other ministries and interests in Ottawa. The puppeteers and the ways they have sidetracked the agency’s performance have been largely unseen by Parliament and the Canadian public, and the puppet was held responsible when performance fell short. With the announced takeover of CIDA by Foreign Affairs, this is finally going to change.
At first, the subordinate status of the aid agency was open and formal, with structured oversight and intervention by (then) External Affairs, Industry Trade and Commerce, Finance and Treasury Board. Gradual and hard-fought moves over the years allowed some greater autonomy and, like Pinocchio, CIDA yearned to be a real boy or girl with a clear development mission like agencies in the better-performing countries. But the strings have always been there to pull when a Cabinet heavyweight saw a chance to throw money at the latest vanity project or international campaign that could somehow be labeled as “development”.
Two periods of hope came during the terms of Liberal Allan MacEachen and Progressive Conservative Joe Clark as foreign ministers with clout who actually “got” and supported the role and potential contribution of serious international development assistance to Canada’s longer-term national interests beyond our borders. But mostly senior ministers and officials in Ottawa have failed to understand why or how Canada should contribute to the difficult long-term work of trying to help developing countries help themselves. These strong non-developmental interests in Ottawa have consistently resented and repeatedly tried to control any significant aid budgets, personnel and expertise. Now they have “won” – by formally folding CIDA in under the catch-all Department of Foreign Affairs – but it will prove a pyrrhic victory.
The record shows that the Trade and Foreign Affairs Ministries have had virtually no commitment to pro-development policies of their own, and no clue on how to define and pursue our national interest in developing countries in more than the crudest, most adolescent terms. Nor can they even manage complex international spending programs, as was shown when Foreign Affairs bungled aid to the former Communist countries and CIDA had to take over and clean up the mess.
Even in their own terms, attempts to use Canadian (and other donor countries’) aid to advance short-term commercial or political interests have been an unmitigated failure. Direct attempts to support Canadian exporters and investors have almost invariably led to politicized and distortive subsidies, and often damage to our national reputation for competence and integrity. Recent governments had seemed to recognize some of this by finally moving away from the inefficient “tying” of aid to the purchase of Canadian goods and services.
On the political front, with the possible exception of the rapid moves in the 1960s to extend Canadian aid to francophone as well as Commonwealth countries, attempts to use our aid for political purposes have been just as fruitless or counter-productive. Frantic efforts to wield aid carrots or sticks to gain support for Canada’s last election bid for the UN Security Council could not offset our other foreign policy “negatives”, and may only have fed further resentment.
Now the new Budget tells us that the aid program will in future be a handmaiden of Canadian “national interests”, presented mainly as the support of Canadian exporters and investors, with emphasis on the resource extraction industries. No one can seriously contest that individuals and private sector actors – primarily those indigenous to a country itself – are the main engine of economic growth. But there is no credible evidence of how direct support or partnerships with companies by official foreign aid programs can actually advance that objective. On the other hand, there is abundant evidence, from Canada and elsewhere, of the dangers to a country’s reputation and interests when a government underwrites – and thus assumes some direct responsibility – for the actions of its individual and corporate citizens abroad. From traditional gunboat diplomacy to new possibilities of embarrassing scandals and crippling litigation, the possibilities are exciting indeed!
The best thing that our aid and our foreign policy more generally can do for our trade and political interests is to demonstrate that this is a law-abiding, creative, and even generous country ready to shoulder its considerable share of responsibility for international peace, order and good government as well as shared and sustainable prosperity in an interdependent world. Given the control by others, the record of the Canadian aid program has for a long time not contributed as much as could have been expected, but some skilled and committed people in CIDA have still often done us proud in spite of the obstacles. Now, at least, everyone will be able to clearly see the puppeteers so that they can finally be held accountable.
* Bernard Wood is an authority on international development assistance programs, having served for six years as head of the Development Cooperation Directorate at the OECD in Paris – the “donors’ club.” He was previously the founding head of Canada’s North-South Institute and a parliamentary advisor on foreign policy. He now runs an international evaluation practice.