McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, April 16, 2018

The preliminary aid statistics for 2017 are now out. What do they tell us about global trends and Canadian foreign aid?

Globally, official development assistance (ODA) from traditional donors has held steady. The total amount, US$147 billion, is down slightly compared to 2016, but only because the amount spent on resettling refugees in donor countries has dropped. (Accounting rules allow donor countries to count certain forms of assistance to refugees ...

McLeod Group Blog, March 21, 2018

The initial reaction to the February 27 federal budget was “two cheers for development,” with the announcement of an addition of $2 billion over the next five years to the International Assistance Envelope (see our previous blog). Now that the excitement has died down, and since the budget is as much a policy statement as a fiscal document, several questions are emerging. These questions are worth examining in light of the government’s claims of “global ...

McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown and Hunter McGill, February 28, 2018

If you watched Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget speech in the House of Commons yesterday, you had to be paying close attention to catch the one sentence that refers to foreign aid: “We will also do more to help vulnerable people around the world by making the largest new investments in international assistance in more than a decade, including greater support for the world’s women and girls, through ...

McLeod Group Blog, January 26, 2018

When Global Affairs Canada (GAC) announced the Women’s Voice and Leadership program to support its new feminist aid policy, with a budget of $150 million over five years, observers hoped for the creation of a fund with a clear purpose, approach, and implementation that would support women’s organizations in developing countries. Canada already has experience with this type of fund, as it established regional gender equality funds in the period after the Beijing World Conference ...

McLeod Group Blog, January 22, 2018

Every year, heads of government of the G7 member countries (United States, France, Japan, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Canada) get together for a day or two to discuss global issues and matters of mutual concern. This year, it’s Canada’s turn to host, in Charlevoix, Québec, during the first week of June. What will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bring to the table by way of agenda and initiatives, and what commitments will he be asking ...

McLeod Group guest blog by Douglas Roche, December 7, 2017

Not long before the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize winners gather in Oslo to celebrate the progress made in nuclear disarmament, North Korea successfully tests a new long-range missile considered capable of a nuclear attack on the U.S.

How disjointed can the world become?

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work in the development of the new Treaty on the Prohibition ...

McLeod Group blog, December 4, 2017

When the Liberal government announced in June of this year that there would be an additional $62 billion over the next two decades for defence, but no additional funds for the much trumpeted Feminist International Assistance Policy, response was muted. There were several articles in the media, international development organizations expressed disappointment (again), but little response from the broader public. In short, there seemed to be no political cost to maintaining the aid ...

Blog by Stéphanie Bacher, November 29, 2017

At the 2017 Canadian Council for International Co-operation’s Annual Conference, Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau unveiled Canada’s new Policy for Civil Society Partnerships for International Assistance (also called the Civil Society Partnerships Policy). To justify the updating of the policy, which replaces the one adopted by the Conservative government in 2015, Minister Bibeau cited the need to incorporate inputs from civil society organizations (CSOs) and to redefine the relationship between the ...

McLeod Group guest blog by Rachel Vincent, November 27, 2017

When Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Canada’s second-ever national action plan on women, peace and security at the start of November, four other federal ministers as well as a huge crowd of civil society representatives and diplomats were also on deck for an impressive show of support. To what extent does it advance a feminist foreign policy? Though the new plan is a clear step forward, it also carries important ...

McLeod Group Blog by Carolyn McAskie, November 22, 2017

When the current government was voted in two years ago, it triumphantly announced that Canada was back on the international stage, signifying a clear break with the previous regime which had run its own version of “Canada first”, picking and choosing among international fora, denigrating the UN and cutting international development contributions. Nowhere was the difference between the two governments more marked than in their respective attitudes towards UN peacekeeping. It appeared ...