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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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
McLeod Group Blog, June 1, 2015
Universality – the idea that certain norms should apply to all countries alike – is a crucial feature of many aspects of international life, from the United Nations Charter to the Declarations of Human Rights. Still, the idea that wealthy nations should be submitted to the same standards as poor ones can be a surprisingly touchy political subject. The latest example is the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDGs are the successors to those ...
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McLeod Group Blog, May 11, 2015
In the 2015 Federal Budget, the Conservative Government announced the creation of a Canadian development finance ‘initiative’. Details remain scanty. In the name of ‘coherence and effectiveness’, the budget states that the government has established the new initiative to enhance private sector development, achieve meaningful development outcomes, and raise people out of poverty.
Despite claims about advancing ‘new’, ‘innovative’, and ‘blended’ financing by involving the private sector, neither promoting the role of the private sector ...
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Guest blog by Liam Swiss, April 22, 2015
Liam Swiss is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University in St. John’s. He teaches courses on development, gender, globalization, and research methods.
The latest foreign aid numbers were released on April 8. Globally, aid remains at near record high levels (US$135 billion). This is good news for the global fight against poverty. The numbers tell a rather depressing story, however, if you are Canadian. In the past ...
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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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McLeod Group Blog, April 1, 2015
On March 15, 2015, the armies of Chad and Niger drove Boko Haram out of the Nigerian town of Damasak where it had been wreaking havoc for more than five months. The Nigerian military, one of the largest in Africa, was not part of the operation and was nowhere to be seen.
Long ago, in answer to a question about possible Canadian support for eastern Nigeria’s secessionist Biafra, Prime Minister Trudeau replied, ‘Where’s Biafra?’ One ...
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McLeod Group Blog, March 26, 2015
What’s the first best weapon to combat terrorism?
Good jobs-lots of them.
What’s the second best weapon?
Knowledge: continuous, detailed analysis of the complex root causes of radicalization and terrorism that informs the fullest range of actions by governments.
Yes, we admit here to ‘committing sociology’ (an idiotic phrase if there ever was one). For the record, we also regularly commit anthropology, and political science, and economics, and community development, and, especially, gender analysis.
It could be that truly ...
Continue Reading →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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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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