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How to Hijack an Aid Program

AN OPEN LETTER TO AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER TONY ABBOTT

from Ian Smillie

October 29, 2013

Dear Tony Abbott,

The day after you led your Liberal/National Coalition to a landslide victory in September, you announced that AusAID, the Australian government’s aid agency, will be integrated into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Because many have likened this move to what Canada has done in merging CIDA with DFAIT, I thought I might give you some background information on what has happened ...

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The Harper Government’s Foreign Policy Record

October 22, 2013

There has been a lot of noise about a new realism in Canadian foreign policy—principled, not going along just to get along—and it seems a great deal of rushing around the globe by the energetic Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird. But what do we have to show for all of this? There has been a flurry of comment in the last few weeks about Mr Harper not addressing the United Nations General Assembly fall session, unlike many ...

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Changing Canadian International Development by Malign Neglect

Oct. 8, 2013

It’s easy to save money and effort—don’t buy toothbrushes, toothpaste or dental floss, never take your kids to the dentist, don’t bother with fluoridation of municipal water supplies—and in a few years the kids won’t have teeth to worry about.

There is increasing evidence that a similar but stealthy malign neglect is affecting Canada’s contribution to international development, thanks to the Harper Government. Let’s look at the evidence.

On July 14, 2013, the Ottawa Citizen reported that CIDA would underspend ...

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Cutting International Youth Internships Makes no Sense

Cutting International Youth Internships Makes no Sense

August 21, 2013

Embassy recently reported that DFATD might not be funding the International Youth Internship Program (IYIP) past March 2014. The program has run for the past 16 years, providing up to $12,000 in funding for young adults (age 19-30) to participate in 6-12 month work placements with NGOs in developing countries. IYIP was barely saved from the chopping block five years ago and a similar internship program run by DFAIT was cancelled in 2012. These training programs, Continue Reading →

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Lending for Private Sector-led Development. Another false start?

July 26, 2013

For decades development practitioners, including CIDA, have recognised the critical role of the private sector of developing countries in creating jobs for the poor.

We did not need the 2012 House Report to confuse the issue of strengthening the role of that local private sector with the promotion of Canadian offshore investment. Now, just as the very name CIDA is scratched from Canada’s international face to be replaced by the ugly acronym DFATD, there may be plans afoot ...

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Deleting the Brand

July 18, 2013

At the end of June, the day of the official name change at 200 Promenade du Portage, the CIDA headquarters sign—in darkly Orwellian fashion—was covered up with some garbage bags. The seamless transition promised by then Development Minister Julian Fantino wasn’t quite ready for prime time because the new signage had not arrived.

Within a day, however, the new lettering was up and the CIDA President had been sent away, replaced by an associate deputy minister with no experience ...

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Nasty Canada

May 27, 2013

Recently, Andrew Coyne wrote an article about the Conservatives, saying that their “Nasty Party” reputation was well deserved. The adjectives Coyne used were moronic, secretive, controlling, manipulative, crude, autocratic, vicious, untrustworthy, paranoid. “It’s quite a performance,” he said. And that was before the full Technicolor Duffygate

You can’t of course, separate the party from the government it runs. And that government has applied the same qualities it uses in Canada to its foreign policy, making Canada an outcast in ...

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CIDA’s Dead-End Merger

May 18, 2013

Is the CIDA amalgamation another flawed move?  Can this latest political manoeuvre yield better outcomes for the poor? Or is the promise of policy coherence and effectiveness a mirage?

The costs of the transition, ranging from the mundanities of new business cards and the switch-over of all software protocols to the further losses of morale and skills as staff are shuffled out or into new roles, will be high.  It might seem that the hidden goal is budget savings, ...

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The Good News Budget Bill

May 2, 2013

So, the verdict is in. Pundits, academics, even the troublesome NGOs seem to like Bill C-60, the Harper Government’s omnibus Budget Bill that, among many, many other things, “folds” CIDA into DFAIT.

When the merger was announced, John Baird—perhaps trying to alleviate the concerns of those who saw aid budget cuts ahead—said it had nothing to do with money. Which makes you wonder, then, why the merger was squeezed into a Budget Bill. But we’re getting used to that, ...

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Goodbye to All That: The Death of CIDA

Goodbye to All That: The Death of CIDA

March 23, 2013

The execution of CIDA has been applauded by at least two former foreign ministers (Barbara McDougall and Lloyd Axworthy) and proclaimed to be reasonable “in principle” by a wide variety of academics and journalists—pointing to Scandinavian models for evidence, deploring CIDA’s past mismanagement, and citing the need for a coherent foreign policy. A common story line for many commentators, most of whom don’t know any more about the Paris Declaration than Julian Fantino, is that aid never worked ...

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