Bibeau to press Trump counterpart on aid

OTTAWA — International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says she will try to persuade her counterpart in the Trump administration not to slash billions in foreign aid as the president has proposed.

Bibeau she will make the case for continued spending, including for family planning and abortion, when the new head of the U.S. Agency for International Development is finally hired.

The USAID chief is one of many vacant Trump administration positions, but former Tanzanian ambassador Mark Green has been nominated.

“We will definitely have this conversation,” Bibeau said Tuesday in an interview from London, where she was attending the international Family Planning Summit.

“We have identified our priorities, and we will keep working on it to bring as many partners, public and private, with us in this journey.”

President Donald Trump has said he will cut the State Department and USAID budgets by 31 per cent in 2018. USAID alone has an annual budget of US$20 billion.

Trump has also reinstated a ban on funding abortion-related activities by foreign aid that was first started by the Reagan Republicans in 1984. Trump expanded the policy, which means he could strip billions of dollars from a wide range of health programs in the developing world.

Bibeau announced details of how $241 million of a previous $650 million pledge would be spent: two-thirds will go towards African countries.

U.S. philanthropist Melinda Gates, who cohosted the London summit, said she was “deeply troubled” by Trump’s proposed budget cuts and hoped U.S. Congress would find a way to block them.