CIDA changes
Nipa Banerjee on the agency’s demise,
The talk of the town for development community members is the merger of CIDA with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. This was unwelcome but not surprising news for many of my development colleagues who say that the plan has been brewing in the Conservative government pipeline for a while.
This is possible. But I have to question how much a poverty of leadership from CIDA contributed to Thursday’s decision. Over the last few years, I watched with hopelessness CIDA’s pursuit of un-strategic policies or rolling along with no strategies whatsoever. This, along with ineffective aid, stripped CIDA of the reputation it once enjoyed as one of the world’s most valued and best development agencies. One has to wonder what options are available in the face of such decline.
I worked under giant development leaders, such as Margaret Catley Carlson, Madame Huguette Labelle, Marcel Massé and Bill McWhinney who trained us in NorthSouth development co-operation, not aid as a means of promoting Canada’s trade and economic interests. CIDA’s Lewis Perinbam made Canada the world’s lead country in utilizing the innovative programming mechanism of development delivery through the partnership of government and non-government civil society organizations. Our leaders promoted debate and dialogue across the agency.
At all levels, we argued, we critiqued, we learned to be transparent and accept criticisms that helped improve our policies and practices on the ground. My understanding from CIDA colleagues is that all dissenting voices are now throttled — certainly not a good indicator for an agency that purports to promote democracy in its partner countries.
We worked amicably with DFAIT, both departments acknowledging differences in our mandates. The meshing of Canada’s trade interests and aid for poverty reduction were considered incongruous functions for one department.
A “comprehensive approach” that is cited as the rationale for the merger of CIDA and DFAIT, was not ever absent.
In fact it fully flourished as the two government departments — DFAIT and CIDA — worked as two arms of Canada’s foreign policy, promoting Canadian values through political, economic and development dialogue and practices in the world.
The level of independence of its staff and decision-making and protection of its mandate of poverty reduction was made possible through visionary, innovative and vigilant leaders and senior staff members, of whom CIDA has been devoid over the last few years.
Canada has been moving further away from the goal of reaching the aid budget of 0.7 per cent of our GDP. CIDA’s valued partnership program involving civil society organizations and professional associations has been virtually killed, cutting a limb off the agency, with little known objection from CIDA.
The recent news of a CIDA minister’s embarrassing admission to the media about his ignorance of the nomenclature “effective aid,” brings into question CIDA’s senior managers’ negligence of duty for advising a new minister appropriately on current priority issues, especially when in a recent review, CIDA’s performance in aid effectiveness has been assessed as not so positive.
Little is known about any resistance from CIDA’s senior managers to attempts at linking of development programs to Canadian mining interests overseas.
No doubt the amalgamation of CIDA and DFAIT will reinforce the government’s recent tendency to link aid with commercial interests. But could this tendency not be aborted at the conception stage by experienced senior CIDA staff?
While Oxfam Canada rightly comments that Foreign Affairs is not in the business of poverty reduction and that it is CIDA’s business, a million-dollar question remains to be answered: Are the required expertise, focus, effectiveness and results to address the goal of poverty reduction and above all, the willingness and commitment to address development values, present in CIDA?
If not, can we blame the political influences that promoted a merger?