Tories put quiet end to CIDA

Agency folded into Foreign Affairs, with focus on Canada’s economic goals

OTTAWA— The federal Conservative government will fold Canada’s international aid and humanitarian assistance agency into the Foreign Affairs Department, creating a super-ministry to oversee a more coherent foreign policy and help “increase economic opportunities.”

After slashing what it spends annually on international aid by more than a third of a billion dollars last year and reducing the number of countries it sends aid money to, the government is pitching the move as merely a tinkering with the machinery of government.

It will bring the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), first created in1968, under the umbrella of a newly renamed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, and under the same legislation.

While International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino will still oversee international aid efforts, he essentially becomes a minister without his own department.

The move will also see aid explicitly cast as another lever in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s foreign policy toolbox — specifically one aimed at bringing economic opportunity to Canada.

The budget plan says the Conservative government will continue “to make international development and humanitarian assistance central to our foreign policy” and that “core development assistance will remain intact.”

But non-governmental organizations such as Oxfam raised concerns that Ottawa’s allocation of aid “will be driven by Canada’s self-interest in foreign policy and the government’s economic and trade agenda, rather than poverty alleviation.”

“Foreign Affairs is not in the business of reducing poverty,” said Anthony Scoggins, Oxfam’s director of international programs. “We risk losing the expertise, focus, effectiveness — and results — that CIDA staff brought to this goal.”

The budget plan says Ottawa will continue “to provide essential aid” in key areas such as maternal, newborn and child health, education, public sector governance, justice reform and agriculture. But the Conservative budget describes those aid efforts as catalysts for economic growth in the developing world and “a critical instrument for advancing Canada’s long-term prosperity and security.”

The budget mentions no further cuts in international aid to poor and developing countries or humanitarian assistance to war-torn regions or disaster zones.

In truth, the cuts of last year’s budget, which reduced the overall international aid budget from a high of $5 billion to $4.6 billion, are just beginning to hit.

The NDP’s foreign affairs critic, Paul Dewar, challenged the government’s rationale for the move, saying it is clear the Conservatives “do not believe in international aid.”

“They’re switching from a focus on international development to say, ‘We’ll do it through trade.’ ” he said.

Perhaps sensitive to the political fallout of the move, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did not even mention the change in his budget speech.