PQ proposes global development agency
Sovereigntists’ bid to create organization for international aid seen as a jab to feds
MONTREAL— Quebec’s sovereigntist government is moving toward the creation of its own international development arm to fill the gap it says has been left by a federal aid agency more focused on trying to help Canadian mining and oil firms abroad.
Modelled on development initiatives from separatist administrations in Scotland, the Spanish region of Catalonia, and Belgium’s independent Walloon region, the proposed Agence québécoise de solidarité internationale is being pitched as a way to present the province as a nationlevel force for good in the world.
But it’s also a deliberate poke in the eye of the Canadian International Development Agency, which has been taken over by the Department of Foreign Affairs and rearranged to focus more on economic development as the best way to alleviate poverty and human suffering.
“For a number of years, the types of international development that others have been doing, the Canadian government, have appeared to us a little too commercial,” Quebec’s International Relations Minister JeanFrançois Lisée said in a video to launch a round of public consultations on the project this week.
“In Quebec, we obviously help our companies and the world, but when we do solidarity, it’s for solidarity’s sake.”
The province’s partners in the project, which include aid workers who no longer hide their disappointment with Ottawa, are keenly aware that an aid agency launched by the Parti Québécois will also be a tool for the sovereignty movement.
“We’re not naive. We know that it’s a sovereigntist government, but it’s the same thing when we work with Ottawa — we know that it’s with a Conservative government. We’re at the mercy of their agenda and their individual political visions,” said Gervais L’Heureux, director-general of the Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale.
L’Heureux’s organization has been sitting in on consultations with NGOs, intellectuals, private business and other interested parties over the last few months. After the publicinput, they will draft a report with recommendations on the structure, budget and suggested areas of focus.
Stepping up activities in Haiti is one area where Quebec sees fertile ground, given the province’s large Haitian expatriate population. Federally funded projects in Haiti have been in limbo since questions were raised about corruption and the efficiency of the Haitian government.
“There’s a total lack of transparency on the part of CIDA for some time now. There’s been cuts and delays that result in a total disorganization for NGOs,” said Nancy Thede, a professor of international development and human rights at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Lisée also argued last winter before a parliamentary committee that while Quebec contributed about one quarter of the money for CIDA’s budget, just 11 per cent of projects were awarded to Quebec aid groups.
Quebec already has a piecemeal funding program for development work, but Lisée has grander plans to use the agency as a tool to carve out a greater stature for Quebec on the world stage.
“It would permit the Quebec government to have the status to go the World Bank or to go to (Bill Clinton’s) foundation and say Quebec is asking for $10 million with our partners,” he said in February. “I think that will help us obtain international money and it will give us a status, a credibility, a reputation, and we certainly need one.”