Nearly $300 million set aside to fight world poverty was not spent by the Canadian government last year, prompting questions about this administration’s commitment to foreign aid. The budget for foreign aid had already been slashed by 7.5 per cent representing a reduction of $377 million from the previous year. That brings the total reduction in spending to $677 million last year.
“Real money that… could have saved lives”
“This has deprived programs and organizations and government of real money that probably could have saved lives through medicines, through food security, through clean water, through human rights advocacy, through business loans,” says Edward Jackson, professor of public policy at Carleton University.
“There’s a whole range of things that this money would have been and, I would say, should have been used for, which indeed has been denied.”
Parliament was not consulted
Cuts to the foreign aid budget might have been justifiable, says Jackson, but to simply not spend what Parliament already approved for foreign aid is not.
“Certainly this $300 million was never discussed either…inside Parliament, it was not discussed with the Canadian public, says Jackson. “…this is being untransparent, unaccountable on the backs of the poor. And that is really unacceptable for a government in a wealthy country like ours.”
Government cut groups “it didn’t like”
Cuts in funding to feminist groups and activist groups were made by the current conservative government, notes Jackson. “They certainly cut some groups very intentionally and, I would say, gratuitously. But many of those groups were doing exceptionally good work on the ground… That deprives our partners in the field of very important resources to do good work.”
“Trade is the new priority”
Trade appears to be this government’s priority, not diplomacy, suggests Jackson. It cut ties with international development groups in favour of building partnerships with Canadian mining companies. It also merged the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Canada also drew criticism in 2009 when it shifted its foreign focus from poor countries in Africa to middle-income trading partners in Latin America.
The Canadian public supports foreign aid
The Canadian public is probably not even aware the government fell short of spending its foreign aid budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, says Jackson. “Over the years there has been a very strong majority of Canadians that wanted us to have a generous aid program and that’s been consistent through economic cycles…
“My sense is that Canadians want us to continue to be generous. They want the money to be accountable. They want it to be transparently spent, which in this case, it has not been. We’re still a generous nation.”
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