AUTHOR
Stephen Brown
Professor, School of Political Studies
The voting for the next head of the Conservative Party of Canada has begun. The winner, to be announced on August 21, will become the Leader of the Official Opposition. In the midst of the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic …
READ MORETwo prominent umbrella groups of Canadian development organizations – CCIC and CanWaCH – recently launched a COVID-themed campaign to drum up support for Canadian foreign aid. In doing so, they have embraced a nationalistic, threat-based case for aid that verges …
READ MOREDespite talking a good game when it comes to foreign aid, Canada is still not stepping up to the plate. Baseball metaphors are not my forte, but it is clear that Canada is refusing to contribute its fair share of …
READ MOREJustin Trudeau has been a better ally to gay communities than his predecessor. However, he seems to be losing interest in protecting the rights of LGBTI people in other countries, despite the desperate need for such support.
Justin Trudeau’s government …
READ MOREWhile one federal party leader pledges to cut foreign aid, others fail to agree to meet Canada’s long-standing commitments. In the run-up to the 2019 elections, international assistance finally did earn a place on the campaign agenda. However, all major …
READ MOREDoes the world need more Canadians? Global Affairs Canada recently announced a new initiative to send more Canadians abroad to help developing countries fight poverty. The new …
READ MOREFrom the international development perspective, Budget 2019 is the most disappointing federal budget since the current Liberal government was elected. Foreign aid warrants a mere three paragraphs. The first repeats past commitments and the third describes how the government will …
READ MOREBy Stephen Brown and Hunter McGill
To help ensure that Canadian foreign aid is spent on supporting people in need in developing countries — rather than things like white elephants and Canadian commercial interests — Canada has legislation that mandates …
READ MOREOf late, many commentators, from humble bloggers to the more august Toronto Star and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have lamented Canada’s relative lack of generosity in foreign aid and called on the Canadian government to increase the …
READ MOREby Hunter McGill and Stephen Brown
Every five years or so, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducts a “peer review” of the countries that belong to its Development Assistance Committee (DAC). This year was Canada’s turn and …
READ MOREby Stephen Brown and Hunter McGill
Ten years ago, the Canadian parliament unanimously passed the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act, following years of intensive lobbying by Canadian civil society organizations. Prior to 2008, Canada had not had any legislation …
READ MOREOne of the best predictors of whether a country criminalizes homosexuality is whether it is a member of the Commonwealth. In 36 out of 53 Commonwealth countries, sexual acts in private between two consenting adults of the same sex are …
READ MOREThe preliminary aid statistics for 2017 are now out. What do they tell us about global trends and Canadian foreign aid?
Globally, official development assistance (ODA) from traditional donors has held steady. The total amount, US$147 billion, is down slightly …
READ MOREby Stephen Brown and Hunter McGill
If you watched Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget speech in the House of Commons yesterday, you had to be paying close attention to catch the one sentence that refers to foreign aid: “We will …
READ MORE“I would love to increase the aid budget,” admitted Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal Member of Parliament and Parliamentary Secretary to Canada’s Minister of International Development, speaking at a recent conference organized by the Canadian Council for International Co-operation. But, she argued, …
READ MOREShifting from petty and mean to sunny ways, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has done a remarkable job of changing the tone of Canada’s international engagement. When it comes to foreign aid, however, the rhetoric has not been matched by action. …
READ MOREIn the early 2000s, Western donors finally recognized that they were partly to blame for foreign aid’s often disappointing results. The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, adopted in 2005, was the result of that soul-searching.
The Declaration was based …
READ MOREProviding foreign aid is only one among many things that countries like Canada can do to promote international development. Official development assistance (ODA) on its own is not sufficient to help developing countries radically improve the lot of their poor …
READ MOREIn its first five months in office, the Liberal government has captured the world’s attention, never losing an opportunity to proclaim that “Canada is back.” In a blog a few months ago, the McLeod Group lamented the new government’s lack …
READ MOREThe current migration crisis poses a threat to foreign aid. By that, I certainly do not mean that the refugees and asylum seekers themselves are dangerous, but rather how Western governments respond to the crisis is already having a negative …
READ MOREA decade of Conservative rule has had a profound impact on Canadian foreign aid — and mostly for the worst.
With respect to aid level, we are back where we started. The Harper government initially embraced the Liberals’ goal of
The French version of this essay was published on the Huffington Post Québec blog Un seul monde on January 8, 2015.
When the Harper government abolished the Canadian International Development Agency and transferred its functions to the newly renamed Department …
READ MOREBy Rieky Stuart and Stephen Brown
Published on the McLeod Group Blog, June 10, 2014
The Canadian government’s recent Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Summit in Toronto has not lacked for cheerleaders, especially NGOs receiving funding under the …
READ MOREWhile global foreign aid reached an all-time high in 2013, the Canadian government’s contributions fell by over 11%. Among the 28 industrialized countries belonging to the Development Assistance Committee, only debt-ridden Portugal cut aid more drastically than Canada. Not …
READ MOREIn July 2013, when the government abolished the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and transferred its functions to the newly renamed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD), it did so mainly in the name of policy coherence. The …
READ MOREMany supporters of DFAIT’s recently announced takeover of CIDA are invoking spurious arguments. More fundamentally, most commentators are missing the crucial point that this new arrangement will do little or nothing to fix the actual problems with Canadian foreign aid. …
READ MOREPublished in Embassy Magazine, September 19, 2012
Canada’s contributions to reducing global poverty are rarely a priority topic for debate in the House of Commons. Foreign aid is an important tool for supporting international development, but it will likely …
READ MOREMedia commentary has been remarkably lenient regarding Bev Oda’s record at the end of her five-year stint as Canada’s Minister of International Cooperation. Coverage has by and large ignored how, under her watch, the government systematically undermined both the fundamental …
READ MORETransitional justice is trendy. After a civil war or political transition, the new government will often announce one or more of a variety of mechanisms for dealing with the past, such as a special tribunal or a truth commission.
What …
READ MOREIn a blog post yesterday, my colleague Natalie Brender rejected a recent Ottawa Citizen column’s condemnations of the use of CIDA funds to subsidize Canadian mining companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects in mining-affected communities in developing countries.
The crux …
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