Canada and Development Cooperation

Abstract

THE TOPIC presents a major challenge; it is difficult to say something new and useful given the many reports on the subject and the excellent advice provided in two recent papers on directions for Canada.1 I have, therefore, attempted a slightly different approach, expanding on issues not often covered elsewhere, an effort in the spirit of John Holmes. I believe that the trends, constraints, and choices made as part of the larger themes have a more significant impact on the role in development cooperation than is normally acknowledged. An overly narrow frame does not allow for a full strategic overview of the most important issues and their interconnections. My article starts with the larger issues that provide the framework within which development cooperation policy must be developed and implemented. I argue first that development assistance and cooperation efforts are vital to self-interest and are not merely an expression of charity. I then touch on a few lessons from the past and some new emerging issues that will have to be considered in developing new policies and structures. Finally, I present a few directions for the future and some errors that should be avoided.CANADIAN INTERESTS AND DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION Development cooperation is generally viewed only through the lens of altruism; the picture is of Canada contributing to the welfare of other people, usually non-white and poor, the charitable orientation of the people translated on their behalf by the federal government. In this arrangement, CIDA has been the principal institutional mechanism through which over 80 percent of the money, goods, and services are transferred to the deserving poor. As ClDA describes it, development cooperation is a tangible measure and expression of Canadian values-humanitarianism, generosity, equality and social justice.2 I have no doubt that we all support the view that existing orders of inequality in the world are a disgrace and that contributions to reduce poverty, ill health, and other gross deprivations are a required expression of our ethical principles.But I also argue below that development cooperation serves important hard interests, including security, sovereignty, and prosperity. It is important to start with hard interests: the soft principles of altruism, good will, and charity of Canadians proved insufficient to prevent the decline of resources towards the less well-endowed during the decade of the 1990s. The decline followed the demise of the former Soviet Union in 1989, which marked the end of the Cold War and removed the perception of a hard interest in the form of a need to influence poor countries. Many commentators saw the end of the Cold War as providing a peace dividend. Both resources and attention would shift from defence to development. In Canada, the following decade saw the decline of all allocations to matters outside-defence, foreign affairs, and development cooperation.During the decade of the 1990s, while Canada's GDP grew from $570 billion in 1992s to $1200 billion in 2003,4 a growth of over 100 percent, the allocations for Canada's official development assistance (ODA) fell both as a ratio of ODA to GDP as well as in absolute amounts. This brought Canada down from the middle ranks of the 22 donor countries of the OECD to the bottom three or four in terms of the ratio of ODA to GDP. contributions plunged to 0.22 percent, very close to the US and far from our highest levels of almost 0.55 percent. It is far lower than our 35-year-old commitment to reach 0.7 percent. It is also far from the almost one percent provided by like-minded countries in northern Europe. If Canada had met its long-standing commitment by 2003, the resources currently available for ODA would have been $8.4 billion instead of around three billion.This reduction of resources happened in spite of the fact that 44 percent of Canadians believe that the country allocates inadequate resources to foreign aid and 57 percent of Canadians have said that they are in favour of an increased tax at the rate of one percent dedicated to international poverty removal programs. …