Harper, Multilateralism and the UN: How will he manage demands from his base?

Moving to the centre in order to get elected is a time-honoured tradition in Canadian politics. That’s basically what Stephen Harper did recently when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in October in an attempt to shore up Canada’s bid for a seat on the Security Council.

His speech was, well, almost Pearsonian, replete with references to “the sovereign equality of countries,” justice and human rights, and its affirmation of Canada’s role in UN peacekeeping and aid efforts. The most commonly used words in Harper’s address were “UN”, “Canadian”, “development”, and, interestingly, “also.” Even Bob Rae liked it.

As the public record painfully shows, Canada lost the vote and Portugal won the seat.

Still, Canada must continue to work with and through the United Nations and other multilateral bodies on a host of complex files. Haiti, Congo, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Burma are but five hot spots; there are dozens more.

So what are the chances that the Harper government will maintain the moderate and cooperative multilateralist stance we saw at the General Assembly?

The odds don’t seem good. On the contrary, Mr. Harper will face strong pressure to move to the right. With a federal election in the offing, the Prime Minister cannot ignore the demands of his domestic base. Broadly speaking, Canadian conservatives—both the economic (the neo-cons) and social (the theo-cons) streams of the movement—don’t like the United Nations. In their view, it is too statist, too liberal, too anti-Israel, too anti-American and too committed to a broad definition of human rights. Many on the right see it as a troublesome, bloated bureaucracy that should really be dismantled and tossed into the Hudson River.

One of the mother-ships of North American conservative thinking is the Heritage Foundation in the United States. Its website contains repeated, trenchant condemnations of the UN. The Foundation’s experts recommend radically reducing American government funding of the institution, bypassing the international aid apparatus altogether, and relying essentially on “economic freedom” and foreign direct investment to lift developing countries out of poverty.

Conservative think tanks in Canada have also been carving out their positions on foreign aid. They provided cover for International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda when she cut funding for feminist and progressive NGOs earlier this year, arguing that taxpayers shouldn’t pay for what they termed left-wing activism. And when Ms. Oda unveiled Canada’s maternal and child health initiative, right-wing commentators praised the government’s refusal to include abortion services in the program, arguing that an anti-abortion stance is consistent with the laws of many sovereign states.

But the UN doesn’t see it that way. At the recent summit on the Millennium Development Goals, member states, including Canada, not only rededicated themselves to achieving what’s known as MDG 3, the gender-equality goal, they also reaffirmed the importance of “full reproductive rights” for women around the world. Moreover, member states declared once again their full support for the new UN agency for women, which will take the kind of robust, rights-based approach for women’s equality that conservatives love to oppose.

There will be other contradictions between Canadian conservatives and UN policies and practices. However, the Harper government will find that its room for manoeuvre will be limited in resolving the views of its political base with those of the UN system.

While it is true that the UN is often ponderous and bureaucratic, it nevertheless provides a crucial worldwide system for addressing global risks, such as, importantly, fighting pandemics. The United Nations convenes parties for the creation of norms for food safety and nutrition. And it works hard to broker and maintain peace agreements in conflict regions. A world without the UN would be much more dangerous and volatile than it is now.

And the UN’s budget is far from bloated. The UN Secretariat’s annual budget is just over $2 billion, a little less than the budget of the City of Ottawa —a modest sum to handle the whole world, hundreds of issues and dozens of specialized agencies. Indeed, several UN agencies—the World Food Programme is one—are much better run than our own foreign-aid program.

Without a seat on the Security Council, Canada remains a small player among many larger and more powerful nations, especially the permanent members of the Council. Under these circumstances, we can gain leverage only through cooperation, reciprocity and pluralism—not through unilateral action driven by a single ideology.

The bottom line, therefore, is that it will be difficult for Stephen Harper to use his government’s multilateral activities to satisfy his domestic political base. He will have to find other ways to do that.
In the meantime, there is important work to be done through the UN. Strengthening global systems to fight the drug trade and human trafficking, for example, could attract support from both conservative and progressive Canadians. So could enhancing humanitarian efforts in response to new natural disasters and civil strife. On these and other issues, even from outside the Security Council, Canada could play a leading, animating role that would enable the United Nations to achieve important results.
Maybe staying in the centre is the best course for Stephen Harper after all.

Foreign Aid: Telling Parliament - The Second Report to Parliament on Canada's Official Development Assistance, 2009-10

Lost amidst the welter of recent government announcements about the wonderful things Canada is planning to do with its aid budget was the tabling in the House of Commons of the second Report to Parliament on the Government of Canada’s Official Development Assistance (ODA), 2009-2010. You would think that a government which places great store in action and principles – if we are to believe the Prime Minister’s explanation for losing a seat on the Security Council – would be eager to tell Canadians what a swell job it is doing in foreign assistance. But it didn’t. Instead it opted to publish the report on line, with no mention on CIDA’s website and no printed copies available except on request.

The ODA Accountability Act of 2008 was a private member’s bill that passed with all-party support, a very rare occurrence in our parliament. The Act sets out three conditions for Canadian development aid: it must contribute to poverty reduction; it must take into account the perspectives of the poor; and it must be consistent with international human rights standards. And the government has to report on all the expenditures it is claiming as ODA (as defined by the OECD Development Assistance Committee) not just the funds disbursed by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This explains why Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Finance Canada, National Defence and a range of other departments – including Parks Canada – get a mention in the report. If you thought that including these other departments was an exercise in sweeping up a few spilled kernels of wheat, think again. Finance Canada spent over $500 million on ODA in 2009-2010 and Foreign Affairs almost $300 million out of a total of $4.788 billion.

So what’s in the report? Essentially, it’s just a list, and a selectively short one at that. The opening section states “Canada is contributing to the global efforts to meet the needs of those living in poverty in developing countries…” and goes on to list, in general terms, “activities that are undertaken to achieve poverty reduction.” The subsequent text on CIDA lists some of the things the agency spent money on, without explanation as to how or why they meet the stipulations of the Act. There are frequent references to CIDA’s indomitable Minister, Beverly J. Oda. Human rights and the perspectives of the poor get short shrift. When it comes to Finance and Foreign Affairs there is virtually no reference to poverty reduction, the views of the poor or human rights.

The government can claim that it has reported, but it’s a skimpy effort, completely inconsistent with the spirit and aim of the Act. This is not surprising, given that the government doesn’t like the Act.

Why such a weak report? Minister Oda can’t utter a sentence about recipient governments and NGOs without demanding “results” half a dozen times. The government claims it’s throwing money at lots of good causes – Haiti, and the mother and child health initiative for example – so there should be lots of material to work with. Perhaps there’s less here than meets the eye. With the aid budget frozen for the next five years, there will be less money to spend on all the announcements made this year. And Afghanistan has an insatiable appetite for CIDA money and priority, regardless of the Act’s stipulations about poverty, human rights and what the poor might think.

Maybe if the media or the Opposition asked the right questions there would be more government accountability around an Act which is, after all, the law of the land. Don’t hold your breath though. Reporters and parliamentarians of all stripes seem content with the mantra that Canada performs well and is a respected member of the international aid donor community. Too bad the public record can’t or won’t demonstrate the facts to back it up.

Canada and Haiti: When all is said and done, much more is being said than done

There is no question that Haiti is a difficult place for external actors to work. Nation-building has eluded the best, most well-intentioned aid donors for decades. Treating the country as a basket case worth considering only as an international trusteeship candidate is not the path to follow for sustainable development. When disaster strikes Haiti – hurricanes in 2008, an earthquake in January this year – Canada responds, lots of ministerial and media attention (are those related?) and talk of commitments of large amounts of money, but then it’s soon off to the next emergency…….hellooo Pakistan! Whereupon the relationship with Haiti reverts to the same old, same old.

Has the devastating earthquake of January 12 created an opportunity for dialogue within Haiti about development? Can Haitians reach consensus on where they want their country to go from here, and what role they want external actors, such as Canada, to play in the coming months and years? Is Canada capable of listening to Haitians, or will Canadian agencies, whether governmental or civil society, continue to develop and support projects which deal with symptoms rather than causes? Will we plough ahead with promises to construct new buildings for the Haitian government without giving thought to what the government occupying those offices should be doing to meet the needs of the population?

Haiti’s chronic political instability and the non-delivery of services by the government have held back any meaningful development. Income inequality in the country is staggeringly high as is illiteracy and the evidence of Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters is very well known. Yet there is a remarkable resilience in Haitian society, an entrepreneurial capacity of individuals which surely could be drawn upon to build a better future for the country.

Unfortunately, when all is said and done, much more is said than done. Canada appears to be as responsible as any other external partner for this situation – lots of promises of aid but little evidence that we are doing much to support Haiti’s own efforts. Canadian ministers (Cannon, Oda, Kenney) talk of Canada’s “long-standing commitment, as well as our experience and expertise…positioning Canada to assume a leadership role in assistance and reconstruction.” What’s been keeping us from doing this up to now? Has Canada indeed delivered on its financial commitments at the international conference in New York on March 31? Have the institutions and agencies (Haitian, international and Canadian) tasked with carrying out the work actually been given the money to do the job, or have they been told “the cheque is in the mail” without any idea when (if?) it was posted?

It isn’t easy to figure out just what Canada’s financial commitment to Haiti is. CIDA’s website lists four numbers: $85 million in humanitarian assistance between January 13 and 19; $400 million announced at the UN Conference on Haiti March 31; $220 million government contribution to the Matching Fund; and $65.5 million humanitarian assistance announced (in Haiti) on April 18. On the UN’s financial tracking system for humanitarian aid, as of August 23, Canada is shown as having committed and contributed US$139.2 million. On July 12, to commemorate six months since the earthquake, Ministers Cannon, Oda and Kenney reiterated Canada’s engagement with Haiti and the noted the allocation of over $150 million “to date” by CIDA for humanitarian assistance and initial reconstruction efforts. Apparently this is in addition to Canada’s “planned, ongoing $555 million engagement in Haiti for 2006-2011.”

Announcements, commitments, engagement, pledges, allocations, contributions – how much has actually been spent, and on what, and what have been the results? When will Canadians be told? The Canadian government needs to demonstrate that Canada’s aid to Haiti is effective and having an impact.

The trend in Canada’s aid program is to move back to a supply-driven project-based approach, which well-performing donors have abandoned. It is time for us to stop delaying, reducing, re-programming or suspending aid. It is time for us to listen to Haitians’ views, at the community level, not just the political elites, and to support activities which will make a near-term improvement in people’s lives. Haitians deserve this from us and Canadians expect this of their government. Is the Harper government capable of listening and doing the right thing?

Should Canada be on the Security Council?

Canada is lobbying hard to win a seat on the UN Security Council for a two year 2011-2012 term. The competition for this non-permanent seat on the Council comes from two member countries of the European Union, namely Germany and Portugal, and Germany is all but confirmed. It has been a decade since Canada was last a member of the Council.

With its spotty record of late in international affairs, should Canada be taken seriously as a helpful, responsible candidate, ready and able to contribute to discussions on global issues and contribute to the search for solutions and consensus?

It is actually very difficult to discern any Canadian agenda in seeking a seat on the Security Council. Unlike the G8 Summit in Muskoka – there because Tony Clement’s riding needed infrastructure – and the G20 conference, staged to demonstrate how the Toronto Police Force’s advanced crowd control techniques, membership on the Security Council requires a two-year plan. This could be a challenge for the Harper government, which is more accustomed to playing it week-to-week, month-to-month. What, for example, might the government’s position be on a possible international food price crisis? Where will Canada stand on UN peacekeeping efforts – to which we contribute so little? What is our position on the lack of progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals?

And how does our track record look? The Security Council is the preeminent venue for discussions on issues of global consequence. Like climate change. Like peace, security and development in poor countries. Like Middle East peace and stability. International economic relationships and security. High seas piracy. Migration and security. In recent years Canada has not shown much, if any interest in working with others to find solutions to shared problems. Cutbacks in development cooperation, little interest in UN peacekeeping, a denial of climate change, resurrecting Cold War era scares over foreign (Russian) bomber overflights, bombastic attitudes on Arctic sovereignty – these are hallmarks of the Conservative government’s approach. Not much evidence of an ability to work with others, or to lead by example. By and large, there isn’t much interest in international affairs in general, except to revert to well-known law-and-order mantras when something does pop up, like a boatload of Tamil migrants. It does not seem to have registered with the Prime Minister’s Office that the “build more prisons so we can lock up more bad guys for longer” approach doesn’t work outside our borders.

So what do we offer? A disturbing prospect – Canada as a member of a key international forum, but a member without a plan, a strategy or objectives. It’s as though the government wants to be able to add something to its corporate CV – Member of the Security Council – but is not willing to do the work and accept the responsibilities that go with the job. So the prospect if we are elected, is Canadian diplomats occupying a seat and having little if anything to say. Even that might be OK if we could be sure that Canada wouldn’t pipe up on the hugely important Israel-Palestine peace talks with an objection based on narrow domestic political considerations. That’s just one unpleasant but entirely possible scenario coming from a government that has demonstrated that it is unprepared to lead on the international stage.

The Harper Govenment and Civil Society; The CCIC debacle

Not satisfied making Canada a foreign aid laughing stock among its G8 and G20 peers, the government, led by CIDA minister Bev Oda, is now hunting down any organization it doesn’t like, and is doing whatever it can to put them out of business. The latest victim is the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, the well-respected umbrella organization that represents the interests of hundreds of Canadian organizations delivering aid programs to poor countries. CCIC’s failing? It went to bat for some of its members – such as Kairos and Match International -- that have already been axed because CIDA didn’t like what they had to say about human rights in the Middle East or their work with women.

CIDA has used an insidious methodology, one it has perfected over the past year with NGOs it doesn’t like. It allows funding to run out, says nothing for months while the organization eats up its reserves, and then the Minister says, often as an aside in a media scrum, that the organization in question doesn’t “fit” with CIDA’s priorities. CCIC, which has been a CIDA “partner” organization for more than 40 years, was treated a bit better. It was given an extension on its funding from April to July this year while CIDA ostensibly carried out a review. If there really was a “review” it was never shared with CCIC. Instead, the minister told CCIC in July that its funding was now at an end. CCIC could reapply to CIDA if and when it had some overseas programs for consideration.

When a minister of the Crown makes a suggestion this daft, one hardly knows whether to laugh or cry. Any hope that the Prime Minister might call the RCMP again came to nothing.

CCIC has laid off more than two thirds of its staff, and its office building is up for sale. An important coordination body and a respected voice, one that speaks not just for its members but for the poorest of the world though efforts like its “Make Poverty History” campaign, has been attacked and damaged. Another important Canadian institution is being brought to its knees.

Some say that organizations like CCIC should be funded by their members, not the government. That’s fine, but after 40 years of support, don’t give them that message 24 hours before the “partnership” is cancelled.

In July in Krakow, Foreign Minister Cannon addressed the Community of Democracies’ high-level ministerial meeting. He also opened the session of the Working Group on Enabling and Protecting Civil Society, which Canada chairs. Under the circumstances, it is hard to imagine what he said. His website, which is chockablock with Cannon speeches, leaves this one out – perhaps because what Canada says about civil society in the world is very different from what the government is doing at home.

The logic of what Stephen Harper, Lawrence Cannon and Bev Oda are doing to Canada’s aid program and to courageous, hard-working NGOs makes no sense. They are hurting Canadians who are trying to help and they are wrecking Canada’s once-deserved good reputation. More importantly, they are reducing the Canadian potential for good in many very poor countries to rubble.

Global governance: a new dynamic

Global Governance is about the mechanisms and institutions by which we seek to manage our world.
We are not talking about a world government and black helicopters, but something real and current. This is an array of supra-national institutions created by the world’s dominant economic actors to shape and constrain the actions of individual nations and their citizens.
Important shifts are happening now: maybe most critically leadership is moving from a dated G7 to a more inclusive G20, with a strong presence of ‘emerging’ developing countries.
The acronyms if not the precise roles are often familiar. The UN and its dozens of specialized agencies such as UNICEF is the big daddy, but often weak, under-resourced and divided. The giant financial institutions, the World Bank and IMF, are often seen as too powerful. Over the years many bodies have been added such as the WTO for trade, the OECD for policy co-ordination of the developed economies and ASEAN bringing together nations in S.E. Asia.
Impatient with these too ‘democratic’ multilateral bodies and panicked by the 1973 energy blackmail of OPEC countries, the rich and powerful created their own exclusive club, the G7. This club of economic giants dominated the world scene for years; it pressed for global rules to suit its members’ interests. For many developing countries, the G7 used its voting dominance of global governance instruments such as the IMF and the WTO to father debt crises, the pains of structural adjustment and the frequently adverse impact of globalization, whilst ignoring issues of poverty and human rights. However, this elitist club has steadily declined in effectiveness, even relevance, into a rambling set of sub-committees and an annual high profile photo-op.
We are now living in turbulent times. After over a decade of fat days, at least for the West and amongst a few privileged emerging nations, we are confronting a global economy that is still on life-support – hit by a global financial crisis, just months after a global food crisis and the ongoing threat of climate change. Democratisation as a positive force is also shaking up many countries.
Surprisingly to some, many stronger developing countries survived the financial crisis of 2009 better than the old G7 elite. The Yuan not the US$ is now seemingly the stronger currency. The group we now call the emerging economies, notably the new economic giants, China, India and Brazil, did not falter much and are now actually still pulling many enfeebled northern economies, even the mighty USA, out of their self-dug economic ditch.
A new approach to Global Governance, one still taking shape and far from perfect, is being built around a more inclusive G20, bringing together leaders of major economies from both the developing south and the north. The old elitist model of the G7 has been largely repudiated. It was the G20 that led the process of pulling the world out of the US/UK bankers-created global financial crisis. Over the next few years it will become the global policy forum of choice. and one where the voice of the poor, of developing countries, will come to be much better heard.
Where is Canada?
We were lucky to get into the G7; today we are struggling to even be #15 globally inside the G20. We did not get re-elected to the UNSC and now it is a G20 debate that will likely help shape the consensus on reforming that critical UN body, as well as a reformed ownership of the World Bank and IMF, with increased shares for the emerging economies leading towards a majority voice for the south.
Canada can find a creative role in this new order. However, it undermines its once substantial credibility, in part by being the most insistent in holding onto its old status, saying the G7 should remain the club of choice. Canada, especially its Finance officials, almost alone object to the G20 talking about world peace or environment, when at the same time the new leading voices (now more important than our own) in global affairs, notably the BRIC countries, are in the G20, not the G7. CIDA increasingly underfunds the UN and its specialized agencies.
We could rebuild our once strong credibility as a friend of developing countries. The McLeod Group believes that Canada could start by taking (constructively) a lead in pressing for even greater inclusivity in the G20 – there is a real need for a voice of the fragile states inside the G20 and an important opportunity to turn the G20 into a more regional representative body, in a manner matching the reform in ‘voice’ that is now being slowly operationalised in the World Bank and IMF Boards. Another opportunity that is well-suited to a ‘neutral’ Canada is to press for an end to over-representation of smaller European nations and for the US to cede its veto in the IMF and birth-right to always hold the World Bank Presidency.
We need to get that more positive Canadian act together soon. France now holds the chairs of both G7 and G20 for this year. Unlike Canada in 2010 it is determined to be an energetic reformer. Conservative Canada is still seen as an important spoiler on several global governance issues that conservative France will be pressing. They want more global action to ensure there cannot be a repeat of the irresponsible behavior of the runaway giant banks that triggered our present crisis. They, with other Europeans, some developing countries and even the IMF, not exactly a radical voice, want to use the new mood to create a global transaction tax. This could help mobilise new ‘additional’ funding to counter any new banking crisis, but also to mobilise incremental resources for action on climate change mitigation, food security and other development issues.
Will we remain the laggards, the spoilers? Canada can do much better. But we may need however to first re-learn a little more humility, to stop boasting so much about how (if to be honest as much due to inertia as superior wisdom!), we avoided the global economic crisis. We should go back to being the quiet but not disengaged Canadians, folks who work with others, a country that share its good fortune and work diligently to ‘fix’ things internationally.

Gender equality

In the 1980s and 90s CIDA’s policies on equality between women and men were on the leading edge of international practice but that has changed dramatically over the last few years.  While CIDA at one time was seen as a leader in the field others donors have now surpassed CIDA.
Since producing its 1976 guidelines and releasing its innovative 1984 policy on Women in Development (WID), CIDA has worked consistently – internally and with its partners, other donors, and international institutions – to promote women’s full participation as both agents and beneficiaries of development. ¹
It worked to promote a deeper understanding within CIDA and globally of the systemic causes of women’s subordination and the social construction of gender relations, and translated that understanding into policies and programming.  
CIDA’s programming came to be based on the understanding that an important underpinning of prosperous and peaceful societies was equality – between women and men as well as between different races, classes and ethnic groups. Recognizing that gender is an important social and economic dimension marked by inequality, CIDA revised its 1984 policy in 1995 to emphasize the importance of gender equity and women’s empowerment. The 1995 policy on WID and Gender Equity was widely used by partners in their policy dialogue work and as a model for the development of their own policies.²
CIDA consolidated this experience in a policy statement in 1999 which it developed through a broad consultative process. The 1999 policy brought CIDA national and international recognition. ³  The policy reaffirmed CIDA’s long-standing commitment to the pursuit of gender equality internationally, and introduced a new vision which emphasized Gender Equality as an end result and linked it to the Agency’s poverty reduction strategy.⁴
The 1999 Policy Framework outlined three programming objectives:

• To advance women's equal participation with men as decision-makers in shaping the sustainable development of their societies;
• To support women and girls in the realization of their full human rights;
• To reduce gender inequalities in access to and control over the resources and

benefits of development.
This meant funding multilateral organizations in their efforts to promote and contribute to gender equality – both financially and by advocating for gender equality as Canadian delegates governing those organizations.  It meant respect and support for indigenous organizations supporting the advancement of women, often through CIDA ‘gender funds’.
Although the 1999 statement remains CIDA’s official policy, the Agency is implementing it selectively.

• Whereas CIDA used to fund projects aimed at promoting women’s rights and strengthening women’s organizations, its gender-related projects now focus on service delivery.
• CIDA has cut local funds to support women’s advancement organizations despite a 2006 evaluation that found the funding program highly effective.
• Several organizations ( Kairos, International Planned Parenthood) that support a broad range of women’s rights have not had their funding renewed.
• Canada has moved out of several of the poorest African countries where many of the world’s poorest women live.
• Canada is no longer a strong advocate for women’s rights in multilateral organizations

A prime example of this approach was the Prime Minister’s March 2010 announcement that Canada’s G8 signature project will be a Maternal Child Health Initiative.  However, the Conservative government is vacillating on whether to include the provision of family planning services, contraception and access to safe abortion in this initiative. Including these services is essential, say experts in this field, and would be in accordance with the practice of other G8 members.  In hewing a conservative line on gender, family planning and abortion, the government drew the opposition parties into the fray, making maternal child health a divisive Canadian issue rather than one of social justice and good health for the world’s poorest.
The current government’s position is no longer to support equality between men and women – with our voices or with our dollars – in global fora where the struggle for women’s place in the world is at stake.   Our current government believes it is more important to use foreign aid to divide the Canadian public along partisan lines and hopefully win a few votes from those who believe that treating symptoms is more important than making real progress through dealing with causes – that imposing made-in-Canada solutions is better than building alliances. 
This needs to change.
Canada, through CIDA and Canadian Civil Society Organizations, has a long history and deep experience in promoting gender equality and women’s rights globally. Canada could again take up that role and reestablish its international reputation by seriously implementing the1999 CIDA Policy on Gender Equality as a foundation for an agency-wide vision and framework for gender equality in CIDA’s international cooperation as confirmed and recommended by the extensive 2008 evaluation. Using Canadian aid policy on gender equality for narrow partisan purposes is unworthy of a government aspiring to G8 leadership. 
_________________________
 APPENDIX 1 
OVERVIEW OF CIDA ACTIVITIES ⁵
Three Decades of Commitment
The following list of activities gives a sense of the breadth and depth of CIDA’s activities to promote gender equality and women’s rights over the last 3 decades.

• 1976: CIDA adopted initial policy guidelines on Women in Development (WID).
• 1984: WID Directorate established and first CIDA WID Policy developed.
• 1986: CIDA's five-year WID Plan of Action launched.
• 1993: CIDA's WID Policy and activities evaluated.
• 1994: WID and Gender Equity Division established in Policy Branch.
• 1995: WID Policy update: WID and Gender Equity Policy.
• 1995: Government of Canada Policy for CIDA on Human Rights, Democratization and Good Governance released; it recognizes the centrality of women's human rights.
• 1995: Support for the full participation of women as equal partners in the sustainable development of their societies is identified as one of CIDA's six programming priorities in the Government's foreign policy statement, Canada in the World, Government Statement.
• 1995: CIDA performance review conducted focusing on the WID and Gender Equity Policy.
• 1995: CIDA's Policy on Poverty Reduction released; it commits the Agency to address gender equality as part of poverty reduction.
• 1996: CIDA's Strategy for Health released, emphasizing the importance of women's and girls' empowerment to improving their health.
• 1997: CIDA's Basic Human Needs Policy launched, emphasizing the promotion of gender equality as a necessary strategy to meet the needs of women and their families.
• 1997: CIDA's draft Strategy for Children released for consultation; it declares gender  equality and women's empowerment essential for girls' and boys' well-being.
• 1997: CIDA strategy Our Commitment to Sustainable Development released; it acknowledges that achievement of CIDA's sustainable development and poverty reduction mandate depends on support for the full participation of women, along with CIDA's five other programming priorities.
• 1999: CIDA's Policy on Gender Equality launched; the Policy update is created to support the achievement of equality between women and men to ensure sustainable development in the 21st century.
• 2005: Gender equality seen as a crosscutting theme throughout Canada’s development cooperation. Gender equality results intended to be systematically and explicitly integrated across all programming within each of the five sectors of Agency focus: governance, health, basic education, private sector development, and environmental sustainability.
• 2005: Canada’s International Policy Statement reaffirmed CIDA’s policy commitments to gender equality, specifically that: “Gender Equality results will be systematically and explicitly integrated across all CIDA programming.”
• 2006: CIDA’s latest Business Process Roadmap reiterates the Agency’s commitment to integrate gender equality in all its initiatives.
• 2006: On October 31, 2006, the Minister of International Cooperation, in a speech to the International Cooperation Days, declared that: “…we need programs and funding that specifically target support to the economic and social development of women. We need to combine forces and work in collaboration with developing countries to speed up progress for women and girls….”
• 2007: CIDA adopted gender equality as the central theme for International Development Week in February 2007.
• 2007: The new Minister of International Cooperation, announced on October 4, that Canada will contribute $60 million over four years to EQUIP, which is managed by the World Bank. EQUIP invests in educational facilities and human resources, while placing a special emphasis on the promotion of education for girls.  Canada’s investment in EQUIP is the largest investment made by any donor in the world to date.

¹ This historical background is drawn from the Evaluation of CIDA’s Implementation of its Policy on Gender Equality, Final Report, April 2008, prepared by Bytown Consulting and C. A. C.  International, Only the Executive Summary is available on CIDA’s web site -  http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/ACDI-CIDA.nsf/eng/NAT-2375240-H4Y  (accessed April 2010). [back]

² Ibid p. 18 [back]

³ Ibid p.19 [back]

⁴ Ibid p.19 [back]

⁵See Evaluation p.17 [back]

Canada and peacekeeping

MYTH: Canada is a world leader where United Nations peacekeeping is concerned.
FACT: The term peacekeeping entered the popular vocabulary in 1956. During the Suez Crisis that year, Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson – later Canada's 14th Prime Minister – proposed that a multinational UN peacekeeping force be sent to the Suez to separate the warring parties. For his visionary idea, Pearson was awarded the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize.
There have now been 63 UN peacekeeping operations, and in the early years, Canada supplied troops to almost every one of them. That is no longer the case. Currently, the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, with the support of the Department of Field Support, manages 17 operations deployed across five continents. These operations comprise more than 100,000 military, police and civilian personnel.
In February 2010, only 160 of them were Canadians, about one fifth of one per cent of the total.
The leaders in troop provision for UN peacekeeping operations are Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Even Austria, Belgium and Ireland outstrip the Canadian contribution. Sierra Leone, where Canada did have peacekeepers a few years ago, is now contributing more troops to UN operations around the world than Canada.
Canada’s contribution to UN peacekeeping, long in decline, is now a disgrace.
And thanks to Afghanistan we are now better known in the world for our war-fighting than our peacekeeping.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
UN peacekeeping suffered many failures and setbacks during the 1980s and 1990s, but recent successes in Chad, Burundi, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic and Cambodia demonstrate that it can be highly effective under reinvigorated UN leadership, when combining troops with peacebuilding experts, development assistance and civilian reform of the police and judiciary.
Traditional peacekeeping, the myth-sustaining kind for Canadians, is a rarity in today’s world. Instead, tens of thousands of soldiers, police and civilians, most of them from developing countries, are on the front line of dozens of multi-faceted peace operations led by the United Nations and regional organizations, where roles vary from battling armed gangs and insurgents to helping with election security to training local police.
Canadian troops have served with distinction in NATO-led operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Canada is one of the few non-Security Council members with an expeditionary military capacity. Canada has demonstrated in Afghanistan that our military can fight, and our deployment to Haiti shows that we can move quickly.
Canada could, and should again be a leader in UN peacekeeping operations, but this will require boots on the ground. As a leader Canada could help in setting the peacekeeping agenda, making the UN more effective and contributing to more sustainable long-term peace in areas where this has been in short supply for a generation.

Canada and the Environment: From Maverick to Miscreant

Canada’s international reputation is shaped not only by its foreign policies, but also by its stance on environmental issues. Canada was, not so long ago, a principled leader – some would say maverick – on the environment, punching well above its weight at international fora. For example:

• Throughout the 1970s Canada drew international praise for its pioneering work on environmental assessment.
• Canada co-sponsored the first Earth Conference held in Stockholm in 1972.
• Canada showed leadership in negotiations to protect the ozone layer, culminating in the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
• In 1987, Canada reacted positively to the Brundtland report, Our Common Future. The federal, provincial and territorial governments created round tables on the environment and economy (only two of which still exist).
• In the late 1980s, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney succeeded in coaxing US President Ronald Reagan into taking measures to curb acid rain, culminating in the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement in 1991.
• In 1988 Canada hosted the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, the first major international meeting that brought governments and scientists together to discuss action on climate change, a meeting that was instrumental in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Two years later, the Canadian and Manitoba governments establish the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg as a global centre of expertise.
• Canadian Maurice Strong headed the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the largest meeting of world leaders in history. There, Canada signed conventions on climate change and biodiversity. Under Mulroney’s government, Canada became the first industrialized country to ratify the biodiversity convention.
• Canadians were instrumental in the creation of the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank in 1992.
• In 1993, Vancouver hosted the first in an ongoing series of conferences entitled Global Opportunities for Business and the Environment.
• Canada has converted about 10 per cent of its total land mass – an area larger than Germany and France combined – to parkland, and we’ve protected over three million hectares, roughly 0.5 per cent, of our oceans.
• Most of our cities have waste recycling programs and these programs continue to expand.

IImpressive, yes, but the McLeod Group believes that Canada has fallen from grace to the point where many now view Canada as a miscreant.
Canada’s backsliding gained momentum in the mid-1990s when the Liberal government severely cut Environment Canada’s budget. Many advisory programs disappeared, including the Canadian Global Change Program. Canada pretended to attack climate change by spending a lot of money on public relations with virtually no tangible results. While many other industrial countries moved forward, Canada lagged behind.
Where are we today?

• A study conducted by an independent team of researchers at Simon Fraser University, based on data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), concluded that Canada has one of the worst environmental records in the industrialized world. Of 30 OECD member countries, Canada ranked 28th in energy consumption, 29th in water consumption, 27th in sulfur oxides pollution and 30th in nuclear waste and carbon monoxide production. Particularly worrisome was that Canada showed no improvement relative to other OECD countries over the previous 10 years.
• According to OECD data, Canada now has the worst record of all G8 countries with respect to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At Kyoto in 1997, Canada pledged to cut GHG emissions by six per cent from the 1990 level. Since then emissions have risen by more than 25 per cent. No other signatory has done so poorly and Canada has signaled its intention not to participate in a second round in 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol’s legally binding commitment period is due to be renewed.
• Canada ranks 46th of 163 countries measured, according to the world’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI) developed by Yale and Columbia universities. We fared reasonably well on indicators for forestry, water and agricultural practices, but we ranked 125th of 127 countries measured on fisheries conservation and 151st of 164 countries on GHG emissions per capita. A comparison of the green content in economic stimulus programs of several G8 governments in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis shows Canada falling further behind its G8 partners.
• Prime Minister Harper went to the UN climate convention’s 2009 summit in Copenhagen and pledged to reduce our GHG emissions by 17 per cent from the 2006 level by 2020. Experts, and most literate Canadians, know that this is poppycock: we’ll be lucky if we get a quarter of the way to achieving that target. Growth in emissions over the next decade from Alberta’s oil sands alone will completely offset the combined impact of federal and provincial climate measures.
• Canada has twice earned the ignominious “Fossil Award” for its inaction on curbing GHG emissions, first at the UN Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009 and again in Cancún the following year. We also hold the “Colossal Fossil” award as the country making the least constructive contribution to UN climate change negotiations. George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian and bestselling author, said, “Stephen Harper and Jim Prentice threaten to do as much damage to your [Canada’s] international standing as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did to that of the United States.”
• Canada’s reputation as a “positive influence” in the world took a steep nose dive in 2010 according to a BBC poll, the first time since the broadcaster began tracking international sentiment in 2005. The decline was sharpest among some of Canada’s chief trading partners, notably the United States, China and Britain. The chief reason? Canada’s lackluster environmental policies.

Can it get any worse? Yes it can.

• The federal government is planning to cut the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency by 43.1 percent in 2012-13. That’s on top of a 6.9-percent cut in in 2010-11. Close to 800 meteorologists, chemists, biologists and other scientists stand to lose their jobs and several key environmental monitoring programs will disappear.
• For all the rhetoric about renewable energy, renewable supplies only account for about one per cent of demand in Canada. In contrast, we expect to almost triple Alberta oil sands production by 2025 from the 2008 level, thanks largely to generous tax subsidies. The oil sands extraction process is so energy-consuming and polluting that it makes crude oil production look green. A reputable Canadian organization, Environmental Defence, has called the tar sands development “the most destructive project on earth” and in September 2011 the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Tutu and seven other Nobel Peace Prize recipients added their voices to the growing chorus calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring Alberta tar sands oil to US markets.

The McLeod Group believes that our government is taking the country in a direction that is out of step with most Canadians and with the forward march to a sustainable future. Polls consistently show that most Canadians give environmental protection priority over economic growth. A tax on carbon did not stop the Liberal government in British Columbia from getting elected for a third consecutive term in 2009. Ironically, much of Canada’s corporate sector is more progressive on environmental matters than the ruling Conservatives. In 2007, for example, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives called for a Canadian public policy to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and pledged their members’ support for action on climate change. The Forest Products Association of Canada claims that its pulp and paper members have reduced GHG emissions by 57 percent since 1990, 10 times Canada’s Kyoto target.
What’s needed to get Canada back on track?

• We need to get serious about climate change and we must be bold. The federal government should put a price on carbon and gradually increase it over the next two decades. Carbon pricing is the key, even though it’s a political minefield. Otherwise companies have little incentive to invest in emission reductions. If Australia can move on a carbon tax, why can’t Canada?
• Our governments should more aggressively regulate vehicle emissions and provide incentives for individuals and businesses alike to make more efficient use of carbon energy and to switch to alternative sources.
• Infrastructure spending in Canadian cities should have higher green content, and should provide stronger support to green transportation – walking, bicycling and public transit.
• Our federal government should reward industry – small and large – to go green and it should engage provincial and municipal governments to do the same. It should take on a larger role in promoting more compact and energy-efficient Canadian cities and use its tax policy and regulatory powers to steer development and consumption choices by industry and individuals.
• Canada needs to get its domestic and foreign policies in line. The federal and Quebec governments should, for example, cease “defending the indefensible” through its shameless support for the export of asbestos products to developing countries while banning their use at home.
• We should restore needed funding to the Department of Environment and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. We should increase support for research and public engagement on the environment.
• We should act on the promises we made to protect biodiversity.
• We should emulate elsewhere the Ontario government’s pledge to plant 50 million trees by 2020 in southern Ontario.
• We should act on what scientists, fishers and Aboriginal Peoples have been telling us for decades about our dwindling fisheries.
• We should no longer make promises at international conferences that we have no intention of keeping.
• Our Prime Minister and Minister of the Environment should phase out subsidies for oil sands development, move to a more sustainable energy strategy, and cease forever the rhetoric that tar sands oil is “ethical oil”.

Canadians enjoy an environment that is the envy of most of the rest of the world. But our international reputation as a principled defender of the environment is in steep decline. The McLeod Group believes that this is unlikely to change over the short term. The best one could hope for is for Canada to refrain from obstructing other governments more willing to lead where Canada once did.
Notes:
1. Keating, M. (2010). Is Canada on a sustainable path? Background paper prepared for the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development of Canada as part of the Second National Conference of the Canadian Sustainability Indicators Network, Toronto, March 3, 2010.
2. Gunton, T. (2005). The Maple Leaf in the OECD: Comparing progress toward sustainability. Vancouver: The David Suzuki Foundation.
3.Simpson, J. “The two faces of Stephen Harper.” The Globe and Mail, January 25, 2010.
4.Reid, P. (2009). “Opportunity in a time of crisis: stimulus packages and the green new deal.” in Canada-Europe Transatlantic Dialogue. Carleton University, August 2009.
5.GlobeScan. (2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/02/11/bbc-poll-influence.html
6.Minsky, A. “Cuts hit environmental assessments.” Vancouver Sun, July 21, 2011.
7.Keating, M. (2010).
8.Simpson, J. “We are the Ugly Canadians.” The Globe and Mail, June 25, 2011. F9.

Democracy and human rights

The McLeod Group is deeply concerned about recent trends and developments in Canadian policy on the promotion of human rights and democracy:

• The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, an organization created by and responsible to Parliament, has been brought to the edge of destruction by the Harper government’s appointment of staff and board members bent on constricting the work of the organization. At question initially were three small grants to human rights organizations in the Middle East, taken to be “anti-Israeli”. Several Board members resigned in protest because of governmental manipulation, including Sima Samar, former deputy president of Afghanistan and a noted human-rights campaigner. Executive Director Remi Beauregard died of a heart attack shortly after a stormy board meeting, and several staff were fired following the appointment of a successor, someone with close ties to the government’s agenda;
• CIDA announced in 2009 that it had halted all funding to the ecumenical church-sponsored NGO Kairos, saying that its work did not “fit” with CIDA priorities. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said during a speech in Israel that the reason had to do with the government’s “zero tolerance” policy towards ant-Semitism, referring apparently to Kairos’s position on Israeli human right abuse in the West Bank, and mistaking the Canadian Kairos for another organization by the same name;
• CIDA has taken a different approach with the Montreal-based organization, Alternatives which, unlike Kairos, has called for a boycott of Israel as a way of bringing attention to the Palestinian crisis. An application for renewed funding from CIDA in April 2009 has simply gone unanswered. Despite many calls and letters, Alternatives has effectively been ignored by CIDA and starved of funding;
• The government is considering the creation of a new “Canadian Democracy promotion Agency” with a large budget (estimated at between $30 and $70 million) and a very narrow mandate “to establish or strengthen pluralistic democratic institutions, particularly political parties…” Work on the agency is moving forward, although there is widespread concern among parliamentary organizations, human rights bodies and NGOs that the proposal is ill considered, and may eclipse the work of many Canadian organizations already working in the field;
• The government has stated that maternal and child health will be a centrepiece of Canadian development assistance. No sooner was this announced than questions were asked about women’s reproductive health and rights, and whether Canada would promote the same rights for women in developing countries as those available to women in Canada. CIDA Minister Bev Oda has refused to answer the questions, leading many to fear that Canada will adopt the approach of the Bush administration in the United States: no funding to any organizations that promote family planning, and a curtailment of support to any health or medical facility that condones abortion.

In Canada’s 2005 International Policy Statement, “good governance” was taken to mean several things: democratization, human rights, the rule of law, and public sector capacity building. Historically these have emerged as different streams in Canadian policy and programming, with different emphases at different times. Human rights has the longest record, perhaps because as a discipline it is well articulated internationally, and it has deep and honourable, if vexed roots in Canada’s domestic history.¹ The international application of a human rights policy has been at times principled and at other times situational. Concerns about Indonesian human rights violations in East Timor, for example, were not allowed to interfere with the sale of weapons and other commodities. But Canada took a principled position on South African apartheid in the mid 1980s, one that put a Conservative Canadian government at odds with its conservative counterparts in the United States and Britain.
As an explicit tool in the ODA arsenal, “governance” has a more recent provenance, emerging largely from economic structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and what became known as the “Washington Consensus”. Canada was an eager member of this consensus, which emphasized cutbacks to the state in some areas without much thought about state strengthening in other areas where it was badly needed. It is only in the past decade that the need to build state capacities has been seen as an important part of governance, a position that Canada now strongly endorses.
The promotion of democracy and democratic processes emerged as the most recent part of Canada’s good governance agenda in the mid 1990s. This too has been somewhat situational, although the ambiguities are not as striking as in US policies, where there are stark everyday tradeoffs between, for example, the promotion of human rights and the detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, or between support for democracy and human rights, and the desire for friends in countries such as oil and gas-rich Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, both of which run serious deficits in democracy and human rights.
Some critics of Canada’s approach to governance lament the absence of coherent policies tying all aspects of the agenda together. A patchy, project-by-project approach with no obvious central policy and no central management, they say, is unlikely to yield coherent results. This may be true, but given the overwhelming size of the governance agenda and the limited track record in its promotion by any donor, healthy doses of humility and caution are warranted, along with a good set of brakes in the expectations department. Given the complexity of the challenge, a case can be made for selective interventions, made in concert with other donors, aimed at learning what works and what does not.
The apparent absence in Canada, however, of a place where the lessons can be rolled up, spelled out, shared and remembered, works against the learning that is so badly needed in this field. This is a role that the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development could have played, but did not. Instead of pushing it to do so, however, the government has effectively wrecked it, because it disagreed with one small part of its program. It has sought to silence other Canadian organizations with which it disagrees, and plans to create a new agency that will presumably do its bidding without demur.
The issue here is not the Middle East. The issue is Canada, Canadian pluralism, Canadian democracy and freedom of expression. The government is under no obligation to support positions taken by others if it disagrees with them, but the heavy-handed emasculation and destruction of entire organizations sets a very dangerous precedent in Canada, with strong echoes of the abuse and bad governance that we have sought to mitigate elsewhere.
The world of 2010 is considerably more fraught with the outcomes of bad governance than anyone might have imagined when the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989. War, human rights abuse and collapsing states in Asia and Africa inevitably have a real and significant impact on Canada, in much the way that war and collapsing European states did in the 1930s.
In the face of governance disasters in Haiti, Afghanistan, and two dozen other “failed” and “fragile” states, humility and caution are important watchwords for outsiders. Good governance, including respect for human rights, does not drop from the sky; it is not a gift; it cannot be imposed. Good governance is unlikely to flow from a collection of disparate, time-bound projects offered by a dozen ill-coordinated donors. It cannot be transferred holus-bolus like pizza from a delivery truck. It must be earned and learned, not just by those for whom it is intended, but by those who would help them. Effective application of the full governance agenda as we now understand it is still pretty much undocumented, untested and uncoordinated.  And it is far too young for dogmatism and certainty.
It is old enough, however, that mistakes should not be repeated. And it is important enough that lessons, both positive and negative, should be documented, learned, remembered, and applied. For democratic governments that want to encourage some of their values elsewhere, doing this well is a test of their own understanding of, and commitment to, principles of democratic good governance.

¹ See, for example, Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists 1930-1960, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2005 [back]