Hey, Big Spender: Budget Cuts at CIDA

There is a curious juxtaposition between CIDA Minister Bev Oda’s sense of personal entitlement – a room at the Savoy, $1000-a-day limousines – and the ruthlessness with which she has presided over cuts to CIDA’s operational budget. It isn’t just the luxury spending on herself as compared with how many children might have been inoculated with that $1000. It seems that no amount of bad behaviour on her part will go unrewarded by the Prime Minister.

By reappointing her after the “not” scandal, Prime Minister Harper thumbed his nose at all those who had called – with some justification – for her head. By ignoring her serial luxury binges while giving CIDA the Costa Concordia treatment, he is telling those who care deeply about Canada’s role in the world and its efforts to reduce poverty that they might as well get in the lifeboats or swim for the shore.

That, of course, is what is happening to most government departments – with the possible exception of the Canada Revenue Agency, now tasked with hunting down and exterminating charities with opinions. Which raises a question about who has spoken out about the CIDA cuts, cuts that will reduce Canada’s aid program to about the same level as that of Greece. A quick survey of the Canadian media shows that dozens of outlets have condemned the cuts. In a Times-Colonist column carried by other Canadian papers, Nathaniel Poole put it well:

It is unconscionable to deny a child a two-cent vitamin A pill that could keep him or her from going blind.

There can be no justification for withholding $20 worth of drugs that would save a mother of five from an agonizing death by tuberculosis…

One can argue forever where cuts should happen and how, but there can never be any rational, ethical or moral justification for one of the richest countries in the world claiming a lack of money when cutting help to the poorest.

This was the attitude taken by Britain’s Conservative government when deciding on the toughest austerity budget since the 1970s. It left a much more generous aid budget than Canada’s alone.

To their credit, the Canadian Association of International Development Consultants and the business-oriented Canadian Council for Africa have spoken out. Others, however, appear to see only opportunity in the disaster. Like buzzards circling above an abattoir, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association website says, “Private industry and the Canadian International Development Agency are looking for ways to work closer in developing countries. The business community and CIDA may start building on successes first done by the mining sector as a way to both promote Canadian business in the Third World and help bring CIDA programs to developing countries.”

Oddly, the Canadian NGOs that once campaigned for more and better aid have been pretty much silent on the cuts to CIDA. A search of the websites of those with the largest numbers of donors, members and alumnae – World Vision, Plan, CARE, CUSO, the Mennonite Central Committee – reveals only silence about the cuts. Development and Peace, a recent victim of the CIDA slasher, talks only about itself and its own budget.

The Canadian Council for International Cooperation has done a detailed analysis of the cuts, Engineers Without Borders campaigned against them and Oxfam Canada has deplored them, but beyond that, the craven hush is deafening. And very sad