Transparency

In 2011, Canada joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative, a global standard that aims to make information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand. The move was timely (although there is still no implementation schedule, four months after signing), not least because obtaining meaningful details on CIDA spending has always been difficult.

But transparency, it seems, will be limited to “where” and “how much”. The “why” will continue to be elusive, as will predictability and consistency. When CIDA cut all funding to the Canadian Teacher’s Federation last year, the Globe and Mail said that the decision-making process had been less than transparent. In a letter to the paper, CIDA President Margaret Biggs shot back: “CTF was given a clear, written explanation for the decision,” which presumably had to do with the fact that “CTF was unable to show how short-term staff and teacher visits abroad would produce lasting results in those countries.”

This isn’t the place to go into CIDA’s dysfunctional fetish with “lasting results” or why CIDA only realized in 2011, after decades of support to the CTF, that it wasn’t getting enough of these “lasting results”. Biggs did say, however, that “We learn more as time passes,” and she referred to “today’s standards”. Understandably, the letters section of the Globe was not the place for elaboration.

It seems that there is no other place for elaboration either. Instead of responding to proposals made by Canadian organizations acting independently abroad, CIDA now requires NGOs to submit bids in specific competitions. Vast detail is required, including, of course, how proposed activities will lead to “lasting results”. The submissions are then gathered into the bowels of CIDA where civil servants pore over them, for months usually, before making their recommendations to the Minister.

The Minister reserves the right to put a “not” in front of words like “recommended”. NGOs and organizations like the Canadian Teacher’s Federation have no “entitlement” to CIDA funding -- as they are now frequently reminded. CIDA can change its priorities and fund (or defund) anyone it wants.

You’d like to think, however, that there is at least some method in this, and that if CIDA were truly interested in lasting results, then predictability and consistency would play a role. You’d also think there might be some common definitions and standards – the sort you’d expect if you were writing a high school exam. You might flunk the exam, but you’d be told why – with specifics. If you passed, you’d know by how much and where you could have done better. That’s part of “learning”.

In recent months CIDA has been exercising its right to change its mind (and to cancel what might have passed for entitlements) at an alarming rate. Some NGOs with good track records and positive CIDA evaluations have been completely defunded; others have been cut by as much as 75%. This might be about “results”, as the minister claims. Or it might be because the countries where the NGOs proposed to work are not among CIDA’s favoured few. Or perhaps there is an unwanted advocacy program of some sort lurking in the NGO’s past, criticizing the Canadian government or a Canadian mining operation abroad. Perhaps the NGO used the wrong font in its application or maybe the Minister just had a  bad day.

Touchingly, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC) thought it might do its members a favour by trying to find out why some proposals have been approved and others not. Under the Access to Information Act, it asked CIDA for a “rating and ranking” of its decisions on several recent NGO competitions. Having been defunded itself by CIDA without explanation, you’d think CCIC might know better, but hope, as they say, springs eternal. What CCIC got back was a heavily redacted (i.e., blacked out) set of lists. All of the approved projects and amounts were there – no big surprise as most of this was already on the CIDA website. Blacked out were all details of rejected proposals: no names, no amounts, no reasons. Also blacked out were any comments about the winning bids – no reasons given for any approval or rejection.

If nobody is allowed to know why an application has been approved or rejected, how will NGOs know what to do next time? How on earth can they know what CIDA is learning “as time passes”? And how, for that matter, is the public to know why this plan appears to offer “lasting results” and that one not?

If, like CCIC, you thought that the Access to Information Act might help, think again. CIDA hides behind the following provision:
21. (1) The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested under this Act that contains (a) advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution or a minister of the Crown.

If you want genuine transparency from CIDA, you might as well use a crystal ball.