The closure of the Canadian International Development Agency

Last week I offered some background to the Canadian government's decision to close the Canadian International Development Agency by merging it into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, now to be called the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. The comments, in the Peterborough Examiner, can be found here: http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2013/03/26/funding-cut-will-hurt-jamaican-self-help

Land grabs and the Canadian connection

An article in the current Watershed Sentinel that draws upon an interview that I gave a few days ago:

Land Grabs & the Canadian Connection

the curious case of the missing recovery

Join Jim Stanford in this excellent search for Canada's economic recovery.



My thanks to Brian Robinson for showing me this.

the rise of Canada's richest 1 per cent

This interesting paper from the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives shows how over a 90 year period there have been cycles in inequality in Canada, and that the most recent cycle demonstrates a marked sharpening of income inequality.

The Rise of Canada's Richest 1% | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

my home town

Although it is far too commonly ridiculed by Canadians that I have met, I feel that I am extremely fortunate to have been raised in Thunder Bay. In a very real sense, Thunder Bay--the people and the place--made me what I am today.

I have just come across a remarkable song by Jordan Burnell of Thunder Bay. It really captures the essence of a lot of what it is about. So here it is.

not who we think we are

Canadians have a self-image of themselves as well-meaning, liberal, polite and open. Canada as a nation is often seen in much the same way. Yet every so often a series of events collide that forces us to question some of these core precepts. The past 2 weeks has seen 3 sets of events that force me, once again, to ask a fundamental question: who do we think we are?

The first event was the spectacular testimony of Richard Colvin, who claimed to have repeatedly warned his superiors while he was posted in Afghanistan that Afghan detainees held by Canadian forces were being tortured upon their transfer to Afghan custody. The subsequent attack upon Colvin by senior government and military figures was staggering, and was clearly designed to deflect attention away from the central issue: were Canadian forces complicit in the torture of innocent Afghans?

What surprises me about this issue, though, is that in any event it deflects attention away from an even more central question: are Canadian soldiers complicit in the deaths of innocent Afghans. This question is not asked because we already know the answer: yes, of course they are. That the Canadian military kills innocent people is not the image that Canadians have of their armed forces; but the blue-capped Canadian peacekeeper is a thing of the past, replaced by a war-fighting machine that is currently involved in a mission that cannot be won and which has produced tens of thousands of dead non-combatants. Is this who we think we are?

The second event has been the series of racist attacks targeting international students in central Peterborough, where Trent University is located. Is Canada a country that respects difference? Canadians think they do; but these attacks say otherwise. They say that there are many places in Canada where the right to be different should not be assumed but instead remains an ongoing struggle. It says that Canada is not what it thinks it is, and Canadians are not who we think we are.

The third event is the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Writing in The Guardian George Monbiot described Canada as a 'corrupt petro-state'. There is more than an element of truth here: Canada is amongst the worst contributors to global warming on a per capita basis, the government's plan to deal with greenhouse gas emissions is derisory, and the government continues to promote the Alberta Tar Sands project, one of the dirtiest energy projects in the history of the past 2 centuries. Canadians as despoilers of the environment? It's not who we think we are.

Canadians, like people everywhere, need to face up to the realities of their country. Only then can improvements be made, and the reality start to begin to match the aspirations that Canadians have for themselves.

37000 won't work

Earlier this week US President Barack Obama announced, after a long and often heated debate within the US administration, that an additional 30000 US troops would be sent to Afghanistan by the summer of 2010. This morning in Brussels NATO foreign ministers were able to agree that an additional 7000 soldiers would be sent to supplement US and NATO forces already operating in the country. So, by next summer 140000 foreign soldiers will be fighting in Afghanistan. The plan is that the military surge will create the conditions for a transition to an improved security situation, which can then be reinforced by a civilian surge that takes advantage of improved security to kick-start development efforts in the country, particularly in agriculture, creating the preconditions by which the US can begin to exit the country in July 2011.

This plan will not work. The mission in Afghanistan will end in failure, for a very straightforward reason: from the beginning the US and its allies have profoundly misunderstood the nature of Afghan civil society.

Following the September 11 attacks the US overthrew the Taliban government that had been harbouring Osama bin Laden; but they did not do this on their own. They supported the Northern Alliance, a grouping of former Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara mujahideen fighters, which retook the major cities of Afghanistan from the Taliban, including Kabul. The factions of the Northern Alliance then sought to strongly control Afghan politics by facilitating the establishment of a government notionally led by a Pakhtun, Hamid Karzai, but dominated by elements of the Northern Alliance. It is this alignment that to this day controls the rudimentary state that exists in parts of urban Afghanistan; it is this group that rigged the last presidential election so that Karzai, who allows them to act with impunity, could remain in office. They control this restricted state in order to further one objective, and that is lining their pockets. Afghanistan in December 2009 is little more than a corrupt narco-state run by the warlords and criminals that used to control the Northern Alliance.

In supporting a corrupt and anti-democratic government the US and its allies have alienated the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan: the Pakhtuns. Granted, it was the Pakhtuns that formed the militant base of the Taliban, and it is the Pakhtun that form the base of the current insurgency. But it was also the Pakhtuns that militantly opposed the Taliban in its very heartland: the prolonged history of radical Pakhtun nationalism demonstrates some of the deeply anti-authoritarian tendencies within Pakhtun civil society, tendencies that Mullah Omar unsuccessfully tried to stamp out during the years of Taliban rule.

The alienation of progressive Pakhtuns was then reinforced by 'collateral damage': according to Human Rights Watch the numbers of non-combatant deaths over the past 8 years in Afghanistan has been 65000, of whom the vast majority have been Pakhtun; only 2000 insurgents have been killed. So the 'mission' in Afghanistan has since 2001 become progressively little more than an all-out one-sided assault on the Pakhtun by forces aligned with an illegitimate government dominated by druglords and criminals. It is little wonder that this has generated resistance amongst the Pakhtun; resistance that the West terms Taliban but which is in fact a far more complex manifestation of Afghan realities.

The Pakhtuns have never accepted occupation, and they never will. The international mission in Afghanistan will fail because it is in support of a regime that does not enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the very population in whose name it is supposed to rule.

Canada and nuclear proliferation

Over the course of the summer, there have been a number of major global stories with international development dimensions: but one in particular, with major ramifications for the future security of the planet, has been completely missed by the world's media, for reasons that both baffle and disappoint me.

On 2 August, the Saturday of what in Canada is a long weekend, The Globe and Mail's Campbell Clark reported that Canada will 'accommodate India's entry into the club of countries that can trade openly in nuclear fuel and technology'. If correct, Canada has, during the lull of a long weekend during the height of the summer, when no one pays attention to international news, effectively killed the most effective international treaty preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Opened for signature on 1 July 1968, the NPT was designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons beyond those that acknowledged that they had such weapons at the time of the NPT's agreement. Initially proposed by Ireland, signatories to the NPT agreed that:

• if they are not in possession of nuclear weapons they will not acquire them;
• if they are in possession of nuclear weapons they will seek to eliminate them;
• the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes was acceptable.
  

Currently, 190 states have signed the NPT, and only 4 significant countries have failed to sign: the nuclear-armed states of Israel, India and Pakistan, and the nuclear-capable state of North Korea.

Campbell Clark's report in The Globe stated that Canada was later this month going to agree to back an exemption being proposed by the United States for India at a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an informal club of countries that trade in nuclear materials. The United Sates and the Indian government reached a contentious agreement to trade in nuclear materials a few years ago, and in order for the deal to proceed, the US and India must ratify it, but, crucially, the Nuclear Suppliers Group must exempt India from its restrictions on trade in nuclear technology and fuel such as uranium. Many believe that such an exemption, because of India's existing nuclear arms capabilities, has the potential to fuel a South Asian nuclear arms race with India's arch-rival, Pakistan.

Canada's change of stance is dramatic, because Canada has a long and troubled history of dealing with India on nuclear matters, going back to 1974, when Canadian technology acquired in the 1950s was used by India for a 'peaceful' nuclear explosion. In the aftermath of India's abuse of Canadian co-operation, Canada became an even more vocal supporter of the NPT, and Canada was traditionally viewed as being a proliferation hawk in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. However, this hostility now seems to have evaporated, with Foreign Minister David Emerson's commenting that 'you can't keep somebody in the penalty box forever'.

What Emerson fails to apparently appreciate is that to make India an exception to the NPT treaty will effectively kill it; why would any country abide by a nuclear technology control regime that exempts a non-signatory nuclear power from paying attention to the underlying principles of the regime? Or, to carry Emerson's analogy further, how sensible is it that if the team in the penalty box reaches agreement with another team in the division to ignore the rules of the game then the rules of the game have to be changed? Just as with the transformation of Canada's military from a peacekeeping to a war-fighting machine, which has been chronicled in this weblog, Canada's willingness to grant an exemption to India heralds a major transformation in the country's foreign policy, increasing its willingness to accommodate American foreign policy interests at the expense of its previous Pearsonian internationalism.

Canada in the world: what happened?

goodbye Rick Hillier

This weblog has been very quiet, for several months. The pressures of work have not allowed me to follow up several issues on which I have wanted to comment--the protests in Tibet, the elections in Zimbabwe, and the character of the World Bank and IMF, to name three. However, I have been roused out of my silence by the news yesterday that General Rick Hillier, Canada's Chief of Defence Staff since February 2005, is retiring.

Rick Hillier has been portrayed in the press as a straight-talking soldier concerned above all with the troops under his command, who has waged a struggle for the hearts and minds of Canadians to support the military while it undertakes its twice-extended mission in Khandahar. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Hillier's beliefs, but I do have reason to question them.

When Hillier became Chief of Defence Staff, Canada had 600 soldiers stationed in Kabul with NATO's International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF. These soldiers were undertaking a fairly 'classic' Canadian international military operation: peacekeeping in the comparative safety of Kabul. Peacekeeping was what Canada's military, globally, was known for up until the appointment of Hillier. With that appointment, though, things changed.

As Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang convincingly demonstrate in their excellent The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, it was Hillier who, in the wake of the Chretien government's opposition to the Iraq war and the Martin government's withdrawal from the United States' missile defence program, recognized an opportunity to placate the United States while at the same time fundamentally transforming Canada's military. That opportunity was the 'mission' in Kandahar, an infinitely more demanding assignment than Canada had undertaken in Kabul. The Martin government's agreement to send Canadian soldiers to Kandahar was basically Hillier's doing; those in the government had little idea about Afghanistan or Kandahar. They agreed because the 'mission' eased pressure on the United States military, both in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, and in so doing pleased those who had been unhappy with several foreign policy decisions that directly affected the United States.

It also did something else, however: Kandahar was and is a war zone. It is not a place where peacekeepers try to keep warring parties apart and maintain order. It is a place where order must be imposed through the use of force, because local warlords oppose the intervention in Afghanistan. As a result, Canadian forces have been heavily engaged, for the first time since the Korean War, in offensive military operations against opponents that the media dubs 'the Taliban' but whom, as Graeme Smith of The Globe and Mail has so ably demonstrated, are not the remnants of the former government of Afghanistan as rather an assortment of those opposed to Western military involvement in Kandahar. At best, the Pashtuns fighting the Canadians might be termed 'neo-Taliban'.

The point, then, is that Hillier has transformed the Canadian military from a peacekeeping force into a war-fighting machine. This has, no doubt, greatly increased the cohesion of the military themselves, and has also increased the recognition of the military amongst ordinary Canadians. It has, however, also led to the deaths of 82 Canadian soldiers and a significant reinforcement of opposition in Kandahar to the Canadian presence (many of whom are mistaken for American soldiers), which now totals 2500 soldiers. Most importantly, however, while the 'mission' has to terminate in 2011, Canada--and NATO--has no strategy in place to deal with the possibility that the country will remain largely hostile for the foreseeable future. This is a conflict that cannot be won militarily, as the history of Afghanistan shows, and will be difficult to win politically, given widespread views that the government of Hamid Karzai is not a national government but, at best, a weak Kabul government. Hillier has led Canada into what is, in essence, a no-win scenario; and for this, his tenure as Chief of Defence Staff will probably, over time, be viewed much more negatively than is currently the case.

Canada's development co-operation

Canada currently delivers about $4.1 billion a year in development co-operation, or what is commonly known as 'foreign aid'. Moreover, Canadian aid has been increasing in nominal (non-inflation adjusted) terms for the last several years--as recently as 2001 Canada's development co-operation was just $1.9 billion. Nonetheless, in an October peer evaluation of Canada's development co-operation effort, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee suggested that Canada's development co-operation policy lacks focus and political direction. Of course, the OECD did not say this quite as bluntly as this; it is a diplomatic talking shop. Nonetheless, the point was made.

According to the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), Canada as a country scores pretty well in the CGD's 'Commitment to development index'. This index evaluates OECD countries on the basis of the size and quality of development co-operation, their openness to exports from developing countries, their policies to promote investment and technology transfer to developing countries, their openness to migration, their commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions, their efforts to secure peace and security, and their attempts to combat corruption. Canada is ranked 7th in the OECD. It does not score well in aid, but does do well in trade, investment and technology. It scores less well on the environment and on security, as well as migration. The countries with the biggest commitment to development, according to the CGD, are not surprisingly 'the Nordics': the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. It is to Canada's credit that it places in this league; the Nordics are indeed impressive donors.

If Canada is doing so well, in relative terms, in its commitment to development, why is it falling short in its development co-operation? According to the OECD, part of the problem is that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has a weak mandate and is insufficiently results-oriented. The weak mandate is reflected in the lack of a clear statement as to what is the purpose of Canadian development co-operation. This is reinforced by changing political circumstances, which result in improvised policy pronouncements, at the expense of a clear direction. Changing political circumstances are reflected in ministerial appointments; five ministers have had responsibility for CIDA over the past six years, and the average tenure of the head of CIDA over the past few years has been 18 months. This, of course, goes back to the body politic, and the transition from the Liberals, under two prime ministers, to the Conservatives, ruling from the position of a minority.

The OECD report proposes that CIDA should do what is actually already Government policy. This reflects the iterative character of such reports; the conclusions were seen by the Canadian Government long before the report was published, allowing the Government to pre-empt the findings of the report in the last Budget. In the Budget, two lines signified quite an important change in Canada's aid policy. The first noted that the Government intended to focus bilateral (country to country) aid on fewer countries where 'we will aim to be among the largest five donors in core countries of interest'. The second was the pledge to 'put more of our staff in the field, allowing us to be more responsive and make better choices on the ground'. Both these recommendations, which were made in the OECD review in October, were in the Budget in March.

In fact, the first recommendation shows the remarkable degree of consensus within the Canadian establishment about development co-operation. This is because it was under the previous Liberal-led government of Paul Martin that the first intention to reduce Canada's number of development 'partners' to 25 was announced. These countries have been receiving upwards of 40 per cent of Canada's development co-operation over the past few years, and indeed in 2006 the top 20 recipients of Canadian aid received 68 per cent of the total.

As to the second recommendation, there can be little doubt that CIDA is far to ensconced in its headquarters in Hull. Only between 10 and 20 per cent of CIDA's staff works abroad, in the field.

So: does the OECD--and the Government--have it right? Only partially. The problems with Canada's aid program are three: it is inefficient; it is distorted; and it is inadequate. Canada's development co-operation is inefficient precisely because of some of the problems identified in the OECD review: as anyone who has worked with CIDA (as I have) will tell you, it is extremely bureaucratic and inflexible. It has a culture of form filling and box checking that, in my view, demonstrates the worst aspects of the 'development industry'. However, that is only part of the problem. It is also staffed by a surprising large number of people who have little, if any, interest in international development. Many CIDA staffers are career civil servants brought in to fulfill a task. This means not only a lack of professional commitment to international development; it also means a lack of adequate preparation--or indeed understanding--for the work that they have to do. As a consequence of this, CIDA relies very heavily on a coterie of well paid consultants, some of whom are very good (I have to say that--I was one!), but many of whom are professional consultants that earn their living by securing the next contract and the next contract is secured by giving the client what they want to hear. The lack of adequate preparation is also reflected in CIDA's attachment to the latest development 'fads': it is somewhat ironic that having scaled back rural development programs for some years, with the new World Bank World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, agriculture is back, and, in all likelihood, CIDA will now have to try and revive an expertise in a policy area that it neglected for decades. Finally, the lack of adequate preparation means that CIDA often plays 'follow the leader'; and in development co-operation, this means, far too often, follow the neoliberal leader.

As for distortions in the aid program, the biggest is, of course, Afghanistan. Not even mentioned in the Martin Government's list of 25 development 'partners', Afghanistan is far and away Canada's largest aid recipient, and will receive more than $1 billion by 2011. However, Canadian aid in Afghanistan is embedded within a broader discourse: defence, diplomacy and development. The aid effort in Afghanistan is very closely tied into Canada's military mission there; with the defence leg being much stronger than the other two it is totally unclear as to what exactly is the purpose of Canada's aid in Afghanistan--other than providing support for the military mission.

Finally, there is the inadequacy. Canada has committed itself to the UN target of devoting 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to development co-operation. Currently, Canada devotes around 0.35 per cent of GDP to development co-operation. This is where the discussion on concentrating foreign aid should be located. One of the reasons Canadian aid needs to be concentrated is because it is, in global terms, so paltry. If you don't have a lot of money, you don't have a lot of money to go round, which means you have to make strict choices--it is a very neoliberal perspective. Others of a less neoliberal persuasion might suggest that increasing the amount of money increases the choices that can be made, and that that is what is extremely important in understanding why Canada's development co-operation record in aid--as opposed to say trade, investment and technology--is not as good as one might hope.

Canada's development co-operation spending has increased for several years. Canadians are respected in the field, and have made important contributions to international development. Nonetheless, in global terms, Canada is not an important bilateral 'player' in international development. Part of this is because of inadequate resources for the tasks at hand; part of this is because of distortions caused by Canada's foreign policy; and part of this is because of inefficiencies within CIDA. These are the issues that must be sorted out by the new generation of international development activists that are emerging from the universities and from civil society.