Will CIDA’s demise hurt the world’s poor?

Owen abroad

There is an article by me and Lucas Robinson in the Globe and Mail today:

 The risk is that development becomes a secondary goal in a department with bigger fish to fry. The opportunity is that by putting development at the heart of a more powerful department with a broader remit for foreign and trade policy, Canada will now be able to promote development-friendly policies across the wide range of issues which most affect poor countries. It is not CIDA but Canada as a nation that needs to do more.

And I'm quoted in the Toronto Star:

"It makes no sense, giving aid to the same countries you hit with high tariffs," says Owen Barder, a London-based official with the Centre for Global Development, a think tank that focuses on international aid issues.

It's a disconnect, Barder said, that could be addressed and resolved with foreign aid officials positioned closer to the centre of power in Ottawa.

 

Archived copies: 

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