The Victoria Unitarian

February 2010

Foreign Aid Spending Jean McBean

Much of Canadian foreign aid is made through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).  CIDA's mandate is to reduce poverty.  In 2005 39% of funding went to Africa.  Around the world funding was given to projects in 155 countries, but only 18 countries received more than 10 million dollars, 90 received less than 5 million dollars and some 54 countries received less than 1 million dollars.  There was a feeling for some time that Canada would strengthen the impact of its international funding and make more efficient use of its dollars by putting a focus on a few sectors of aid and giving that aid to fewer countries.

However, when the Conservative Government moved on this issue in February 2009, they decided that 80% of bilateral funding would now go only to 20 named countries.  (Bilateral funding is funding to one country unlike multilateral funding which consists of contributions to international funds such as the UN Fund for Food.) A perusal of the list of countries made many critics suggest that foreign policy had more to do with where the aid would be spent than the capacity of the countries to benefit from aid.  Thus one of the largest beneficiaries will be Afghanistan, and there has been a major shift in focus from Africa to Latin America, although seven African countries are still on the list.

While the idea of efficiency in foreign aid is laudable, the difficulty is that around the world there are many aid recipients who have made excellent use of Canadian donations for many years and are dependant on the continuation of that aid.  One such organization is the MaeTao Clinic on the Thai-Burma border which in 2008 treated 140,000 patients, a caseload which was equally divided between Thai and Burmese people residing in the area, and Burmese people who either managed to cross the border to the hospital, or were seen by roving health workers sent out into the Burmese jungles by the clinic.

The World Health Organization ranked Burma's health system as the second worst out of 191 countries.  This month we will focus on what the loss of CIDA funding will mean to this clinic by talking about its achievements to date, and the dire consequences of the funding loss.  There are numerous other projects, mostly in Africa, where the loss of Canadian funding will also mean more people will die.  We will have a letter for church members to sign in support of continued CIDA funding for organizations such as the MaeTao Clinic which have proven their worth over the years.  We hope to hear from church members of other projects which they know will be affected by this decision, and lobby on behalf of all of them.