Today Bev Oda, Minister of CIDA, announced what she deemed to be Canada's new strategy for making its foreign aid more effective. This announcement sought to further clarify how Canada will be spending its foreign aid budget after announcing in February that aid would be shifted in focus from having small amounts of aid going to many countries to focusing 80% of its aid to just 20 countries whose needs were greatest and circumstances best fit into Canada's foreign policy priorities.
Here is a link to Minister Oda's speech about the changes at the University of Toronto
A few key points to note:
- Apparently Canada has met its G-8 committment to double its amount of aid to Africa. This sounds like a great step forward in Canadian aid but considering Canada has decreased the number of recipients as well as decided to focus its priorities in the America's so I am unsure whether this will be a long-term accomplishment.
- Apparently Canada is on track to doubling its amount of international assistance to $5 billion per year by 2010-11. This only represents a move from 0.28% of GNI to approximately 0.30%. This is still a far cry from the projected goal by the international community of 0.7%. Canada is still a long way away from reaching this goal.
- The target of untying all Canadian foreign aid is admirable and is definitely a step to making the aid budget go farther. The one major problem I see with this is that in doing so there is less incentive for the the private sector to become involved in public-private endeavours and such which can be especially effective ways to bring manpower and expertise into the field.
In the end, it is likely that only time will tell as to the effect of these strategic initiatives. Factors like how long the Conservative government stays in power and what shape the rest of the global economic crisis will take will play major roles in any success that Canada sees in its international development assistance.
On the edge of your seat yet? haha
- blenCOWe
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