You couldn't help but celebrate Saturday night with the rockers who focused the world's attention on eliminating poverty. As past chair of Canadian Food for the Hungry, International ("CFHI"), I joined with millions of other Canadians who are struck by the compelling nature of fighting poverty. For one thing, the concerts got my young kids talking about world hunger as we watched the sometimes aging rockers bring their message home.
But before we all reach for our on-line triggers to tell Paul Martin to double foreign aid, let's step back to recall the enormous change of direction initiated by the Prime Minister two months ago. That's when he called for a redeployment of aid away from Canada's volunteer agencies in favour of putting our tax dollars directly into the hands of foreign governments or large bureaucracies. Under the new policy, over 400 Canadian NGOs suddenly became ineligible to receive government funding, regardless of their track records. Agencies such as CFHI, Compassion Canada, and Samaritan's Purse all received word that their funding was suspended.
To quote CFHI's President, David Collins ("Selling out Canada's NGOs", May 5, 2005), Too often, our governments take credit for the work of others. Or they attribute these successes to the large multi-lateral agencies, such as the United Nations or World Food Program. The reality is, much of the actual aid delivery is subcontracted out to NGOs that work in the field. They are the ones that take great risks to ensure the suffering people of the world are not forgotten.
In the government's new foreign policy document, the government-run Canada Corps is hailed as a new initiative that will change the face of Canada's international aid effort. But what the government is doing is simply moving the control of volunteerism from the NGO community and placing it squarely under the bureaucracy of a government in desperate need of a success story.
Recent events in Ottawa have cast new doubt upon the ability and will of any bureaucracy to use the hard-earned money of Canadian taxpayers honestly and effectively. The Prime Minister's new policy compounds the problem, making those who deliver the aid less accountable than ever to the source of the money: Canadian wage earners and businesspeople.
NGOs such as CFHI, which last year delivered $6.64 in goods and services to the field for every $1 contributed, can surely compete with government bureaucracy on any comparison of aid-dollar effectiveness. Furthermore, it's easier to make a Canadian NGO accountable for how donors' funds are contributed than if the money is funneled through a large, multinational organization or a foreign government. Multilateral organizations and foreign governments have different values, institutions, bureaucracies, and accounting principles from those employed by home-grown Canadian organizations.
Steven Radelet is a world-renowned expert on third world development, Senior Fellow at the Center For Global Development in Washington D.C., and a former adviser to Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. In Radelet's far-reaching study, Aid Effectiveness and the Millennium Development Goals, he made it clear that the practice of dumping aid dollars directly into the hands of foreign governments is liable to end in futility. As he puts it, especially "in poorly governed countries, smaller, shorter-term projects implemented by NGOs are more appropriate." You'd think Martin would listen to Radelet since Radelet's think tank was one of the first places where Martin spoke, in April 2004, soon after becoming Prime Minister.
Common sense says that Radelet is right. Does it surprise you that the gargantuan multinationals, like the UN, which receive the bulk of Canada's foreign aid funding, themselves rely on NGOs to deliver the goods on the ground? Canada's foreign aid strategy must not lose sight of the NGOs, which are the crack troops in the battle against food and hunger abroad.
At the end of the day, most Canadians share with me the desire for lower taxes and less government involvement in our lives. But it's also critical for us Canadians to demonstrate the compassion so broadly harbored in our hearts and the gratitude we express for the blessings of living where we do. While we contemplate Sir Bob Geldof's challenge, let's ensure we promote policy coherence, monitoring, accountability and reporting to Parliament, and enhanced public transparency. These are all benefits brought by NGOs, measures which take us in the right direction of increasing the effectiveness of humanitarian aid efforts by the Canadian Government.
John Weston is the Conservative Party of Canada's candidate for the federal riding of West Vancouver- Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country
