Many supporters of DFAIT’s recently announced takeover of CIDA are invoking spurious arguments. More fundamentally, most commentators are missing the crucial point that this new arrangement will do little or nothing to fix the actual problems with Canadian foreign aid. In fact, it is likely to make them worse. Many proponents of the merger actually do no… Read More
Author Archives: Stephen Brown
Foreign Aid: More of the Same?
Published in Embassy Magazine, September 19, 2012 Canada’s contributions to reducing global poverty are rarely a priority topic for debate in the House of Commons. Foreign aid is an important tool for supporting international development, but it will likely attract less attention now that controversial international co-operation minister Be… Read More
Tags: Canada, CIDA, international development, Julian Fantino, Stephen Brown
Media commentary has been remarkably lenient regarding Bev Oda’s record at the end of her five-year stint as Canada’s Minister of International Cooperation. Coverage has by and large ignored how, under her watch, the government systematically undermined both the fundamental purpose of Canadian foreign aid, which is to fight poverty in developing coun… Read More
Tags: Bev Oda, Canadian International Development Agency, international development, Stephen Brown, Stephen Harper
Transitional Justice As Subterfuge
Transitional justice is trendy. After a civil war or political transition, the new government will often announce one or more of a variety of mechanisms for dealing with the past, such as a special tribunal or a truth commission. What outside actors often forget – even though domestic actors may try to remind them – is that such mechanisms can be more about eva… Read More
Tags: Africa, conflict resolution, Kenya, Stephen Brown, transitional justice
Putting the Corporate Back Into CSR: A Rejoinder to Natalie Brender
In a blog post yesterday, my colleague Natalie Brender rejected a recent Ottawa Citizen column’s condemnations of the use of CIDA funds to subsidize Canadian mining companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects in mining-affected communities in developing countries. The crux of Natalie’s objections is as follows: “[A]s for the no… Read More
Tags: CIDA, corporate social responsibility, extractive industries, mining, Natalie Brender, Stephen Brown
