Paul Stothart is vice-president, economic affairs of the Mining Association of Canada. He is responsible for advancing the industry’s interests regarding federal tax, trade, investment, transport and energy issues. www.mining.ca
The Canadian development aid community, like many aid providers around the world, is often described as slow, inefficient and disorganized. In a recent article in the Globe and Mail, aid consultant Ian Smillie noted that it takes Canada’s official agency CIDA an average of almost four years to move an aid project from concept to approval, while projects sent to the CIDA Minister for approval are often returned for revision a dozen times.
It is important to note that the leveling of criticism toward Canada’s aid agency is not particularly new, nor is it restricted to the present government. Many past studies and evaluations have lamented the inefficiency of global aid delivery. A recent report provided to Australia’s foreign minister concluded that the performance of AusAID suffers from having no clear objective. Globally, western democratic countries have spent $2300 billion on foreign aid over the last five decades with minimal progress. Aid systems seem incapable of delivering cheap medicines to children or inexpensive bed nets to families to prevent malaria deaths. Extreme poverty and preventable diseases continue to kill thousands of men, women and children each year in developing countries despite these hundreds of billions of dollars in aid flow.