When it comes to foreign aid, Canada fails to be guided by morality

OTTAWA—Pierre Poilievre is promising to cut foreign aid if he becomes prime minister. It’s a good vote-getting ploy, except Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already beaten him to it; and, insofar as Africa’s Sahel region is concerned, he has given up on foreign aid all together. The whole of Sahel is experiencing major political turmoil. The past few years have seen a succession of military coup d’états in Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Gabon, and Mali. Others like Tunisia, Chad, Sudan, and recently Senegal are seeing power grabs and attempts at regime change by the use of coercive legal means, sometimes called a constitutional coup. Canada can play a constructive role in the region. But the prime minister, International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen, and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly haven’t said or done anything. Perhaps they don’t see a political opportunity. Perhaps they want to outsmart Poilievre to the punch. Or, perhaps they can’t comprehend the complexities to determine how Canada’s interventions could help stabilize the region. Assuming it is the latter, they could begin by breaking with our impulse to see Africa as a static homogenous blob. The reality is Africa has the highest amount of ethnic, linguistic, and even genetic diversity on the planet. Thus, we must resist the temptation to conjure up one-size-fits-all solutions, and try instead to gain a contextual understanding of the myriad factors at play. For coup d’états, the best place to start is with the scholarly works of the great South African academic, anti-apartheid activist, and political leader Ruth First. In her 1971 book, The Barrel of a Gun: Political power in Africa and the coup d’état, First reminds us that the only system of modern governance that Africans inherited entirely intact at the time of independence was the colonial bureaucracy and its control of the chief instrument for state-driven coercion: the army. Compared to the army, civil society, tribal groups, and political parties were diffuse and relatively disorganized. Because of this, the first wave of coup d’états was led by generals and top bureaucrats of the colonial era. They seized power to establish dynastic rule as in Djibouti, Gabon, and Togo. The subsequent waves, First notes, were led by lower-ranking officers who overthrew Western-allied elites to implement haphazard programs of economic nationalism and varying degrees of pseudo-socialism as witnessed in Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Indigenizing the political or bureaucratic structures is not a panacea for the coup d’états because while the colonialists have physically left, their desires to secure the minerals buried in the rich terrain of the Sahel have not. Neither have their methods to arm dictators and insurgents and, recently, to fund self-serving projects for transportation routes and loading facilities. The outcome, as First infers, is the same irrespective of who pulls the strings: the United Kingdom, United States, France, Russia, or China. The economy is mobilized to produce only one or two commodities, the natural progression for societal maturation is replaced with institutionalized corruption and nepotism, and state power is consolidated to a handful of elites. This process is periodically disrupted when the improvised resist against the inequalities. Their struggle usually ends with another coup d’état, and the cycle repeats itself again. Canada can change things. We can follow Norway's lead, and shift our policies to emphasize capacity building in the Sahel. Like Norway, we could help diversify local economies with agriculture, clean energy, marine products, and stand up a viable a middle class to guard against wealth concentration and political turbulence. But this requires money, which Trudeau has categorically refused to spend, except of course in Ukraine. Trudeau has decided to support dictators and despots like he did in 2022 by voting for Gabon, Togo, and Rwanda to join the British Commonwealth. He is also militarizing the region under the guise of fighting terrorism. It’s not working. It turns out military officers trained by Canada and our allies were involved in an astounding 12 military coups, including those in Burkina Faso in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022; and Mali in 2012, 2020, 2021. First was assassinated in 1982, but not before observing that arming dictators is big business, development aid is not. Maybe she was thinking of Canada. Since 1970, we have committed to spend 0.7 per cent of our GDP on aid. We have not once met that target in over 30 years. In 2022, we reached a highpoint of 0.37 per cent, only because of Ukraine. For dispensing foreign aid, we rank 18 out of 31 developed countries. Norway is third. Unlike Canada, Norway views development aid as its moral obligation. Its leaders care about their country’s moral standing in the world. Trudeau and Poilievre, on the other hand, think that morality is contingent on the management of money. Some might call that kind of logic morally bankrupt. At any rate, it’s not helping our reputation, at least not in the Sahel. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general from the federal public service. He also held executive positions with the governments of Ontario and British Columbia. The Hill Times

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When it comes to foreign aid, Canada fails to be guided by morality

Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre think that morality is contingent on the management of money. Some might call that kind of logic morally bankrupt.

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