Why is CIDA Funding Domestic Advocacy Groups?

Written by David Murrell Ph. D Thursday, 18 February 2010

Last December at the Copenhagen climate talks, a Canadian environmentalist group – the Climate Action Network – bestowed upon Canada its “Fossil of the Day” award, attacking the country for its supposed slowness in undertaking policies against global warming. Accepting the award was a the mayor of Toronto David Miller. The left-leading politician added his own attack on his country. "Like most Canadians, I’m embarrassed" Mayor Miller declared before the international media. "I’m embarrassed that our government continues to be one of the biggest obstacles to reaching agreement."

Federal Environmental Minister, Jim Prentice, responded angrily to the allegations, replying that he was “fed up” with the media-friendly antics of groups like the Climate Action Network and that Canada was acting “constructively” during negotiations at Copenhagen.

At another point during the Copenhagen conference a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Dimitri Soudas, got into an argument with environmental activist Steven Guilbeault, director of the left-wing Equiterre. Soudas mistakenly accused Equiterre in front of CBC news cameras of staging a hoax press release and web page announcement claiming drastic greenhouse gas reductions by Canada. (The fake media release was in fact undertaken by the “Yes Men”, a radical group based in the United States).

What is interesting about all this - some might even call it bizarre - is that Mr. Prentice and Mr. Soudas’ own Conservative government funds Equiterre. According to the 2008/09 Public Accounts (the most recent information available), Equiterre received $113,313 from taxpayers. The money came from a little-heard-of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) program called “Contributions for Partnership Programming”, a fund intended “to support development of public engagement initiatives”. (More on this program below).

Climate Action Network Canada (CANC) – the group behind the “Fossil of the Day” award – is an umbrella organization of several, mostly left-wing, organizations, all of which are listed on its website. A quick check of the 2008/09 Public Accounts reveals just how much money some of these organizations receive from Canadian taxpayers:

  • Assembly of First Nations ($1,500,000)
  • AQLPA ($318,400)
  • Canadian Council for International Cooperation ($243,000)
  • Canadian Labour Congress ($1,056,000)
  • Clean Nova Scotia Foundation Climate Change Centre ($113,000)
  • Ecology North ($119,300)
  • Equiterre ($113,313)
  • Green Communities Centre ($291,000)
  • Nature Canada ($444,200)
  • Nature Saskatchewan ($247,000)
  • Oxfam Canada ($21,561,000)
  • Pacific Peoples Partnership Program ($104,200)
  • Sage Centre ($189,100)
  • United Church of Canada ($993,000)
  • USC Canada ($4,130.,000)
  • World Wildlife Fund ($450,000)
  • Yukon Conservation Society ($128,900)

CANC itself has a small budget. According to its 2008/09 Annual Report, the umbrella group took in $195,130 and spent $188,720. It listed only $210 for “local travel” and no money for international travel. So members involved in the heavily politicized activity in Copenhagen were either travelling at their own expense - a dubious prospect - or they were subsidized by their respective member organizations, which means in some cases, with taxpayers' money.

But money is not the only issue here. According to the CANC’s most recent Annual Report, individuals from its various member organizations sit on its Board of Directors and influence policy. Consequently, many of the above organizations had a say in CANC embarrassing Canada with its Fossil award, and Mayor Miller’s grinning participation.

To be fair, some of the transfers listed above were directed toward legitimate, functional purposes. For instance, the Green Communities Foundation received its $271,199 from Health Canada to “support health promotion projects in the areas of community health”, and Nature Saskatchewan received its $271,000 from Environment Canada under the latter’s “Habitat Stewardship Contribution Program”.

However, much of the money came from CIDA’s “Contributions for Partnership Programming”. Here, in the department's own convoluted words, is an explanation of what this fund is intended to accomplish:

Contributions for Partnership Programming: Contributions for development assistance programs, projects and activities intended to support development and public engagement initiatives or to enhance the awareness, understanding, and engagement of Canadians with respect to development and contributions for education and training programs, projects and activities for the benefit of developing countries or countries in transition.
(CIDA’s Plan for Transfer Payment Programs, 2009)

This description is quite a mouthful, even by government bureaucratic standards. Essentially what this program does hand out money to largely left-wing activist groups, to lobby the federal government for more development spending.

For some members of CANC, a significant portion of total amount of the taxpayer money they received came from this CIDA program. Oxfam Canada, for example, received $1,923,073 for "public engagement initiatives" while Nature Canada was given $332,335, and USC Canada received $2,112,669. But other members of CANC received all of their federal transfer income from this one CIDA program: Canadian Labour Congress ($1,056,314), Pacific Peoples Partnership ($104,200), United Church of Canada ($933,000), and Equiterre ($113,313). Activist groups not associated with CANC who received grants under the CIDA “public engagement initiatives” program in 2008/09 include: Project Ploughshares ($146,095); Oxfam Quebec ($7,599,926); Canadian Bar Association ($664,612), the Canadian Teachers Federation ($2,060,801), CUSO ($9,117,084), CUSO-VSO ($1,136,756), and Inter-Peres ($1,332,000).

All told, according to the 2008/09 Public Accounts, CIDA handed out a whopping $249.76-million to advocacy groups for "public engagement initiates" in that fiscal year alone! That's almost a quarter billion dollars that Canadian taxpayers are paying mostly left-leaning advocacy groups to lobby for more taxpayer money. To put things into perspective, that sum represents nearly 8 percent of the total amount of money CIDA transferred in that year ($3.17-billion), money that most Canadians assume - in good faith - is going to foreign aid.

What's more, these numbers represent federal grants only, and exclude transfers from other levels of government to these and similar organizations.

If Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is seeking to trim wasteful federal spending in his forthcoming March Budget, he can start by ridding his government of useless programs, like CIDA’s pork-barrelling program to left-leaning NGOs

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