"Time to Reassess Canada's Foreign Aid" in Policy Options, September, 2008
Abstract: In March 2008, I penned an article for Maclean’s giving the Maloney view of where we were at in Afghanistan right after one of my trips. In that piece, I mildly criticized CIDA for dragging its feet on the Highway 4 paving project and asked why a country that could put a railway through the Rockies couldn’t pave 40 km of road. That three-line criticism resulted in a viciously defensive complaint by elements in DFAIT and CIDA to the Privy Council Office and then over to my department, DND. The amount of energy wasted on those three lines was bizarrely disproportionate-and bordered on totalitarian behaviour (There is definitely somebody in the PCO that has a Napoleon Complex. It’s just too bad he’s nowhere near as good as Napoleon at strategy-or even policy). NOBODY, it seems, is allowed to criticize CIDA. Nobody. Really? Read this. It is only the tip of the historial iceberg. There will be more. The country can no longer AFFORD it. |
