11

Canadian Development Assistance to Latin America

Laura Macdonald

Canadian development assistance policies toward Latin America mirror the evolution of Canada’s broader foreign policy relations with the region, and thus provide important insight into Canada’s changing identity and role in the world. Canada’s early ties with Latin America were weak and intermittent, and even as more recent governments have shown greater interest in the region, they have failed to develop deep and sustained ties with hemispheric partners and institutions.1 Similarly, levels of development assistance were minimal in the early years of the Canadian aid program, and while Canadian assistance to Latin America increased substantially over the last several decades, it never rivalled levels provided to Africa (see David Black’s chapter in this volume). Latin America is the world region with the highest levels of inequality, where high levels of poverty exist alongside extreme wealth. However, most Latin American states are classified as middle-income developing countries and the region is not viewed as the highest priority for aid aimed primarily at reducing poverty (Haiti is the main exception to this generalization and has been the principal recipient of Canadian aid in the region in recent years). Therefore, motivations for delivering development assistance based on pity, compassion, or “humane internationalism”2 are not predominant in Canadian aid to Latin America, where other motivations tend to prevail (the chapter in this volume by Tijerina displays some of these non-humanitarian motivations for development assistance in the case of Colombia).

This chapter reviews the history of Canadian development assistance to Latin America and examines how aid policy has interacted with broader foreign policy objectives over time. At least since the 1980s Canadian policies can be read as a form of dialogue between state and societies (both Canadian and Latin American). Societal determinants of aid policy tend to predominate in this relationship, as opposed to institutionalist factors, which, as David Black discusses in his chapter in this volume, played an important role in the Africa program. These determinants include geopolitical and security interests, commercial considerations, and political and ideological factors. Compared to support for other regions, Canadian aid to Latin America is shaped by the tension between relatively strong Canadian commercial interests in the region and pressures from highly mobilized civil society. Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, aid was increasingly instrumentalized3 and commercial objectives became more prominent, although they never entirely pushed out other motivations.

The chapter begins with a brief discussion of the early history of Canadian development assistance to Latin America, and then explores the politicization of Canadian aid beginning in the 1970s, and the increase in Canadian interest in the region between the 1980s and early 2000s, as reflected in aid policy. The third section considers the policies of the Harper government, which adopted an explicit Americas Strategy. In some ways similar to the efforts of Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government in the 1970s, it identified the region as a key foreign policy priority as part of the broader objective of expanding and diversifying Canadian economic interests in the world. Aid policies played an important role in this strategy, and development assistance was increasingly instrumentalized in response. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the initial changes under the Justin Trudeau government, which has rhetorically shifted away from an emphasis on commercial objectives, toward a greater emphasis on human rights, gender, and a revalorization of the contribution of civil society partnerships in the aid enterprise. It seems likely that while we will see greater balance between diverse objectives and greater input from civil society in establishing policies under the Trudeau government, the policies of the Harper era have established a certain pathway that may be difficult to escape.

Early History

Latin America was overlooked in the early years of Canada’s official aid program, as a result of the country’s traditional cultural and foreign policy ties. The Colombo Plan, as Jill Campbell-Miller explains in this volume, initially concentrated on supporting newly decolonized countries of the British Commonwealth, first in Asia and eventually in the English-speaking Caribbean and Africa. Canada thus expressed its willingness to contribute to the cold war endeavour of supporting and stabilizing former British colonies.4 In contrast, Canada stayed out of Latin America, which was viewed as part of the US sphere of influence and not necessarily a congenial location for Canadian engagement. Canada’s early relationship with the region was symbolized by its failure to join the principle hemispheric multilateral organization, the Organization of American States (OAS). Canadian officials and politicians felt they had little to gain from membership in a body that became increasingly subject to US whims, and there was little social support for greater involvement in hemispheric affairs in this early period.5

Mirroring this foreign policy position, Canada’s development assistance commitments in the region remained limited. However, in 1964 Canada pledged $10 million in assistance for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). According to Keith Spicer, the rationale for the decision to begin providing aid to Latin America was largely based on foreign policy motivations. Among these were the idea that engagement would give Canada enhanced influence on US policy and a deeper understanding of Latin American “revolutionary forces” (which were an increasing concern after the 1959 Cuban revolution). Moreover, aid would help enhance “people-to-people” relations. Spicer expressed concern, however, that such a commitment might also spread Canadian skills too thin and lead to ever-increasing demands for aid to the region. He dismissed the decision to support the IDB as a token of “Canada’s necessarily limited concern for Latin America,” and hoped that it would not lead to increased commitments that might “undermine more valuable older relationships.”6 While Spicer valued aid as a way to expand Canadian ties with the world, he was modest in terms of the world regions he thought Canada should engage with, perhaps reflecting public opinion in English-speaking Canada.

The only exception to the general lack of civil society interest in the Americas beyond the United States came from Quebec, where there existed cultural and religious affinities with the region, in contrast with Anglo-Canada, where commercial interests in the region predominated. The idea of “Latinité” was adopted by the Catholic Church and secular Quebec intellectuals like Pierre Trudeau, who occasionally wrote about Latin America’s social and economic issues in Cité Libre, the influential journal he co-founded.7 Maurice Demers has documented extensive connections between Catholics in Quebec and in Mexico. Citizens in these two locations saw their cultural identities as interconnected, he argues, and used these ties to expand their political capital. Mexican Catholics, for example, used the support of co-religionists in Canada and the United States in their struggles with the post-revolutionary Mexican state.8 Spicer, for his part, refers to the concept of Latinité dismissively as “recalling mystical ties of Latin civilization.”9

According to David Morrison, emerging support for the establishment of a Latin American regional bilateral assistance program was the only one influenced to any significant extent by non-governmental pressures, referring to the government’s desire to appeal to the francophone population in Quebec by projecting a bilingual and bicultural Canadian identity.10 Support for assistance to Latin America would thus represent a counterweight to the emphasis within the aid program on the British Commonwealth. Overall levels of assistance remained extremely low, however, perhaps reflecting the weakness of civil society pressures as well as official disinterest in this period. By 1968, development assistance to Latin America represented only 3 per cent of the total aid budget.11

Latin America took on increased foreign policy relevance after Trudeau’s election in April 1968 when his government sought to diversify Canada’s foreign political and economic relations beyond its traditional partnership with the United States. As the chapters in this volume by Asa McKercher and Stefano Tijerina detail, Trudeau embraced Latin America to find new partners in the Americas and in recognition of the region’s growing importance in the context of a move away from the cold war bipolar system. Trudeau’s shift toward Latin America also reflected his commitment to greater cultural and geographic diversity. The appointment of Paul Gérin-Lajoie, an ally from Quebec, as CIDA president in 1970 signalled this intention. According to Morrison, Gérin-Lajoie drew upon a network of former Catholic missionaries and lay activists to “spearhead programming,” which grew rapidly during his tenure,12 During the period 1970 to 1976, bilateral aid to Latin America almost quadrupled to $34.5 million. At the same time, the presence of Canadian NGOs in the region expanded rapidly. By 1975, there were fifty-four Canadian NGOs operating there, receiving 28 per cent of their budget from CIDA.13

While multilateral cooperation was considered a longer-term priority, in 1972 Canada took on special observer status in the OAS and fully joined the IDB. The 1973 Chilean coup, in which General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal military thugs overthrew elected President Salvador Allende, signalled a shift in the nature of the state-society relationship as a determinant of Canadian decision making on development assistance. After this point, the state-led nature of Canadian involvement declined as a result of the increased mobilization and activism of Canadian civil society actors with direct ties to the region and local civil society counterparts. New domestic actors emerged in this period, most notably the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America (ICCHRLA) and the Latin American Working Group (LAWG). Throughout the coming years, these civil society actors would become effective in pushing for an aid program that would respond to their demands for greater attention to human rights and social justice.

As a result of increased recognition on the part of state, business, and civil society of the importance of Latin America to Canadian interests and values, the Canadian aid commitment to the region grew steadily in this period. In fiscal year 1960–61 only Belize figured in the list of the top twenty recipients of bilateral ODA; over the period 1965–66 to 1975–76, no Latin American country appeared on this list except Chile in fiscal year 1970–71. By the five-year period 1975–76 to 1979–80, assistance to the Americas represented 11.9 per cent of total bilateral ODA, but dropped to 8.2 per cent in the next five-year period (1980–85).14

Overall, before the 1980s Latin American remained a secondary concern in Canadian aid policy, reflecting the common perception that Canadian interests there were minimal, and worries that involvement in the region, then clearly under US hegemony, could lead to undesirable conflict with US interests. While commercial and non-governmental interests were growing, they were not yet sufficiently powerful to overcome this fundamental reluctance.15

1980s—Politicization of Canadian Aid Program in Latin America

The politicization of Canada’s relationship with Latin America, a process started in the early 1970s, accelerated steadily through the 1980s. There was a substantial increase in this decade in the level and intensity of Canadian involvement in the region, largely driven by the outbreak of a major crisis in Central America. The emergence of a series of guerrilla movements in response to long-standing oppressive dictatorships led to a number of civil wars in Central America. The victory of the leftist Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in Nicaragua led to a militaristic response by American President Ronald Reagan, as well as the use of US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding in support of the remaining repressive regimes in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. While contacts between civil societies in different parts of the hemisphere were previously limited and largely occurred through religious channels, the Central American crisis brought Latin American concerns closer to Canadians and secular NGOs, building on contacts established by missionaries and laypeople decades earlier. It soon led to strong pressure on the Canadian state from civil society for a more independent approach to Latin America, different from that of the United States.

The politicization of Latin American civil society meant that decisions about aid (by both state and civil society) took on ever more political connotations.16 Moreover, Latin American NGOs assumed greater protagonism in the aid dynamic as increasingly political Latin American NGOs pressured Canadian NGOs to redefine their joint relationships, moving away from more paternalistic forms of aid.

In response to these political dynamics, Canadian NGOs pushed for: increased aid for Nicaragua; elimination of official assistance to El Salvador and Guatemala; increased assistance to regional institutions; admission of Central American refugees to Canada; and support for the regional peace process.

Overall, civil society actors were largely successful in achieving their demands. The Canadian government’s growing interest in the region is reflected in the fact that Latin America’s share of Canada’s total aid program virtually doubled over this period, from 8.2 per cent of Canada’s total bilateral ODA in the five year period 1980–81 to 1986–87 to 15.4 per cent in 1990–91 to 1995–96.17 By 1986, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, and Peru were listed as countries of concentration for ODA purposes. And the significance of NGO involvement is underlined by the fact that the percentage of total Canadian ODA delivered through NGOs was by far the highest in this region in 1991, at 24 per cent, compared to 7 per cent for francophone Africa, 11 per cent for anglophone Africa, and 7 per cent for Asia.18 Growing Canadian assistance thus reflected both increased prioritization of the region in Canadian foreign policy because of geopolitical and humanitarian concerns, and increased civil society contestation. The government also responded to many of the specific demands of NGOs related to the Central American conflict, including the temporary suspension of aid to El Salvador and Guatemala, and increased assistance to Nicaragua. The Canadian government supported the Contadora and Esquipulas peace initiatives and participated in a UN peace observer mission (ONUCA).19 Despite the suspension of aid to two countries, much of the increase in Canadian development assistance to Latin America went to Central American countries, as Canadian aid to Central America tripled over the 1981–86 period to $100 million and doubled again in the six-year period 1988–89 to 1994–95.20

These decisions were extremely contentious. The Trudeau government had to weigh pressure from NGOs and the White House before choosing to defy US wishes and cut off aid to El Salvador and Guatemala because of the “consistent and massive abuses of human rights” in those countries.21 However, as documented by Brian Stevenson, in justifying the government’s choice, Foreign Minister Allan MacEachen referred to “growing Canadian public interest in Central America” and recognized that public concern “certainly did have influence on government policy.”22 Indeed, this influence persisted. After coming to power in September 1984, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government, though ideologically closer to the Reagan Administration, maintained many elements of Liberal policy. The new government renewed aid to El Salvador, but continued to support regional peacekeeping efforts and designed aid policies to promote peace and stability.23 Overall, Canada’s role in the hemisphere was more mature and independent, largely because of the productive role played by NGO pressure.

1990s and Early 2000s—New Role for Canada in Latin America?

In the 1990s, Canada’s role in the hemisphere entered a new phase as a result of growing economic, political, and social linkages.24 Canadian aid policy continued to be intertwined with these changing foreign policy dynamics. In 1990, Mulroney’s government decided to join the OAS. This sudden decision was a natural extension of the prime minister’s continentalist approach, which was expressed most clearly in the signing of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement.25 Canadian policy under Mulroney thus rejected some of the Trudeau government’s desire for a more independent foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States. Simultaneously, the end of the Cold War provided greater space for Canada to develop a stronger relationship with countries south of the United States, resulting in a new emphasis on democracy and human rights. Yet the debt crisis that broke out across the Latin American region in the early 1980s led to the promotion of structural adjustment policies by Western countries and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that compromised these aims. The neo-liberal ideas behind these policies, which came to be known as the “Washington consensus,” included tariff reductions, cutbacks in social policies, the end of state subsidies for domestic industries, deregulation, privatization, trade liberalization, and other market-friendly policies. The Canadian government stridently supported these policies, while civil society in both Latin America and Canada strongly criticized them for their harsh impact on the poor.

One example of Canada’s greater role in promoting human rights and democracy was its support for the creation of a Unit for the Promotion of Democracy in the OAS in 1991. Similarly, Canada, alongside Peru, led the push to create an Inter-American Democratic Charter, which was adopted after the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, where it was supported by regional leaders.26 This emphasis on democracy and human rights had some spinoff effects on Canadian aid policy. CIDA, for instance, created a $1.5 million Democratic Development Fund for Guatemala in 1993. This program reflected many of the demands and values of NGOs in both Canada and Guatemala, as well as CIDA’s increased recognition of the importance of the role played by civil society and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT)’s interest in supporting the peace process. It included the promotion of “confidence-building and dialogue between groups, especially between elements of civil society and its formal institutions.” The government championed the fund as a means for strengthening “relationships and synergy between Canadian NGOs in Guatemala and between Canadian and local NGOs.”27

In general, however, the Washington consensus dominated aid policy making in this decade (especially through Canadian support for the IDB, which continued to absorb a significant part of Canada’s regional aid budget). The Liberal government of Jean Chrétien became a strong promoter of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) initiative (though it eventually failed). It also signed free trade agreements (FTAs) with Chile and Costa Rica, which came into force in 1997 and 2002 respectively, and launched several other FTA negotiations. The Liberal governments of both Chrétien and his successor, Paul Martin, viewed economic integration and liberalization as highly compatible with democratization in the hemisphere. And Canadian and Latin American civil society organizations that opposed these neo-liberal policies were for the most part not effective in promoting alternative policies.

While the Canadian government did have a significant foreign policy interest in Latin America during this period, this interest was not reflected in aid priorities. According to John Cameron, “countries from the Americas were only very rarely in the top 10 list of ODA recipients and clearly were not top priorities for Canadian ODA.”28 Since the mid-1990s, government efforts to improve “aid effectiveness” tended to concentrate Canadian development assistance in a smaller number of states, mostly in Africa, as well as in “failed and fragile states,” tilting aid away from relatively prosperous Latin America.29 CIDA also produced a list of twenty-five “development partners” to whom two-thirds of Canadian development assistance was to be devoted by 2010. Only four of those states—Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras, and Nicaragua—were located in the Americas. They were the lowest-ranked states in the hemisphere based on both per capita Gross National Income and the Human Development Index, apart from Haiti, which was included in the category of “failed and fragile states.”

The decision to adopt GNI per capita as the primary criterion for choosing “focus countries” meant that the large number of poor people in relatively wealthier but highly unequal Latin American countries would be overlooked.30 If the IPS’s focus on selection of development “partners” based on poverty had been strictly applied, all Latin American states might have been cut. But bureaucratic inertia as well as Ottawa’s desire for diplomatic and commercial influence in the region meant that they could not be cut out altogether.31 Levels of Canadian ODA to the Americas as a percentage of its total government-to-government ODA had increased from 8.2 per cent in 1980–81 to 1984–85 to 15.4 per cent in 1985–86 to 1989–90. This level of support increased again to a high of 17.8 per cent in 1990–91 to 1994–95, reflecting the factors outlined above. In the next five-year period, under Chrétien, aid to the region fluctuated between a low of 12.4 per cent in 1996–97 and a high of 15.4 per cent in 2000–01.32 As well, in this period, aid figures for the region began to be dominated by the high levels of assistance that began to flow to Haiti, which was included in the list of failed and fragile states (along with Afghanistan and Iraq). After many years of indecision, the government decided to substantially increase finding to Haiti in July 2004, dedicating more than $180 million over two years.33 This decision was partly based on the country’s poverty (even before the 2010 earthquake), reflecting humanitarian motivations and Canada’s interest in promoting “good governance.” However, the presence of a Haitian diaspora population in Quebec, concentrated in a few ridings in Montreal, also contributed to making Haiti a top priority for both Liberal and Conservative governments.34

Ottawa’s optimistic outlook on the Americas waned by the mid-2000s following the failure of the FTAA and the emergence of “new left” governments in the region that rejected the Washington consensus policies that Canada and the United States had promoted heavily. While trade and investment opportunities had increased (particularly in the extractive sector during the early 2000s), overall levels of trade remained minimal. And the Liberal government’s shift in aid policy meant that the region no longer represented a major priority, though its share of the aid budget remained more or less constant.35

The Harper Era, 2006–15: “Virage” in Aid Motivations and Mechanisms36

The coming to power of Stephen Harper in 2006 and his rigid Conservative approach to foreign policy led to a dramatic shift in aid policy toward Latin America. Canadian aid policies were also shaped by changes within the region: the resource boom; the swing to the left by many local governments; the rejection of Washington consensus policies in most countries; the decline of US hegemony; substantial progress in reducing poverty and inequality; and the emergence of non-traditional donors, particularly Brazil and Venezuela. The lurch to the right in Ottawa put Canada out of line with most of its regional counterparts.

Shortly after coming to power, the Harper government announced that Latin America would become a major foreign policy priority. The Americas Strategy, announced in a 2007 speech by Harper in Santiago, Chile, highlighted three objectives: increasing economic prosperity (with a focus on Canadian, not Latin American, economic interests); reinforcing democratic governance; and advancing common security. This strategy reflected a broader shift in Harper’s foreign policy away from the emphasis that Liberal governments placed on Africa and poverty reduction toward an emphasis on benefits to Canadian economic interests.37 In particular, the prominence of Canadian-based mining companies in the Latin American region during the resource boom was a prime driver of the government’s approach to the region. While Liberal governments promoted neo-liberal reforms and regional free trade agreements, these economic dimensions were often balanced against broader concerns with human rights and democracy. Under their Conservative successor, however, Canadian policy became more narrowly focused and corporate actors took on new importance in shaping Canadian foreign policy in general and aid policy specifically. The initial “cornerstone” of the Americas Strategy was the “prosperity pillar,” under which Canadian trade and investment interests were promoted, assuming that this would bolster the other two early objectives, democracy and security. The strategy’s objectives under this pillar included “strengthening the region’s enabling environment for economic growth and helping governments and private sector organizations connect to global markets.” It also included a focus on “standardizing and harmonizing” investment and taxation, reinforcing regulatory frameworks, and strengthening public financial management, rather than emphasizing support for the poor and marginalized sectors of the population.38

Reflecting these commercial motivations, the main outcome of Harper’s Americas Strategy was a series of trade agreements with the Americas. FTAs were implemented with Peru (2009), Colombia (2012), Panama (2013), and Honduras (2013), while the government tried to negotiate deals with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Dominican Republic, and Central America.39 These trade agreements included investment chapters modelled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), giving corporate interests a generous right to sue host countries for actions infringing on their commercial interests.

In addition to the emphasis on signing trade agreements with countries in the Americas, government aid policy was “instrumentalized” in support of the government’s commercial objectives.40 Even though the “prosperity pillar” of the Americas Strategy was expressed in terms of Canadian economic interests, not in terms of poverty reduction or human rights (as was required under the ODA Accountability Act), CIDA played an extremely important role in the Americas Strategy because of the lack of dedicated new resources within DFAIT or other government departments attached to the strategy. Only CIDA received new resources dedicated to the Americas.41

In 2009, Development Minister Bev Oda announced a revised list of twenty “countries of concentration,” which would receive 80 per cent of Canada’s bilateral ODA. The list included only seven African countries, five Asian nations, and six countries from the Americas, up from four on the previous list. The targeted American countries included Peru and Colombia, both upper-middle income developing countries where Canada had important economic interests and strong ideological affinities. Reaction to the list was sharply critical. The government was criticized for selecting focus countries with relatively high levels of economic development (GDP per capita in 2015 in Colombia was over $7,748 and over $6,796 in Peru).42 There was also a heavy emphasis on promotion of aid toward the private sector under the new strategy. Particularly controversial was the decision to fund NGO partnerships with mining companies, especially in the Andean region. Stephen Brown refers to this support for the Canadian extractive sector through ODA as part of a “recommercialization of aid.”43 In addition, the selection of Honduras as focus country seemed to obey an ideological and political logic,44 as did the 2014 decision to downgrade Bolivia as a country of concentration45 despite the fact that the program was strongly praised in an internal evaluation.46

The recent increase in Canadian corporate investment abroad (particularly by mining companies) has led some authors to view Canada’s behaviour in Latin America as reflecting imperialist motives. Canada has become a particularly important investor in Latin America, where the behaviour of its corporations has resulted in major human rights violations and environmental degradation. The Canadian state has actively supported these companies through its promotion of trade and investment agreements and its aid program.47 These authors offer an instrumentalist conception of the Canadian state that overlooks the capacity of the state to behave in a relatively autonomous fashion. Yet, as Michael Bueckert argues, it is important to recognize that development assistance is not always functional to capitalist interests and that it can also to some extent (as argued in this chapter) reflect the agency of civil society actors. The Harper government’s merger of CIDA with DFATD did reduce this limited autonomy, however, and left less space for civil society contestation.48

Despite the predominance of commercial considerations in many aspects of assistance to Latin America under the Harper government, it is important to recognize that other factors were at play. In particular, the extremely poor country of Haiti received a large share of the aid budget to the region as a result of the humanitarian crisis caused by the earthquake of 2010, continued state fragility, and the continued electoral relevance of the Haitian diaspora, especially the large number of NGOs based in the Quebec Haitian community operating in their homeland.49

At the same time, the rearticulation of the government’s development assistance policies coincided with a closing of dialogue with civil society and the defunding of important interlocutors. For example, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL), created by Mulroney’s government to promote policy research and analysis on Canada’s role in the Americas, was defunded by Harper and forced to close in 2011, as was the North-South Institute in 2014. Development NGOs historically critical of government policy, including KAIROS, OXFAM, and Inter Pares did not have their CIDA funding renewed and struggled to maintain a presence in the Americas. In other cases, NGO assistance continued to flow, but it was increasingly determined by government priorities, moving away from the old “responsive” framework in which trusted NGOs received government funding for programs they designed themselves, normally in consultation with Southern NGOs.50 The new funding framework acted to reinforce more technocratic and paternalistic forms of aid and cut off lines of dialogue between state and civil society that had flourished earlier.

Conclusion

This chapter has reviewed the evolution of the program of development assistance to Latin America over the last several decades. The very small initial program has grown and flourished in a way that Spicer could not have foreseen in the mid-1960s when he wrote A Samaritan State?. The evolution of Canadian development assistance has been shaped by changes in Canadian foreign policy, which have interacted in different ways with civil society efforts over time. Government support for development efforts in Latin America first increased under Pierre Trudeau, motivated in part by the desire to project a bilingual and bicultural presence in the world and to move away from an earlier emphasis on the British Commonwealth. The Mulroney government increased the weight placed on Latin America in Canadian foreign and development policy, reflecting that government’s greater interest in North-South continental ties, as reflected in the signing of the Canada-US Free Trade agreement. In contrast, the Chrétien and Martin governments shifted toward a greater focus on Africa because of their desire to improve aid effectiveness and to concentrate on providing assistance to the poorest countries. Most recently, Harper’s government made Latin America a diplomatic priority, but the focus of the foreign policy agenda was constrained, blocking productive dialogue between state and non-business civil society. In its place, corporate interests tended to predominate.

In its first term in office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has not prioritized Latin America in the same way that Harper did. Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, announced in June 2017, eliminated the practice of identifying a fixed list of countries of concentration. The policy signalled that the government would increase support for “least-developed countries,” directing “no less than 50 per cent of its bilateral international development assistance to sub-Saharan African countries by 2021–22.” Presumably this will lead to a decline to aid to Latin America.51 Nevertheless, as we have seen above, there is considerable inertia in regional allocations of development assistance, which means there is unlikely to be a dramatic shift away from aid to Latin America. We are also likely to see the government end its controversial support for partnerships between Canadian NGOs and mining companies. In January 2018 Trade Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced the creation of an independent Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE), who will be mandated to investigate independently and monitor compliance with the government’s policies around responsible behaviour of Canadian corporations abroad. The ombudsperson will also be empowered to recommend remedies when policies are violated.52

It is unlikely, however, that the Trudeau government will move decisively away from an emphasis on the promotion of free trade and neo-liberal policies in the region. More hopefully, the long tradition of North-South civil society engagement, the strength of the women’s movement in Latin America, and that region’s success in integrating women into the political process means that it is likely that the region will see benefits from the new Feminist International Assistance Policy. In June 2018, the government announced $79.21 million in new development assistance for nine projects in the Americas aimed at empowering women and girls.53 This is a significant shift away from the move toward commercialization of aid that occurred under the Tories and displays the continued importance of civil society actors in defining relations between Canada and Latin America.

Notes

Thanks to Megan Pickup and Arne Rückert for their assistance with this research. Thanks also to Greg Donaghy and Stephen Brown for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

1 Laura Macdonald, “Canada in the Posthegemonic Hemisphere: Evaluating the Harper Government’s Americas Strategy,” Studies in Political Economy 97, no. 1 (2016): 1–17.

2 Cranford Pratt, “Canada: A Limited and Eroding Internationalism,” in Internationalism Under Strain: The North-South Policies of Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, ed. Cranford Pratt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989); see also David R. Black, “Humane Internationalism and the Malaise of Canadian Aid Policy,” in Rethinking Canadian Aid, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Brown, Molly den Heyer, and David R. Black (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2016), 17–33.

3 Gabriel C. Goyette, “Charity Begins at Home: The Extractive Sector as an Illustration of Changes and Continuities in the New De Facto Canadian Aid Policy,” in Brown, den Heyer, and Black, Rethinking Canadian Aid, 259–75.

4 Laura Macdonald, “Unequal Partnerships: The Politics of Canada’s Relations with the Third World,” Studies in Political Economy 47, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 111–41.

5 Peter McKenna, Canada and the OAS: From Dilettante to Full Partner (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 82–84.

6 Keith Spicer, A Samaritan State?: External Aid in Canada’s Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 62–63.

7 David Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide: A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press), 77.

8 Maurice Demers, Connected Struggles: Catholics, Nationalists, and Transnational Relations between Mexico and Quebec, 1917–1945 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), 3–6.

9 Spicer, A Samaritan State?, 61.

10 Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide, 79.

11 James Rochlin, Discovering the Americas: The Evolution of Canadian Foreign Policy Towards Latin America (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994), 77.

12 Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide, 80, 123.

13 Rochlin, Discovering the Americas, 96.

14 Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide, 456–48.

15 François Audet and Judy Meltzer, “L’aide canadienne en Amérique Latine: Une coopération paradoxale,” in L’Aide Canadienne au Développement : Bilan et perspective, ed. François Audet, Marie-Eve Desrosiers, and Stéphane Roussel (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2008), 321; Jean-Philippe Thérien, Gordon Mace, and Myriam Roberge, “Le Canada et les Amériques: La difficile construction d’une identité régionale,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 11, no. 3 (2004): 17–37.

16 Laura Macdonald, “Current and Future Directions for Canadian NGOs in Latin America,” in A Dynamic Partnership: Canada’s Changing Role in the Americas, ed. Jerry Haar and Edgar J. Dosman (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1993), 113–28.

17 Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide.

18 Macdonald, “Current and Future Directions,” 117.

19 Stephen Baranyi and John W. Foster, “Canada and Central America: Citizen Action And International Policy,” in Canada Looks South: In Search of an Americas Policy, ed. Peter McKenna (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 246.

20 Brian Stevenson, Canada, Latin America, and the New Internationalism: A Foreign Policy Analysis, 1968–1999 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 6.

21 Ibid., 146.

22 Ibid., 146. See also the discussion by Stephen Baranyi and John Foster of a specific citizens’ initiative called Canada Central America Policy Alternatives (CAPA), which carried out research and organized roundtables in Parliament, with the support of sympathetic parliamentarians, to promote a strong Canadian role in fostering peace and social justice in the region. This author also participated in this initiative. See Baranyi and Foster, “Canada and Central America.”

23 Stevenson, Canada, Latin America, and the New Internationalism, 148.

24 Jean Daudelin and Edgar Dosman, “Canada and Hemispheric Governance: The New Challenges,” in Leadership and Dialogue, Canada Among Nations 1998, ed. Maureen A. Molot and Fen O. Hampson (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), 212.

25 McKenna, Canada and the OAS, 131.

26 Maxwell A. Cameron and Jason Tockman, “Canada and the Democratic Charter: Lessons from the Coup in Honduras,” in McKenna, Canada Looks South, 90–91.

27 Laura Macdonald, “Changing Directions? Challenges Facing Canadian Non-governmental Organizations in Latin America,” in Beyond Mexico?: Canada in the Americas, ed. Jean Daudelin and Edgar Dosman (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995), 237–56. See also Baranyi and Foster, “Canada and Central America,” 249–51.

28 John Cameron, “CIDA in the Americas: New Directions and Warning Signs for Canadian Development Policy,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 28, no. 2 (2007): 234.

29 As noted by Stephen Brown, the other two criteria were the “ability to use aid effectively” and “sufficient Canadian presence to add value.” Stephen Brown, “‘Creating the World’s Best Development Agency?’ Confusion and Contradictions and Tensions In CIDA’s New Development Blueprint,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 28, no. 2 (2007): 220.

30 Laura Macdonald and Arne Rückert, “Continental Shift? Rethinking Canadian Aid to the Americas,” in Brown, den Heyer, and Black, Rethinking Canadian Aid, 125–42.

31 Cameron, “CIDA in the Americas,” 236.

32 Cameron, “CIDA in the Americas,” 238–39.

33 François Audet and Judy Meltzer, “L’aide canadienne en Amérique Latine’,” 313–41.

34 Yasmine Shamsie, “Canadian Assistance to Haiti: Some Sobering Snags in a Fragile-State Approach,” in McKenna, Canada Looks South, 184–85.

35 Cameron, “CIDA in the Americas.”

36 For more detailed discussion of Canadian aid policy in this period, see Macdonald and Rückert, “Continental Shift.”

37 For a discussion of the Americas Strategy, see Laura Macdonald, “Canada in the Posthegemonic Hemisphere: Evaluating the Harper Government’s Americas Strategy,” Studies in Political Economy 97, no. 1 (2016): 1–17.

38 For example, in the 2011 internal then-DFAIT (now Global Affairs Canada) evaluation of the Americas Strategy, all of the achievements mentioned under the strategy are the signing of trade agreements and parallel labour and environmental agreements attached to those FTAs. Global Affairs Canada, “Evaluation of the Americas Strategy,” January 2011, http://www.international.gc.ca/gac-amc/publications/evaluation/2011/tas_lsa11.aspx?lang=eng.

39 Macdonald, “Canada in the Posthegemonic Hemisphere.”

40 Stephen Brown, “The Instrumentalization of Foreign Aid under the Harper Government,” Studies in Political Economy 97, no. 1 (2016): 18–36.

41 Global Affairs Canada, “Evaluation of the Americas Strategy.”

42 McLeod Group, “Canadian Development Assistance: The Issue of Focus,” http://www.mcleodgroup.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/McLeod-Group-briefing-note-3-–-A-Question-of-Focus.pdf.

43 Stephen Brown, “Undermining Foreign Aid: The Extractive Sector and the Recommercialization of Canadian Development Assistance,” in Brown, den Heyer, and Black, Rethinking Canadian Aid, 277–95.

44 Macdonald and Rückert, “Continental Shift.”

45 Liam Swiss, “New focus countries not about effective aid,” blog post, 14 July 2014, http://blog.liamswiss.com/category/aid/page/6/.

46 Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, “Bolivia Country Program Evaluation – 2005–2010 – Synthesis Report,” January 2014, accessed 15 May 2017 from http://www.international.gc.ca/gac-amc/publications/evaluation/2014/bcpe-eppb-2005-2010.aspx?lang=eng.

47 See, for example, Todd Gordon, Imperialist Canada (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 2010); Todd Gordon and Jeffrey R. Webber, “Imperialism and Resistance: Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America,” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2008): 64; Jerome Klassen, “Canada and the New Imperialism: The Economics of a Secondary Power,” Studies in Political Economy 83, no. 1 (2009): 163–90.

48 Michael Bueckert, “CIDA and the Capitalist State: Shifting Structures of Representation under the Harper Government,” Studies in Political Economy 96, no. 1 (2015): 3–22. For a more extended discussion and critique of the notion of Canada as a new imperialist power, see J. Z. Garrod and Laura Macdonald, “Imperialism or Something Else? Rethinking ‘Canadian Mining Imperialism’ in Latin America,” in Mining in Latin America: Critical Approaches to the “New Extraction,” ed. Kalowatie Deonandan and Michael Dougherty (New York: Routledge, 2016), 100–115.

49 Audet and Meltzer, “L’aide canadienne en Amérique Latine,” 313–41.

50 Stephen Brown, “CIDA’s New Partnership with Canadian NGOs: Modernizing for Greater Effectiveness?,” in Struggling for Effectiveness: CIDA and Canadian Foreign Aid, ed. Stephen Brown (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 289.

51 Government of Canada, “Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy,” http://international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_developpement/priorities-priorites/policy-politique.aspx?lang=eng. Bibeau was minister of international development from 2015 to March 2019.

52 Global Affairs Canada, “The Government of Canada brings leadership to responsible business conduct abroad,” https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2018/01/the_government_ofcanadabringsleadershiptoresponsiblebusinesscond.html.

53 Global Affairs Canada, “Canada announces $79.21 million in development assistance for Americas,” https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2018/06/canada-announces-7921-million-in-development-assistance-for-americas.html.