(Sept. 17, 2011)

In November 2009, Canada’s federal government rejected a funding request ban KAIROS, the ecumenical justice coalition comprised of Canadian church organisations.

Subsequent public debates about defence of the human rights of Palestinians, the shifting sands of CIDA priorities, and then about ethics in government—that infamous Bev Oda ^NOT—catapulted issues in relations between government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) onto the front pages. Funding to other NGOs and to the Canadian Council for International Cooperation also ended.

Despite budget cuts, the churches and non-governmental organizations among which I have worked over these past decades will likely keep on doing what they do well: accompanying partner organizations around the world to advance human rights, community development and social and ecological justice. As the t-shirt proclaims, KAIROS is ^NOT going away.

Obviously, partnership work is easier when backed with public funds. Since the 1960s, all governments—except the current one—saw the value of working with other groups and have funded NGO development programs. It’s not that we feel a sense of entitlement, much less think that the state should fund the church. But NGOs, together with CIDA staff and elected officials, form a sort of community of development practitioners. Our experiences inform each other’s practice in the complex world of development assistance.

Sharp disagreements, healthy collaboration

Even in the midst of sharp disagreement over the years about matters such as tied aid and the growth of bureaucracy that administered Official Development Assistance (ODA), it has been possible to maintain healthy collaboration with the government. We work with government programs in support of partner goals that are aimed at improving the well-being of people and the Earth.

At the same time, we maintain a lively critique of the use and misuse of power. We watch the impacts of what is done in the name of “development” that is carried out only for the sake of wealth creation. We uphold ethical principles in government, and we bring partner perspectives to bear on decisions in Canada that affect their interests. Over these past decades, we have been pretty noisy in the face of onerous foreign debt, structural adjustment programs, resource extraction, climate change, and free trade deals that weaken governments and harm farmers and workers.

But there are other debates about development. From the right and the left, aid is sometimes assailed as ineffective (or worse). Whatever happens in the Canadian debates over financing for development, we still have to ask what might be wrong with development aid programs and what might be done differently.

While I am convinced that work at the modest scale carried out by most Canadian NGOs and by church partners around the world is effective and accomplishes its goals, criticism of some of the large-scale efforts—such as those of the international financial institutions like the World Bank—has some justification.

(Sept. 2, 2011)

“May those with pens expose all the crimes to the world”

As one who has a pen, I have sought to use it—and my computer—to share stories of people who hunger, thirst and struggle for justice.

I don’t remember where I heard the prayer cited above, but it stays with me as an incitement to write and speak.

I grew up in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia, the western-most province of Canada. My parents grew up on farms northwest of Calgary, Alberta. Like the generations before, we moved around a lot. By the time we settled in British Columbia when I was ten, I had already lived in three other provinces.

Food—central to development debates—is perhaps what unites a family extended over time and space. Production, transportation and sales. My grandfather and an uncle were cowboys and ranchers in the Alberta foothills and in northern British Columbia. One aunt worked in the Burn’s meat-packing plant in Calgary. An uncle was a travelling salesman for Burn’s and another uncle was a salesman in the Safeway supermarket chain. My parents ran a small grocery store: that’s where I had my first job. My sister and her family raise Berkshire pigs in the Cariboo region of British Columbia.

At my grandmother’s dining room table, I remember arguments over something called the “Crow rate.” A subsidy to facilitate grain exports made shipping anything else prohibitively expensive, locking in a model of development that (arguably) protected Canadian sovereignty, grain farmers, Ontario manufacturers and the Canadian Pacific Railway for close to a century.

Beyond the mountains

I’m the kid who was endlessly curious about what was going on beyond the mountains. I wanted to understand the ideas that led people to do things in different ways. And I had found that I could write.

Eventually, I passed through the School of Journalism at Ottawa’s Carleton University. A few years later (in 1983), I found myself in the Dominican Republic and talking with people who made a sort of living from cutting sugar-cane.

I had gone to the “D.R.” to participate in a six-week exposure program for young adults sponsored by Youth Corps (a ministry of the Archdiocese of Toronto) and the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society (a Catholic religious order). The Dominican Republic Experience opened a door for me to the growing movements for social change in Latin America.

Over time, I will tell you more about what I learned from Haitian cane-cutters, and how their experience shaped the work I have done since then.