February 27, 2013

Eye View

Canadian development overseas not only shapes the way others see us; it also forms the way we see ourselves.

We prefer the image of Canada the good: like the impression that the citizens of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan must have had after the Montreal Jesuit William Mackay helped establish their modern education system in 1963.

Not many of us like to think about the ugly side of Canadian development. Seventy five per cent of the world's mining companies are based here and one-half of their operations are outside of Canada. Too often, those operations involve displacement of native people from their lands, environmental degradation and human rights violations.

Few Canadians are aware of these projects. Even fewer consider it as part of our history says Tina Loo, professor of history at the University of British Columbia. She laments the common view that history is only about what happens within our borders.

"We can't understand Canada - - as a nation-state - - without understanding it's relationship to the world outside our boundaries."

Overseas development is as much our history as home-grown issues: the two solitudes of English and French, the third world conditions of Canada's first people, the complex mosaic of our multicultural society.

Canada has a long history of "humane internationalism." We help others because the world becomes safer when we lift the living conditions of others. We are empathetic to the problems of developing nations because we have faced them ourselves: foreign control of our industry, a weak manufacturing sector, reliance on resource extraction.

The rewards of state activism and ethical motivations go beyond feeling good about ourselves. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker considered development as a way to buy global stability. It was "cheap insurance for Canada," he said.

The opposite side of the ideological coin conceives development as an extension of Canadian industry. We do it, not for humane reasons, but as a way of selling our technology aboard. And we incidentally create jobs for workers.

Until recently, Canada did both. We promoted humanitarian development through the Canadian International Development Agency and exported industry though the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Now that the Harper government has moved CIDA under DFAIT, it's clear that ethical development, like support for science, will be fitted with cement boots. Sure, CIDA has its problems but nothing that couldn't be fixed.

CIDA was in the vanguard in developing food security. It was among the first state agencies in the world to support non-governmental organizations in which government funds could be leveraged for greater good.

CIDA not only promoted Canadian values of democracy, the rule of law, and fairness in other countries, it gave Canadians who worked on projects a fresh perspective of Canada. Pam Asbury, who now works as an engineer in Kamloops, told me of her CIDA-funded project in Uganda.

"I returned home humbled by fact that I had taken much of it for granted. I saw how badly people worked to have just the basics - - clean water, healthy families, nutritious food, and an education - - and it made me strive to understand more complicated socio-economic and environmental issues."

CIDA represents the kind of liberal ideals that the Harper government abhors. The face of Canada is receiving a makeover and the results won't be pretty.

David Charbonneau is the owner of Thompson Studio
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca