Scrap CIDA

Peter Foster, in today’s ‘Post’, gives a number of excellent reasons for killing the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). In my estimation the most compelling of these is - and I didn’t know this till now - "CIDA was created in the late 1960s by Maurice Strong". Anything that Maurice Strong is involved in has to be deeply suspect. In Peter Fosters words:

[Strong] the self confessed socialist master-manipulator behind ...Kyoto, sustainable development and global governance.

...deliberately installed a vague agenda and loose controls over CIDA

...agenda to promote activist, leftist NGOs in the development field

Mr. Foster’s latest exposé follows columns (here and here) detailing CIDA and NGO interference with various mining operations around the world. His column today calls for CIDA to be dumped:

CIDA should be a candidate for the scrap heap, not because it has been ineffective in promoting development, but because it has become a prime factor in stopping it.

The solution to poverty is trade, investment and the rule of law... NGO activists ... should have less influence inside the gates of Ottawa.

I think I’ll write to the Minister responsible for CIDA and urge her to give it the axe.

Related

Letter to the editor from Kairos (CIDA funded NGO) chairman Father Paul Hansen protesting Peter Foster’s earlier column.

Also in today’s FP ‘Comment’ section along with Mr. Foster’s column is a letter from an Ecuadoran indigenous group to Mining Watch (funded in part by Kairos) protesting its anti-development activities which are helping to keep poor people in poverty.