Canada`s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird “quietly” ordered his department to cut millions of dollars out of a foreign aid program last year and to call the cut a “surplus,” according to an article by journalist Carl Meyer posted Wednesday (January 14) on the website of the Ottawa magazine Embassy.
Meyer quotes a May 13, 2014 memo released to Embassy under access-to-information legislation from Associate Deputy Minister Peter Boehm which says “per your instructions, $7 million was declared surplus.”
Meyer writes Minister Baird’s office “blamed the cuts to the program, which used to be run by Canada’s aid agency before that agency was folded into the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, on the bad performance of Canadian diplomats.”
In the Embassy article, Paul Dewar, the foreign affairs critic of Canada’s Official Opposition NDP party suggests the minister was deceiving Canadians.“It’s what I would call a parlour trick, to make it appear like they’re sound fiscal managers, when in fact in this case, Minister Baird is trying to make people believe that his cut of $7 million is in fact a surplus. This is exactly the same thing that they did with regards to lapsed funding.”
In an email to Embassy, Kevin Page, Canada’s former Parliamentary Budget Officer wrote “The Conservative government has managed the austerity program launched in the 2012 budget with deliberate secrecy. They did not inform Parliament of the details of their spending plans…Austerity is difficult and they did not want to pay a political price for making difficult trade-offs…their strategy was to limit planning information to shut down debate and evade accountability.”
More information:
Embassy – Baird ordered foreign aid cut be labelled ‘surplus’ – here
Boehm memo to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird (pdf) – here
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