Behind the Scenes: Consulting the Government of Canada’s International Development Plan
We were invited by the Minister of International Development to provide our opinion on the future of Canada’s international development plan. What’s it really like to work behind the scenes? What did we accomplish?
It’s the morning of June 7th and my day is shaping up to be a little different. For starters, it’s 5 a.m. and I am not accustomed to waking up in the dark. The next deviation? I forego my normally comfortable work attire for the abnormally uncomfortable suit and tie that is mainstream work attire. After all, I need to make an impression — I was invited by the Minister of International Development and La Francophonie to provide my opinion on the future of Canada’s international development plan.
Reality (Muffin) Bites
I’m just going to go ahead and take the wind out of my own sails right here. This was not as cool as it sounds. This wasn’t me in a backdoor room with the Prime Minister waxing philosophical on the nature of development. It was a public consultation that involved 30 organizations who work in the international development sector. There was about 100 people in total milling about a bunch of tables with chart paper. There was a nice assortment of muffins and non-caffeinated tea.
Wait. Rewind. Why us?
A week ago, Operation Groundswell received an email sent on behalf of the Minister of International Development, Marie-Claude Bibeau, asking us to send a representative of our organization to this consultation. It was like that feeling you get when the most popular kid in school wants to be your friend. First, you pant with excitement. Then you pause and think with a pang of suspicion, ‘why me?’
Operation Groundswell is not a development organization. We consider our work primarily as educational. We meet with governments, NGOs, cooperatives, artists, and activists as we try to pull together a narrative of a culture out of a messy mosaic. We do work on volunteer projects from time to time, primarily as a way to better connect with the communities we visit. But we certainly don’t propose and lead projects. Instead, we listen. We find partners who share a similar vision of what the world can be. We ask them what they need. We let them know how they can help us. We spend more time developing relationships with our partners than we do measuring our outputs.
The Vision
As I sat on the train, reviewing the pre-reading material, I continued to ponder a) how the hell the Government of Canada heard about us and b) why they thought it would be a good idea to invite us to the party. The pre-reading is pretty well put-together. It’s clear that Canada’s international development focus will be geared towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The goals do a good job of explicitly acknowledging the interconnectedness of a variety of struggles. How poverty connects to climate change, how gender inequality relates to violent conflict and everything in between.
Reading through this, it was clear to me that mainstream development has been catching up with what some of the best practitioners and theorists have been saying for some time — all struggles for justice and equality are connected and by ignoring the ones that don’t suit our sensibilities, we will fail. The sustainable development goals themselves address this point and align well with OG’s ultimate vision: a more equitable, sustainable, and just world.
Let’s Talk Process
Visions are great. It’s important to know what you’re striving toward. It’s a powerful motivator and a provider of direction when we are mucking about in the world of ‘doing’. Vision, however, ain’t everything. Process is equally important. If the process doesn’t reflect the values that we are striving towards in our vision, we are at risk of reinforcing the same old values we’re purporting to fight.
When I looked around the Roberston Room, sitting in our comfy chairs with our fancy translating earbuds, I couldn’t help but notice that there were only 2 people of colour in a group of 100. The room consisted primarily of Canadian-born men and women. There were no organizations that represented ethnic immigrants who hail from the countries we’re attempting to assist. Of the 7 panelists who were asked to speak, many of whom I deeply respect, not one mentioned this disparity. Why do we consider ourselves experts on the needs of others? Why don’t we invite those who are most directly affected by injustice to lead our discussion?
The particular area I was supposed to provide my ‘expertise’ on was Security System Reform (SSR). SSR deals with assisting in the development of legitimate and credible policing, legal, and corrective institutions in fragile states. There are about 35–50 fragile states in the world (depending on measures used) who don’t have the resources, power, or authority to govern.
After listening to the panelists, our smaller sub-group broke off for a one hour working session on recommendations we would like to present to the minister. It was time to enact OG’s agenda.
Make a New Plan, Stan
I had conversations with members of the team here at OG around what we wanted to emphasize in the room. The plan was to ensure a few things were heard:
- Stop doing harm. Canada is an active contributor to injustice in the world. We ratify trade deals that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the vulnerable. Our mining corporations are constantly using and abusing their power to exploit the natural resources of indigenous communities in the developing world. We have an ever-expanding contribution to climate change through the oil sands. Canada isn’t in a position to play morally superior. If we want to aim for those lofty SDGs, we need to take responsibility for our most dangerous misdeeds.
- Listen. Listen. Listen. Those who are living through the experience of poverty should be the first voice we listen to. There was so much talk about how we can empower women. Women already have power! Women around the world are standing up and risking their lives for justice. We don’t need to empower them. We need to support them. We need to ask them what they need in their struggles. We need to follow their lead. We need to be prepared to be admonished for when we misstep.
- Stop measuring output, start measuring outcomes. It’s easy to track outputs. In SSR, an output would be the number of police officers we equipped and trained. Then we pat ourselves on the back when that number increases. An outcome would be the number of people who feel safer in a community that we’ve trained and equipped. Looking at it this way, we might learn that people actually feel less safe with more policing. Perhaps it will force us to change the way we think about SSR altogether.
So I said all of those things to my group — probably far less eloquently than I would have liked — but I said them.
The Proof is in the People
I need to give credit to the civil servants who were responsible for facilitating and passing up notes from our working group. It’s easy for us to make unpopular statements and feel like our conscience has been assuaged. These civil servants recognize that no governing party in Canada is going sacrifice political expediency in an effort to assist non-voters, regardless of the direness of the situation. Which is kind of fair. Their job is to represent the will of the people, and Canadians have spoken pretty clearly — they don’t want too much of their tax dollars going towards international development.
The most common argument I hear against international development is that we spend all of this money and nothing changes. That’s not true. From 1990 to 2015, 2.6 billion people gained access to cleaner and safer drinking water. Today, 793 million people around the world are undernourished. That’s 216 million fewer people than in 1990–1992. The share of the world population living with less than $1.90 a day went from 35% in 1993 to 9.6% in 2015.[1] Yes, there is much work to do, and climate change will likely wipe out a lot of the gains we’ve made in the past 20 years. So now, the job of the ministry is to communicate to Canadians that international assistance has value.
One problem — and it’s a big one — is that civil servants are not the most gifted communicators. They are quick to fire off statistics and measurements that indicate progress but they have no idea how to tell a story. Communicating a narrative is the only way to humanize the abstraction of people we’re trying to help. Knowing there are 216 million fewer hungry people serves as a nice statistic. Without anchoring that statistic in the story of a family who can finally go to bed with full bellies, we lose the emotional and human connection that drives us to help others.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
After an intense hour of back and forth, we finally came to a few specific recommendations on ways to restructure SSR assistance. Points 2 and 3 made it onto that list — that we have to listen and learn and that we have to start measuring outcomes over outputs. Point 1 — stop doing harm — that one never got spoken aloud to the larger group. I should have seen it coming. It’s a lot easier to point out the faults of others than it is to admit our own faults.
I left the session feeling a little deflated. I was generally happy with the results but I was troubled by the process. The process was never up for discussion. I don’t think it was purposeful. It was clear to me that this process will never be the way towards the fulfillment of the SDGs.
Now what?
After looking back on the day, I have to say that I’m still hopeful! Partially because that’s just the way I’m wired, but also because I know the movement towards creating a more just, equitable, and sustainable world is growing.
I’m hopeful because while the process is slow, we’re still learning from our mistakes and taking steps to correct them.
I’m hopeful because our situation demands hope, and our work requires it.
I’m hopeful because our local partners are standing up to injustice in their countries, where it is even harder to stand up, and they are winning. Not every battle, but enough. And as Martin Luther King said, “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
