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27 mars, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, March 27, 2025 Part 1 of this two-part blog is available here. From 1945 until recently, the United States served as the cornerstone of the liberal rules-based international order in trade, finance and security. Sometimes, the US played this role (…)
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26 mars, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, March 26, 2025 Here is a sentence no one could have written in the 1980s: “Canada’s political parties and provincial governments are united in supporting free trade with the United States”. The 1980s featured a ferocious debate on whether free trade with (…)
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18 mars, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, March 19, 2025 The timing was unusual. After being delayed by well over a year, the Trudeau government finally released its Africa strategy, a mere eight days before a new government was sworn in and probably only a few weeks before new federal elections are (…)
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11 mars, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by S.L. Erikson, March 12, 2025 Aid can’t be run like a private equity or hedge fund. And yet, Benjamin Black, Donald Trump’s nominee to run the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), is eager to redirect USAID’s US$44 billion budget away from public (…)
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3 février, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, February 4, 2025 In a midnight post on his social media platform X, Elon Musk announced what appears to be the “shutting… down” of the 63-year-old US Agency for International Development (USAID), America’s main vehicle for delivering development and (…)
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31 janvier, par Stephen Brown
How Haiti and Canada can turn the urban exodus into an opportunity to decentralize and build a sustainable future for Haitians McLeod Group guest blog by Mary Durran, February 3, 2025 They flee the Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods that were once hubs bustling with traders, schoolchildren and (…)
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24 janvier, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by John Saxby, January 27, 2025 What began as a two-year adventure turned into a lifetime commitment. In An Outsider Within, former CUSO volunteer Mary Ndlovu uses her experiences to weave together the story of her family with Zimbabweans’ struggle to end colonial rule (…)
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14 janvier, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by John Cameron and Lauchlan T. Munro, January 16, 2025 With a federal election coming soon, how prepared are Canadian civil society organizations to speak out about the causes that they represent? Civil society has an important role in a democracy in holding leaders and (…)
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23 août 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Belinda Dodson, Aug. 26, 2024 After years of hinting at an imminent Africa strategy, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) has launched “final consultations” on a “proposed approach to partnerships in Africa”. There are rumours that a draft framework has been in internal (…)
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16 août 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Rhonda Gossen and Jane Cooper, August 19, 2024 The new memoir by Ian Smillie, Under Development: A journey without maps, takes the reader on the bumpy ride of international development from the late 1960s over more than four decades through the trends and geopolitical (…)
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17 juillet 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Joshua Ramisch, July 17, 2024 It was the scenes of violence – Kenya’s parliament burning, protesters shot dead on the streets – that captured world attention at the end of June. A week of peaceful protests against the 2024 Finance Bill and its significant tax increases (…)
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13 juillet 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Laura Macdonald, July 15, 2024 On June 2, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum won a convincing victory in Mexico’s presidential elections and will become the country’s first woman president, defeating another dynamic female leader, Xochitl Gálvez. Sheinbaum gained 62% of the popular (…)
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18 mai 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Nicholas Coghlan, May 21, 2024 By most measurements, Sudan is the gravest humanitarian crisis in the world today. One theatre of a country-wide war – Darfur – is seeing a reprise of the genocide of 2002-2003, as the descendants of the Janjaweed prepare an onslaught on (…)
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8 mars 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Adam R. Houston, March 11, 2024 What lessons did the Canadian government learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? On the issue of equitable global access to medicines, the government’s recent actions suggest that it has learned the wrong ones. The gulf between the rhetoric (…)
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20 février 2024, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Rhonda Gossen, February 21, 2024 The general elections in Pakistan on February 8 shocked those who had written off the banned party of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan. Over half of the 60 million voters selected candidates backed by his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (…)
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13 décembre 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Daniel Livermore, December 14, 2023 The Senate has weighed in on the reform of Canada’s foreign service. Its Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s report of early December owes much to the experienced hands of its chair and vice-chair, (…)
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30 novembre 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, November 30, 2023 Halfway to the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) target date of 2030, the UN’s recent assessment of the world’s progress is pessimistic: “the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, a weak global economy, and the lingering effects of… (…)
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22 novembre 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Edward Jackson, November 23, 2023 This year’s conference of the parties on climate change, COP 28, promises to be as complex, contentious, and consequential as any of its predecessor gatherings. It will also feature the broadest representation of constituencies in the (…)
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9 septembre 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, September 11, 2023 Is the UN just an ineffectual talking shop, incapable of meaningful action? Richard Jolly does not think so. In his short, insightful and easy-to-read autobiography-cum-UN history, Jolly shows that the UN has long been at the forefront (…)
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25 juin 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by John Cameron, June 26, 2023 With Canadian official development assistance (ODA) stuck below the OECD average for more than 20 years, a federal election possible at any time, the governing Liberal Party agnostic towards ODA and opposition Conservatives likely to propose (…)
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21 juin 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Daniel Livermore, June 22, 2023 Global Affairs Canada has taken the first important step in making GAC “fit for purpose”. After months of anticipation, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly unveiled a discussion paper, Future of Diplomacy: Transforming Global Affairs Canada, (…)
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21 mai 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Leah Reimer, May 23, 2023 Two billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, live in fragile and conflict-affected states. These people are increasingly vulnerable to the changing climate. Climate change adds new stresses to areas and populations already facing (…)
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14 mai 2023, par Stephen Brown
Guest blog by Julie St-Pierre-Gaudreault and Susan Spronk, May 15, 2023 In order to address problems in the field of international development, and particularly to achieve its feminist objectives, the Canadian government is now promoting “innovative” financing tools that mobilize money from (…)
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15 avril 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, April 17, 2023 Foreign aid figures for 2022 are out and they show a large increase in disbursements. But you might want to wait before popping the bubbly. Unpack the data a bit, and you won’t find much to celebrate. The so-called good news The OECD trumpets (...)
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8 avril 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Gloria Novovic, April 11, 2023 As the Canadian government drafts its long-awaited feminist foreign policy, it is wise to examine the implementation of its Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), adopted six years ago. However, the Auditor General’s recent (...)
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29 mars 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, March 29, 2023 The government has repeatedly promised to “increase Canada’s international development assistance every year”, including in the Minister of International Development’s most recent mandate letter. Newly released Budget 2023 repeats the (...)
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5 mars 2023, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Mario Renaud and Robert Letendre, March 7, 2023 Those of us who have been closely associated with Canada’s international development assistance over the past few decades have noted the catastrophic impact of the 2013 merger of the Canadian International Development (...)
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14 décembre 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Cristina Rojas, December 15, 2022 The recent election of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez as president and vice-president of Colombia gave a new momentum to the peace agreement between the government of Colombia and the guerrilla group FARC-EP. The agreement, signed (...)
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3 décembre 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Nigel Martin, December 5, 2022 India will host the G20 meeting for the first time in September 2023. One of the annual summit’s activities, dating back to a Canadian-inspired initiative in 2010, is an official meeting between G20 officials and civil society (...)
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6 novembre 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Ryan Katz-Rosene, November 7, 2022 The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has just begun in Egypt. As the conference’s President-Designate, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry, recently noted that the (...)
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17 octobre 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown and Gloria Novovic, October 18, 2022 Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland recently gave a headline-grabbing foreign policy speech in Washington, DC. At the event, hosted by the Brookings Institution on October 11, she (...)
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8 août 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Daniel Livermore, August 9, 2022 If the stars align, the year 2023 promises to be key for decisions about Global Affairs Canada and the Canadian foreign service. Two studies are now under way: in the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International (...)
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1er juin 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Hunter McGill, June 2, 2022 After shrinking in the final years of the Harper government, Canadian foreign aid was back up in 2021 to where it had been in 2011 and 2012: 0.32% of Gross National Income. An achievement of sorts, but not a big one, especially considering that (...)
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20 avril 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Gloria Novovic and Stuart Trew, April 21, 2022 Recently, the federal government issued Budget 2022, unveiling plans for “Canada’s leadership in the world”. This leadership role, however, is questionable. In 2020, Canada’s failed bid for a seat on the United Nations (...)
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17 avril 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Betty Plewes and Brian Tomlinson, April 19, 2022 Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, made a powerful plea to northern countries at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year: “We have come here to say two degrees of global warming is a death sentence for (...)
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12 avril 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Nyambura Githaiga, April 13, 2022 The war in Ukraine is leading to a drop in food production, higher food prices and an increased risk of famine around the world. High-income countries should take three steps to help prevent hunger from spreading. First, avoid (...)
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10 avril 2022, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, April 11, 2022 We have to give credit when credit is due, but also recognize obfuscations when we see them. The Canadian government’s 2022 budget, released on April 7, provides opportunities for both regarding development assistance. There is not much to (...)
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20 mai 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, May 21, 2020 Two prominent umbrella groups of Canadian development organizations – CCIC and CanWaCH – recently launched a COVID-themed campaign to drum up support for Canadian foreign aid. In doing so, they have embraced a nationalistic, threat-based case for (...)
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19 avril 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stéphanie Bacher and Kirsten Van Houten, April 20, 2020 The COVID-19 virus has now reached Africa, a few weeks after it hit Europe and North America. Many analysts fear that the virus’s impact on the continent is nothing less than a “time bomb”, due to a lack of adequate health (...)
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16 avril 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stephen Brown, April 16, 2020 Despite talking a good game when it comes to foreign aid, Canada is still not stepping up to the plate. Baseball metaphors are not my forte, but it is clear that Canada is refusing to contribute its fair share of development assistance. In (...)
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15 avril 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Hunter McGill and Lauchlan T. Munro, April 16, 2020 Aid-funded efforts to promote human rights, gender equality and good governance overseas have encountered many problems over the years. Impediments include low levels of funding, changing donor priorities and a projectized (...)
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8 avril 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Lauchlan T. Munro, April 9, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments around the world to take drastic policy measures, whose scale and scope are truly astonishing. Many of these measures were unthinkable only two months ago. As the nature of the policy responses to (...)
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6 avril 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Molly den Heyer, April 7, 2020 If you speak to any hardened international development practitioner, they will share stories about epidemics, states of emergency, conflicts and economic crises – but most will also acknowledge that this time is different. There is no (...)
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24 mars 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Clark Soriano and Rhonda Gossen, March 25, 2020 With a global health emergency now declared and COVID-19 present in most countries on earth, we need to ask: How should international assistance be used in this health emergency, beyond the usual items such as immediate (...)
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25 janvier 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog, January 27, 2020 Ten years ago this month, a massive earthquake struck Haiti, devastating the capital Port-au-Prince and other cities such as Léogâne and Jacmel. About 230,000 people were killed, with many more injured and tens of thousands of homes and small businesses (...)
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13 janvier 2020, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group blog by Stéphanie Bacher, January 14, 2020 Global Affairs Canada (GAC) recently held a dialogue on civic space and the environment for civil society in Canada and globally, with a focus on women and marginalized human rights defenders. The meeting’s main purpose was to discuss the (...)
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26 décembre 2019, par Stephen Brown
By Ian Smillie, December 30, 2019 Several members of the McLeod Group had the privilege of knowing and working with Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, the founder of BRAC, one of the world’s top NGOs (see our recent blog). He passed away on December 20, and we wanted to share an appreciation of him with our (...)
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16 décembre 2019, par Stephen Brown
December 17, 2019 Dear Deputy Minister MacLean, Congratulations on your appointment as Deputy Minister of International Development at Global Affairs Canada (GAC). We wish you all the very best as you settle into your new job. Since you have been a senior public servant before, you will know (...)
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17 novembre 2019, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Ryan Katz-Rosene, November 19, 2019 Yesterday’s blog highlighted the contradictions between economic development and climate action, focusing on the oil and gas sector. However, that is not to say that there’s no possible win-win scenario, even in the Prairies. In fact, (...)
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16 novembre 2019, par Stephen Brown
McLeod Group guest blog by Ryan Katz-Rosene, November 18, 2019 The 2019 federal election revealed an underlying contradiction between Canada’s climate change mitigation policy and its energy development strategy. On one hand, voters rewarded the Trudeau government’s efforts to take bold action on (...)
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