I am doing a series of articles on the book “Rethinking Canadian Aid” (University of Ottawa Press, 2015), and now it’s time for “Chapter 3: Revisiting the Ethical Foundations of Aid and Development Policy from a Cosmopolitan Perspective” by John D. Cameron.

The absorption of CIDA into DFATD and explicit subordination of aid policy to broader foreign policy suggests two possibilities for how we analyze aid and development policy. The first is to abandon any expectation that aid is connected to or inspired by moral concerns for the well-being of other people and to employ realist methodological perspectives that analyze aid purely as an instrument of foreign policy. […] The alternative […] is to re-examine the ethical basis for aid and to analyze aid in the context of a more theoretically consistent and coherent normative framework that draws attention to the broader range of government policies that affect developing countries.

I admit that I’m excited by the idea of putting aid ethics in a larger ethical framework, and while the first is an easy throwaway, the second argues for looking at policy coherence. I’m interested to see how deep he goes in defining coherence because there’s an assumption out in the literature, and particularly in many NGOs, that aid policy and foreign policy or more accurately trade policy are incoherent. They trumpet examples such as giving $40M in aid to a country while clawing back $25M in tariffs as obviously “incoherent”. Except that they haven’t first defined what they mean by incoherence, or which is the starting point and which is the ending point.

For example, if your opening “framework” was that you deal with all countries for trade on an equal playing field, and if they don’t support human rights, labour laws, environmental sustainability i.e. if they race to the bottom that unfairly “subsidizes” production by not incurring costs that more responsible producers incur, then that country pays tariffs (the above mentioned $25M), then you have a perfectly coherent trade policy. If you then say, “But wait, that’s a poor developing country that needs our help”, and the government turns around and gives them $40M in aid, including for human rights, labour, social development, education, governance, and the environment, it’s tantamount to giving them their $25M back and giving them an extra $15M. Still perfectly coherent trade policy — taxing the exploiters and pushing the country to raise its workplace regulations to match international standards. It even is perfectly coherent aid policy — helping those who need it, giving them money to help while still engaging them in trade which will pull them into the international community, laying the groundwork for long-term economic sustainability.

However, what is missing from the original complaint is “policy coherence for something” — you need an overriding policy that is the dominant one to resolve conflicts if/when conflicts arise. The Dutch and the OECD looked at this in the early 2000s and quickly found multiple levels/types of policy coherence — simple coherence where two policies conflicted (i.e. one said to do A, another said to do B), almost an administrative coherence; moderate coherence where two policies could work together for a common goal; or true coherence for a specific policy objective and everything that didn’t directly meet that objective was changed. This is what Cameron refers to as “policy coherence for development” and too often those last two phrases are left out, so I’m glad to see it so strongly highlighted.

What intrigues me too is that Cameron looks at two frameworks while studiously ignoring a third possibility — that while the humanistic portrayal says “poverty reduction”, there are many ways to meet that need, some of which are perhaps better delivered by Foreign Affairs and Trade than other forms. For example, if one of the priorities is economic development, and one of the sub-areas is private sector development, there are lots of micro-credit experts in development, but very few who know much about building coalitions of companies to advise governments what their negotiating strategy or positions should be at the WTO. That’s mainly Trade Commissioner territory. Put another way, there is another framework that says not just that there are “other policies” but one that says “other approaches are perfectly valid forms of poverty reduction, even approved as such by the OECD Development Assistance Committee”.

Ethical consistency and political responsibility suggest that scholars of aid should give equal consideration to positive and negative ethical duties. In practical methodological terms, this would require the expansion of our analytical frameworks beyond aid as an expression of positive duties to also include greater examination of the potential harms caused by both aid and non-aid aspects of development policy, in particular the ways in which other policies might undermine the impacts of aid.

While Cameron is quick to assume that we review the benefits of aid, and both the benefits and costs of non-aid, there are serious risks to the aid side too that are difficult to measure and evaluate, but no less concerning. Greater integration into the world economy opens those countries to shocks, building human rights institutions and strengthening rule of law helps stabilize aspects of governance but can also create new tensions that fragile governance systems are ill-equipped to manage. We do projects that are gender-sensitive, respect the environment, don’t displace Aboriginal communities, emphasize education and health, all with the latest tools. Except if the culture was not like that to begin with, there is a piece of it that must adapt or die. If that seems too esoteric, too remote, then let’s look at the number of projects that in conflict-torn regions provided mobile health services, complete with a vehicle so that the doctors and nurses could get to the injured. Sounds simple, right? Except that a week after the vehicle arrived, it was suddenly gone — and look, the military has a new troop carrier of the same size and shape, allowing them to attack farther afield. Not all development projects go according to plan, not all outcomes are foreseen. I wrote on Chapter 2 about the challenges of infrastructure projects (Critique of Rethinking Canadian Aid – Chapter 2 – Refashioning Humane internationalism) and the long-term unintended consequences. If you go farther back and look only at the “good intentions” of development projects, early projects that looked a lot like modern “Manifest Destiny” didn’t have very positive outcomes for Aboriginals. And all done with the best of intentions.

While the OECD/DAC emphasizes policy processes to enhance policy coherence for development, the Commitment to Development Index focuses explicitly on six non-aid policy areas (as well as aid itself) in its analysis of rich country development policies. Those six policy areas are trade, investment, migration, environment, security, and technology transfer (CGD 2013).

Having witnessed a number of the early discussions of the CDI, I am not as optimistic of the interpretation given to it. Most countries seemed to interpret it as “simple coherence” that eliminated externalities only, few were willing to go deep into the analysis. I love the idea of expanding to other areas, but I wish there was more “meat” to Cameron’s initial call to arms.

Take migration for example. The example given early is how Canada steals the medical professions from other countries, thus undermining their original health care system. It seems simple, seems obvious. So much so that many harp on it repeatedly and use it to beat the drums of injustice. Except there are three very big questions that any ethical framework would have to address, beyond those simplistic terms.

First, the UN Conventions on Human Rights (economic, social, political, civil) have mutually re-inforcing clauses that say labour mobility is a human right. A human right, full stop. Yet, the NGOs who advocate for strong human rights want foreign governments to limit a medical professional’s right to labour mobility because the origin country needs them. Some who are quite well-versed in labour mobility call that being held hostage; those more aggressive in their rhetoric call it slavery or at the very least indentured servitude. The ethical framework has to resolve that, or it cannot stand.

Second, there is a practical issue. How do you address the economic disconnect? There is a reason the doctors and nurses want to leave their home country. Not because they don’t like it, not because they hate their families, not because they don’t want to stay where they are — they leave because there aren’t enough paying jobs to sustain their families and they can make more money elsewhere. While the first part is purely on the “pull” factor of countries like Canada recruiting abroad, this is the internal push factor.

Eveline Herfkens used to tell a story of her first trip abroad as the Development Minister for the Netherlands. She went to Ghana and was going to renew a project that sent Dutch doctors to Ghana for sabbaticals basically to work and train new doctors in Ghana. When she announced to the Minister of Health the renewal, she asked why he didn’t seem happier. He said that sending a Dutch doctor was welcome but would cost her $200K. For the same money, he could pay maybe 4 doctors $50K more a year or even 10 doctors $20K more a year, and get 4-10 doctors instead of just one. Brilliant, she thought, so she changed the project, cancelled the Dutch doctors and agreed to fund the Ghanaian doctors. It seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Except that the next day, in the Dutch papers, the headlines read, “Herfkens kills African babies”. Because the reality was that she wasn’t going to send the Dutch doctors anymore, and they had the support to go plus wanted to go, and they wouldn’t get the results that they had before. Maybe similar results, or maybe different, but not the same. Was the headline inherently racist in its assumptions? Of course, but hiding in the weeds is that the only way to get the Ghanaian doctors to stay is to pay them more. They want to stay, few want to leave a stable home if the country isn’t going to pot, and many want to stay even if it IS going downhill (maybe even more so). But the ethical framework has to figure out how to remove a strong economic incentive to move. Oh, and by the way? There are some who view it a lot like paying polluters not to pollute — you’re paying them to “do the right thing” and not leave their country. It’s a bit messy.

Third, and perhaps most important, you’re going to have a framework that decides (on some basis, maybe GDP?) what is “best” for the origin country. It sounds simple, at first blush, stay and save people. Except here’s the kicker. What’s the biggest challenge? Poverty. How do you fix that? An influx of capital. What do all those medical professionals do when they start working elsewhere? Send home remittances. Money from outside the country.

In fact, back in 2002-2003, African countries put on their collective website of the African Union articles about the same topic, how foreign countries were stealing their medical professions. What happened? Other countries told them to take them down and shut up. Because a couple of the countries had looked over at the Philippines, realized that they too had little to develop to “export” other than people, and started investing in medical training. So they too could send their newly trained citizens abroad and get the remittances coming back. There are numerous countries in the world where remittances outpace trade, development and several other types of flows in/from the countries. Some OECD countries have even proposed the remittances count as development assistance.

So, that ethical framework that says Canada can’t steal health professionals needs a broader context to resolve not only the “why” but how to measure the impact. And, more pointedly even, who decides — the individual who wants to exercise their mobility rights and earn money for their family; the origin country’s government that wants them to send money back, have factored future remittances into their development plans, and doesn’t have the money to pay them themselves; the host country that wants and needs their skills; or the NGO or academic who thinks it’s wrong?

As with my previous infrastructure examples, the ethical framework has to be able to deal with really complex messy issues, some with no clear answers. I’m not sure the call to arms in Chapter 3 gets us there, but it’s a start.

I am doing a series of articles on the book “Rethinking Canadian Aid” (University of Ottawa Press, 2015), and now it’s time for “CHAPTER I: Humane Internationalism and the Malaise of Canadian Aid Policy” written by one of the co-editors, David R. Black.

He takes Pratt’s analysis and identifies three conceptual constructs.

First, he argued that Canadian political culture incorporated a robust and persistent, though eroding, element of “humane internationalism” (HI), defined as “an acceptance by the citizens of the industrialized states that they have ethical obligations towards those beyond their borders and that these in turn impose obligations on their governments” (Pratt 1989, 13). This orientation was, he argued, understood by its adherents to be consistent with the “real long-term interests of the rich countries,” but remained at its core ethical and cosmopolitan in orientation (Pratt 1989, 14).

Put more simply, there is a role to be played if you’re an international actor. I think it would be good if Black went a little beyond aid though — there are ethical obligations for peace-keeping and entries into war, going back to the time of feudal kings. Even if you yourself were not threatened, you had an obligation to aid an ally under attack. In those times it was more self-interested (mutual protection), but it was also the basis for chivalry and knights. It certainly was part of the argument for getting involved in European wars that didn’t directly threaten non-European borders.

The idea of the counter-consensus was Pratt’s second main conceptual contribution to the framing of Canadian foreign policy. It foreshadowed the growing interest in the role and influence of “civil society” and the “democratization” of foreign policy that came to the fore in the 1990s. […] Given what he understood to be HI’s public resonance and firm societal roots, the puzzle was why it had not had greater influence on the policy and practice of Canadian aid, which virtually all scholarly commentators saw as bedevilled by “mixed motives,” among which ethical considerations were typically (though not unremittingly) subordinated to more narrowly self-interested priorities.

One complaint I have with the characterization of an NGO consensus is that it represents a consensus at all, particularly in Canada. Consultations have shown again and again that when NGOs et al are asked what the Canadian government should do about problem X or in country Y or in sector Z, those same NGOs who argue for humane ideals (on which they do agree) are the same ones submitting extremely self-serving and divergent solutions. That’s not completely surprising on one front — if an NGO is focused on famines, they are obviously going to suggest that the world needs to do more on food security. Those who focus on water are going to suggest more needs to be done on water issues. Yet in most cases, it isn’t that “more” needs to be done but rather that there is no consensus as to what the priorities should be. In fact, there is an old joke at CIDA that it should have been renamed ATTAP — all things to all people. No one wants to talk about the old saw that up until about 1992, 80+ percent of all “aid” money was actually spent in Canada on Canadian NGOs. We have a strong history of supply-driven aid, much of which belies a “consensus” on anything more than “help people”.

To explain this puzzle, Pratt elaborated a “dominant class” approach, combining an emphasis on the relative autonomy of permanent officials within the state with an understanding that their conception of the “national interest” showed a persistent bias towards the interests of “capitalism in Canada.” Influenced by structural Marxism, combined in a “non-doctrinaire” manner with international realism and, in later versions, a neo-Gramscian attention to the precepts of neoliberal globalization, Pratt’s emphasis on the enduring influence of dominant class interests provided a basis for understanding the policy choices that were made (e.g., regarding tied aid, the choice of recipients, and the use of aid funds to promote private sector activity in developing countries) under the ethical cover of the aid program.

Yesterday I mentioned one of my complaints (Critique of Rethinking Canadian Aid – Introduction) with academic analysis looking like intellectual masturbation, particularly when it comes to political economy, and this sort of sophistry is where it falls apart for me. The short short short version is that we have a liberal democracy with a capitalist economy. What a shock to say that many of the government policies of the day reinforce the dominant ideals in both domains and that they also influence aid policy. It’s hard to imagine a large-scale government policy that doesn’t reflect the dominant ideologies in most western-style democracies. That’s how they work. It doesn’t create a separate “class” (economic or political) nor is it doing it under “ethical cover”. It doesn’t NEED ethical cover as if it is hidden or subversive. We have identical influences in every department — why would aid be different? And why would the government “apologize” for it?

Not that Black is wholly embracing of the Pratt analysis, noting that

[…]such ideal-typical contrasts have important analytical utility. However, they also have certain risks and ramifications when applied to the “real world” of policy. First, the ethical clarity of purpose associated with the “pure” articulation of HI is virtually impossible to approach in practice.[…] On the other hand, a discussion of development that does not embed a forthright and sophisticated discussion of ethical purpose will be an impoverished one. A policy domain that is centrally preoccupied with addressing the causes and consequences of global poverty will be infused, inevitably, with conceptions of and arguments about obligation and justice. What is needed, therefore, is a discussion that better captures the dilemmas and ambiguities of ethical purpose, without (implicitly or explicitly) discounting it as somehow “too hard” or too naïve.

I agree with the intent but not the direction. Black wants to take the NGO claim to “true” ethical concerns while tossing out “wrong” concerns for Canadian interests — but there is no normative basis to say that a Canadian government official that is appointed to work “for Canada” is somehow morally corrupt because they are interested in Canadian interests. The pillar of self-righteousness assumes the moral high ground, but with no ethical basis to do so. Person A wants to help foreigners, Person B wants to help Canadians — that isn’t an ethical dilemma that can be solved through rhetoric or solved at all. In fact, there are a lot of people who think that Person A is actually “wrong” in their approach and that the “right” or “true approach” that will work is self-interest. With equally compelling “ethical” arguments going back to Kant and Rousseau. The fact that one is more “attractive” to the NGOs doesn’t make it “the one true way”, like a religion.

I’m going to digress here for a moment with more of a personal revelation. Despite the fact that I work for the government, and support its policies and programs in as non-partisan fashion as I can, I think the NGOs are correct that our aid policies and practices should be primarily if not exclusively based on altruism and serving developing country interests. However, having studied ethics, political economy, philosophy, human rights, and law, I also believe that there is a limit to normative views and that on some levels, when consensus is not “self-evident”, relativism has to invariably creep in. Person A may have an absolute belief in self-interest or at least “national self-interest” (to be more precise), but they have no greater or lesser claim to normative roles for government than the altruist unless one of those “beliefs” eventually rises to the level of a human right. Only at that point does it become normative; up until then, it’s all choices.

David Morrison, in his landmark 1998 history of CIDA, noted that “while polls have consistently shown humanitarian sentiment as the leading reason people give for supporting aid, they have also revealed scant general knowledge about the nature or extent of Canadian development assistance — and, except for a small minority, a low ranking in comparison with other public goods” (Morrison 1998, 440). Noël, Thérien, and Dallaire (2004) used publicly available polling data to elaborate on this point, and further noted that there was a deep divide between a soft majority of Canadians who were broadly supportive of aid and a substantial minority who were deeply sceptical or even hostile towards it.

I don’t think this type of analysis actually moves the yardstick forward. What is actually needed is a more nuanced survey that also asks what people (including Parliamentarians) think development actually IS. That sounds pedestrian, doesn’t it? Asking them what development means? Yet even the NGOs can’t agree. In OECD terms, there’s a division between humanitarian assistance, transition programming, and regular development. Yet when CIDA engages with the NGOs and more importantly the average Canadian, they ask about “development”, yet the support from Canadians is for humanitarian assistance. It’s why the average Canadian talks about earthquakes, and floods, and tsunamis, and does stupid things like shipping a box of used shoes around the world to “help”. The level of understanding and the broad support that NGOs claim exists is a very large but extremely shallow puddle.

Let’s take a practical example. If you ask most Canadians if food and shelter are development, they’ll say “of course”. (Note, it’s probably not, just humanitarian aid that acts as triage on a gaping wound – the patient stays alive, but they’re not living.) If you ask them if organizing a meeting of NGOs to talk about the country’s needs is “development”, about half say yes. The other half say no because they don’t see it as doing anything — just talk. Yet the governance people would cry “of course”!

Now, go one step further, and say the NGOs have got together and agreed that the people need a water irrigation system for their crops. And look, there’s a Canadian company with the technology and time and availability to do it. Can I hire them to do it, maybe even using local labour to install and run it? And is it development? The locals say of course; the Canadians would say about 80% yes; and the NGOs in Canada would scream “No, that’s self-interest, you can’t do it.”

While I hesitate to go Machiavellian and look more to the end than the means, the definition of development is fairly clear. A development activity that aids a developing country. It doesn’t care WHY we did the development activity, as long as there were benefits to the developing country. How and Who benefits, not an ethical debate of motive.

If one wants to go down that rabbit-hole, there is a much bigger and simpler ethical dilemma that the NGOs can`t answer. Is it better to do something that aids Canada and helps a developing country grow and survive, yet has a moral taint according to the NGOs, or to risk doing nothing for lack of domestic support and let them remain unaided in poverty, yet Canadian consciences can remain calm that doing nothing was for the right reasons? NGOs would argue that the question is a strawman that wrongly frames the question, and I don’t disagree. But if the NGOs want to stand on high ground and claim ethical normativism, then their position has to be able to answer these types of questions unequivocally, not just reframe them to make it an easier one.

I have to confess that Black loses me when talking about CIDA forming alliances with other departments.

It meant, as well, that development analysts and practitioners were less attentive than they might have been to opportunities for forging strategic relationships and alliances with people and branches in other government departments, so as to enlarge and strengthen the constituency for development assistance within government. It would be naïve to think that this could be easily or widely achieved, but it could potentially broaden the range of opportunities and support for development issues within the apparatus of the state.

So, going back to what I said above, I don’t think CIDA reflecting “government of Canada priorities” is any different from any other department. Yet, for some reason, it is assumed that forging alliances with those other departments (who by their nature are even more domestically and nationally oriented than DFAIT) would help entrench more human internationalism. Having worked in CIDA and DFAIT for 12 years, I cannot think of a single time when interacting with other government departments didn’t have the officials at CIDA arguing for more poverty reduction focus and less national interest focus demanded by the other partners.

Nevertheless, the increasingly pressing question for many aid sceptics, on both the right and the left, was whether aid was doing any good at all for those it ostensibly sought to assist. Would, for example, a more generous aid program translate into better life prospects for poor people and communities? Would the gains made be sustainable, or would they deepen distortions and dependencies? Would the good work undertaken by aid agencies be effectively undermined or even negated by macroeconomic policies or foreign investments (e.g., in the extractive sector) promoted by other arms of the Canadian state?

Ultimately, when you take out the normative claims, results are pretty much all you are left with, which still sounds quite Machiavellian, although the ethical argument is about motive, not actually the means. Which approach produces better results? Evidence is extremely mixed on a good day, and involve a lot of assumptions of relative value. Some who operate on purely capitalist ideology would argue that if the standard of living goes up, everything is good — they may not care about rule of law, gender equity, the environment, human rights, or social mobility. If a culture is destroyed but the patient lives, the operation was a success. Others obviously have different measuring sticks. Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen debated the proper “stick” at length when ul Haq was creating the UNDP Human Development Index, and even they couldn’t agree (including on what eventually became the Millennium Development Goals).

In doing so, however, Canadian development scholars and analysts arguably neglected a series of critical trends in migration, remittances, investment, ecology, and the like. To be sure, they (or rather we) did not ignore these important trends. Nevertheless, given the ongoing emphasis on the study of Canadian aid policy and the debate about its underlying motivations and purposes, less attention was given to the interconnections between development assistance and these broader trends than their importance warranted.

While I disagree with some of the conclusions and approaches of Black throughout the chapter, I love this last section. I’m hoping others pick this up in more detail in the rest of the book, but with not much foreshadowing here in his text, I have my doubts. Development includes many things, and aid is but one; even in considerations of development “flows”, and financing, there are some sources that eclipse aid dramatically. I have hopes that someday we will see a full framework enunciated by someone that talks about the various flows in a coherent fashion, including knowledge, people and resources, and stops assuming it is only about resources.