Event Summary:
Trade and Foreign Aid Event
March 4 2009
Speakers: Ian Smillie, Robert Calderisi, Parker Mitch
Location: Hart House- Debates Room
On the evening of Wednesday, 4 March, a full house of over 200 people attended a joint CIC Toronto branch and the Hart House Debates Committee panel discussion on the University of Toronto campus on “Trade and Foreign Aid: Can We Make Poverty History?.” The three expert panel members discussing the topic were Ian Smillie (International development consultant,founder of Inter Pares, and writer of “Freedom From Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the Global Grassroots Organization That's Winning the Fight Against Poverty”), Robert Calderisi (author of ‘The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working) and Parker Mitchell (co-founder and co-CEO of Engineers Without Borders).
The panelists opening statements were followed by a lively and interactive question and answer period. CIC members, Hart House Debates Committee members and those who asked questions from the floor were invited then invited to the post-event cocktail reception.
The expert panel of three reviewed the traditional model of aid to deal with poverty, noting that there continues to be pockets of tremendous poverty even after 40 years of concerted effort. All panelists agreed that tied-aid, the principle of giving money conditional on it being spent on Canadian businesses, was ineffective and was a major reason for the challenges Official Development Aid had encountered.
After 15-minute opening remarks from the three panelists the floor was opened for an Q&A period.
The audience, much like the panelists, had passionate stances regarding what should be done to help poor nations.
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Question
“Does foreign aid have a social corrosive effect?”
Answer
Robert Calderisi addressed the question by describing how ‘giving and receiving’ can at some times be extremely challenging. However, he emphasized that to receive aid is surprisingly even more difficult, since it requires and honest understanding of why the aid is in fact needed. In his opinion, this factor is often neglected to the population of the receiving country.
Parker Mitchell identified imbalance as the main factor. Specifically, the imbalance of high-paying jobs in developmental organizations which result in government employees spending useless amounts of time and resources on workshops run b NGO’s. These workshops were designed in his opinion to “top up abysmal salaries”- an issue which he feels can be stopped in only one other way- stopping bribery.
Question
“Should aid organizations be amalgamated so there is less duplication and waste?
Answer
Parker Mitchell highlighted that amalgamation causes more inefficiency and less transparency. His reasoning was that organizations like CIDA, which in his view are ineffective, would be more prevalent and simply less would get done. He felt that it created more bureaucracy in area that needed less.
Question
“This event is about trade and foreign aid, but it seems like we’ve only talked about foreign aid. What can we do about trade-? Trade should be much more supported, in my opinion.”
Answer
“We need to look at Africa. We need to focus on the African perspective of poverty. “
Calderisi felt that “we in the developed world cannot begin to comprehend the thoughts and needs in the developing world”, that it was essential that we do our best to listen to try to understand what Africans need. He said it was impossible for us to ever know what it was like to be in a third world nation such as Africa.
Parker Mitchell had a slightly different stance. He argued that while we could never know what it was like in Africa, to gain the best perspective would be to not impose our ideas and ideologies in a nation that wasn’t designed to adopt them.
Ian Smillie reciprocated Mr. Mitchell’s thoughts. He outlined that we need the people of the aid receiving country to run the developmental programs. These developmental program need to take on the mold of successful organizations such as BRAC, which has the population of Bangladesh leading their own country. Which, in his opinion, is more successful approach because nationals will be aware of the specific needs of their country. Moreover, the BRAC initiative makes developmental projects more accountable.
Question
“Who benefits and suffers from the carbon trading?”
Answer
Calderisi, while unfamiliar with the issue believed that carbon trading was fallible idea, susceptible to the unwanted encouragement of producing even more pollution.
Smillie, while his comment was short, it addressed many of the questions in one sentence: “I’m not entirely sure about this situation, but Africa will get suck with short end of the stick- they always manage to end up with it, even when they’re not supposed to- major changes need to be done.”
View the event flyer: Flyer.
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