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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Students protest cuts to foreign aid
Boris Minkevich / Winnipeg Free Press Brenda Chaput-Saltel (from left), Chloe Ryan and Jenna Sto Domingo hold the handprints of people opposed to the cuts. (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store
University of Manitoba students signed petitions Wednesday and others pledged on Facebook to fast Good Friday to protest federal budget cuts to foreign aid projects.
The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is the latest non-government aid agency to see its funding from the Canadian International Development Agency slashed; the Mennonite Central Committee and Kairos suffered earlier cuts.
Kairos, a church-backed aid organization, was at the centre of a 2009 scandal over doctored documents that earned Bev Oda, the international co-operation minister, a rebuke in the Commons.
Unlike Kairos and MCC, Development and Peace retained some of its funding but faces a 65 per cent cut -- from $44.5 million to $14.5 million over the next five years -- in the wake of this month's budget.
"The reduction in funding from CIDA, it's major, a 65 per cent cut in the amount of funding we have to work with," executive director Michael Casey said from Montreal.
The agency, which runs 186 projects in 30 of the world's poorest countries, is evaluating which projects will survive. It draws 60 per cent of its funding from the Roman Catholic Church and private donations. CIDA targeted its aid to projects in seven countries that will go on.
The agency learned about the cuts in February and since then, 260 people have pledged on Facebook to fast on Good Friday.
No one knows how many will go through with the pledge, but the call was circulated not only on Facebook but in every Roman Catholic parish in Canada, including Manitoba, as well as among community groups and universities.
"There are quite a few people fasting to make a statement," said Brenda Chaput-Saltel, a Manitoba spokeswoman for Development and Peace.
The Manitoba Development and Peace youth group is circulating petitions on university campuses and gathering letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to protest the cut, the deepest in the agency's history.
"We've been close partners with CIDA for 45 years, and they're facing major cuts in their own operations. We're all in this together," Casey said.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops set up Development and Peace in 1967 to engage in work around the world to ease poverty and promote justice.
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 5, 2012 A12
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