The Incredible Shrinking Country

“Canada Is Disappearing.”The words reached deep within many of us on the Foreign Affairs Committee as we listened to the state of affairs in the Great Lakes region of Africa, an area that contains Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.They were uttered by Serge Blais, Program Officer for the Development and Peace Organization.  Previous to his presentation, he had sat at the rear of the room and listened as officials from CIDA reported that, despite the fact the agency itself was pulling a large portion of their funding from many of these nations, it was still doing good work and Canada’s image was strong in the region.No so, said the next witness, Denis Tougas, Director of Programs for Africa, for Entraide Missionnaire Inc.  He alluded to the steadily deteriorating situation in the region and concluded by observing that, “Canada is losing interest in the area.”  Well, what were to make of that after what we just heard from the CIDA officials?By the time Mr. Blais made his claim, a certain urgency came into the committee room.  Was he right?  Is Canada no longer a strong influence in Africa?  I had declined the opportunity to press CIDA officials on how they could justify pulling much of their aid out of place like the Congo because the organization has been under constant assault for years and I felt no desire to make it worse.  But after hearing Serge Blais share his insights, I grew troubled, as did others on the committee.And there’s the problem.  Rwanda haunts the Canadian mindset still.  And the Democratic Republic of the Congo has lost some 4 million people in the last number of years.  These are countries plagued by deep problems.  Yet progress was being made, much of it due to CIDA’s efforts.  But if Blais and Tougas are right, these countries are falling back and CIDA’s recent pullout announcement will only speed up that process.Canadians have some serious things to consider.  We have a well-deserved international reputation for being the country that got itself dirty working in the hardest regions on earth, fighting for human rights, buildings schools and promoting public health.  We even got a Nobel Peace Prize for the effort.  Anyone who has traveled extensively knows exactly what I’m talking about.  But we’re in the process of disappearing. We are receding into the fringes of the world’s consciousness.  Our greatness isn’t so much misplaced as it is being forgotten.  CIDA will have to do better than this.  The Canadian government will have to engage the world more effectively.  We’ll all have to do better as citizens before our presence is removed from the memory of the world’s most desolate places.