Time To Man The Lifeboats?

The government's attempts to silence its critics took a strange twist and a new low this week as CIDA suddenly cut funding to a major faith-based group it has worked with for almost four decades.  KAIROS was initially formed to help pull together the voices of the Anglican Church, Christian Reformed, Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterian, Quakers, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the United Church, to name only some. Their work has been vital enough that CIDA has established a working relationship with the group in order to enhance its own reach around the globe.Somehow KAIROS found itself in the company of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the former head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and now Richard Colvin, in an odd grouping facing the wrath of the Conservative government. It's application for the funding period 2009-2013 proceeded swiftly up through the ranks of decision makers of CIDA until it landed on the minister's desk five months ago. KAIROS continued its work in the meantime, carrying out numerous projects in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Some of its efforts involved pressing the government to take climate change seriously at the upcoming Copenhagen summit and also to urge the Harper Conservatives to take Corporate Social Responsibility seriously by looking at the poor human rights records of a few Canadian mining companies around the world.  Ultimately, it was these last two initiatives that did them in, as Ottawa opted to add KAIROS to the list of those who should suffer for speaking truth to power.And example of just how bad it's getting occurred in Question Period yesterday. Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae opened the session with two questions on the Afghan detainee situation. For his third query he turned to CIDA minister Bev Oda and asked why KAIROS, of all groups, would be suddenly cut from funding following 35 years of important work with CIDA. The response he got was from the Minister of Transport. Now this means something. John Baird is the "go-to" guy for anything the government is trying to hide. Opposition members in the Commons at times chant "deflect, deny, deceit" when he responds, and for a certain reason. These past weeks he's risen to fend off questions on the lack of stimulus funding, the detainee situation in Afghanistan, and now an inter-faith group with a sterling record of service across the globe. This Transport minister pops up whenever the government is in trouble on a file, and it knows that cutting KAIROS could have serious implications for its own lack of credibility in climate change solutions and human rights intervention. Bob Rae couldn't even get a response from the CIDA minister herself.We all know that CIDA has fallen on hard times; it struck an iceberg a number of years ago and has been listing since. Rather than defending the rights of the poor and oppressed, it has now signed on to a political ideology that seeks to crush those who question its actions. Pronouncements of CIDA's demise because of its ineffectiveness have been mounting in the last two years specifically because it has received fatal damage but refuses to take remedial action to keep itself afloat.Well, with this cut of KAIROS, the Agency has made a decision that will cause it to lose many of those who sought to keep it afloat. Within CIDA itself, workers fought to get KAIROS its money, only to be overruled in the end by their political masters. Political ideology has trumped (and thumped!) pragmatic and compassionate social justice. KAIROS discovered the situation only with a last-minute phone call, leaving the group scrambling with its own future - a remarkable act of unprofessionalism that mirrors the earlier shock of African leaders who discovered their CIDA funding was cut by hearing about it in the media.I have defended CIDA despite criticisms for doing so, but I'm now wondering if it's taken on too much water. Perhaps we should consider dropping the lifeboats over the side since there appears absolutely no desire to correct the damage and partner with those who can repair it. A very, very sad day.