By Minaz Kerawala, Communications and Public Relations Advisor
Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada (DPCC) notes with consternation that Budget 2025 proposes reducing international development assistance by $2.7 billion over four years. It is also deeply disturbing that this and other cuts are being made principally to boost military spending.
“As a Catholic organization, we find it unbelievable that when the world needs more bread, Canada wants to make more bombs,” said Carl Hétu, executive director of DPCC.
Referring to a webinar we co-hosted last month, Hétu added, “Our partners who are feeding malnourished children in Sudan and Somalia just told us that Canadian aid is a ‘demonstration of deep solidarity and compassion’ and a ‘lifeline for the most vulnerable.’ Cutting aid means cutting that lifeline and abandoning the hungry, the displaced and the dispossessed. That is not Canadian!”
Budget 2025: a cut that makes little sense
“Budget 2025 not only breaks a promise, it also misses an opportunity for Canada to take the lead on the international stage when others are pulling back,” Hétu said, alluding to the prime minister’s campaign commitment to not cut foreign aid and to the ongoing retreat of many Western countries from aid funding. He added that slashing official development assistance (ODA) “doesn’t even square with the government’s own stated priorities.”
The foreword to Budget 2025 lays out the government’s desire to respond to a profoundly changing world with a “generational investment strategy,” especially to “protect Canadians in an increasingly fractured world.”
ODA spending is not an expense, but a strategic investment, as Cooperation Canada, a coalition of NGOs that includes DPCC, highlighted in its submission to the pre-budget consultations. The submission cites research showing that investing in development and governance reduces conflict risks; that conflict prevention can be 60 times more cost-effective than military intervention; and that ODA investments pay off in increased exports.
It is particularly regrettable that the bulk of the ODA cuts proposed in Budget 2025 are in the health sector because health aid is known to be exceptionally effective at increasing life expectancy, reducing child mortality and enhancing donor countries’ standing abroad.
Canada’s decision to cut ODA is therefore far from the “fundamentally different response—not one of caution, but of courage” that the government says it wants Budget 2025 to be.
Budget 2025: better sense can still prevail
These concerns are shared by many of DPCC’s peers. Right after the budget was tabled on November 4, we joined over 100 Canadian civil society organizations in criticizing the proposed cuts to international aid.
Precisely because of the difficult realities described in the foreword to Budget 2025, DPCC urges the Government of Canada to reconsider its decision to cut ODA funding. We also call opposition parties to include the maintenance of ODA funding along with the protection of welfare programs here in Canada among their conditions for supporting it.
“It is not too late to reverse this disastrous decision,” Hétu said. “Canada’s budget must reflect Canada’s values of compassion and generosity. Prime Minister Carney, please keep your word. Please don’t cut international aid. Lives depend on it!”