This article originally appeared in the Hub. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By David Mulroney, June 25, 2024
The Canadian Public Service enshrines respect for democracy among its core values. Public servants are required to faithfully implement the policies of a new government regardless of their own political views. If they can’t, public servants must disclose this impediment and accept the possible consequences that flow from it.
But despite this, there has always been a tendency for some public servants to try and keep programming at arm’s length from unwanted oversight. This tendency was, in my experience, particularly acute at the former Canadian International Development Agency, or CIDA.
When I served as foreign policy advisor to the prime minister (a public service appointment within the Privy Council Office) I struggled for months to obtain a list of initiatives Canada was supporting at the U.N. under the heading of “Maternal Health.” I came to believe I was being stonewalled because officials were reluctant to reveal the extent to which Canada was promoting abortion in the developing world.
As associate deputy minister of foreign affairs with special responsibility for coordinating our mission in Afghanistan, it took me months to obtain a list of CIDA’s hodgepodge of programming in that country. I needed this because there was a worrying disconnect between the projects CIDA wanted to fund and the Kandahar mission then being undertaken by the Canadian Forces.
And as ambassador for Canada in China, I refused to sign off on a CIDA project that had as its objective improving the business skills of Tibetan women dubiously identified as “sex workers.” I suggested that we instead offer training in skills that would free women in Tibet from having to sell themselves to Chinese truckers to feed their families. CIDA ignored me and quietly secured project sign-off back at headquarters.
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