The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is happy with the $600 million increase included in the latest federal budget
The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is pleased with the Canadian government’s recent budget announcement to increase international assistance by $600 million after five years.
“We are welcoming this step that’s been taken in this budget as good news,” said Jim Cornelius, executive director of the non-profit agency based in Winnipeg.
“The current international assistance budget is about $5.2 billion. After five years, with the new funding, there will be an additional $600 million, bringing the new total to $5.8 billion, an 11 percent increase.”
The budget will increase by $200 million in the first year and $100 million in each previous year.
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Cornelius said Canadian funding for international assistance is critical in addressing global poverty, inequality and hunger. It reflects Canadian values, compassion and fairness by helping the poorest and most vulnerable people through life-saving interventions and breaking the cycle of poverty.
“Canadians like to think of ourselves as generous people and Canadians are generous. That also needs to be reflected in the way publicly we support international assistance and efforts to reduce and end extreme poverty around the world,” he said.
“It’s a great step to begin to reinvest and starting to put the funds back into this, what we consider to be a vital program.”
One of the ways that international aid is measured is how much is provided as a share of a country’s gross national income.
The United Nations set the global target for country donors at .7 several years ago — Canada is currently providing .26 GNI.
“With these increases, it will stay around .26 percent, given the expected growth on the Canadian economy,” he said.
The new base budget for humanitarian assistance also saw a welcomed increase to $700 million, which has more than doubled from the old base of $300 million.
The added funding improves predictability by allowing officials and program managers to better plan how they will respond to ongoing crisis and emergency relief of people and their needs in a timelier manner.
“This is providing life saving support when there’s conflict and people are displaced when there’s drought and flooding and earthquakes,” he said.
Cornelius said past budgets for emergency relief were too low, which meant the government would continually have to find money from other parts of the budget to respond to unexpected crisis.
“It meant it was very difficult sometimes to plan around this because the base budget was at a certain level even though you knew you’d get more money, but you didn’t know when and how,” he said.
“So they’ve recognized that the levels of needs around the world are much higher and will continue to be higher.”
