Shifting Purpose

This article analyzes Canada's foreign aid relations with Asia, including the range of motivations and reasons why the Canadian government, at this historical juncture, should rethink how and why it gives scarce public resources to promote, among other things, the wellbeing of people in Asian countries and strategic ties with Asia. This includes addressing not just developmental purposes in Canada's aid relations with Asia but other - namely diplomatic and commercial - purposes. The basic argument is that Canada has a tradition of successfully leveraging its foreign aid relations with Asian countries for a comprehensive set of foreign policy objectives, but that more recently Ottawa has been slow to respond to Asia's dramatic evolution and to key shifts in the global order more broadly.1 Canada's aid strategy has not been adjusted adequately to allow for the effective recalibration of Canada's foreign relations with the rising powers of that region.While it has become fashionable in the international donor community to speak of the issue-area as "developmental assistance" or "development cooperation," it is suggested that development - the pursuit of economic and social progress in low-income countries - is only one of the purposes of foreign aid. Foreign aid is understood here as a policy tool, which can be used to achieve a number of purposes. The purpose of aid is evident not only in the goals that are set by donor governments, but in the actions that are taken on amounts given, country allocation, and use. Carol Lancaster has recently outlined that foreign aid is used for four main purposes: diplomatic, developmental, humanitarian relief, and commercial.2 Whereas the second and third purposes are the least controversial, the first and fourth are more so. However in the real world of development, all four purposes are in play, and governments usually have mixed purposes for providing foreign aid. Canada is no exception.The article concludes with policy recommendations on how Canada can adjust strategically to the rise of China and India as rising powers and as emerging donors by reenvisioning economic diplomacy as one dimension of aid policy.REASONS FOR CONCERNThe shiiting global orderCanada's foreign aid relations with Asia take place within the country's broader foreign policy framework. Asia's dramatic economic and social development over the past three decades presents Canada with a number of foreign policy challenges. One is the question of the continuing relevance of Canada as an international partner in Asia. Another is whether the rise of China and India will change the international system and the architecture of international organizations that Canada has helped build since the end of the Second World War. Asia's economic rise raises concerns about whether Canada has a clear sense of purpose or well-identified priorities in pursuing its relations with the world's most dynamic region. If current predictions are correct and Asia continues along its overall upward growth path, rationality would suggest that Canadians would want to be well positioned vis-a-vis the future hub of the world economy and a region that is home to four of the world's emerging or great powers - China, Japan, India, and Russia. If Canada wishes to once again punch above its diplomatic weight and effectively promote Canadian interests and values abroad, one would think that serious consideration should be given to how best to engage the Asian region in the future. In brief, Asia's sustained rise is the driver of the shifting global order.Ottawa has put an enormous amount of government attention and resources into aiding the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and containing the spread of religious extremism in neighbouring countries in the subregion. However, there has been a major strategic gap in terms of Canada's broader geopolitical and geo-economic interests in Asia. The rise of India and China - economically, politically, and diplomatically - only highlights the inadequacies of Canada's foreign aid relations with two of the world's main emerging powers. …