Foreign Affairs: Canadian International Development Agency

Federal Bureaucracy Dept: Harper came to office in 2006 harbouring a deep distrust of the federal bureaucracy, which he considered a catacomb of Liberal sympathizers. He held a particular animus for foreign affairs, whose officials he thought of as elitist, having never travelled abroad. More crucially, he feared their resistance to his blind support of Israel, according to The Star. Harper s latest cut of $523.5 million over four years at foreign affairs comes on top of two earlier ones. He may be driven partly by the populist notion of stripping the pinstriped brigade of their martini lunches. But in reality, Canadian diplomats are among the hardest working civil servants, besides being among the brightest yet quintessentially modest Canadians and the Stephen Harper government was ready to splurge $25 billion or more for fighter jets. It s spending $9 billion for jails we don t need. But it has no money for programs and agencies it does not like. It has been axing or starving them for example, the CBC, the Canadian International Development Agency, the foreign affairs department and the Montreal-based human rights group, Rights & Democracy, in this latest round of cuts alone. His compulsive need to control all government communications hit our diplomats particularly hard. It hobbled their ability to publicly speak for Canada, something they have long been very good at. He muzzled them so much that, in 2008, the John Manley commission on Afghanistan publicly criticized him for preventing our embassies and ambassadors from representing our interests abroad. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.