Bureaucratic Nightmare

Canadian International Development Agency CIDA Dept: For the public servants who have to execute this merger it will be a bureaucratic nightmare that makes major corporate takeovers pale by comparison. The new ministry will likely take years to jell into an effective organization, according to Vancouver Sun. The last time a shotgun marriage of this scale was attempted in the foreign relations machinery was in the early 1980s when Trade, Immigration and External Affairs were merged by the Trudeau government to create what was popularly known as the Three Headed Monster and Thursday federal budget marked the end of an era in Canada approach to foreign aid with the merging of the Canadian International Development Agency CIDA into the Department of Foreign Affairs DFA . To some this might seem like just another bureaucratic shuffle, meaningless in the broad scheme of things. To others, in the NGO community in particular, who rely on CIDA funding to do their jobs, this move represents the end of the world as they know it. The last big bureaucratic merger Ottawa went through was the post-911 attempt to create a Canadian version of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, when the Martin government established Public Safety Canada by merging the Department of the Solicitor General and its associated agencies, with the Border Services Agency and the Office of Critical Infrastructure and Emergency Preparedness. That new super ministry took years to come together effectively. Some claim it still has teething problems a decade later. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.