Canada cut projects to Catholic agency despite staff recommendations

Canada cut projects to Catholic agency despite staff recommendations

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TORONTO (CNS) -- Government staffers described the bishops' Development and Peace agency as "Canada's most experienced development organization supported exclusively by Canadians" -- then slashed its funding. Internal emails, briefing notes and memoranda obtained by The Catholic Register, a national weekly, reveal that a government decision to cut funding to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace in 2012 went against the advice of almost everyone consulted, including its own bureaucracy. Last spring's massive cut in funding is not recommended anywhere in 235 pages of documents The Catholic Register obtained from the Canadian International Development Agency through an Access to Information request. Instead, in an email outlining Development and Peace's five-year proposal for $49.2 million in funding for 20 countries, CIDA program officer Doug Henderson told the agency's media relations department, "CIDA has analyzed and agreed with the results... and the amounts allocated in the budget ... and to the entire five-year project. Extensive due diligence has been carried out up front." In a briefing prepared for Canadian International Development Agency President Margaret Biggs, staffers said, "This is a strong proposal from an experienced partner." The Aug. 31, 2011, briefing -- delivered the same day Development and Peace's previous five-year funding agreement ran out -- praised the agency for its outstanding record since 1968.

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Source: http://www.georgiabulletin.org/world/2013/01/17/news-6/?s=

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