Canada's role over the past decade on the global scene has witnessed a change, and not one for the better, say panelists at a recent event held in Ottawa.

It's a role Canada needs to renounce, with a return to the days when our nation's foreign policy was viewed in a kinder light. 

At the Jan. 30 event entitled “Reclaiming Canada’s Foreign Policy,” Obianuju Ekeocha, pro-life author and activist, and David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to China, spoke of the urgent need for a reset in Canadian foreign aid policy.

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The Ottawa event was organized by Campaign Life Coalition, co-sponsored by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Culture of Life Africa and hosted at the Ottawa offices of non-partisan think tank Cardus.

Over the past 10 years, Ekeocha says “Canada changed, in my eyes and in the eyes of many around the world, from ‘Canada, the kind’ to ‘Canada, the coercive.’ ”

In 2018, Ekeocha wrote Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century and the following year produced Strings Attached, a documentary film that examined the devastating effects upon African women of foreign aid that promotes contraception and abortion.

Born and educated in Nigeria, Ekeocha went to England in 2006 for graduate studies in biomedical science and has since worked in health sciences.

“I was very interested in health even before I started doing pro-life work. I wasn’t interested because of faith or ideology, but just as someone who had worked in Africa and had witnessed the abysmal situation of the health-care system. I just wanted to know: how can things be better?”

In 2010, Ekeocha had hope that Canada might provide an answer to her question. That year, at the G8 summit held in Huntsville, Ont., in the Muskoka region north of Toronto, a Canadian-led foreign aid policy initiative was launched. The Muskoka Initiative committed member states to $5 billion in spending to improve maternal, newborn and child health in African countries.

Ekeocha says that when she first became involved in pro-life work, she was not attuned to the realities of political partisanship in Western nations. She had “no idea of the difference between a Bush administration and a Clinton administration.” For her, the attractiveness of the Muskoka Initiative had nothing to do with the Harper government or the Conservative Party of Canada, but rather an appreciation for a project that closely tracked and addressed the real needs of African women.

Ekeocha told the Ottawa crowd, “African maternal mortality rate remains the highest in the world, and I call it one of the ugly scars of African countries.”

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The Muskoka Initiative spearheaded hundreds of projects that sought to address those problems. With the election of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government in 2015 however, Canada's priorities began to change.

“There was now a new group of people who decided to inherit something that was so beautiful, so well accommodated by the giver and the recipient, and completely hollow it out,” said Ekeocha.

This attenuation was accomplished by the introduction in 2017 of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (CFIAP), and the 2019 announcement that Canada would spend $1.4 billion to “support women and girls’ health around the world” with half of the funds earmarked for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

Ekeocha says these funding priorities are not in response to the real needs of African women but instead reflect Canadian ideological commitments. This, she says, “is where David comes in.”

The connection between Mulroney and Ekeocha came after Ekeocha had the opportunity to show her film Strings Attached to a group of Canadian legislators and diplomats. After hearing her speak, Mulroney says the “scales fell from my eyes.”

“I began to see that indeed we were guilty of this kind of neocolonialism, this ideological colonization.”

Mulroney articulated his concern for a foreign policy that has lost its way and tarnished Canada’s international reputation in the process.

“We are engaged in policies of overturning and undermining cultures that we don't understand and don't seem to respect," he said. "This is doing real damage at the community level in societies where communities are cohesive and important. It is also doing damage to Canada's reputation. It's not a good idea to lose friends, but Canada as a middle power needs friends.”

Ekeocha concluded her remarks with a frank plea to Canadian policymakers.

“I would appeal to people who develop policy, who write policy and who advise the government on policy issues, please rethink your proceedings.”

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In an interview with The Catholic Register in advance of the Jan. 30 event, Ekeocha noted, “There's a confluence of things that are happening at the moment that means we are in a very unique position.”

With U.S. President Donald Trump’s reinstitution of the Mexico City Policy which requires non-governmental organizations working in foreign countries to certify they neither provide nor promote abortion as a condition of receiving federal funding, and an uncertain political situation in Canada, Ekeocha senses that the time is right for a frank assessment of Canadian foreign aid priorities.