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Think-tank teeters on the brink despite Tory strategy for Americas

OTTAWA - Canada's top think-tank on relations with Latin America and the Caribbean is on the brink of closure, starved for funds under a Conservative government that has declared the Americas a foreign-policy priority.

FOCAL, or the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, was created in 1990 under the Mulroney Conservatives. At the time, Canada was joining the Organization of American States as a full member and taking a more active interest in the hemisphere with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Back then, both the Foreign Affairs Department and the Canadian International Development Agency provided substantial funding to FOCAL. Foreign Affairs even provided civil servants to serve on its executive, picking up the tab.

The organization has often served as a government ally in pushing Canadian interests at the OAS and in its member countries, and has become a hub for Canadians with business and other links to Latin America.

But funding for FOCAL at Foreign Affairs evaporated when the Harper government came to power in 2006. Since then, it has been hanging by a thread through projects funded by CIDA, an agency more focused on delivering services in the developing world than pushing Canadian interests.

Money will run out by the end of the year, and CIDA won't approve new projects until September when it may be too late for the organization.

FOCAL remains Canada's only independent think-tank on the region, apart from university-based research units.

"We've come to a point in this country with public-policy institutes where the current models are not viable, and that's an issue that we're wrestling with at FOCAL," said spokesman Carlo Dade, who has been volunteering as executive director while working on specific projects.

"Working with CIDA is not viable financially. ... We don't have a viable model and FOCAL has been through this for years and suffered the slow degradation of capacity and the ability to work — and this can't continue."

Part of the problem is that FOCAL was not given an endowment by the federal government when it was founded. By contrast, the Asia Pacific Foundation was given $50 million in 2005 that has kept it stable and helped it leverage funds from other governments and the private sector.

"If you look at the funding that the Asia Pacific Foundation gets, there's just no comparison, even though Latin America represents a fair greater proportion of Canadian trade and investment than Asia does," says University of Calgary professor Pablo Policzer, the Canada research chair in Latin American politics and a recent fellow at FOCAL.

"They should be doubling, tripling, quadrupling their budget. It shows a great deal of nearsightedness."

Dade notes that Canada does not have the same culture as the United States, where large corporations send millions to promote independent policy work. Some of FOCAL's work has been funded by the private sector, but not enough to keep it afloat.

Ironically, FOCAL has been viewed by some academics and politicians as being too pro-business and too conservative, supporting for example the recent free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. It has been critical of the Cuban government, and has slammed the decision to impose visas on Mexican visitors to Canada.

University of Ottawa professor Paul Haslam, who has worked over the years as a staff member and senior fellow with FOCAL, argues it has been instrumental in stimulating interest in Latin America within Canada and in promoting Canada's influence in the hemisphere.

"I think FOCAL has really done a lot for Canada's relationship with the region and done even a lot for the Canadian government's ability to put forward the kind of arguments that it was making regarding democracy and civil society participation," said Haslam.

"I think Canadian engagement in Latin America will be weaker for it and the Canadian government's ability to get things done will be weakened by it."

Despite the government's stated foreign-policy focus on the Americas, articulated in the 2007 speech from the throne, no extra money has turned up to keep FOCAL afloat.

A recent internal audit of the Americas Strategy by Foreign Affairs, released to The Canadian Press earlier this year, found many elements of the plan to be superficial and poorly supported.

The auditors go so far as to warn "there is evidence to suggest Canada's credibility in the region could decline."

The office of Diane Ablonczy, minister of state of Foreign Affairs, did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Last week, Ablonczy told a meeting of the Canadian International Council's Canada Latin-America Forum that it's full steam ahead for the Americas strategy.

"Our Americas strategy can be enhanced through perspectives and input by Canadian stakeholders like you," Ablonczy told the meeting of academics, policy experts and others.

"With improved dialogue and communication, we will be able to make more informed decisions and improve the effectiveness of our program delivery."


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