NEW CIDA DIRECTOR NAMED

UNCLAS OTTAWA 000882 SIPDIS STATE FOR WHA/CAN AND EEB/IFD STATE PASS USAID E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EAID PGOV CA SUBJECT: NEW CIDA DIRECTOR NAMED ¶1. (U) Prime Minister Harper has named veteran civil servant Margaret Biggs to replace Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) president Robert Greenfield on July 1. Biggs has been a deputy secretary to the Cabinet in the Privy Council Office with responsibility for plans and consultation since May 2006. Greenfield will become managing director and chief business officer of the World Economic Forum in Geneva. ¶2. (U) According to press reports, Biggs joined the Canadian civil service in 1978 as an economist in the Finance Department and has served in a variety of roles with different government departments, primarily with Human Resources and Development Canada. She also has had experience outside government, including several years in the early eighties at the North-South Institute, a Canadian non-profit and independent research institute focused on international development. ¶3. (U) Biggs takes over CIDA at a time when the agency is facing criticism as a "troubled agency" and under pressure to shift direction and overhaul how it delivers its aid and development programs. A Canadian Senate report last year called upon the government to consider dismantling the agency because it had failed to make a difference in Africa over the past 40 years. It criticized CIDA as slow, top heavy, "ineffective, costly, and overly bureaucratic." Non-government groups also have been critical of CIDA operations although they see the agency as a major player and supporter of international development in a league with USAID and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). The head of CARE Canada believes that the Canadian government and CIDA should re-examine the balance between funding government groups like UN agencies and supporting civil NGOs who may often be better equipped to deliver programming than bureaucracies. Since 2000 the percentage of CIDA funding going to NGOs has fallen below 20 percent. ¶4. (U) Some observers hope that the Prime Minister's decision to appoint a senior bureaucrat to head CIDA is a sign of the agency's growing stature within the government. The president of the North-South Institute said "the fact that she's coming from the Privy Council Office will serve CIDA in good stead because, quite frankly, it is at the bottom of the totem pole, and it needs all the allies in the system that it can get." Outgoing president Greenhill's experience had been predominately in the private sector. Visit Canada,s Economy and Environment Forum at http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/can ada WILKINS