Bev Oda affair another reason for Harper to call an election

If there is one thing certain about the Bev Oda controversy it is this: Oda, the minister in charge of foreign aid, will some day soon have to answer several compelling and mysterious questions over the doctored document in the Kairos funding affair.

This may be common knowledge now for most Canadians after the week-long uproar in Parliament, but Kairos is a longstanding church-backed group that promotes human rights and development abroad.

It represents a broad coalition of Protestant and Roman Catholic churches and, if recent history is any indication, successfully uses its energy, resources and government grants, with support also from churches and the private sector, doing good deeds.

It tries to help people in many poor countries, or poor people within countries, such as the Palestinians in Israel, around the world.

In March, 2009, Kairos, as it and its predecessor coalition of churches had done on a regular basis since 1973, applied to the Canadian International Development Agency for a new round of multi-year funding - $7 million - as its existing agreement neared an end. By September, 2009, it had not yet heard from CIDA, overseen by International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, about the fate of its application.

Mary Corkery, the executive director of Kairos, explains what happened next.

“It had been at the minister’s desk,” she says. “We were told that it had gone upstairs, that it was in the minister’s office, that she was travelling, that she was busy and there was no problem.”

Oda was, indeed, busy that year, spending $78,394 in travel and hospitality expenses on trips to South Africa, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Washington, Haiti, Pakistan, Rome, Rome again later in the year, and Whistler.

And that was all before she made her fateful decision in late November on the Kairos funding application.

“There were questions,” Corkery goes on. “They asked questions, we answered questions, but then the phone calls stopped, so we said, ‘Well, it’s very quiet. We were nervous, so we called and we were told it was on the minister’s desk and it would be soon, very soon.”

But it never happened. On Nov. 27, 2009, Oda decided, after two full months considering a CIDA recommendation to award Kairos its funding for the next four years, not to approve the recommendation.

“Kairos Devastated by Loss of CDA Funding,” says the headline on a Dec. 2, 2009, Kairos news release.

The initial controversy over the rejection began on Dec. 17, 2009,  when the Toronto Star published a report from Jerusalem, of all places, saying Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney had the previous day told a conference on anti-semitism in Jerusalem that Ottawa had de-funded Kairos, and other organizations, for their leadership in an attempt to boycott Israel.

Kairos quickly corrected the record, saying it had not only not led the boycott efforts, but did not even support the boycott.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Conservative party at that time was putting much effort into a campaign to attract electoral support from Jewish voters in Toronto and Montreal. It had become controversial after Conservative flyers suggested Liberals, including Jewish MP Irwin Cotler, were anti-Israel, and even anti-semitic.

The Kairos controversy faded into the background, with the government playing down Kenney’s comments and Oda insisting the Kairos funding was denied because Kairos programs did not match government priorities.

Then, in October 2010, Embassy Newsweekly in Ottawa published the story that led to the uproar this week over Oda.

Under federal Access to Information law, Embassy had uncovered a copy of the document Oda signed, apparently, on Nov. 27, 2009, in which she officially rejected the Kairos funding proposal.

The problem is, the document was a memo, dated Sept. 25, two months earlier, in which the president of CIDA and a vice-president recommended to Oda she attach her signature underneath theirs at the bottom of the letter, to indicate that she approved the $7-million grant. It was their recommendation to fund Kairos.

Oda’s signature is there, as we have learned from the House furor, but the line above no longer says the grant was “approved.” It says it was “not approved.” Someone pencilled in the word “not” in front of and just above the word “approved.” There is even a little arrow sign pointing down to show where the “not” is meant to be.

Oda told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last December she did not know who inserted the not. She told the Commons this week she instructed someone to insert the not.

But she did not identify the not installer.

Needless to say (or not) there are now many jokes about Oda-fying documents. Oda was in the House for all five question periods this week, but did not say a peep.

The opposition parties insist it is likely the prime minister ordered Oda not to award the grant, which, considering Kenney’s statement in Jerusalem, sounds most likely.

If it weren’t so serious, considering human rights are at stake, it would be tears-in-the-eyes hilarious.

There may be one thing that might prevent Oda from explaining herself. That would be an election. Another reason for Stephen Harper to call one.