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A doctor in Mwanza, Tanzania, advises the mother of a newborn diagnosed with a chest infection at the Kisesa Health Centre, which was supported by CIDA through the Health Basket Fund.Joshua Kraemer

Weekly insights from The Globe newsroom and highlights of our best work. I welcome your comments.

The death of the Canadian International Development Agency was a long process, much longer than it needed to be, as I learned last spring when a small group of "private sector actors" met quietly with then International Development minister Bev Oda and CIDA president Margaret Biggs to debate the agency's future.

There was clearly blood in the water on that March morning as mining representatives, a few big-time international investors and an array of consultants piled on with story after story of the agency's dwindling significance.

Many of us knew Ms. Oda was Dead Woman Walking, plagued as she was by expense-account scandals and a generally poor grasp of her file. It was more interesting to see how CIDA had become Dead Agency Walking, with the Harperites in the room looking for lines of inquiry to raise further questions about its effectiveness.

I had been invited as, I suppose, a neutral voice, given that I had spent seven years living abroad and writing about development issues in the 1990s. I continued to follow the agency and its work, as the Paul Martin and then Stephen Harper governments both tried to bend it to their liking. It was a "glove" for Canadian peacemaking money in Afghanistan, a Montreal-focused public-relations machine in Haiti and – most bizarrely – the face of Mr. Harper's sudden interest a few years ago in maternal mortality.

In each case, the agency fell short of political and development expectations because trade, technology and human migration had changed the so-called Third World more in a few years than international aid had in decades.

My message was this: CIDA isn't the agency to change the model. It needs to be broken up.

The Harper PMO was already in full flight to transform the agency, for reasons both high and low. Never forget that this government disdains any arm of the bureaucracy that feels its existence is enshrined. There are few bastions of entitlement quite like CIDA. It has its own president, operates in many ways like a Crown corporation even though it doesn't have its own legislation, and it is rarely able to produce meaningful metrics of success for all the money it spends.

To learn more about CIDA's place in the world, read this weekend's feature report from Africa correspondent Geoffrey York and this online column from Janice Gross Stein of the University of Toronto.

But the budget announcement of CIDA's demise was not just about development economics. As with so much in politics, the personal is mighty powerful. When Ms. Oda was removed, Ontario's former police chief Julian Fantino got the portfolio – an appointment that left many development watchers perplexed, some infuriated, because of his lack of international experience. Fantino proved the doubters wrong. He may not be an intellectual, but he is demanding, and like the old TV character Columbo, he has a way of asking the brilliantly naive question. Why do we give aid to countries that receive billions every year in remittances from Canada? Why do we finance development projects in places that are economically sound enough to steal Canadian jobs? When did CIDA plan to put itself out of business?

He didn't like the answers.

Mr. Fantino's skepticism coincided with John Baird's ascent in the world of foreign affairs. Once a political pit bull, Foreign Minister Baird has emerged as a serious player in global affairs. He also has maintained his disdain of bureaucratic entitlements – from ambassadors who expect chauffeurs to the well-stocked bars in embassy residences. (Executives at the International Development Research Centre tell a funny story about shutting down an open bar before Mr. Baird's arrival at an event.)

As an aside, Mr. Fantino may be putting himself out of a job as CIDA winds down. I'm told the government intends to introduce legislation enshrining the development portfolio, along with a cabinet position representing aid. But at 70, Mr. Fantino is said to be uninterested in career charting and prefers the challenge of a good assignment. We'll see where he lands in a summertime shuffle, either taking international aid into a new era (a remarkable twist of history there) or, Columbo-like, taking on a new case for the PM.

Speaking of Canada's role in the world, we dispatched our technology reporter, Iain Marlow, to Nigeria recently to document the surging market there for BlackBerrys. Iain has produced a piece about the many other ways that Nigerians are fuelling economic growth and reducing poverty. (Although one doesn't always lead to the other.)

Iain is about to leave our newsroom for a six-month fellowship in Accra, Ghana, with the Toronto-based NGO Journalists for Human Rights. He and his partner Nicole Baute will help under-resourced Ghanaian journalists carve out space for stories on human rights – all while conducting seminars and working one-on-one in a mentoring capacity for journalists who may not have formal journalism education. "Funnily enough," he points out, "I'll be working with an Accra newspaper called The Globe."

Enjoy the weekend,

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