This panel was part of a series on “Canada’s Involvement in Latin America,” which began with Michael Lubbock’s lecture. The five speakers each addressed a different aspect of Canada-Latin America relations. The panel was moderated by Professor Vallé of McGill University and focused primarily on allowing the moderator and the audience to ask questions of the panelists.
Pierre Charpentier was Director of the Latin American Division at the Department of External Affairs and a graduate of the Université de Montréal and Oxford University. Before working in government, he was a journalist and ambassador to Peru and Bolivia. During the panel, he discussed the progress made on the recommendations of the 1971 White Paper on Latin America.
Alfred Pick was the Canadian Ambassador to the Organization of American States starting in 1972 and a graduate of McGill. Before this, he was the Director of Commonwealth, European, and Latin American Divisions of the Department of External Affairs and ambassador to Peru. During the panel, he discussed Canada’s role as a permanent observer at the Organization of American States and the Quito Conference, at which a number of Latin American countries unsuccessfully moved to lift sanctions on Cuba.
Allan B. Roger was Director of the Information Division at the Department of External Affairs and a graduate of the University of Toronto. His diplomatic postings in Latin America included Santo Domingo and Rio de Janeiro. During the panel, he discussed his work managing the perceptions of Canada in Latin America to advance Canadian interests, whether that involved resources, commerce, politics, or investment.
Rev. C. William Smith was Head of the Latin American Department of the Canadian Catholic Conference. He spent 10 years in Brazil working on leadership training, educational television, community development, and literacy campaigns. From 1972-1974, he visited almost every country in Latin America. During the panel, he argued that a crucial component of development was missing from the panel: the voices of Latin Americans. He advocated for Canadian institutions to seek out Third World voices, rather than allowing the world’s privileged nations to control the story.
Pierre Tanguay was Director of Latin American and Bilateral Branch at the Canadian International Development Agency. During the panel, he discussed Canada’s conception of development and CIDA’s role in managing a number of different development projects. He suggested that in CIDA’s view, the best aid program was one with the goal of leaving the country under question, to help Latin American countries take control of their own development.
During the open question and answer period, panelists discussed the Canadian myth that they are lovable and uniquely moral in the world, and addressed a number of questions that they said needed to be dealt with in the Canadian development aid program, including who decides what development is, and whether allowing transnational corporations to decide the quality of life in the developing world was truly democracy. They also suggested that there needed to be transparency around the role aid played in investment, since roughly half of all aid came back to Canadians through other trade or investment deals. Tanguay argued against the critique that developed countries were taking more out of the Third World than they gave back in aid, suggesting that all aid relationships began with recipient countries’ needs and priorities.
The panel was held on November 27, 1974. Listen to it below.