Aid groups ask Canada to prevent child soldiers by rallying G7 heads around education

Senator Romeo Dallaire in Ottawa on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA — Some of Canada’s aid sector is rallying around a call for Ottawa to prioritize education initiatives abroad as a way of bolstering security at home, as the U.S. pullback from foreign aid raises questions about Canada’s looming G7 summit in Alberta.

“Canada is nowhere near reaching its full potential, internationally,” said former senator Roméo Dallaire, who led Canada’s peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in the 1990s.

“Education is a fundamental pillar of violence prevention within the global security strategies of the international community,” he said Wednesday.

He was speaking at a forum convened by senators on Parliament Hill, where dozens of Canadians involved in development threw their support behind urging Ottawa to champion “peace, education and security” on the world stage.

Their advocacy comes as the Trump administration winds down the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest aid funder which is facing a 90-day freeze and a large cutback.

The aid coalition Cooperation Canada has said that millions of people have been abruptly cut off from life-saving supplies, and that numerous Canadian projects are in limbo because they operate through systems funded by USAID.

Ottawa is holding the rotating G7 presidency, a role that culminates in a leaders' summit of some of the world’s most powerful government heads, scheduled for June 15 to 17 in Kananaskis, Alta. The Group of Seven includes Canada, the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the European Union.

Canada has yet to outline all of its priorities for the summit, amid uncertainty about who the prime minister will be at that time.

The G7 touches on issues ranging from economics to defence, while the host country often launches a “signature initiative,” usually a multi-year development project that gets large amounts of funding from peer countries.

Canada last hosted in 2018 in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, where the Liberals rallied nearly $3.8 billion for educating women and girls in crisis and conflict situations. In Huntsville, Ont., in 2010, the Conservatives pledged $1.1 billion for maternal health, and got peer countries to focus part of their aid budgets on that cause.

Dallaire says Ottawa should use the G7 to drive dollars toward education for youth in areas at risk of conflict, given the rise in wars that have led to the highest-ever number of displaced people in history.

He said that would build on existing projects aimed at preventing youth from being recruited by armed groups as child soldiers.

“Canada has shown some leadership on the global stage — not just dialogue, but tangible, life-saving impact,” he said.

“This G7 in Kananaskis will offer us a moment to set a bold, new direction -- one where Canada does not merely respond to crisis but leads the world in preventing them, through education systems that promote social cohesion and peace.”

The fear is that Canada will instead follow allies in drawing back from foreign aid.

The Liberal leadership campaign will select the next prime minister on March 9, and there could be a federal election before the G7 summit in June. Liberal candidates have not outlined detailed commitments on foreign aid.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been leading in the polls, and says he plans to cut back on foreign aid and divert the funds to military spending, though the party hasn’t clarified how much aid spending they would cut.

Retired Lt.-Gen. Jean-Marc Lanthier, who served as vice-chief of the Canadian military, said Ottawa should take a broader approach beyond armed forces to promote a more peaceful world.

“By keeping children in zones of conflict in school, we reduce the ability of bad actors to recruit them as child soldiers,” he told the Wednesday event.

“We’ve got to be able to break that cycle by focusing a big part of our military efforts in zones of conflict on education.”

He noted that on top of wars, UNICEF says that at least 242 million students in 85 countries had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events in 2024.

“We’re in a period of turmoil that has no equivalent since the Second World War,” Lanthier said.

Dimitry Anselme, an executive with Boston-based anti-hate education group Facing History and Ourselves, said education can help stem identity-based violence, whether that’s social media inspiring people in North America to do hate crimes, or youth in developing countries who are traumatized by conflict.

He gave the example of the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are overwhelmingly young and have witnessed wartime violence.

“We need the hospitals back up, absolutely. But what’s the education investment,” Anselme said. “Unless you work with that 13- and 14-year-old, you have created the next soldier, the next battlefield.”

Shelly Whitman, executive of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative based in Nova Scotia, told aid advocates Wednesday that her colleagues in Canada and other G7 countries are trying to lobby the officials preparing the summit to get education on the agenda.

She said aid organizations want to be part of developing policies, implementing them and measuring the results.

The Wednesday event could shape a formal civil-society process related to the G7 summit, known as the C7. The aid coalition Cooperation Canada is hosting a virtual meeting March 4 to try crafting a document that outlines the priorities that aid groups across G7 countries area asking of their leaders.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2025.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press