Melissa Torres is an immigrant from Honduras. Now living in Montreal where she leads a non-profit organization dedicated to art and language education, and an art therapy program for children with physical and psychological challenges, she keeps in close touch with the extended family she left behind. 

Her life is a perfect example of the havoc wreaked in developing countries by uncontrolled corporate activity and significant cuts to development aid by the Canadian government — budget reductions that Development and Peace - Caritas Canada, the Catholic bishops’ international development agency, aims to avert.

Torres said she left Honduras when high levels of cyanide from mining operations of a Canadian company polluted the river that irrigated her family’s crops, destroying the entire local economy.

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Although she is happy with her life in Canada, her troubles are far from over. A recent tragedy in her extended family underscored the impact of aid cuts to nations in the Global South where local governments and NGOs cannot provide basic services without international assistance.

“My little nephew, David Torres, born with a heart condition, passed away at eight months because the hospital in Honduras didn’t have the resources and the equipment to save his life,” she told The Catholic Register. 

With international donors scaling back on overseas development assistance, she said, hospitals in Honduras are facing a severe shortage of equipment and medicines for emergencies, which result in such preventable tragedies. 

Honduras tops the list of Latin American countries that have been hardest hit by these unprecedented budget cuts, not only from Canada, but also the U.S. and the European Union. Others, such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Sudan, have been even more severely impacted, intensifying a global pandemic of humanitarian crises.  

DPCC is engaged in a political advocacy campaign to tip the scales of justice in favour of thousands of people like Torres caught in a double dilemma — exploitation by corporations that prioritize profits over humanity, and lives of extreme hardship exacerbated by the withdrawal of financial assistance from traditional donor nations. 

In addition to advocating for stricter laws to regulate the activities of Canadian companies operating overseas, DPCC is making a strong plea for the Canadian government to adopt a less trade-related and more humane approach to its funding assistance to countries suffering acute poverty, displacement, climate change, war and violence.

In the November 2025 federal budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government announced cuts of $2.7 billion to the International Assistance Envelope (IAE) over four years, reducing foreign aid and development spending close to pre-COVID levels.

Dean Dettloff, DPCC’s research and advocacy officer, is the author of a brief submitted to the House of Commons standing committee on finance in pre-budget consultations for Canada’s 2026 budget. Dettloff said he and DPCC partners are deeply concerned about the reduction and hope for more generous funding for overseas development assistance in the new budget. 

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“Instead of pouring money into corporate subsidies and militarism, we should be funding truly integral human development, which we know produces the conditions for lasting peace,” he said. 

Cooperation Canada, a coalition of 100 civil society groups, including DPCC, predicts steep future rollbacks. It assesses that with the $2.7-billion IAE reduction, partnership grant funding is scheduled to drop to $71 million.

DPCC receives most of its funding through private, mainly Catholic donors, but approximately 20 per cent of its total revenue comes from federal grants disbursed by Global Affairs Canada. It works with partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, bringing emergency relief and sustainable solutions to millions impacted by war, conflict, poverty and natural disasters. 

In the pre-budget brief submitted to the finance committee, DPCC has four major recommendations:

• Allocate $5.5 billion to official development assistance, including $962.7 million to humanitarian aid, with one-fourth of this outlay going to Canadian civil society organizations;

• Reinforce corporate accountability by enacting a mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence law to prevent disastrous consequences for local populations as a result of industrial activity overseas, and withhold support for corporations guilty of abuses;

• Pledge $15.9 billion to climate financing over the next five years, and allocate more public funds for loss and damage in the Global South, ensuring that climate financing reaches grassroots organizations led by women and Indigenous groups because they are best equipped to identify the needs of the most vulnerable; and

• Promote peace by increasing aid funding and reduce military spending, and to close legal loopholes that allow arms exports to countries and entities known to violate humanitarian and human rights law.

Dettloff said the brief was, in essence, inspired by Catholic social principles.

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“Canada has an opportunity to lead by example, as other wealthy countries step back from their obligations and commitments to fund humanitarian aid and development and build a more peaceful world,” he said. “We are echoing the courageous voices of Pope Francis and Pope Leo.”

As Pope Leo XIV told an audience of world leaders who gathered in Rome last October to mark World Food Day: “We cannot be content with proclaiming values; we must embody them. Slogans do not lift people from misery. We must place the human person above profit and guarantee food security, access to resources and sustainable rural development.”