No one mourns the death of humanitarian organizations in Canada anymore. The appetite for eulogies is spent. The wellspring of sympathy has run dry.

So many groups dedicated to reducing global poverty, making the world fairer and promoting informed debate have folded in the past eight years that the demise of another one is scarcely noticed.

Last week, the North-South Institute, one of the country’s oldest foreign policy think-tanks folded. Its board of directors thanked the founders, donors and staff members for their contribution to 38 years of non-partisan research to strengthen Canada’s role in to the world. Then they quietly turned out the lights.

Voluntary chair Bruce Moore, a former United Nations landmines expert, said the institute had not succeeded in “diversifying and growing its funding sources.”

Translation: Ottawa pulled the plug. The grant that had sustained it for almost four decades was terminated.

Much the same thing happened to the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre last year. It lost its government support and closed its doors last October.

The year before that Rights and Democracy died. It was an arm’s-length federal agency set up by former prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1988 to encourage democracy and monitor human rights around the world.

In 2010, the government cut off funding to Match International, an organization that supported women’s rights in the developing world. With a blitz of fundraising and partners in 71 countries, it survived.

The Canadian Council on International Co-operation (CCIC), a coalition of 100 foreign aid groups striving to end global poverty, did not fare as well. When its grant was slashed, it had to lay off most of its staff. The organization still exists, but it has lost its voice.

Ottawa also defunded a couple of church-based development groups — Kairos, which represents 11 denominations, and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace— but their members kept them afloat.

The international charities the department of foreign affairs does support, such as the Red Cross, Care Canada, Plan Canadaand World Vision Canada, deliver emergency relief efficiently, stick to basic health care and education and don’t challenge the government’s priorities. The think-tanks the government favours are large, well-endowed American institutions such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Brookings Institution.

To some degree, this reflects global change. Once-poor countries have become economic superpowers. Africa, formerly known as the “dark continent,” is becoming a magnet for investors.

But it is also a reflection of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ideology. He rejects the notion of Canada as a helpful fixer, using diplomacy, foreign aid and peacekeeping to make the world safer. He believes in bolstering Canada’s international image with military muscle, aggressive rhetoric, trade and investment deals, and foreign-policy priorities with his own imprimatur: his 2010 maternal and child health initiative for example.

Does this mean agencies such as the North-South Institute are obsolete?

Quite the contrary. Civil society organizations are needed more than ever to do what Ottawa can’t — or won’t — do:

Provide a non-partisan forum where Canadians can discuss global problems and grapple with the challenges of the 21st century: terrorism, ethnic cleansing, failed states, jihads, massive refugee flows. These problems can’t be bombed out of existence and don’t lend themselves to traditional diplomacy. The best minds in the country are needed to develop 21st-century tools of statecraft.

Supplement the meagre information that parliamentarians and the public get from the federal cabinet.

Tap into the talent and experience of Canadians who have lived abroad and the knowledge of immigrants with relatives and friends in every part of the world.

Help opposition parties flesh out foreign policies.

Keep the pipeline open to international partners that do not share the Harper government’s hardline pro-Israel stance or penchant for saber-rattling.

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The tragedy of losing a once-venerated foreign policy institution is not just that another window on the world has closed.

It is that so few new ones are opening up and so few Canadians support those that remain.