From Ottawa, a piece on the Canadian government’s International Development Agency (CIDA) cutting off NGO’s for saying the wrong thing.

Aid groups say the federal government is casting a chill over advocacy work that takes positions on policy or political issues – and one claims a senior Conservative aide warned them against such activities….

Another aid NGO, the left-leaning Montreal-based Alternatives, can’t get CIDA to return its calls since the National Post – citing unnamed government sources – reported that the organization’s long-standing $2.1-million funding proposal would be rejected because of its political advocacy. Its most recent aid funding ran out last March.

Alternatives produces a newspaper that has published left-wing commentators and, for example, a piece that made a controversial argument for a “united Israel” and against Israel’s status as a Jewish state – rather than the internationally endorsed “two-state solution” of Israel existing beside a separate Palestinian state.

“Everything we hear is that Alternatives’ advocacy work is the main reason we’ll eventually be cut,” said the organization’s executive director, Michel Lambert.