I've got no problems with some of the tied aid that is given. Where I do have problems with it is when it is inappropriate tied aid. Probably the classic Canadian example of that was several hundred million given by Canada to Mozambique in the 1970's to build a railroad into the resources areas of the country. Good idea, except for the implementation. It used a non-standard gauge of track and all the equipment was produced in Montreal and only available there. The effect was to create a situation where the railroad did little actual good and, in terms of supporting Canadian industry, the money would have been better spent on a straight subsidy
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Canada is hardly alone in that regard, Marc. We started an insurgency in Bangladesh with a dam that eliminated a tribal group's homeland and benefited their rivals. I have told my story here about Wisconsin dairy cattle forced on USAID Egypt by a now deceased Senator who later was a Sec Def (Les Aspin). All the pampered Wisconsin beauties were hoofs up in a year in Egypt's slightly different climate where the locals don not put air conditioning in barns (if they have barns). Pick a reciepient country and we probably have dome something that was not quite right. Military assistance gets even more bizarre.

Your frustration about foreseeable, perpetual, and often perpetuated crises is also valid. But very often those whoe refuse to see (or publicly admit) the crises are the governments that need the aid. That was my experience in Sudan in 84 when the drought was just as bad as it was in Ethiopia. Or as was the case in Zaire in 94 when the "government" (as in the muliti-layered criminal organzation that ran the country called itself) used the Rwandan refugee crises to its advantage only to have that crises consume them. Sudan (Darfur) and Zimbabwe (the whole bloody place) fall into that realm.

My frustration has been and still is that much money that actually should go to developing countries goes to countries that do not even fight the profile for development aid, those of course being both Israel and Egypt.

Best

Tom