Last year, Canada's economy generated about $1.25 trillion dollars. Last year, Canada's economy grew by about $30 billion. Last year, Canada had a federal budget surplus of about $8 billion, the provinces another $4 billion. Last year, federal debt charges declined for the fourth year in a row.
Last year, if Canada had met the UN standard (0.7 per cent of a country's gross national income) — set in 1969 with instrumental support by the late Lester Pearson — we would have contributed about $8.7 billion to international aid. Instead, last year, Canada spent about $3 billion in foreign aid. This year, the federal government plans to spend only a little more, about 0.34 per cent of our gross national income on foreign aid.
Challenged during this summer's Live 8 concerts to increase that to the Pearson standard, Prime Minister Paul Martin said the country can't afford such an increase, that it would threaten our financial stability, that it would put us into debt.
Can't afford??? At the very least, the prime minister is guilty of faulty logic in suggesting that Canada, by any measure one of the richest nations on the Earth "can't afford" to give less than a cent of every dollar to foreign aid. At worst, his nose might be in danger of becoming part of the softwood lumber dispute.
Perhaps even more troubling, however, were the subsequent surveys that suggested about six in 10 Canadians supported Mr. Martin's views. I'm not certain about the wording of the questions, but even so, it appears that Canadians are woefully ignorant about what we can afford as a nation and what we should be doing to support those whose lives are infinitely less fortunate than ours through no fault of their own and no virtue on our part.
In 2003, a study by Foreign Policy magazine and the independent Centre for Global Development in Washington, D.C., measured "foreign aid, openness to international trade, investment in developing countries, openness to legal immigration, contributions to peacekeeping operations, and responsible environmental practices."
At the top of the list were the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal and New Zealand. At the bottom? Canada, Australia, the United States and Japan.
That ought to have embarrassed us as a nation. Instead, our national pride seems to hang on winning international hockey championships. And isn't it slightly worrying that what drives any discussion about these issues are mostly aging rock stars? Mostly foreign aging rock stars?
But can't afford a few farthings? No, one might debate the particular figures, one might debate the aid mechanisms, one might even debate whether poor Africans or only the "big men" in their Mercedes (a.k.a. dictators and politicians) will benefit from an increase in aid.
There is much to debate about how best to help other countries, but there is no debate about whether Canadians can afford to do more. Much more.
For Christians — and Jews and Muslims, for that matter — the issue is even more acute. The pattern in the Bible is not only to support those who are economically deprived, but to run the economy according to just principles.
As reported inside on our international news pages, Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently raised this latter point about a just economy in a commentary on the G8 aid package being promoted by Britain. "The Group of Eight started well with cancelling [US]$40 billion worth of debt," Archbishop Tutu wrote in an editorial prior to the summit. "Now let them continue in that direction and change the trade laws."
A study by Oxfam a few years ago noted that if sub-Saharan Africa had been able to maintain its exports at the same level as in 1980, its economy would be worth an extra $350 billion a year. Moreover, the World Bank estimated that trade barriers in rich economies costs poor nations more than $120 billion a year, about twice what those rich countries give in aid.
Over the last decade, many Christians have been heard to bemoan that their voice isn't being heard in the public square. There is some truth to this, but perhaps we haven't been challenging ourselves on what really matters.
This is a thread some of our youth writers in this issue address, including the Make Poverty History campaign. One puts it this way: "I wonder what has become of my religion when its leaders preach more on popular culture than the starving millions in sub-Saharan Africa?"
We need urgently to discuss the problem of those starving millions. Then, maybe, Christians will be able to correct the prime minister's mistaken view that we can't afford to give a little more.
