Cool Aid

Canada's official Opposition loves to bitterly observe that the current Conservative-led government has an abstemious attitude toward helping the unfortunate. It becomes frugal with the national treasury when it comes to providing international humanitarian aid. Instead of focusing on the goal to spend .07% of the nation's (GDP) spending on the priority of international aid, it takes its own measured and mean approach to Canada's responsibility to those less fortunate in the world.

The truth is different. Humanitarian aid agencies groan and despair publicly that they are underfunded, that government is not seeing the necessity to ensure that Canadian aid go where it is needed. That we, as a society, are unforgivably lax in our attitudes toward third-world relief and the need to support the emerging economies of less advanced countries of the world. NGOs, however, represent an establishment of their own, the business of aid provision.

Their business provides them with the opportunity to grow their mandates and to spread their efforts and to furnish employment and to make a respected name for themselves enabling them to further grow their business. And this is the type of business that will grow, for despite the United Nations informing us that there is far less poverty and hunger and privation in the world of today, those dire conditions of life remain for countless millions.

The human condition of warring upon one another is one causative. Another being the greed and rapacity that means that a minority living anywhere will thrive on corruption and oppression while the majority living in fear and degraded conditions under them will live deprived lives which aid agencies attempt to ameliorate.

Another fact: Canada's development assistance budget has not declined It has, in fact, doubled under the current government led by the Conservatives, to around $5-billion annually. Government has also come to the conclusion that generous aid with no strings attached often has a way of being co-opted by corrupt officials representing the poverty-stricken recipients, so very little trickles down.

The choice of recipients is also critical. Certainly countries like Haiti will remain a focus of Canadian aid attention. On the other hand, the People's Republic of China has also been a recipient of CIDA aid, focusing on "poverty alleviation" in China, spending $30-million there yearly to achieve that goal. Allowing China to spend $120-billion itself annually on its military.

Now that's an inconvenient and puzzling detail, a real head-scratcher. Canada invested hugely in Mali only to see the military it helped train unseat the democratically elected government it financially aided, and to witness the arrival of Islamists filling the vacuum left by failed government infrastructure, then marginally aiding France's military in its effort to oust the Islamists.

Life is complicated and aid outcome is unpredictable. What has been predicted and validated through observation is that linking aid with investment and trade seems to produce far better results for the recipient country which learns the manner in which it can take the aid and investment and begin trading on the world market, making a place for itself there.

So the Government of Canada announced in its recent budget its intention to merge the already-linked departments that represent foreign policy, international trade, and aid. A solution to much that ails less advanced societies, and a better outcome for Canadian investment.

Now, they've really got to drop the financial aid to China, and just focus on trade and investment on that portfolio.