A word about Canada’s G8 commitments:

You may have heard, with some elation, that Canada is actually on track to keeping its commitments, made at the G8 summit in 2005, to double aid to Africa.  In a purely technical sense that is correct, though the more you probe and prod the less and less honourable the commitments become.

First point:  When Canada agreed to double its aid to Africa in 2005 the baseline was thought to be USD $1.1 billion.  Canada later “clarified” that the baseline it meant to use was USD $750 million.  So in other words, after the commitments were made, our targets went from USD $2.2 billion to USD $1.5 billion.  That’s only 68% of what we agreed to in the first place.  Why was this allowed to happen?

Second point:  Canada’s commitment was the smallest of the G7 by way of dollars actually spent.

Third point:  Though in a technical sense we may have lived up to our manipulated targets on Africa, Canada’s official development assistance (ODA) as a proportion of gross national income (GNI) is shamefully low.  In 2004 ODA as a percentage of GNI was 0.26%.  In 2005 it was 0.30%.  In 2006 it was 0.27%.  In 2007 it was 0.29%.  And in 2008 it was 0.31%.  Isn’t it wonderful that we ex post facto changed our targets to be so dismal that we could meet them without even coming half way to the globally endorsed 0.7% of GNI in ODA – to which we have long been committed. 

Fourth point: We lived up to part of our manipulated faulty promises in aid for Africa, but every indication has been given that it is to be short lived – the Canadian government looks like it will actually be shifting money away from Africa this coming year.

This is not success.  This is not a reason for celebration.  If anything it should serve as a firm reminder that unless we press and monitor our governments on these issues we’ll continue to get gesture politics.  Canada’s aid targets should be amended.  We should set a clear timeline for reaching 0.7% of GNI in ODA.  And we should relentlessly push our elected representatives to make it happen.  If we want to see this on the G8 agenda in 2010 we have to start working on this now.