|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
View Answers
Question 2: The 1995 Policy Review and SinceAmid recent global changes, should Canada continue to endorse a balanced ‘three pillar’ approach to its foreign policy objectives, or should the current balance be adjusted? |
|
| Contributor: | CCIC |
| Date: |
2003-05-01 21:11:05 |
| Answer: |
The Government of Canada needs to rethink its “three pillars” approach—namely, the promotion of prosperity and employment, the protection of our security within a stable global framework and the protection of Canadian values and culture. We need to ask what kind of global relations make Canadian prosperity, security and values possible. In particular, Canada’s foreign policy objectives need to be re-examined from a perspective that acknowledges the urgency of addressing widespread global poverty and underdevelopment.
Canadian foreign policy, particularly trade and aid policy, must systematically address the lack of prosperity of the world’s poor. It must address the insecurity caused by poverty. And it must promote values that build global social justice, peace and respect for the world’s ecosystems.
Fundamental to the eradication of poverty is the right to human security, a safe environment, clean water, universal health care, education and other basic rights. The eradication of poverty is the single greatest contributor to global human security. The inclusion of a “prosperity” directive in Canada’s foreign policy framework that assigns a higher priority to facilitating commercial profits than to the overall economic and social well-being of people is inimical to the pursuit of “security”.
Poverty, inequality and the lack of human rights are major sources of conflict and instability. Addressing global poverty trends and human rights has become an ethical and political imperative. Arrested development and the vast economic disparities that separate us on the planet do not cause events like those of September 11, 2001 but they do set the stage for the more than 40 conflicts on the planet today. Global peace will remain out of reach for everyone unless we all have a share in the common future.
Canadian foreign policy should explicitly acknowledge that the eradication of global poverty is an attainable goal. Poverty eradication, as defined here, involves advocating for a more socially just distribution of the planet’s finite resources. It also involves ending government support for economic growth practices which exploit people and the environment and deprive developing countries of critical resources.
The pursuit of neo-liberal economic models among nations of the global North has not yielded a better, more prosperous life for all. Instead we have witnessed growing inequities globally.
The gap between rich and poor has more than doubled in a little more than a generation despite steady growth during this period in the world economy and Northern national economies. United Nations figures released in 1998 (as part of that year's United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report) indicate that for every hundred dollars of economic growth, $86 had gone to the world's richest one-fifth and only $1.30 had gone to the world's poorest one-fifth. In 2002, the UNDP released data indicating that the richest 5% of the world's people now have incomes 114 times those of the poorest 5%.
At least 1.3 billion people around the world – mostly women and children – live in absolute poverty on less than $1 U.S. per day. In their review of donor aid commitments, the authors of Reality of Aid 2002 characterize Northern donors as "never richer, never meaner." Wealth per person in donor countries has doubled since 1961, approaching $30,000 in 2000, while aid given by donor countries per person is less than what it was four decades ago.
As a minimal starting point, Canada should work to achieve United Nations targets known as the Millennium Development Goals, including reducing the proportion of those living in poverty by half by 2015. Cutting the proportion of people living on $1 a day by half in 2015 would still leave about 800 million people living in absolute poverty and the majority of the world’s population would still be considered poor (living on under $2 a day).
World leaders committed their governments to providing universal access to basic education, healthy drinking water and a new measure of gender equity as part of the Millennium Development Goals package. Yet donor economies have come nowhere near providing the two-fold increase in international aid flows needed to achieve these basic objectives, let alone deal with the nearly one billion people who would continue to live in absolute poverty.
CCIC welcomes the Government of Canada’s February 2003 budget increase in foreign aid spending, which had been derailed for over a decade. Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2003/04 is expected to reach $3.2 billion and $3.4 billion the following year, fulfilling Ottawa’s commitment to an 8% annual increase over three years. Canada should meet its own foreign aid commitments with targets and timelines, while encouraging that other industrialized nations to do the same.
The United Nations has estimated that globally an additional U.S.$ 50 billion annually in aid is required to meet the basic commitments of the Millennium Development Goals. For Canada to reach its share of the global contribution towards these goals, CCIC has calculated that over the next 13 years Canadian aid would have to grow by 10% to 13% each year. In other words, the 8% annual increases the Canadian government is projecting, though a welcome start, are not enough.
Even with an 8% increase, Canada’s ODA as a percentage of our Gross National Income (GNI) remains the same at an estimated 0.27 %. This is still well below the internationally agreed to 0.7% of ODA to GNI. Although aid is projected to double by 2010, at this rate, it will still take until 2040 for Canada to meet its United Nations commitment.
Canada must ensure that its policies on international trade and ODA take into account the perspectives of locally-based civil society organizations as well as state agencies in preserving local economies and services. The renewed emphasis by donor states on rebuilding government capacity in developing countries, while necessary and long overdue, should not take place at the expense of support for locally-based civil society.
The Comprehensive Development Framework—and the Canadian International Development Agency’s new aid directions—rightly place "local ownership" at the centre of the idea of aid effectiveness. But loans to developing world economies from global financial institutions, through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and other mechanisms, are layered with multiple conditions. In 1999, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) attached an average of 114 conditions to loans to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. These conditions sharply limit the development choices of developing country economies.
In a “post-September 11th” world, human development (economic equality, democracy, human rights and environmental integrity) is the only real foundation for international peace and security. The current political and media focus in the U.S. and elsewhere on waging war—the “war againgst terrorism”, the “war against Iraq” frequently obscures the most fundamental challenges to peace and security. The gravest (and long term) threats to international peace do not come from wars between nations. They come from internal political and social disintegration and the undermining of peoples’ livelihoods in the world’s developing economies. If this pervasive "every-day-terror" is to end, local economies and public services in the developing world need to be preserved and enhanced.
Recommendations in response to Question 2
1. Work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including reducing the proportion of those living in poverty by half by 2015.
2. Ensure that its policies on international trade and ODA take into account the value of locally-based civil society organizations, as well as state agencies, in preserving local economies and services.
3. Meet foreign aid commitments with targets and timelines, while encouraging other industrialized nations do the same.
4. Define the protection of Canadian values and culture to include the promotion of social justice, human rights and environmental protection through cross-cultural linkages and respect for other cultures. |
|
|
|
|
