Martin is right about 0.7, dammit!
Poor Paul Martin. For handshaking, babykissing, speechmaking change-the-world political types like him it must be a cruel fate to be Prime Minister of a country that makes a national habit of disdainfully tolerating its political leadership. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush may be hated, but they're also loved. Canadians never love their leaders (OK, Trudeau is the one exception to the rule), though we can be drawn into a sort of wistful fondness for one departed leader in comparison with the new one.
The flip side is that we don't generally hate our political leaders either, though this may have something to do with the fact that we keep electing boring, tolerably corrupt moderates while our southern cousins routinely go for the love-him-or-hate-him, envelope-pushing, extremely corrupt choice over the boring, tolerably corrupt moderate opposing him.* I can see Canadian liberals literally hating, rather than just disdaining, Stephen Harper, but I can't see a multi-million-dollar Harper-hating industry sprouting up, riots at the Conservative convention, an attempted impeachment over sex. I think Harper-hatred among liberals would largely take the form of sighing over lattes at the Second Cup and typing on blogs: where is this country headed?
In a sense, it's a chicken-vs.-egg thing. Does the fact that the party of boring moderates is always in power lead Canadians into complacent apathy about politics; or it actually our complancent, moderate political apathy that leads us to elect and reelect the boring moderate party? (In recent history, the only time power shifts hands in Commons is when one party supplants another as the most convincingly boring and moderate. Right now, that means the Liberals basically have a lock.) Does the fact that no Canadian politician ever really fades away -- afterall, outside the Cabinet, half the Commons seems to be terminally ill -- mould our all-forgiving-because-we-don't-actually-care nature? Or does our nature prevent us from encouraging the sort of scandal and demand for new, untainted blood that keeps up the party leader churn down South?
It's because I'm half American that I can occasionally be drawn into actually feeling defensive about Paul Martin, faced as he is with the perpetually sighing Eyeores that make up the mainstream Canadian press. It's profoundly un-Canadian of me. Getting het up about how fucking, disproportionately mean the Washington Press was to Al Gore during and after the 2000 campaign is fine; that's what American liberal political junkies were supposed to do. There actually exists a fairly popular, and quite good, 7-year-running blog more-or-less devoted to the subject. I'm virtually positive that Martin, a comparably unloved politician scaled to Canadian standards, will never have a blog devoted to his problems with the media. But at least he has me.
So after reading in yesterday's Globe and Mail about my poor Prime Minister getting trashed by Bob Geldof -- Bob Geldof! -- over his refusal to commit to Lester Pearson's old and Tony Blair's current goal of contributing 0.7% of GDP as aid to Africa by 2015, I'm defensively weighing in on Martin's side. The PM explained himself and his decision as follows:
"I believe it is important that governments say not just what they are going to do, but that they should say how they are going to do it," the Prime Minister said.
"I am telling members that the problem with international policy is that, too often, commitments are made on the grounds of photo ops and I will not do that."
Exactly, Mr. Prime Minister. The pile-on was, of course, immediate:
"There's no use your Prime Minister coming to Scotland unless he's prepared to do this deal," Sir Bob said in a pre-taped video message at the announcement of the special Live 8 concert in Canada.
"If he's not prepared, [then] stay at home. Just stay at home. Don't come. You're not welcome unless you're prepared to do something finally and irrevocably on behalf of the poor of this world."
...
NDP Leader Jack Layton said Canadians will be bothered by Sir Bob's criticisms. "Does it bother this Prime Minister enough that he is finally going to keep this promise?" he asked during Question Period.
After approvingly quoting "Sir Bob" and Layton, the reporter, Brian Laghi, lays down the goods (emphasis mine):
"To reach the 0.7 per cent figure by 2015, Canada would have to devote $15-billion a year to foreign aid, almost five times the $3-billion it currently gives.
The Finance Department has developed several scenarios on how the country might get there, including one that would see Ottawa begin increasing outlays by 25 per cent a year starting in 2010. Such an idea would cost $28-billion extra in the five years before 2015.
Another would see Canada raising expenditures by 15 per cent a year starting this year. That scenario would cost $41-billion in total over 10 years.
Canada currently gives a little more than $3-billion a year, and has announced it will increase funding by about 8 per cent each year through to 2010.
Ignoring the transition costs, ($28, $41 billion, whatever), placating "Sir Bob" would require committing to pay an extra $12 billion per year after 2015, about $300 per capita (not to be confused with the much higher per taxpayer figure), and that's excluding the costs to Canadian industry from the much more morally pressing step of untying our aid from our national products. Adjusted for population size and growth trends, that would be like the United States government committing to an extra $115 billion dollars (CDN -- or $100 billion USD) in spending every year. In the US, that's a politically unthinkable amount to propose spending on pretty much any single domestic policy program, let alone sending off to Africa. With Canada's babyboomers starting to retire under the Medicare program, and with the likely anti-federal-tax revolts coming in Alberta and other rich provinces, committing to this sort of outlay ten years down the road is just ludicrous. It would be an obvious case of convinient political lying on Martin's part, just as he says. And, geez, Mr. Layton, when Prime Minister Pearson made that promise back in the 60s, he didn't have to contend with the post-Mulroney-years national debt. He didn't spend the last ten years of his career making hard cuts to social programs in order to get the country's fiscal house in order. Is that sort of deficit spending what the NDP is threatening to take us back to?
The article points out that Italy, Germany, Britain and France have committed to reach the target by 2015. Well, big deal. The 0.7 figure has been bandied around for decades by opportunistic liberal politicians all across the globe. Africa is still a mess and few rich countries give anything close to that much aid. So far, only Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands give 0.7 or more of their GDP in total foreign aid. And, even if we assume that these other G8 members are sincere this time (Blair, at least, is), surely being a progressive politician in one of those countries can't be as utterly thankless a task as it is in Canada. As Geldoff himself says, "In this instance, at least, we do need more Canada. We need you to urge your neighbours to come along with this." See, Canadians are just supposed to be the leaders on this; it's our international job to pony up and guilt-trip the Americans. No kudos for that; it's just our duty. Nor can the leadership of the Liberal Party -- already committed to doubling the African aid budget over the next five years, mind you -- expect to reap a political reward for this among left-leaning voters or the Canadian press. But at least Geldof and Bono would stop complaining.
So, yes, dammit. Prime Minister Martin is right, both in principle and politics, not to commit to the 0.7 target right now. And in Canada, being right doesn't necessarily win much applause. Mr. Martin, I salute you.
Update: Having written this, I now see (courtesy of Google News) that, for once, the Globe and Mail editorial staff is giving the Prime Minister some love for his position on Live8.
* A couple of notes on this: In 1996, it's true that Clinton was more of a moderate than Dole, and that he fashioned himself as such, though conservatives didn't see it that way. But Clinton was much less boring than Dole and though he wasn't really any more corrupt, his brand of corruption was more flamboyant. Also, it's unfair to suggest John Kerry was "tolerably corrupt" since he really wasn't corrupt at all by American standards. The only overtly corrupt thing he ever did was help overrule Clinton's veto of the odious 1995 Private Securities and Litigation Act. Alas, perhaps cleanness was actually Kerry's biggest problem.
The flip side is that we don't generally hate our political leaders either, though this may have something to do with the fact that we keep electing boring, tolerably corrupt moderates while our southern cousins routinely go for the love-him-or-hate-him, envelope-pushing, extremely corrupt choice over the boring, tolerably corrupt moderate opposing him.* I can see Canadian liberals literally hating, rather than just disdaining, Stephen Harper, but I can't see a multi-million-dollar Harper-hating industry sprouting up, riots at the Conservative convention, an attempted impeachment over sex. I think Harper-hatred among liberals would largely take the form of sighing over lattes at the Second Cup and typing on blogs: where is this country headed?
In a sense, it's a chicken-vs.-egg thing. Does the fact that the party of boring moderates is always in power lead Canadians into complacent apathy about politics; or it actually our complancent, moderate political apathy that leads us to elect and reelect the boring moderate party? (In recent history, the only time power shifts hands in Commons is when one party supplants another as the most convincingly boring and moderate. Right now, that means the Liberals basically have a lock.) Does the fact that no Canadian politician ever really fades away -- afterall, outside the Cabinet, half the Commons seems to be terminally ill -- mould our all-forgiving-because-we-don't-actually-care nature? Or does our nature prevent us from encouraging the sort of scandal and demand for new, untainted blood that keeps up the party leader churn down South?
It's because I'm half American that I can occasionally be drawn into actually feeling defensive about Paul Martin, faced as he is with the perpetually sighing Eyeores that make up the mainstream Canadian press. It's profoundly un-Canadian of me. Getting het up about how fucking, disproportionately mean the Washington Press was to Al Gore during and after the 2000 campaign is fine; that's what American liberal political junkies were supposed to do. There actually exists a fairly popular, and quite good, 7-year-running blog more-or-less devoted to the subject. I'm virtually positive that Martin, a comparably unloved politician scaled to Canadian standards, will never have a blog devoted to his problems with the media. But at least he has me.
So after reading in yesterday's Globe and Mail about my poor Prime Minister getting trashed by Bob Geldof -- Bob Geldof! -- over his refusal to commit to Lester Pearson's old and Tony Blair's current goal of contributing 0.7% of GDP as aid to Africa by 2015, I'm defensively weighing in on Martin's side. The PM explained himself and his decision as follows:
"I believe it is important that governments say not just what they are going to do, but that they should say how they are going to do it," the Prime Minister said.
"I am telling members that the problem with international policy is that, too often, commitments are made on the grounds of photo ops and I will not do that."
Exactly, Mr. Prime Minister. The pile-on was, of course, immediate:
"There's no use your Prime Minister coming to Scotland unless he's prepared to do this deal," Sir Bob said in a pre-taped video message at the announcement of the special Live 8 concert in Canada.
"If he's not prepared, [then] stay at home. Just stay at home. Don't come. You're not welcome unless you're prepared to do something finally and irrevocably on behalf of the poor of this world."
...
NDP Leader Jack Layton said Canadians will be bothered by Sir Bob's criticisms. "Does it bother this Prime Minister enough that he is finally going to keep this promise?" he asked during Question Period.
After approvingly quoting "Sir Bob" and Layton, the reporter, Brian Laghi, lays down the goods (emphasis mine):
"To reach the 0.7 per cent figure by 2015, Canada would have to devote $15-billion a year to foreign aid, almost five times the $3-billion it currently gives.
The Finance Department has developed several scenarios on how the country might get there, including one that would see Ottawa begin increasing outlays by 25 per cent a year starting in 2010. Such an idea would cost $28-billion extra in the five years before 2015.
Another would see Canada raising expenditures by 15 per cent a year starting this year. That scenario would cost $41-billion in total over 10 years.
Canada currently gives a little more than $3-billion a year, and has announced it will increase funding by about 8 per cent each year through to 2010.
Ignoring the transition costs, ($28, $41 billion, whatever), placating "Sir Bob" would require committing to pay an extra $12 billion per year after 2015, about $300 per capita (not to be confused with the much higher per taxpayer figure), and that's excluding the costs to Canadian industry from the much more morally pressing step of untying our aid from our national products. Adjusted for population size and growth trends, that would be like the United States government committing to an extra $115 billion dollars (CDN -- or $100 billion USD) in spending every year. In the US, that's a politically unthinkable amount to propose spending on pretty much any single domestic policy program, let alone sending off to Africa. With Canada's babyboomers starting to retire under the Medicare program, and with the likely anti-federal-tax revolts coming in Alberta and other rich provinces, committing to this sort of outlay ten years down the road is just ludicrous. It would be an obvious case of convinient political lying on Martin's part, just as he says. And, geez, Mr. Layton, when Prime Minister Pearson made that promise back in the 60s, he didn't have to contend with the post-Mulroney-years national debt. He didn't spend the last ten years of his career making hard cuts to social programs in order to get the country's fiscal house in order. Is that sort of deficit spending what the NDP is threatening to take us back to?
The article points out that Italy, Germany, Britain and France have committed to reach the target by 2015. Well, big deal. The 0.7 figure has been bandied around for decades by opportunistic liberal politicians all across the globe. Africa is still a mess and few rich countries give anything close to that much aid. So far, only Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands give 0.7 or more of their GDP in total foreign aid. And, even if we assume that these other G8 members are sincere this time (Blair, at least, is), surely being a progressive politician in one of those countries can't be as utterly thankless a task as it is in Canada. As Geldoff himself says, "In this instance, at least, we do need more Canada. We need you to urge your neighbours to come along with this." See, Canadians are just supposed to be the leaders on this; it's our international job to pony up and guilt-trip the Americans. No kudos for that; it's just our duty. Nor can the leadership of the Liberal Party -- already committed to doubling the African aid budget over the next five years, mind you -- expect to reap a political reward for this among left-leaning voters or the Canadian press. But at least Geldof and Bono would stop complaining.
So, yes, dammit. Prime Minister Martin is right, both in principle and politics, not to commit to the 0.7 target right now. And in Canada, being right doesn't necessarily win much applause. Mr. Martin, I salute you.
Update: Having written this, I now see (courtesy of Google News) that, for once, the Globe and Mail editorial staff is giving the Prime Minister some love for his position on Live8.
* A couple of notes on this: In 1996, it's true that Clinton was more of a moderate than Dole, and that he fashioned himself as such, though conservatives didn't see it that way. But Clinton was much less boring than Dole and though he wasn't really any more corrupt, his brand of corruption was more flamboyant. Also, it's unfair to suggest John Kerry was "tolerably corrupt" since he really wasn't corrupt at all by American standards. The only overtly corrupt thing he ever did was help overrule Clinton's veto of the odious 1995 Private Securities and Litigation Act. Alas, perhaps cleanness was actually Kerry's biggest problem.
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