McLeod Group Blog

September Song: Political Will and Political Won’t

McLeod Group Blog, Sept. 24, 2015

 Oh, it’s a long long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

—September Song, Maxwell Anderson, 1938

In May, the NDP published a policy paper entitled ‘Canada cares: Our vision for international development cooperation‘. The overall policy was very good. Among other things, it pledged to reverse the dramatic cuts made by the Harper government. ‘Under the Conservatives,’ the paper lamented, ‘Canada’s ODA/GNI ratio will fall below 0.24% by 2015—meaning Canada will rank among the world’s worst performing aid donors.’

The paper went on to state that,

New Democrats have consistently promised to reach the internationally agreed upon goal of 0.7% of GNI. We will get Canada on track to fulfilling our longstanding commitment by developing a multi-year timetable to increase our ODA budget to 0.7% of GNI. Several other countries, including the United Kingdom, have reached the 0.7% target. All it takes is political will.

That political will, so refreshingly presented in the May paper, seemed to have evaporated by September, when the NDP released a broad overview of the costs of its campaign platform. In order to get to a much ballyhooed balanced budget, some things would be delayed, postponed or otherwise not done. The CBC reported that, ‘in order to balance the books for the next four years, an NDP government would not be able to take immediate action toward reaching the party’s pledge to commit 0.7 per cent of Canada’s GDP on development aid—a figure requested by the United Nations for all developed economies.’

A senior NDP member called the party’s previous commitment only ‘aspirational‘—in other words, he implied that the ‘consistent promise’ was somehow not actually a commitment. During a press conference on the subject, Toronto NDP candidate Andrew Thomson, a former Saskatchewan finance minister, said the NDP would announce further details in early October.

The 0.7% target was established in 1968 by an international committee led by retired Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson. For decades it has been met or even surpassed by most of the Scandinavian countries, and more recently by the United Kingdom. Canadian governments, however—Liberal and (Progressive) Conservative alike—have never come close, always arguing that they would get there as soon as the economy turned around.

The economy has turned around many times since 1968, but the political will never has, and under the Harper government, aid has been manipulated, diverted, and slashed to an abysmal low. The Harper government has even officially abandoned the target.

Almost half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. Poverty is the cause and consequence of many of the world’s greatest challenges: the growing hazard of climate change and pandemics; fragile states that are the incubators of violence; the fallout from complex emergencies that have produced more refugees and more unchecked population movement that at any time in history. Development cooperation, through aid, the promotion of fair and equitable trading practices, respect for human rights and good governance, is about fixing these problems. It isn’t about charity; it’s about dealing with very serious problems that transcend borders. And it’s about Canada’s own, long-term self-interest.

In the McLeod Group’s first election brief, we called for a 0.1% increase in the ODA/GNI ratio each year until the 0.7% target is met. Based on the current level of 0.24%, it would take less than five years to get there.

The Liberals, so far, have had nothing at all to say on the subject, not even aspirational. It’s about time they made their intentions clear.

And it’s about time for the NDP to put a clearer price tag on its own political will.