It was always too good to be true.
Those hard-working Canadian NGOs who gave Stephen Harper the benefit of the doubt publicly were always wary privately. Mr. Harper suddenly making maternal and child health in poor countries a priority? Where did that come from?
The grounds for skepticism were clear enough. No one in government, including the Prime Minister, had raised the issue before, even though many groups around the world have long begged the West to prioritize it. The government had done nothing toward improving our own home-grown crisis of maternal and child deaths. The minister responsible for foreign aid, Bev Oda, had publicly attacked and humiliated her own experts at CIDA. Foreign aid was being re-directed from Africa to better-off Latin American countries.
The Harperites seemed hostile to exactly those NGOs with the most experience in maternal and child health issues. They defunded Kairos, allowing their visceral hostility to all things Palestinian to trump the group’s support for violated women in eastern Congo. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, which has received CIDA funding for almost three decades, ominously hasn't had its money renewed.
Finally, the many authorities in this area all agree that to ensure the overall well-being of women and children, which ultimately will determine both their quality of life and their mortality, larger issues of development and women's rights must be pursued diligently. Sexual violence, child marriage, land and inheritance rights, birth control, abortion, political rights – all these issues related to women's subordination must be faced if their overall health is to be improved. Could Mr. Harper actually deliver such a program?
So there was much reason for skepticism to begin with. Since then, I fear, it's been downhill all the way.
Apparently there are no simple motherhood issues in the Conservative Party, not when it comes to family planning and its various components including birth control and abortion.
First, this so-called priority is often not even alluded to when Mr. Harper and his people speak about the upcoming G8 meeting. Other than for straight political purposes – to woo voters beyond the Conservatives' narrow base – maternal and child care seems barely on the government's radar.
The government's real commitment to humanitarian work abroad was reflected in its recent budget. There are no further increases planned to foreign aid after this year. None. Where will any money for maternal and child health come from? There are already indications that much of our aid to Haiti will not be new money but will come from other parts of the CIDA budget. Our aid, now 0.33 per cent of gross national income – a shabby 18th out of 22 donor countries – will plummet to 0.28 per cent by 2014. The goal of 0.7 per cent will be reached presumably at the End of Days.
At the same time, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has announced that Canada will freeze aid to Africa until the government assesses how previous aid was spent. Many will be surprised to know that sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region on Earth with the most dire record on maternal and child health, received only one-fifth of Canada's development assistance in 2008. Where in the world does the rest go? Who deserves it more? Well, eight poor African countries had their aid from Canada peremptorily ended, diverted to middle-income Latin American countries to serve our own commercial trade interests. So our generous “aid” will actually be used on behalf of Canadian businesses instead of combatting African poverty.
