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Foreign aid is not aid, it’s a rip-off

[dropcap]I’ve[/dropcap] made clear the position of this website on the candidates for leader of the Conservative Party (Maxime Bernier). So I’ll go ahead and share another reason why: it comes from this latest emailout by his team. In it he talks about foreign affairs, or at least foreign aid, and how it should really be called failure aid.

It is spot on.

As an aside, I have noticed a weird affliction among political campaign support teams and their mailout writers: someone must have told them that when doing a mass mailing, it’s best to make every sentence have its own zip code.

Each sentence contains within it a fresh new declarative doctrine, and its own paragraph.

And each sentence is made to stand out as another fresh bold take.

It’s as if they made an allowance for applause time at the end of each line.

And they think it makes each notion appear somehow august by doing this.

To wit:

Friend, Canadians are being ripped off by Justin Trudeau.

He’s trying to buy a seat at the UN by sending aid money around the world.

He’s building roads in Africa with your tax dollars.

He pledged $2.6 billion to fight climate change in developing countries.

And last month, he announced millions more to fund abortions abroad.

My position on foreign aid is clear:

Canada should not fund economic development abroad, and humanitarian aid should be given only to help save lives in crisis situations.

No country has ever been lifted out of poverty by handouts.

They need to reform their economy, free their entrepreneurs from bureaucratic shackles, respect the rule of law, and trade.

We have people who struggle here. We can’t send billions in tax dollars overseas when there is no tangible benefit to Canadians.

Foreign aid should be given only when there is a genuine humanitarian crisis.

Famine. Rapid outbreak of disease. War. Natural disasters. These are real problems.

In times of real need, Canada can and will do its part.

But we must stop funding things based on a flawed left-wing ideology.

(From Maxime Bernier emailout, April 13, 2017)

I hope you get the point. Because if you didn’t, your reading skills may need some aid from a foreign country.

America has it even worse, both debt-wise and foreign aid-wise (“wise” being an ironic suffix to use in each of these cases). Bernier has it right all on his own, I’m sure, as I’ve heard him speak this way for ages, but down south, Donald trump got elected partly on this same footing. For example he once said,

This country is a great country but we are a debtor nation. We borrow money from Japan in order to defend Japan and we pay interest on that money and I think it’s just ridiculous. The country, the United States, is being ripped off and it shouldn’t happen.

(Taken from The risk Trump takes in abandoning Steve Bannon, Washington Examiner, April 13 2017)

As different as both of these men are, both are absolutely correct, including their shared usage of the term “ripped-off.” And whether both said it or not, it’s all left-wing ideology at work, here, to be sure.

And here’s another thought:

Canada is a rich nation, and yet we know that Canada absolutely relies on the United States to help defend Canada, not unlike Japan. Canadians thus save billions every year simply by not spending the cash otherwise necessary for her own national defence. Canada in effect gets foreign aid from the United States, even while Canada gives out cash aid to other countries — for abortions and other such left-wing values.

Both Canada and the United States are getting ripped off. And I think it’s ridiculous.

Joel Johannesen
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