Recently while walking down a street I was approached by an obviously intoxicated panhandler seeking a donation. Everyone has heard the excuses given by someone who has figured that they have better use of our money. I had to hand it to this guy, he was at least honest. He just wanted to go down to the pub for a beer. At times like these we are confronted with the question: should we reward honesty or refuse because we would be supporting a bad habit?
Foreign aid is much the same way, an aiding and abetting of a bad habit. While superficially our aid is humanitarian, we are in effect underwriting tyrannical regimes. The foreign aid we provide protects these tyrannies from the logical consequences of the rampant economic, political and social corruption and human rights abuses. We are in reality directly supporting these unstable tyrannies in a war against their own citizens. The aid acts as a buffer against the widespread abuses these governments perpetrate by keeping their people reasonable content. This is if the foreign aid does indeed reach the people as we had hoped.
However, this is hardly the case. We usually do not provide the foreign aid directly to the people but rather to governments. The government ministers and their hangers-on skim off their standard take for “administering” the funds. Most of the remaining funds go on to placate their own tribal factions and supportive structures and to buy off the populace’s outrage by spending on some token pet project. Little to none of the foreign aid we provide finally makes it to the people. Our foreign aid in the end enriches individual government officials and their lackeys and usually no one else.
Some countries which receive foreign aid really do not need any such aid. China’s booming economy has increasing influence in the West. Notwithstanding their atrociously abusive human rights record and large scale corruption, China is the number one beneficiary of Canada’s largess. All this despite the Chinese government’s continued efforts at military and corporate espionage against western interests. China has yet to clamp down on unrestrained corporate piracy waged by their citizens against Western businesses and individuals in contravention of patents, copyrights and trademark agreements.
What about disaster relief? Should we not provide disaster relief to countries which have been visited by some unfortunate natural disaster? Take for example tsunami relief undertaken by western nations in Sri Lanka. The Italian government chartered two amphibious aircrafts to aid in the distribution of disaster relief supplies to inaccessible areas of the country. The aircrafts were confiscated by the Sri Lankan Air Force and sat unused at a regional airport. A water purification unit donated by the United States was confiscated for the personal use of the Sri Lankan president. The monies provided for disaster relief was diverted to build hotels to boost the island’s tourism industry. The hotels which are to be built on valuable beachfront land confiscated from victims of the tsunami will be owned by government ministers and their party cronies.
Institutionalized and systematic corruption ranging from bribery, extortion, fraud, trafficking, embezzlement, rent taking, nepotism and cronyism while reading like our own Liberal Party’s rap sheet is a way of life particularly in the third world. No country can afford the burdens imposed by corruption on its economic, political and social institutions. Economic hardship, famine and human rights abuses are all symptoms of corruption and the policies pursued by tyrannical regimes. Treating symptoms never cures the disease.
The billions of dollars in foreign aid have not been effective in raising the standard of living nor alleviate the misery of third world. This is a failure of our own aimless foreign aid policies which simply dumps good money after the bad. Much of the third world nations receive foreign aid incessantly and are effectively being rewarded, year in year out, for pursuing bad political, economic and social policies.
Canada needs an objective, goal oriented, well defined foreign aid and disaster relief policy. The final objective of our policy must be the weaning of the recipients from any further need for foreign aid. This requires the countries to have both external and internal security, a transparent judiciary, a viable free market economy and a stable political climate. Any forward thinking policy must take into account the establishment of institutions that would make these requirements an eventuality.
Canada must set out a series of achievable goals for foreign aid recipients. As these objectives are met, foreign aid may be released to alleviate prevailing economic or teething conditions or as a reward for accomplishment of objectives. Those unwilling to have such conditions attached to the providing of foreign aid should be considered unworthy of our charity.
The foreign aid provided by Canada is a burden imposed on the Canadian taxpayer. Third world nations are effectively imposing a tax upon Canadians who are seen by them as a source of unearned income. Like any other social program, foreign aid is an enforced form of charity. It is the Canadian government’s responsibility to prove that foreign aid spending has had a beneficial effect. The current state of affairs merely operates in the splurge and forget mode effectively assuming against all evidence that it is money well spent.
I must confess my guilt however, as I did provide a donation towards a future beer purchase for our panhandler. Perhaps I should have taken my own advice.
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