Canada Needs to Step Up

Many are aware of Canada’s reputation as a beacon of global peace, development, and stability. Indeed, Canada, under Prime Minister Lester Pearson, was one of the major forces behind the United Nations proposal in 1969 that urged developed countries to devote 0.7 percent of their gross national income (GNI) to official development assistance (ODA) spending. Since then, many developed countries have either achieved or exceeded this goal, and many more are clearly working towards achieving it in the near future. Meanwhile, Canada continues to lag behind the rest of the developed world, with approximately 0.3 percent of our GNI going towards development assistance. Should our aid budget be frozen again in 2012 as it was this year, this figure will continue to fall as our economy grows, further distancing ourselves from this goal. Given that countries such as the U.K., which is in far worse economic shape than we are, are demonstrating a more active effort to achieve this goal, we simply have no excuse to not devote more of our GNI to aid.

Let us make this issue known to our elected representatives in Ottawa as talks surrounding the 2012 federal budget take place, and let us no longer embarrass ourselves as a nation by failing to meet even our own expectations.

Deepa Sury
Calgary, AB