Making Spiritual Poverty History
It was a offer hard to refuse. Jeffrey Sachs, special counsel to both President Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was speaking at the Millennium Summit in Montreal this week. Would I consider having a private meeting with him to discuss humanitarian development issues around the world? Tough to turn down.
For a full hour at the Congress Centre in Montreal we discussed the deeper needs of the Third World. He was fully engaged, asking pointed questions and showing interest in my own history in inter-national development. But he was angry - I could tell. We, the rich countries possessing the vast majority of the world's wealth, were in the process of abandoning the most desperately poor. Despite promises made at G8 or G20 summits, we weren't living up to those commitments - to our shame. Since he travels to 40-50 countries a year, I naturally asked him how Canada was viewed from an international perspective. His comments were insightful ... and troubling:
- your country has lost its distinctive voice
- Canada should be the conscience of the continent, but instead we're just a business partner
- his discussions with many world leaders revealed that Canada had lost its presence - the legacy of Lester Pearson is no more
- Canada has lost its brand
- leaders in Canada have become so enamored with financial markets that they have denied this country's own historical DNA that saw it as a beacon of peace to the world
I could go on, but the points above are pungent enough that we get where he's coming from. And these aren't just his opinions; they were voiced repeatedly by many international environmental, economic and anti-poverty leaders at the summit itself. This isn't about a difference of opinion here. An inter-national consensus is emerging that we have severed ourselves from our own past, a history that was powerful enough to define us in the world. This was a world leader, a confidant of Obama, Mandela, Ban Ki-moon, the Dali Lama and more Nobel prize winners of all political stripes than can be listed here, and his words carried their weight in every syllable he uttered.His angst was fully revealed when marvelling how CIDA made the decision to pull out of 8 African countries. He found it unfathomable that when people like Obama and the EU are calling for heightened commitment to that continent, that Canada quietly moved to another part of the world. "Just as Africa is getting better, much of that due to Canada's help, we are telling the world we've lost our moral, our spiritual, compass."These are very, very serious words. That lack of spiritual and ethical dynamism that so enhanced our reputation in the world has been evident in both Liberal and Conservative times of government, but it has been specifically in this last while that our own depravity and empty words has fallen precipitously. Bono once declared that the world needs more of Canada. We went nuts as a nation at hearing that, swelled with pride and a sense of place. But really, Canada, this Canada right now, needs that Pearsonian kind of Canada more than at any other time. We are becoming spiritually depraved, moved more by the wallet than the world. That is the kind of poverty we need to make history, for without eradicating that from our midst, we will never recover what we have so dearly lost in the world.