The Truth Is Out There

It hasn't been adding up for some time now, and when Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon announced last week that the Harper government had fulfilled the Paul Martin 2005 promise of doubling aid to Africa, observers from that continent shook their heads once more at what they knew was clearly a misnomer. For almost two years now the government of Canada has been telling Canadians that it was on-track for fulfilling Martin's promise even at the same time as they were pulling long-term development funds out of numerous African countries. It remained an ominous task to acquire the true number that would validate such a claim. When the Auditor General had to finally conclude a few months ago that the CIDA disbursements were something of a moving target, people despaired of ever getting to the bottom of the matter.Two distinguished Canadians did us all a great service today by publishing their detailed research on this subject in the form of a op-ed article in one of this country's national newspapers. Brett House, senior economist at Columbia University, and Desiree McGraw, former senior CIDA policy advisor and prominent McGill University lecturer, combined their efforts to see if Cannon's statements were in fact valid. Their findings only confirmed what so many have been sensing for the last number of years: aid to Africa, far from doubling, has fallen some $700 million dollars short. This helps to explain why so many of CIDA partners, both domestic and international, have continually bristled at the spurious claim of doubling African aid.Before laying out the math concerning the Conservative claim, House and McGraw remind their readers that many development commitments to Africa have been underachieving for years now. Their claim the only a fifth of Canada's assistance in 2008 went to Africa might surprise many, though not development experts themselves. The assertion that this country has been, in reality, pulling much of its aid out of Africa to invest in middle-income countries in Latin America will come as a disappointment to many. To discover that some 55 commitments made by the G8 on international development have failed abysmally, including Canada's contribution, is disturbing at a time when making promises seems much easier than delivering on them.The meat of the article concerns then Prime Minister Martin's promise at the Gleneagles G8 summit to double aid to Africa over a five year period. Ms. McGraw was present during those announcements and I've since had the details confirmed by officials of the then Tony Blair government. When Harper officials claim that they actually fulfilled Martin's promise ahead of schedule, they participated in a shell game full of illusion. To be sure, aid to Africa has increased under the Harper regime, but not nearly to the levels they claim. Martin committed to double aid to Africa from an expected 2003-2004 base of $1.4 billion to $2.8 billion by 2008-2009 and was on-track to fulfill that promise when he lost government in 2006.  Once elected, the Harper government chose to go with a lower baseline for doubling (thus to $2.1 billion) rather than go with Martin's hard target of 2.8B. That changed everything, with the result that this country has fallen a full $700 million short of the Martin pledge.The government's gamble that Canadians wouldn't figure all this out paid off for a time ... until today, when the House/McGraw piece revealed the rather unseemly truth. No wonder it was difficult for Africans to endure Mr. Cannon's lecture about aid accountability to the continent when his own government promised one thing and significantly under-delivered. As House and McGraw conclude, while African nations and NGOs have delivered countless accountability reports to satisfy Canadian requirements, our own government has actually been the guilty party in terms of aid accountability.Brett House and Desiree McGraw have done us all a favour by exploding the Cannon myths and revealing the rather dark and soft underbelly of the Harper government's accountability claims. One can only hope that government members will align themselves with the research, tell the truth to Canadians, and get its international development act together before it hosts the G8 summit in just a few months' time.