Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party caucus to strongly support the motion which has been put forward in the House today by my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois.
I would like to congratulate the members of the Bloc Quebecois for bringing forward this important motion.
September 11 was a day of unbelievable tragedy and anguish as we saw over 6,000 people die in the crimes against humanity involved in the terrorist attacks on New York, on Washington and in Pennsylvania. We in the New Democratic Party continue to mourn the tragic loss of those victims, to pay tribute to the people involved in the rescue effort and of course to do everything we can to bring to justice the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity.
As well, September 11 was a day on which 30,000 children around this planet died of preventable disease and hunger. UNICEF has reminded us that each and every day on this planet 30,000 children are dying of preventable disease and hunger, on September 11, on September 12, on September 13 and on every single day since then. There is no CNN, no publicity, but there is death, despair, famine and hopelessness. Five thousand children died in Iraq last month because of the impact of sanctions on that country.
Today we, along with the Bloc Quebecois, are calling upon the government to increase significantly the level of Canada's commitment to international aid. Certainly when we look at the current levels of aid, Canada's performance has been nothing short of shameful. Not that many years ago when the Liberals first took office in 1993, Canada was number 5 or 6 among the 22 nations of the OECD. By 1999, after years of savage cuts by the Liberals, we had dropped to number 12. Last year we were number 17 out of 22 countries in the OECD.
As Roy Culpeper, the president of the North-South Institute, said very clearly just this month in a document he submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance for the prebudget consultations:
Mr. Chairman, I will reiterate my remarks to (the Minister for International Cooperation) at her consultations last week on CIDA's new directions. I said to her that Canada should be ashamed of this abysmal performance. Certainly, if they were still alive and with us today, prime ministers Pearson and Trudeau would both be astonished and terribly disappointed at the state of affairs.
Our commitment as Canadians should be to meet the target of 0.7% for the ODA/GNP ratio, which was established, by the way, by Prime Minister Pearson. In order to meet that we should be working to get to the halfway mark of 0.35% within the next five years. The parliamentary secretary has said that they are increasing the level of aid and there will be more coming, but the fact of the matter is that the Canadian Council for International Cooperation has made it very clear that if we are to meet that target of 0.35%, which is after all only halfway to the goal we have committed ourselves to, it will require an annual increase of $400 million in each of the next five years.
That is what we are calling for as a minimum in order to get us on the road to meeting those commitments. Other countries can and have done far better, as others have pointed out. The Scandinavian countries, for example, Sweden, Norway and Denmark along with the Netherlands, have all consistently exceeded the UN target of 0.7% of GNP: Sweden at 0.7%, Norway at 0.91%, Denmark at 1% and the Netherlands at 0.8%.
Until recently we were actually falling further and further behind every year. If it was imperative that we increase our aid before September 11, it is even more so today.
As has been pointed out by the World Bank recently, we risk a dramatic increase in the level of poverty in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. These terrorist attacks will hurt economic growth in developing countries worldwide this year and next year. As many as 10 million more people will be condemned to live in poverty next year. It will hamper the fight against childhood diseases and malnutrition. This is all in a preliminary economic assessment that was released by the World Bank on October 1 this year. Even before September 11 the bank had predicted an economic slowdown, that growth in developing countries would fall as a result of slowdowns in the United States, Japan and Europe.
We know of course that the impact of September 11 on wealthier countries means that there will be a decline in their level of spending as well.
The worst hit area will be Africa where, in addition to the possible increases in poverty of two to three million people as a result of lower growth and incomes, a further two million people may be condemned to live on below a dollar a day due to the effects of falling commodity prices. The 300 million poor people in sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable because most countries there have absolutely no safety nets whatsoever. Poor households certainly do not have any savings to cushion bad times. Half the additional child deaths worldwide are likely to be in Africa. That is the area which has already been hardest hit by the epidemic of HIV-AIDS.
Again, in the aftermath of September 11 we must do far, far more. Gerry Barr on behalf of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation pointed out just this week that it is imperative that there be a significant increase in Canadian aid spending following the events of September 11. He points out that the shock waves of September 11 are likely to devastate the global south.
Foreign direct investment is down and is likely to go even lower. Export commodity prices, on which the economies of many developing countries depend, are anticipated to fall further. Recession in the markets of the developed world, including in Canada, means fewer sales for the developing world and declining revenues for them as well.
We are also very concerned that with the focus in the budget on security measures, international aid and other anti-poverty measures not be squeezed out as a result. We do not want to see Canada's aid spending become yet another casualty of the war on terrorism.
It would be a shame to see the Canadian aid budget fall victim to the war on terrorism. War, conflicts and emergency situations are threats to global security.
The end of hostilities must lead to the first steps towards peace. Peace will only be possible through development, the even distribution of resources and social agreements which, beyond the military action, allow the people to establish security for all those who live on this planet.
I would like to mention the constant efforts of the member for Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay, who has worked relentlessly in favour of more justice, more fairness and a better distribution of wealth between rich countries and poor countries. Since the beginning, he has spoken about the terrible impact of co-operative globalization. I want to thank him for his work on this important issue, which led to this motion by the Bloc Quebecois.
The motion of my friends in the Bloc also speaks about the importance of increasing the level of Canada's humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.
The situation in Afghanistan is absolutely devastating. It is a humanitarian crisis. Already more than 20 years of war have devastated Afghanistan, destroyed its economy and displaced huge numbers of civilians, including children. Already before September 11 Afghanistan was facing its most severe drought in years. The situation is only going to continue to deteriorate.
Aid delivery is hampered due to this terrible political situation and, I might add, due to the bombing by the United States. We have seen that a number of bombs have already hit Red Cross warehouses. We have seen that too many innocent civilians are dying as a result of the bombing campaign. In a country which is already facing massive challenges of de-mining, one of the countries that already has more mines than anywhere else in the world, we have seen that shamefully, the United States is continuing to use cluster bombs in its bombing campaign.
Six million people are dependent on food and emergency aid already in Afghanistan. Chronic instability and conflict have already displaced much of the population. They are fleeing the terror of the Taliban regime but they are also fleeing from the bombing. With winter months approaching, children in particular are going to be susceptible to the harsh climate without the necessary provisions for warmth. This five million or six million people is the equivalent of the entire population of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba that are fleeing as refugees. As Nadine Grant, the director of programs for Save the Children Canada, said recently, “The crisis looming in Afghanistan has the potential to become the worst humanitarian situation in the world”.
The Afghan people are already suffering the devastating effects of a three year drought. The emergency crisis for Afghani children is overwhelming. Three million Afghanis are already dependent on NGOs for food. It is estimated that an additional three million people will also need food assistance this winter. Two hundred and fifty-seven children out of every one thousand die before their fifth birthday. It is one of the worst levels of infant mortality in the world. There are currently 900,000 internally displaced people living in Afghanistan. There are approximately 50,000 children working in Kabul to support their families. In the north, as I mentioned earlier, there has been near total crop failure in 1999 and 2000. An estimated 10 million live mines are still buried in Afghanistan, placing children in most danger.
We join today in pleading with our government to do far more than it has already done to respond to this humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. So far, Canada's contribution has been approximately $16 million Canadian. Norway, a country of under five million people, has contributed over $80 million. Sweden has contributed over $60 million. The Netherlands has contributed over $50 million. We as Canadians can and should do far more.
It is also important that we recognize that in tackling global poverty it is not good enough simply to increase levels of aid. We have also to do far more to cancel the debts of the poorest countries of the world. In fact, the proposal of the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative to have the debt of the world's poorest countries cancelled has been one of the most important priorities for some time. Canada has not done nearly enough in this regard. We cancelled the debt of some of the poorest countries but we have not gone far enough.
This debt is a crushing burden on developing countries. It is the most obvious expression of their poverty. The indebtedness of the south condemns millions of people to lives of destitution. In fact the debt load of the heavily indebted poor countries is such that they have to use their meagre financial resources to make payments on their debts and they can no longer spend that money to meet the basic needs of their populations.
We join in calling for the objective of CIDA to be not just poverty reduction, but poverty eradication. It would not take a lot. In fact it has been estimated by the UN secretary general that some $40 billion worldwide would be what it would take to meet the needs of the world's poorest citizens.
Debt reduction and opening up the markets of developed countries to the products of the poorest countries is also essential, particularly agricultural products, textiles and clothing. These are the products that they depend upon for their survival, their economic self-sufficiency. Too often our doors are slammed shut. We could get rid of these tariff barriers at a minimal cost to Canadians but this would mean a huge difference in the lives of the poorest around this planet.
I would like to take a moment as well, because the WTO meeting in Doha is coming up, to appeal to our government to recognize that we have to be doing a lot more within the context of the trade agenda to respond to global poverty. Structural adjustment programs which have been forced on developing countries by the World Bank, the IMF and other international financial institutions has simply increased the gap between rich and poor in those countries. It has added to the level of poverty in those countries.
The WTO agenda and the agenda of the FTAA would exacerbate poverty and would drive more peasants and small farmers off their land. They simply cannot compete against the heavily subsidized agricultural products which are flooding their countries from wealthy countries like the United States and elsewhere.
We have to put poverty and its elimination front and centre on the global trade agenda. That means also that we have to look at the impact of TRIPS agreements. These are the agreements that give huge powers to multinational pharmaceutical companies.
I would hope that the Bloc, in addition to calling for an increase in the level of aid, would recognize that we have to stop pandering to the multinational pharmaceutical companies which are holding the poorest of the poor up to ransom for their patent rights. In South Africa, Brazil, India and elsewhere these pharmaceutical companies are demanding that they have the right to protect their patents even if it means additional tens of thousands of millions of lives lost in the fight against HIV-AIDS, malaria and other preventable diseases.
Canada should be playing a far more active role in speaking out against the current TRIPS agreement. Instead, the Minister for International Trade says that he supports that agreement.
There are many areas in which the battle against poverty can be fought. It can be fought within the context of trade deals and not moving ahead on a new round for the WTO. Developing countries have said they want to deal with some outstanding implementation issues of the existing WTO before we even consider moving ahead on new deals. It means challenging corporate powers within existing trade deals such as the powers given under chapter 11 of NAFTA which the government seems to want to extend throughout the hemisphere in the FTAA.
Nelson Mandela has said that security for a few is insecurity for all. Today, on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, we want to support this motion.
We appeal to the government to significantly increase levels of aid to work toward meeting that target of 0.7% of GDP, to meeting the interim target of 0.35% within the next three to five years, making far more aid available immediately to meet the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, ending the destructive and illegal U.S. led bombing campaign in Afghanistan, and forgiving the debts of the poorest countries and restructuring global trading schemes to ensure that they put people, the environment and tackling poverty against corporate profit.