Press Responses - March 20, 2002
CBC Commentary – Broadcast across Canada March 20, 2002
“No doubt the glasses will be clinking as world leaders celebrate saving the world once again. Yet after five long years of preparatory work, the UN Financing for Development conference is a diplomatic disaster.
This conference was to find new ways to wipe out poverty and narrow the growing gap between rich and poor. Intense US pressure, however, gutted the process, reducing the final conference statement to a set of vague principles and generalities. Shamefully, Canada became the echo in the room whenever the US spoke.
Governments eliminated or weakened commitments that could have delivered real reform to global finance and trade systems that by their very nature keep the poor poor.
They left out commitments to review trade policies that block access to markets in rich countries. How can you develop, when you can’t sell your goods abroad?
They overlooked the urgent need to cancel the crippling debt of developing countries. How can you develop, when you must pay the International Monetary Fund before you inoculate children?
They refused to examine how the World Bank and IMF manipulate developing countries economic, fiscal, and social policies. How can you develop, when you’re not allowed to govern your own country?
Canada surrendered principle after principle in these negotiations. It was just 3 years ago that the Canadian Parliament overwhelmingly passed a motion calling for the adoption of the Tobin tax. This innovative idea by renowned economist James Tobin would put a very small tax on the international trade in money, now over $2 trillion dollars a day. It could help prevent the kinds of financial crisis that rocked Asia and Latin America over the last 10 years, thereby enhancing economic stability, a cornerstone of development. The tax could generate tens of billions of dollars and do so by slicing into bank profits not people’s pockets.
With stats like those, the Tobin tax should have been the headliner at any conference on financing for development. Canada, however, not only refused to champion the idea Parliament had passed, but worked to remove references to currency controls from the final statement. Why? Vehement US opposition.
The Monterrey Conference will throw a little money at the problem, but it won’t be enough. It will cost $100 billion annually to cut poverty in half by 2015. The recent $5 billion US aid pledge is little more than a down payment on that bill. So what do we tell the parents of the 27,000 children who die every day, mostly from preventable causes?
African development and global poverty reduction are priorities for the Chrétien government at the G8. How can Kananaskis be anything but a sideshow when the structural barriers to development remain firmly intact? How can Canada remain credible when it has surrendered its principles on issues like the Tobin tax for a chance to sit closer to George W. at dinner?
For Commentary, this is Robin Round in Whitehorse.”
