The numbers on aid

Today in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Prime Minister Harper (left, a little overwhelmed by the fervour and size of the crowd that greeted him) announced that Canada would contribute $105–million over five years to a new fund of $500–million aimed at improving the health of impoverished women and children in Africa and Asia. The program is called the Initiative to Save a Million Lives.

The Conservatives, in their campaign platform for the 2006 election, committed to doubling Canada’s budget for what is called the International Assistance Envelope or IEA by 2010 compared to 2001 levels. That sounds good but, by some other benchmarks, it’s less impressive.

The key measure used by Canada and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for aid compairs official development assistance (ODA) to Gross National Income (GNI), a measure of a country’s wealth.

In June 2005, all parties in the House of Commons — including the Conservatives under then Opposition Leader Stephen Harper voted government “…to honour the Millennium Development Goals and to commit immediately, through a plan, to increase Cana da’s aid budget by 12 to 15% annually to achieve an aid level of 0.5% of Canada’s Gross National Income by 2010 and 0.7% of Canada’s GNP by 2015.”

The key target, for this discussion, is the 2010 number: 0.5 per cent.

So where are we now?

According to the OECD, Canada’s ODA/GNI index in 2006 — the most recent year for which data is available — was 0.30. In other words, for every $100 of gross national income, the federal government spent 30 cents on international aid.

Among the 22 OECD countries, this put Canada in 15^th spot. Sweden was tops with an index number of 1.03 ($1.03 spent on aid for every $100 of GNI) and Greece was at the bottom at 0.16. The U.S. was second worst at 0.16 while the UK was was 7^th at 0.52 and France was 10th at 0.47.

So where are we going? The Conservatives,  in that campaign platform, committed to moving towards the OECD average although there is no timeline in the Conservative campaign platform. The OECD average in 2006 was 0.46 or 46 cents spent on aid for every $100 of GNI. Canada’s aid levels, then, was well back — or 17 per cent behind — the OECD average.

No one knows where the OECD average will be in 2010 but even by doubling international aid, as the Conservatives have promised, our ODA/GNI is likely to drop, according to Finance Department documents I obtained through an Access to Information request. Here’s a paragraph from that document which was written by Finance officials in March, 2006:

Budget 2006 re-affirmed Canada's commitment to double the international assistance envelope (IAE) by 2010 from its 2001 level. This will bring the IAE to over $5–billion by 2010-11. However, despite these annual increases, Canada's ODA/GNl ratio is expected to dip over the next few years, from the 0.35% recorded by the OECD in 2005 (remember in 2006, it had already dipped, says the OECD to 0.30 – Akin) to approximately 0.29% by 2010 (rough estimate only).