The calamitious impact of foreign aid

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

In a candid address to the Parliament of Ghana last Saturday, United States President Barack Obama pointed out to the oppressed people of Africa: “Development depends on good government. This is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places for far too long.”
With reference to the corrupt rule of Robert Mugabe, the longstanding Marxist dictator of Zimbabwe, Obama observed: “The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade.”
Dambisa Moyo disagrees. She is a former consultant to the World Bank who was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia, and holds an earned doctorate in economics from Oxford University. In her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, she persuasively argues that African dictators like Mugabe would not have been able to maintain their prolonged grip on power, if their grossly incompetent governments had not been propped up with hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid.
Altogether, the United States, Canada and other donor countries have handed out close to $1 trillion in foreign aid to Africa. Most of this well-meant assistance has been wasted. Moyo points out: “Africa’s real per capita income today is lower than in the 1970s, leaving many African countries at least as poor as they were 40 years ago.”
Half of the 700 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa get by on less than a dollar a day. Life expectancy in the region averages only around 50 years.
Meanwhile, many less-developed countries on other continents have achieved rapid and sustained economic growth. China is a case in point. Despite having had a lower standard of living than most African countries just 30 years ago, China now has an annual income per person of close to $6,000: That’s more than three times greater than Ghana, Kenya and almost all other African countries.
Moyo asks: “Why is it that Africa, alone among the continents of the world seems to be locked into a cycle of dysfunction? Why is it that out of all the continents in the world Africa seems unable to convincingly get its foot on the economic ladder? … What is it about Africa that holds it back, that seems to render it incapable of joining the rest of the globe in the 21st century?”
She explains: “The answer has its roots in aid.”
Granted, not all foreign aid is bad. Moyo acknowledges that the equivalent of $100 billion in today’s funds which the United States dispensed under the Marshall Plan to the war-ravaged countries of Western Europe was hugely successful. Why, though, has almost $1 trillion in aid to Africa so failed to benefit the people of Africa?
Moyo argues that among many social, cultural and economic factors, one key element was that recipients of assistance under the Marshall Plan realized the program was only temporary. They knew they had better make good use of the aid, because they would soon have to get along without it.
In contrast, leaders in Africa have learned to look upon foreign aid as a permanent handout. Instead of using the assistance to promote self-sustaining economic growth, most African rulers have diverted the proceeds to enrich themselves and prop up their corrupt governments.
Obama told the Ghanaian parliamentarians that his administration will increase assistance to African countries that have established democracies, uphold the rule of law and are determined to curtail corruption.
Moyo thinks this approach is inadequate. She calls upon the United States, Canada and other donor countries to liberate Africa from a stifling dependence on foreign aid, by announcing their intention to phase out virtually all aid to Africa over the next five to 10 years.
Will leaders of the donor countries pay heed to this advice? Let us hope so. Moyo pointedly notes: “one would expect Western moralizers to adopt policies which help those in need rather than hinder them in the long run and keep them in a perilous state of economic despair.”

The sobering reality of immigration

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

As the baby-boom generation begins to retire, the ratio of Canadians over age 65 to those of working age (the old-age dependency ratio) is set to increase so rapidly that the costs of sustaining Canada’s retirees threaten to reduce the rate of growth in Canada’s national standard of living.
What can be done? Robin Banerjee and William Robson of the C. D. Howe Institute have addressed this issue in an illuminating report released on Thursday: “Faster, Younger, Richer? The Fond Hope and Sobering Reality of Immigration’s Impact on Canada’s Demographic and Economic Future.”
It might be supposed that immigration will offset the growing burden of Canada’s aging population. This year alone, Canada is expected to take in an additional 245,000 immigrants. With the exception of Australia, Canada maintains much the highest ratio of immigrants to population in the industrialized world.
Nonetheless, Banerjee and Robson estimate that even if the extraordinarily high current rate of net immigration into Canada is retained, the old-age dependency ratio will more than double to 46.3 per cent in 2057. That’s up from 21.5 per cent this year and less than 15 per cent in 1977.
Is even more immigration the answer? Definitely not. Banerjee and Robson project that if Parliament were to rely on an increase in the current pattern of immigration to stop population aging, Canada would have to take in such a colossal number of additional immigrants that the total national population would reach 210 million in 2058.
That’s out of the question. No conceivable amount of immigration can prevent a rapid and burdensome growth in the aging of Canada’s population.
An increase in the age of retirement would help. Most Canadians at age 70 are no less fit today than were most Canadian workers at age 65 a few decades ago.
Banerjee and Robson conclude that a gradual increase in the normal retirement to age 70 would significantly reduce the rise in the old-age dependency ratio; but only temporarily. It’s likely that within 15 years, the proportion of elderly dependants would resume a steadily upward trend.
There can be no lasting solution to the multiplying difficulties posed by Canada’s aging population short of dealing with the fundamental underlying problem – namely, the devastating collapse in the national fertility rate over the past 40 years. In 2005, the average number of children per woman in Canada was just 1.54 -- far below the ratio of 2.1 that is necessary to sustain the population.
Banerjee and Robson have considered the combined effects of a gradual increase in both the age of retirement to age 70 and the national fertility rate to 2.1. The results are encouraging: Other factors remaining the same, the old-age dependency ratio would remain well below 30 per cent.
Banerjee and Robson do not suggest how Parliament and the provincial legislatures might encourage a rise in the national fertility rate. However, at least one part of the solution is obvious: A major reduction in the catastrophic increase in abortions over the past 40 years.
According to Statistics Canada, there were 28.3 induced abortions for every 100 live births in Canada in 2005, down from a peak of 32.2 in 1998. While that slight downward trend is encouraging, it’s hardly sufficient.
Sooner or later, our politicians will have to take decisive action to curb abortion. Few reforms could do more to eliminate a huge amount of suffering and death.
Moreover, as Banerjee and Robson point out, boosting fertility rates could also play a key role in holding down the rate of increase in old-age dependency that threatens the economic prosperity of Canadians.

Correction: In “Ontario should continue to fight menace of marijuana” (Free Press, June 27), I attempted to summarize my findings from a review of the literature on the harm produced by the recreational use of cannabis with the assertion: “there is overwhelming scientific evidence that cannabis is no less dangerous to life and health than alcohol and tobacco.”
That statement is incorrect. I very much regret the error.

Curbing drug abuse

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

So far this year, London police and RCMP officers have conducted more than 80 raids on illegal marijuana growers within the city, and seized tens of millions of dollars worth of plants. Other municipalities across the province are in the throes of a similar law-enforcement struggle.
Is it time, then, to give up on the war on drugs? Should Parliament and the Ontario Legislature not frankly acknowledge that at least in the case of marijuana, prohibition for recreational use is plainly not working?
Most definitely not. Marijuana is not harmless. Despite the contrary claims of infatuated pot heads, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that cannabis is no less dangerous to life and health than alcohol and tobacco.
Perhaps so, some might argue, but alcohol and tobacco are legally produced and sold. Why not marijuana as well? Why should the Ontario government forgo the huge revenues it could gain by taxing and selling marijuana through government-controlled outlets like the LCBO?
The answer is, or should be, obvious: Addiction to alcohol and tobacco ruins the life and health of tens of thousands of Canadians every year. No legislator with a prudent regard for the health and wellbeing of Canadians would compound these problems by legalizing marijuana as well.
Granted, the suppression of marijuana production and consumption is a never-ending and expensive proposition. But the same is true of any major law-enforcement operation. The police expend vast resources in a perpetual effort to enforce the highway traffic act, yet no one would suggest that the Ontario Legislature should give up the struggle and legalize speeding, careless driving or any of the other all-too-frequent traffic infractions.
Besides, the aim of the police is not to eliminate crime altogether, but to curtail it at reasonable cost. By this standard, there is no reason for police, educational and health authorities to give up on the struggle to curtail marijuana trafficking, addiction and abuse.
Certainly, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino is not about to surrender in the war on drugs. On a recent radio call-in show, he maintained that Ontario police are doing a good job of holding down the number of marijuana grow-ops. Last year, his force dismantled 499 of them, seized 211,919 marijuana plants, removed more than $264 million drugs from circulation and brought 4,700 charges against 2,400 people.
Moreover, there is evidence that the combined efforts of health, education and law-enforcement officials to combat drug abuse is paying off. According to the latest data on drug use among Ontario students compiled by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the proportion of students in Grades 7, 9 and 11 who admitted to having used cannabis at least once in the past year was 22 per cent in 2007, down slightly from 23.9 per cent in 1997, but significantly below the peak of 29.1 per cent in 1979.
While the great majority of Ontario students use cannabis only occasionally or not at all, CAMH estimates that an alarming 10 per cent use the drug on a daily basis and may already have developed a problem with cannabis dependence.
Meanwhile, there has been a dramatic reduction in tobacco smoking among Ontario students. According to CAMH, the proportion who report that they have smoked tobacco in the past year was just 11 per cent in 2007, down from 27 per cent in 1997 and a peak of 35 per cent in 1979.
The McGuinty Liberal government deserves much of the credit. In 2005, it initiated a Smoke Free Ontario Campaign that featured tougher enforcement of the ban on tobacco sales to anyone under 19 as well as an unprecedented $50 million in funding for enhanced health and educational programs to combat tobacco smoking.
Clearly, this Ontario anti-smoking campaign has been a huge success. While continuing to discourage tobacco smoking, the Ontario government should now focus on a stepped-up campaign to combat the even greater menace posed by marijuana. At stake is the life and health of literally hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, in Ontario.

Misguided bailouts

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman

So far this year, the governments of Canada and Ontario have handed over $9.6 billion to the failing General Motors and Chrysler corporations. For the people of Ontario, that works out to more than $2,500 for every family of four.
In defence of these whopping corporate bailouts, Ontario Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty insisted on Monday that he and his government colleagues had no choice: “The auto sector sustains thousands of current jobs for Ontario families and supports the pensions of many of our retirees,” he said. “That's why we're partnering with the federal and United States governments to put the industry on a more sustainable footing for the long term."
There can be little doubt that without government support, GM and Chrysler would have closed down all their operations in Canada. As a result, many related car dealerships, auto supply firms and other companies would also have gone out of business. Ontario government officials peg the total job loss in the province at 85,000.
But is that a compelling argument for the bailouts? In April, there were 5,283,200 full-time workers in Ontario, down 184,500 from a year earlier. Yet the governments of Canada and Ontario offered no corporate bailouts to prevent any of these job losses. Why should the workers whose jobs depend on GM and Chrysler qualify for special treatment?
Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe is at a loss for an answer. Speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, he pointed out that over the past two years, 50,000 jobs have been lost in the forestry sector in Canada, with half of those job losses in Quebec. Yet in this year’s federal budget, the Harper government has provided only $270 million for corporate handouts to the forestry industry.
Regardless, the federal Liberals and New Democrats support the Conservative government’s record auto-sector bailouts. And the reason is clear: Unlike the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats are all vying to win or retain seats in Ontario that include hundreds of voters who are employed in the auto industry.
This overriding political consideration also explains the abandonment by Prime Minister Stephen Harper of his promise to do away with corporate bailouts during the 2004 election campaign. At that time, he pointed out: “It doesn't matter how many millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a Liberal-NDP coalition will be willing to give the auto industry to win an election … their reckless use of taxpayers' dollars will make us less competitive.”
Quite so. Who would have thought that within five years, a Harper Conservative government would squander billions of dollars in corporate welfare on GM and Chrysler, alone?
Note also that as a condition for receiving $10.5 billion in additional handouts from the governments of Ontario and Canada, GM Canada has agreed to make an immediate payment of $4 billion toward the $7-billion shortfall in the company’s insolvent, gold-plated pension plan. How can that be? Are not all companies in Ontario required by law to keep their defined-benefit pension plans solvent?
Not exactly. During the recession of 1992, the Ontario New Democratic Party government of former premier Bob Rae helped sustain GM Canada, by granting the company an exemption from the full-funding requirement for its pension plan. With the support of the Canadian Autoworkers Union (CAW), that exemption has remained in effect ever since.
Even when GM Canada was racking up profits over the past 15 years, both management and union agreed to improve promised pension benefits rather than return the plan to solvency. For the Harper and McGuinty governments now to shore up that insolvent plan at a cost to taxpayers of $4 billion is entirely unjustifiable, especially inasmuch as three-quarters of private-sector workers have no pension plan.
Clearly, while it’s politics, not considerations of economics, equity or justice, that has dictated the billions of dollars in auto-sector bailouts, will taxpayers get at least some of that money back?
Harper says he is not counting on it. Neither should anyone else.

Gairdner on natural and moral absolutes

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
For the past 40 years, most intellectuals have embraced moral relativism -- the calamitous notion that the difference between right and wrong is merely a matter of arbitrary personal tastes and historical circumstances.
William Gairdner, the best-selling author of The War on the Family and The Trouble with Canada, has addressed this issue in his latest dissertation The Book of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals. In this extraordinarily wide-ranging and informative book, he presents a compelling argument for the truth that there are universal moral truths grounded in natural law that apply to all peoples, at all times, and in all cultures.
The contrary proposition -- that all moral values are relative -- is an ancient fallacy that was utterly discredited by Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. Yet it keeps recurring. Gairdner traces the reemergence of moral relativism in modern form to Franz Boas, a cultural anthropologist at Columbia University.
During the 1920s, Boas was horrified by the rise of Nazi antisemitism and the eugenics movement which was backed by intellectuals like Margaret Sanger, the "Godmother" of Planned Parenthood, who advocated birth control for "racial regeneration" as well as feminist freedom. To combat these racist ideologies, Boas propounded the theory that the key determinants of human behaviour and social diversity are cultural factors, not race or biology.
Correspondingly, Boas also insisted that no culture or civilization is any better than any other. Inspired by his teaching, Margaret Meade, Ruth Benedict and a host of other prominent cultural anthropologists set out to prove, as Gairdner observes, that "all cultures are equally good and already fully civilized; that none are morally better or worse than others."
Meade gained international renown in the 1930s with her best-selling book, Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she depicted an idyllic Polynesian community where young men and women enjoyed casual sex before marriage. The accuracy of this portrait is now a matter of hot academic debate.
Gairdner underlines a more fundamental objection: Meade might not have been so tolerant of the prevailing moral code and cultural diversity in Samoa if she had observed that society before Christian missionaries and colonial rulers had persuaded the Samoans to renounce the evils of slavery, human sacrifice and cannibalism.
In addition to cultural relativism, Gairdner describes existentialism, structuralism, post structuralism, deconstuctionism, post modernism, post-post modernism and legal positivism. Running through all these trendy intellectual fads is the perverse notion that there are no knowable and universal principles of morality.
This is a novel doctrine within Western Civilization. Prior to the 1960s, it used to be generally understood in the English-speaking countries that there is a natural law knowable by reason that is the moral basis for valid laws. Thus, Sir William Blackstone explained in his classic Commentaries on the Laws of England that "no human laws are of any validity if contrary" to the natural moral law.
Today, most lawyers and jurists subscribe to the theory of legal positivism -- the doctrine that the law is whatever the sovereign authority in a state says it is. By this reasoning, the Nuremberg jurists had no moral basis for condemning the Nazis who murdered millions of innocent people in conformity with the so-called laws of Nazi Germany.
That's preposterous. And so is the entire theory of moral relativism. Notwithstanding the pretensions of Boas and his followers, no society or culture has survived -- or could survive -- without moral constraints governing such matters as incest, adultery, lying, cheating, stealing and murder.
Typically, the transgressive proponents of moral relativism are inconsistent: While subscribing to moral relativism in theory, they would be quick to denounce in practice the immorality of a fraud artist who victimized them.
Such is the absurdity, but also the appeal, of moral relativism. As Gairdner explains, for all too many of us, moral relativism "is a very handy concept to keep in our knapsack because it helps us to dismiss all sorts of rules and absolutes for ourselves, without altogether denying the need to apply them to others."

An authentic Canadian hero

The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Ezra Levant, popularly known in some quarters as Ezra the Rant, has written an eloquent and powerful polemic Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name of Human Rights. The target of his righteous wrath is Canada's so-called Human Rights Commissions.
The very name of these commissions is misleading. They serve mainly to suppress and subvert the fundamental rights and freedoms they are supposed to safeguard and exhance.
Levant is one of the most famous victims. His troubles began in 2006, when Syed Soharwardy, the Islamist imam of a tiny mosque in Calgary, filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission (AHRCC), accusing him of inciting hatred for Muslims.
At issue was Levant's decision as publisher of The Western Standard to republish a controversial set of Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad. In the letter of complaint to the Commission, Sohwardwari stated: "I am quite disturbed and mentally tortured by the cartoons." He also accused Levant of inciting "violence, hate and discrimination against me and my family."
Prior to enactment of Canada's so-called human rights codes, there would never have been any question about Levant's right in law to publish cartoons that might offend some readers. Likewise, there never would have been any legal dispute about the right of Maclean's newsmagazine to republish an extract from Mark Steyn's best-selling book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
Today, anyone in Canada who says or writes anything that might offend some privileged group in human rights law could be prosecuted. Levant notes that he is "the first journalist in the free world to be grilled by a government inquisitor about the cartoons. Not even the Danish cartoonists themselves were called in to answer for what they'd done. Nor had any of the newspapers throughout Europe that had republished the cartoons.
"I had the dubious honour of being a pioneer in the burgeoning field of Western Islamo-censorship."
Canada is also the only democracy in which anyone has been prosecuted for publishing extracts of Steyn's book. That's disgraceful. Canada, formerly one of the freest nations on Earth, now has the worst record in the free world for transgressing freedom of the press.
Granted, both Levant and Maclean's have been exonerated by the HRC's and tribunals that placed them under investigation. But that's hardly reassuring. As Levant points out, "the process is the punishment." During three stressful years of battling the Canadian and Alberta HRCs, he ran up several hundred thousand dollars in legal bills.
That's typical. The defendant before a human rights tribunal gets stuck with a legal bill that would financially ruin most Canadians, while all costs of the accuser are picked up by the prosecuting HRC.
Moreover, even the best counsel can do little to protect anyone who has been wrongly accused by an HRC, because the kangaroo courts run by our human rights tribunals routinely flout the fundamental rules of evidence and judicial procedure that have evolved over centuries to protect the innocent in a regular court of law.
On the advice of counsel, most innocent victims of an HRC complaint dare not even attempt to defend themselves. Levant is different. Instead of capitulating, he has stoutly resisted the petty tyrants in the HRCs.
Early in the cartoons affair, the Alberta commission tried to shake him down, by offering to drop the case if he agreed to publish an apology in his magazine and pay several thousands dollars to Soharwardi.
Levant summarily refused. He relates: "I replied that I would fight the AHRCC and their hijackers all the way to the Supreme Court before I did that -- and even if I lost there, I'd contemplate doing jail time for contempt of court before apologizing."
Levant is a hero. All Canadians should honour him for defending their rights, and support the growing national movement that he and Steyn have ignited to persuade our federal and provincial legislators to curb, if not altogether abolish, Canada's rights-destroying HRCs.

Open season on the Pope

The National Post
By Rory Leishman

It seems to be open season on Pope Benedict XVI in the secular media. Last week, newspapers around the world mocked him for suggesting during a discussion of AIDS with reporters: "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Then, on Saturday, Agence France-Presse sensationally reported: "Pope Benedict used a nationally televised speech in Angola yesterday to reiterate the Roman Catholic Church's ban on abortion, even to save a mother's life."

According to the official Vatican text of the Pope's address, he made only one reference to abortion, stating: "How bitter the irony of those who promote abortion as a form of 'maternal' health care! How disconcerting the claim that the termination of life is a matter of reproductive health (cf. Maputo Protocol, art. 14)!"

On Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported that Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi "has clarified" the Pope's remarks on abortion, stating that the Church has always taught that "indirect" abortion is permissible if necessary to save the life of the mother. Lombardi added: "What the Pope said is that the concept of maternal health cannot be used to justify abortions as a means of limiting births."

Quite so. It is generally agreed among pro-lifers -- Catholic, Protestant and secular -- that induced abortion is a grievous wrong that can never be justified except if necessary to save the life of the mother.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the Pope's remark about condoms and AIDS continues. In an editorial, "The Pope on Condoms and Aids" (March 17), The New York Times contended: "Pope Benedict XVI has every right to express his opposition to the use of condoms on moral grounds, in accordance with the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. But he deserves no credence when he distorts scientific findings about the value of condoms in slowing the spread of the AIDS virus."

In support of this argument, the Times editorial stated: "From an individual’s point of view, condoms work very well in preventing transmission of the AIDS virus from infected to uninfected people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites 'comprehensive and conclusive' evidence that latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are 'highly effective' in preventing heterosexual transmission of the virus that causes AIDS."

This statement is essentially misleading. Despite several decades of "safer-sex" propaganda, the great majority of sexually active persons do not use condoms "consistently and correctly." In an article published in The British Medical Journal (26 January 2008), Dr. Stephen Genuis, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alberta, observed: "In theory, condoms offer some protection against sexually transmitted infection; practically, however, epidemiological research repeatedly shows that condom familiarity and risk awareness do not result in sustained safer sex choices in real life. Only a minority of people engaging in risky sexual behaviour use condoms consistently. A recent study found that ... [e]ven among stable, adult couples who were HIV discordant and received extensive ongoing counseling about HIV risk and condom use, only 48.4% used condoms consistently."

What about Africa, in particular? Have the millions of free condoms that Western countries have distributed on this continent over the past several decades not at least served to reduce the scourge of AIDS among Africans?

Alas, no. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at Harvard University, is one of the leading authorities on AIDS. In an illuminating article "Aids and the Churches: Getting the Story Right," First Things (April 2008), he wrote: "Consider this fact: In every African country in which HIV infections have declined, this decline has been associated with a decrease in the proportion of men and women reporting more than one sex partner over the course of a year -— which is exactly what fidelity programs promote. The same association with HIV decline cannot be said for condom use, coverage of HIV testing, treatment for curable sexually transmitted infections, provision of antiretroviral drugs, or any other intervention or behavior."

Even The New York Times has grasped that condoms are not a cure-all for the AIDS epidemic. In its editorial chiding the Pope, the paper conceded: "The best way to avoid transmission of the virus is to abstain from sexual intercourse or have a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected person."

Pope Benedict could not have said it any better.


NB: Rory Leishman is a freelance columnist and member of St. George's Anglican Church in London, Ontario.