We have been hearing a lot lately about the deficit and I have a suggestion which would help Canada reduce its debt.
It is about time that Canada followed the lead of the United States (unpopular though that is in some quarters) and investigate just how much of our foreign aid goes to support coercive abortion and family planning in developing countries. Under Ronald Reagan, the U.S. refused to fund any programmes that included abortion, which meant that their foreign aid to China, for example, was not allowed to be used for population-control and other “health” programmes. As far as I know, Canada has not even rebuked China for its obscene one-child policy – which includes forced abortion and infanticide – let alone insisted that foreign aid mist be conditional on China respecting international standards for human rights.
According to the annual report of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Canada’s contribution to international foreign aid to China in 1987-1988 was $98.43 million. More than half of this sum was for food aid and there was other assistance to help with technological and other worthy projects. The CIDA report does not identify how much aid, if any, went into China’s population policies. Still, even if our funds do not go directly into such programmes, our funding of other programmes allows the Chinese government to channel money that would otherwise be spent unobjectionably into population control.
China’s repulsive population control policies, however, are merely the tip of an extremely ugly iceberg. Canada also gives substantial funds to the UN Fund for Population Activities ($12.25 million), the UN Fund for Women ($1.10 million), the World Health Organization ($8.76 million) the International Planned Parenthood Federation ($8.95 million), and so on. Our foreign aid goes to countries where women are bribed or otherwise pressured into being sterilized or used as human guinea pigs to test the latest contraceptive drug or device. It goes to countries where female babies are killed at birth, or earlier by abortion, simply because they are the “wrong sex.”
CIDA’s annual report is bland in the extreme. It does not give any details on the kind of programmes supported under the guise of “family planning” or “health.” Isn’t it about time that Canadians asked for details? Isn’t it about time also that the projects funded by another Canadian government agency, the International Development Research Council (IDRC), were scrutinized? According to their annual report for 1982-83, we gave $317,000 to the Population Council, USA, to distribute and promote IUDs in “family planning” programmes worldwide. We gave the Population Council and an Indian Institute $711,320 for research into an anti-pregnancy “vaccine”. In Indonesia, we gave $95,100 for a contraceptive implant trial. In Chile, $254,600 went to “improve” a progesterone contraceptive implant and to develop progesterone pills given to nursing women to suppress fertility.
To be fair, I should add that the latest report for the IDRC (1987-88) does not detail the kind of projects mentioned above. Lately, it seems, we have been supporting data gathering projects, finding out the patterns of fertility and maternal and infant deaths in the developing countries. However, we should know how much money has gone into contraceptive-research projects in the past. It seems appalling to me that we allow our tax dollars to be used in experiments on the fertility of poverty-stricken women, hidden beneath the rhetoric of misplaced altruism and false propaganda of a population crisis.
With a deficit reaching billions of dollars annually, perhaps such spending detailed here is regarded as just so much small change. But I was taught to look to the pennies first. And even pro-abortionists and radical feminists are disturbed at the idea of forced abortion (it ism after all, supposed to be a matter of choice) and the notion that Third-World women are suitable subjects for medical research. I suppose it could be argued that we have no right to attach “strings” to foreign aid. However, we have not hesitated to use financial pressure to show our revulsion for apartheid in South Africa. It seems to me that we could show leadership also in these areas of human rights abuses.
Our misguided “do-goodism” is not apparently confined to population and health. Recently, the Globe and Mail published a report that a CIDA-funded, $75-million wheat programme in Tanzania is “economically unsound” and is being protested by the people it is supposed to benefit. The Barabaig people, through British anthropologist Charles Lane, say that the programme is “stealing their land and destroying their lives.”
Ancient graves and burial sites have been destroyed. Live-stock herders have been fined and beaten for “trespassing,” their homes have been destroyed, and one says two of his sons have committed suicide. The project has taken away the traditional grazing land of the Baragaigs without their consent and compensation. Lane drafted a letter, signed with the fingerprints of the five tribal leaders, saying, “Through this letter we want to inform you what is currently being done with your aid. You can see how you have been party to the wrongs inflicted on us… Our cry for your help is our last resort.”
Canadians are a generous and warm-hearted people, we gladly support projects designed to help people who do not have any of the amenities we take for granted. Many of us, though, do have difficulty with the thought that our tax dollars are contributing to the global war on life. Surely we can find a better way to help those in need and, if we reduce our deficit, we will have more money to support life.
