[Mb-civic] CBC News - MARTIN PROMISES MORE AID TO AFRICA BUT WON'T TAKE THE 0.7% PLEDGE

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MARTIN PROMISES MORE AID TO AFRICA BUT WON'T TAKE THE 0.7% PLEDGE 
WebPosted Fri Jul  8 13:16:52 2005

---Laughing off a jibe from an Irish rocker, Prime Minister Paul Martin
said on Friday that Canada will double its aid to Africa by 2008 but he
won't pledge a set percentage of national economic output to foreign aid
quite yet.

INDEPTH: The 0.7% goal

Speaking after a summit of the G-8 industrial powers in Scotland, Martin
acknowledged that U2 front man Bono – a self-appointed social
conscience to rich governments – had offered minutes earlier to
kick his prime ministerial butt for again refusing to raise Canadian aid
spending to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product by 2015.

Currently, Canada gives just over $3 billion per year to all foreign aid,
or 0.26 per cent of the GDP.

Martin said he respects Bono, considers him a friend and shares his goal.

FROM JUNE 7, 2005: Celebrities appeal to G-8 finance ministers

"Look, the fact is that we each have a job to do. My job is to make sure
that we achieve the 0.7 and I'm going to do that, and his job is to push
me to do it as quickly as we possibly can, and do it more quickly than I
would have set out. He's doing his job and I'm doing mine."

Martin, who has consistently said he won't commit Canada to reach a fine-
sounding goal in the misty future, refused to comment on pledges by some
European governments to reach the 0.7 mark by 2015.

RELATED STORY: G-8 leaders to double African aid

For Africa, he said, Canada is providing firm figures. His government had
already promised to double aid to Africa by its 2008-09 bookkeeping year
from about $1.05 billion in 2003-04.

"We have said we are going to double our aid to Africa. There are no
conditions on that. There are no monies that have to be raised. It is
budgeted and it is part of our ongoing cash projections.

INDEPTH: The G8 Defined

"And then, having achieved that, we're going to go beyond that. And, in
fact, it is our intention to do what we have done with other targets, and
that is to beat our targets and to build on them."

He said the G-8 nations must honour a summit pledge to end export
subsidies that hurt producers in poor countries by some yet-to-be
specified date. In response to a question, he denied that Canada
subsidizes grain exports through the Canadian Wheat Board, a perennial
complaint of U.S. farm groups.

Martin again joined other leaders in denouncing Thursday's transit
bombings in London. He argued that economic globalization is part of the
answer to such attacks.

"Acts of terror were aimed at the innocent and at a way of life," he
said. "The bombings not only highlighted the tremendous resilience and
spirit of Londoners, they also demonstrated the pressing importance of
the issues that we have just spent the last couple of days discussing and
the prevailing need to expend to the left-out corners of the world the
benefits of globalization and free trade.

"A more prosperous world, a more just world will be a much less fertile
world for the ideology of hate."

Copyright (C) 2005 CBC. All rights reserved.