Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, newly minted as the leader of a majority federal government for the first time in his life, has taken this week’s G8 summit as an opportunity to throw his weight around a little. The only problem is that his behavior is completely at odds with every other G8 leader. From the issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to North African aid, Harper is insisting on taking a contrarian position. Unfortunately, it is coming across as unproductive and pointlessly self-indulgent. And at a G8 summit, that is really saying something.
G8 summits: ostensibly they’re when the leaders of the world’s wealthiest countries get together to co-ordinate their geopolitical efforts to make the world a better place. But we all know they’re typically pointless affairs in which a lot of waffling and pontificating takes place.
It seems probable that Stephen Harper, too, has confused having a lot to say with having political clout. This would explain why he arrived at this week’s G8 summit in France with a dissenting opinion on almost everything. Harper has made no bones about his extreme pro-Israel stance since first taking the Prime Minister’s Office in 2006 and with his increased political strength at home he has seen fit to push that agenda harder than ever at this week’s G8 summit. Despite Barack Obama’s May 19th speech in which he called for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to resume on the basis of returning to 1967 borders and negotiated land swaps somehow Harper has managed to scuttle any mention of 1967 borders from the G8’s statement on the issue.
Reuters cited unnamed diplomatic sources who said that the language was removed at Canada’s insistence, although Harper remained evasive with press as is his usual tactic. At a press conference on Friday, Harper was repeatedly questioned by journalists on Canada’s role in having the 1967 language removed from the statement but only had this to say: “I think the [G8] statement that was agreed to is a balanced statement, I think if you are going to get into other elements, then obviously I would like to see reference to elements that were also in President Obama’s speech such as, for instance, the fact that one of the states must be a Jewish state. The fact that the Palestinian state must be demilitarized. I think it’s important any statement on this question be balanced, as was President Obama’s.”
Yes, I’m as confused as you are over what he means by balanced. Obama’s speech was balanced yet for the G8’s statement to be balanced it had to remove a major stipulation Obama had made for beginning peace talks. This is the kind of idiotic evasion Canadians deal with on a daily basis when trying to get a straight forward answer out of this guy. It’s all rather meaningless anyhow as the final statement instead claims “strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by President Obama.” Like I said, this is all waffling and Harper is just trying to throw his weight around in very pointless and unproductive ways.
On the issue of North African aid the G8 ended their summit Thursday by issuing a declaration on the topic of the “Arab Spring,” a phrase clumsily borrowed from the Prague Spring, the name for the period of political turmoil when Czechoslovakia shook off the authority of the Soviet Union in the late 1960s.
Predictably, the statement “calls for a marshaling of $20B in funds from international and multi-lateral financial institutions like the World Bank, as well as bilateral aid from G8 members and other nations.” So, business as usual more or less. Even more predictably, the G8 didn’t find it necessary to have anything to say on how that money is going to be delivered, instead leaving it up to finance ministers and foreign ministers from the G8 to figure that out “over the next few months.” Most of this money, should it ever actually materialize, will be directed toward Egypt and Tunisia. The G8 seem to want to use this to coax democratic reforms out of other Middle-Eastern countries stating that “We stand ready to extend this long term global partnership to all countries of the region engaging in a transition towards free, democratic and tolerant societies, beginning with Egypt and Tunisia, in association with countries wishing to support transition in the region.”
Several G8 countries have pledged their own direct aid packages to Egypt and Tunisia, Obama has offered a $2-billion US package of loan guarantees and direct debt forgiveness to Egypt, while France and Britain have pledged hundreds of millions for supporting both countries. Stephen Harper, on the other hand, rejected the idea outright. Putting his neo-liberal streak on full display Harper threw his support firmly behind the mechanism of banking and loans, stating that the best way to get a “coordinated international response” to North African development was to contribute money to the African Development Bank (ADB). Citing the fact that Canada already contributes money annually to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the ADB, Harper said Canada would not contribute any additional money toward this new effort to specifically aid Egypt and Tunisia. However, given that none of the money being discussed here is intended to arrive in the form of direct cash injection but rather through the mechanisms of institutions like the World Bank and debt-cancellation the actual difference between the G8’s position and Harper’s is superficial at best. Again, it’s all posturing and pontification.
The thing is all of these figures, these sums of money being thrown around by G8 leaders, it’s all theoretical. Harper claims that Canada has upped its contributions to these three banking institutions by 4.6-billion US since 2009. However, these contributions are in the form of loan guarantees, not up front aid payments. Thus, what Canada has actually “committed” to is supplying money in the event of major loan defaults by debtor nations. And what Harper also failed to mention is that his budget, set to be tabled on June 6th, calls for a complete freeze on foreign aid.
One only has to look back over the last 5 years to realize that what is committed to at G8 summits is rarely followed through on. In 2005 G8 nations pledged to double aid to Africa in an effort to reach the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, a set of ludicrously broad and ill-defined targets to end world poverty by 2015. The money pledged toward these goals, of course, is far from being fully provided at this point. Moreover, even if G8 nations had adhered to the 40+ billion in aid promised it remains to be seen if their favorite way of using this money – paying the World Bank off in exchange for loan cancellation so that developing nations can divert more funds to improve social programs – would even remotely help achieve the lofty Millennium Development Goals. What becomes increasingly clear as one reads more and more about how foreign aid from the West is delivered is that actual true monetary aid given yearly as part of developed nations’ budgets is extremely small and insignificant and rarely aligns with the figures that leaders boast about. At the current G8 summit Stephen Harper has been throwing around the figure of 12-billion US that Canada theoretically contributes in aid to Africa – but in 2010 the actual amount delivered was 1.9 Billion. Moreover, Canada has delivered an extremely modest amount of aid (compared to the US, Britain and the EU) for even Harper’s pet project of choice: the call, within the Millennium Development Goals, to improve global maternal-health through international aid. And due to the fact that this money is funneled through banking institutions it is unclear what direct help it provides.
It’s all a shell game and a ballet of waffling. And with Harper securely in the Prime Minister’s office for the next four years it would seem that Canada is set to become the most obnoxious purveyor of pontification in the G8.
Sources: Globe & Mail 2, CBC, Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Reuters. Millennium Development Goals
