Michael Ignatieff and China's New Colonialism

China becoming a global leader in African exploitation

With Michael Ignatieff set to lead the Liberal party into the new year, it's safe to say that foreign policy will find itself firmly entrenched in the Liberal party`s agenda.

Of particular interest should be Ignatieff`s stance on China. In 2006, Ignatieff criticized Stephen Harper for the Prime Minister`s criticism of China.

Among other things, Ignatieff hailed reductions in Chinese poverty as an erstwhile human rights triumph.

"You have to give them credit for a fact not enough Canadians, I think, recognize which is over the last 10 years, the most important human-rights advance in the world has been the hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of absolute poverty," he mused.

Yet one can`t help but wonder how Ignatieff might have reacted to some of China's activities abroad, particularly in Africa:



It seems China is turning back the clock on colonialism. The country that was once the most sought-after Colony among all European countries is all grown up, and ready to do some exploiting of its own.

Among raw materials, China is also pursuing African oil. The Beijing government is pursuing oil through a collection of exploration and development deals, and reciprocal trade deals coupled with foreign aid packages.

China`s efforts in Africa has them active in countries like Equitorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the latter two cases -- one of which, Sudan, is currently the subject of considerable human rights-related outcry -- the Chinese are involved in countries with ongoing civil conflicts.

Inevitably, China's activities in the DRC will favour the Congolese government over the rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People. As in the Sudan, the Chinese are taking sides in a civil conflict.

If anything, China's activities in Africa -- energy-related and otherwise -- demonstrate that communism is all but officially dead in China. Now, it has learned to exploit the developing world just as stringently as western states and multinational corporations have.

The mess -- both in terms of environmental devestation and human suffering -- being left in China's wake poses a definite question mark on Ignatieff's insistence that reduction in Chinese poverty is a human rights triumph.

Especially when one considers the cost.

Obscuring the Point With Manufactured Controversy

The wolves are out for Pierre Poilievre -- never mind that he has a point

The Canadian political landscape is awash in outrage over some comments made by Nepean-Carleton Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre just hours before yesterday's historic residential schools apology.

In a radio interview with CFRA News Talk Radio, Poilievre questioned how effective the billions of dollars spent on reducing poverty on Canadian Indian reservations has been.

"We spend 10 billion dollars -- 10 billion dollars -- in annual spending this year alone now, that is an exceptional amount of money, and that is on top of all the resource revenue that goes to reserves that sit on petroleum products or sit on uranium mines, other things where companies have to pay them royalties," Poilevre noted. "And that's on top of all that money that they earn on their own reserves. That is an incredible amount of money."

"Now, you know, some of us are starting to ask: 'Are we really getting value for all of this money, and is more money really going to solve the problem?"

Of course, some people predictably don't like Poilievre's comments -- or, rather, like the opportunity to excoriate the Conservatives for a politically-incorrect gaffe.

In particular, Liberal Indian Affairs critic Anite Neville denounced Poilievre's comments as "ignorant" and "disgraceful".

"I invite him to take a tour of many of the First Nations communities in this country and see how people are living," she announced.

Now, there may be much to said about the timing of Poilievre's comments, or about his specific prescriptions for solving the problem (notably "hard work" and "independance" and "self-reliance").

But the real unfortunate twist -- for everyone involved -- in this particular controversy is that Poilievre hasn't said anything that Canadians don't already know: that our federal government spends billions of dollars per year on Indian reservations, with no discernable result to show for it.

Most Indian reservations are as impoverished as ever. Money alone hasn't solved this problem.

Canada's poverty-fighting measures on Indian reservations reflects William Easterly's two tragedies of poverty fighting. The first tragedy is the poverty itself, as poverty always is. The second tragedy reflects the fact that, for all the billions of dollars spent, there has been little discernable improvement in conditions on the reserves.

The sad truth of the matter is that Canada's Indian reservations have all too often been treated as a money pit in which various politicians and commentators have been more than content to pour billions of dollars into without any kind of accountability (accountability for how the money is spent, or even accountability for results) because, by golly, they don't have to live there.

A methodological shift is clearly needed regarding how Canadians approach poverty on Indian reservations.

The money, for the most part, should actually be treated as a non-issue. Fighting poverty costs money. How the money is actually spent is where the shift will be necessary.

It's impossible to believe that Canada's aboriginal population is so impoverished because they're all shiftless and lazy. In fact, many people who have actually worked with aboriginal people in the workforce know things to be quite different: like any other group of people, work ethic isn't a cultural trait -- it's a personal trait.

On Canada's Indian reservations there are thousands of individuals eager to build a better life for themselves, their families and their neighbours. They simply lack the resources to actually do it.

As Poilievre himself notes, a shift in spending away from funds being put into the hands of Band leadership -- who all too often turn out to be almost entirelty unaccountable -- is necessary. Instead, larger portions of federal funding should go toward microfinance that would allow those aboriginals so inclined to start small businesses and, in time, provide stable employment where it is needed the most.

By its very nature, this would also engender a shift in decision-making ability away from government bureaucrats and toward aboriginal community members who know best what their communities need.

In short, what is needed are fewer planners -- government bureaucrats who make funding decisions based on what they think is best -- and more seekers -- individual community members who know what their needs are, and just need the resources to meet them.

We as a country also need to realize that, no matter how much money is spent on fighting poverty on Indian reservations, there is no miracle cure for it. The dilemma of poverty on Indian reserves simply won't be solved tomorrow. Wiping out poverty on Canada's Indian reserves should be viewed as a 100-year project -- one that would have long ago been conluded if we had started on 1 July 1867 -- but one that we need to start making progress on now.

Poilievre is right to be alarmed by the amount of money spent on Indian reservations with no discernable improvement in conditions. Anite Neville should be, too, but unfortunately there's too little political gain in saying "I'm concerned about that, too."

Thank You For Calling, Mr Sachs

We have a message for you

It's positively wondrous what a prestigious United Nations posting can do for a person.

It provides an immediate career boost, accompanied by a surge in self-esteem... and completely blinds one to the failures of their own policies. And turns them into a bit of a loudmouth.

Jeffrey Sachs, Special UN advisor to Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and director of the Millennium Project, recently had some sharp words for Canada in regards to "global leadership".

"We've seen essentially no global leadership from Canada on poverty, hunger, disease, climate change and foreign assistance," Sachs insisted. "This has been a huge surprise for me as a lifelong admirer of Canada, that we don't see the ambition of the Canadian people manifested in Canada's policies right now."

Yet Sachs himself, for quite a considerable period of time, has been thrust into a position of global leadership, and given billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to make the goals of the Millenium project a reality. The results of Sachs' leadership have been less than inspiring.

Consider the case of Mosquito nets. To date, billions of dollars have been spent on insecticide treated mosquito nets. Intended to solve the preeminent (and spreading) problem of Malaria, these mosquito nets have often been diverted into the black market by the bureaucrats entrusted with their distribution.

William Easterly points out that Sachs efforts to distribute the mosquito nets -- although having more recent successes -- have failed on one key point: people have needs, more often than not know their needs, and will act to meet them if they have the resources.

The fact that Non-profit non governmental organizations that sell heavily subsidized mosquito nets have had considerably more success distributing them than the (often corrupt) local agencies given the nets demonstrates a glaring hole in Sach's prescription for ending poverty in the developing world.

Sachs has, in the course of his career as a would-be economic visionary relied almost exclusively on macroeconomics as a solution to poverty.

His previous catastrophic failures in post-Soviet Russia certainly hasn't dissuaded him from deploying his disastrous shock therapy technique into developing economies -- in particular, Africa.

And just as when his policies failed in Russia, what Sachs insists is necessary is a massive bailout from G8 nations, which is probably what is behind his insistence that Canada contribute 0.7% toward his all too often ill-fated aid programs.

Despite Sachs' criticisms, Canada's contribution of $167 million to the UN food program last year made it the third most prolific donor in the world. In 2005, Paul Martin's Liberal government even changed policy that required food contributed to the program to be purchased from Canadian producers to allow it to be purchased from sources closer to their destination -- a wise decision that hastened delivery of aid considerably, although unfortunately at the expense of Canadian producers.

Yet such initiatives don't seem enough for Sachs, who instead wants to play partisan politics in a country foreign to his own.

"Canada did not show leadership on critical issues, like agriculture, for example, where I was shocked by discussions I had in Ottawa," Sachs insists. "Then the [Martin] government fell, and this government has come in and it's been antagonistic, rhetorically and in policy. It's almost mocking, some times, with these objectives."

Of course, it would be remiss to pretend that Sachs has had no successes. In the few occasions in which he has "lowered" himself to dabbling in some microeconomics -- the approach clearly favoured by Easterly -- Sachs has managed to help do some good in Africa. Consider the Millenium villages project, in which $100 per resident is invested every five years, resulting in some truly fantastic growth.

But the problem with the Millenium village approach is that there hasn't been nearly enough of them, and far too much of the money being spent elsewhere is simply being wasted.

Even Sachs' insistence that investing in research and development in developing states -- while possessing a considerable amount of potential -- overlooks the fact that many of these countries don't have the infrastructure for such R&D in place to begin with.

What is needed in Africa isn't massive macroeconomic re-engineering as Sachs seems to insist. What is necessary, instead, is a rethinking of the basic economic principles at work in Africa, and a questioning of some of the assumption Sachs work is based upon.

For example, Sachs' model of Clinical Economics -- in which developing economies are treated as ailing patients and diagnosed and treated accordingly -- possesses tremendous potential. Unfortunately, too much of it relies on Sachs' so-called poverty trap: a concept that can be discarded after even a remedial economic analysis. (William Easterly demonstrates that the 50 poorest countries in the world today are not the poorest countries in the world as of 50 years ago -- obviously, lack of money is not the dominant factor in sustained poverty, although lack of economic development clearly is.)

What is needed in Africa is more microeconomic aid, on a wider scale, and designed as an incentive for the private sector to get involved in providing for the needs of otherwise destitute Africans. In particular, microloans have been very successful.

But these are successes that Sachs has taken advantage of only sparingly, if at all.

It's clearly time for Jeffrey Sachs to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate his own policies before engaging in finger pointing clearly designed to benefit those he considers his political allies.

Then again, that's yet another perk of being a UN appointee: incredible job security, regardless of whether or not one's track record warrants it or not.

Panhandlers Are Not the Problem

Focus on aggressive panhandlers overlooks bigger issue

Following a number of violent incidents involving panhandlers, many people are calling for tougher laws to address the apparent scourge of aggressive panhandling.

Talk about treating the symptom over the cause.

While two recent incidents are alarming -- one in which an elderly Vancouver man was mugged after giving money to a panhandler on a fifth consecutive day, and another in which a pack of panhandlers mobbed a Toronto man, stabbing him to death -- one can easily mistake what the issue at stake is: whether or not aggressive panhandlers should be targeted by tougher laws, or whether these individuals should have to be panhandling in the first place.

First, however, a caveat: it is true that not all panhandlers are made equal. Among the many panhandlers who are legitimately homeless and unable to otherwise fend for themselves, there are plenty of able-bodied panhandlers who resort to panhandling because they do not want to work. They have their reasons, from base laziness, to some who subscribe to a set of counter-cultural beliefs that essentially forbid them from working, paying taxes, and supporting "the system".

For most panhandlers, however, the issue is very different. They are forced to panhandle because they are homeless, and for a variety of reasons. Mental illness, for example, accounts for between 20 and 25% of all single homeless adults. Drug addiction and alcoholism can be identified in 65-85% of single homeless adults. In Canada, in particular, aboriginal people are more likely to be homeless.

To describe these people as "victims of the system" would clearly be passe. Many of them are homeless because of bad choices that they themselves made. However, it is obvious that once they become homeless, society doesn't care for them very well.

Many people regard panhandlers as a "social nuisance", and demand tougher laws to regulate their behaviour, including loitering laws to prevent them from hanging out on the street.

Unfortunately for the homeless people in question, they have no where else to go. In many Canadian cities, there is a shortage of available shelter space.

If homelessness were merely a private problem, that would be one thing. Yet the public inconveniences (as minor as they may be) caused by the homeless veer directly into the realm of the public problem. While relying on philantropy to help homeless people may seem like a convenient solution, there is only so much the private good can do in addressing a public problem.

A renewed commitment to mental health facilities alone could cut the ranks of Canada's homeless by as much as the aforementioned 20-25%. While this directly contradicts the principle of the "new institutionalism" (the idea that the mentally ill are best treated while living among the public, rather than in closed facilities), it's really only contradicting something that hasn't fully worked. Even if Canada's mentally ill homeless were only offered optional instutionalization, at least that's more choice than they have now.

For the rest of Canada's homeless, more shelter space is necessary, and not just during times of inclement weather. Searching for a job tends to require a fixed address, and ability to get in contact with prospective employers. A homeless shelter may not be the most pleasant place to live, and may actually be a fairly expensive operation for the public purse, but it certainly gives homeless people a better opportunity at getting employed and getting off the streets.

Which is basically what the problem with demanding tougher laws against panhandlers entails. We as a society need to be getting homeless people off the streets, not sending them off to jail. For those of them who break the law and assault, steal and kill, that's what we have criminal justice for.

But there is no law against being homeless. Perhaps what we need is a law against allowing people to remain homeless.

That, however, would entail an indictment of our entire society.