DANIEL McCULLOUGH
Opinions Writer

On Sept. 20, Prime Minister Stephen Harper received a positive response from the global community as he pledged $1.1 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Global Fund is an international non-governmental organization that funds on-the-ground work in the developing world to deliver health care and education in prevention of three of the most deadly diseases globally. They also fund dispersal of condoms and other contraceptives, and maintain 20 clinics run by 51 NGOs that provide safe abortions in Ethiopia.

The Global Fund also boasts in their 2010 Innovation and Impact report that they have “become the world’s leading funder of harm reduction services for people who inject drugs, with substantial investments in 42 countries.”

In short, this move by the Harper government will save lives and vastly improve quality of life in some of the most poverty stricken regions of the globe.

It was about this time that I pinched myself, yelped, realized that I was not in fact dreaming and started to get that uneasy feeling of paranoia that nags at me whenever politics are concerned.

You see, in 2007, Prime Minister Harper was quoted as saying that he remains skeptical of the argument that “you can tell people we won’t stop the drug trade, we won’t get you off drugs, we won’t even send messages to discourage drug use, but somehow we will keep you addicted and yet reduce the harm just the same,” as he battled to close Vancouver’s Insite, a safe injection site that practices the principles of harm reduction. This was despite the condemnation of Dr. Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society who accused Harper of attempted “genocide” on intravenous drug users, by ignoring the 30 peer-reviewed scientific studies supporting the harm-reduction methodology.

This spring, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon announced to the Foreign Affairs Committee that “[The G8 maternal and child health package] does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed, the purpose of this [package] is to be able to save lives.”

Apparently, Minister Cannon did not believe that condoms save lives in the most AIDS-stricken parts of the world.

After a media and political backlash, Prime Minister Harper and International Co-ordination Minister Bev Oda backtracked on Cannon’s behalf. They stated that while contraceptives are not off the table, abortion would not be funded out of Canada’s contribution to the G8 Maternal and Child Health Package. This is despite the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia, one of the benefactors of The Global Fund (and a group dealing with the needs of the developing world every day), pointing out that, “unsafe abortion contributes to about 54 per cent of all direct obstetric deaths in Ethiopia.”

But that was then. Over the summer, Oda decided to go on a fact finding mission to Mali and Mozambique and after spending time in countries with GDPs of $1,200 USD and $900 USD respectively (Canada’s GDP per capita is roughly 40 times that), she recanted. When asked by the Ottawa Citizen if one could improve maternal mortality rates without family planning, Oda replied, “Of course not.”

Suddenly $1.1 billion of G8 Maternal and Child Health money is being given to a global aid group with views on social justice diametrically opposed to the explicitly stated views of the Harper Conservatives. Prime Minister Harper is standing on the floor of the United Nations building admonishing the world to further the cause of maternal and child health, to refocus on the UN Millennium Development Goals that aim at ending poverty and oppression and saving lives and the environment.

Has noted evangelical Christian Stephen Harper finally seen the global development light? Has Canada begun to return to its past life of leading the way in poverty reduction and environmental sustainability? Perhaps, but the cynic in me thinks that this is all just a bid for two things: a better world image for Canada as the elections for a seat on the UN Security Council loom, and a means to woo traditional Liberal and NDP supporters into casting a Conservative vote.

It’s not that I’m unhappy that $1.1 billion has just been pledged to save lives all around the world. It’s just that Prime Minister Harper has turned his back on years of regressive and religiously motivated policy and decided to sell out the pro-life vote for a seat on the UN Security Council.

That kind of hypocrisy, even when I get my way because of it, does not sit well with me.

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image: Flickr