To the Editor,
This Christmas is shaping up to be a dark one for the world’s poorest citizens.
The Canadian International Development Agency is facing draconian budget cuts – 41 per cent of which will affect assistance directed to the world’s most impoverished countries.
According to International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino, aid will now be linked to projects benefiting the Canadian private sector.
To make a bad situation worse, the Conservative government recently blocked Bill 398, which would have allowed inexpensive, generic life-saving medicine to save millions of people in the developing world – at no cost to Canada.
This trifecta of shame makes me wonder just what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has against the world’s poor.
Not since 1939, when Canada refused entry to a shipload of Jewish refugees, has Canada so willfully and malignantly turned its back on those in need.
Nathaniel Poole
Victoria