World AIDS Day (December 1) was established for the global community to stand in solidarity against a disease that has devastated many of the world's poor countries, especially in Africa. Unfortunately, the day passed with a poor showing by the Canadian government, which puts into doubt how committed we are to fighting poverty and associated diseases globally.
 
An outsider would get the impression that Canadians are relaxed because they're doing their share and are thus blessed with a clear conscience. Unfortunately that is far from the truth, as we missed yet another opportunity to make good on our G8 promise to do our share to fund the Global Fund to Fight, AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
 
Canada is already in a difficult position globally, since we were a part of a handful of countries that did not make a pledge at the Fund's last replenishment meeting in late September in Berlin. At that meeting the Fund rallied $9.7 billion in resources, a record-breaking year. This is all for good reason as the Fund is saving an estimated 3000 lives a day. Even the private sector has started scaling up their contributions significantly, which begs the question: If the business minded think that investing in impact driven programs to fight these three killers makes good business sense, then where is Canada? We need to at least double our current contribution to the Fund to get us back on track.
 
To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister recently admitted that our foreign assistance is actually declining as a percentage of our GDP. In fact, a recently unearthed briefing note prepared by the Finance Department in 2006 predicted that aid would dip to 0.29% of our GDP by 2010. We're all used to empty promises from politicians, but when it comes to something as straightforward as Mr. Harper's commitment to reaching the OECD average, no excuse is good enough. In fact the only excuse we're getting is that our economy is so buyouant that it is hard for us to keep up. That is tantamount to saying that we're too rich to give anymore.