2008 federal budget

by Bill Morton

On the afternoon of February 26th, I attended the 2008 Budget “lock up”.

Here’s how I see it….

Summary This year’s budget is disappointing. As in previous years, the government maintains the original Liberal government commitment to increase the annual budget in order to double aid by 2010/11. However there is only one new commitment of additional funds (for Afghanistan). Canada’s ODA/GNI will drop slightly this year, and remains below the OECD country average. At current projections, the government will not meet its commitment to bring Canada’s ODA/GNI to the OECD average by 2010.

Here is some more detail….

Maintaining previous commitments for budget increases

This year’s budget maintains previous governments’ commitments to double international assistance by 2010/11 (from 2000/1 levels). This means approximately 8% growth in this year’s budget.

The government will also meet its commitment (made at the G8) to double aid to Africa from 2003/4 levels, and will do this in 2008/9 (the first G8 country to do so).

Additional increases? Just the one….

The only new increase in addition to the growth associated with doubling aid is an extra $100m in 2008/9 to Afghanistan, for reconstruction and development (including training to the Afghan National Police, and Army). This will bring Canada’s assistance to Afghanistan to $280m for 2008/9 and to $1.3b over 10 years.

Special announcements

The budget makes special announcements on a number of issues, all to be funded from the previously-planned doubling of aid by 2010/11. These include:

• $450m over 3 years for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria
• creation of a new “Development Innovation Fund” to support scientific innovation for development solutions. This will be administered by IDRC, with $50m allocated over the next two years
• continued support for initiatives announced in the previous budget, such as the Advanced Market Commitments for vaccines, and tax incentives for corporations that donate medicines for use in developing countries

ODA levels: The numbers

Thanks to our friends at CCIC, we have some numbers on ODA levels and ODA/GNI. While ODA is rising, ODA/GNI is falling marginally. The estimated figures are:

2007/8: Total ODA $4.39b, ODA/GNI 0.3%

2008/9: Total ODA $4.61b, ODA/GNI 0.3%

2009/10: Total ODA $4.85, ODA/GNI 0.29%

This means that Canada’s ODA/GNI will remain well below the projected OECD country average of 0.42% in 2010.

No new targets

As expected, there were no new targets for aid increases past 2010/11, let alone in relation to reaching 0.7% ODA/GNI.