Juno News - Are your taxes going to fund terrorism？

00:00:00.000 Are your taxes going to fund terrorism? Well, according to a recent report from Global News,

00:00:04.820 13 iPads, 3 laptop computers, 4 projectors, 2 mobile phones, and a 2-way radio were all

00:00:10.800 stolen by an Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group. In August 2018, between 8 and 10 jihadists

00:00:16.900 raided a Canadian humanitarian agency in Syria, stole the equipment, and fled.

00:00:21.820 The kicker? This equipment was paid for by a grant from Global Affairs Canada.

00:00:27.320 That's right. Your tax dollars went to give these terrorists the means to plan their next

00:00:32.660 attacks and to spread their propaganda. We know how groups like ISIS run sophisticated social media

00:00:38.940 campaigns to recruit impressionable young Muslims and to spread fear and intimidation. They also

00:00:44.800 call on individuals in the West to pick up arms and carry out gruesome attacks against innocent

00:00:49.800 civilians. Just imagine what a motivated terrorist group could accomplish with thousands of dollars

00:00:55.260 of modern computer equipment. The damage is incalculable. Well, what isn't incalculable

00:01:01.020 is Canada's foreign aid budget. Canada sends 6 billion dollars overseas every year, much of it

00:01:08.000 to countries that are hotbeds for terrorist activity. Collectively, we sent over 1 billion dollars to

00:01:14.120 Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Jordan, Nigeria, Syria, Lebanon, and Pakistan in 2018. Foreign aid is a remarkably opaque

00:01:23.600 system. It's wildly unaccountable and impossible to measure any successes or failures. Our tax dollars

00:01:30.240 are often spent in difficult to track ways. Researchers have noted that Canada's foreign aid data provides

00:01:36.240 only a limited amount of information. So how much of that 6 billion dollars ended up in the hands of

00:01:41.960 terrorists or terrorist-aligned groups? It's an issue rarely raised in Canada. And when Max St. Bernier and

00:01:49.120 Andrew Scheer proposed cutting our foreign aid budget by 25 percent, and when Scheer said he'd cut off aid to

00:01:55.360 countries that have sponsored terrorists, a pack of pundits jumped on his proposal. Some even called

00:02:00.880 Scheer's plan grossly irresponsible. But is it really grossly irresponsible to stop handing out our taxpayer

00:02:07.840 dollars to places that are failed states with no security that are infested with terrorism and a

00:02:13.120 jihadist ideology? Even in the best cases, foreign aid is often squandered and hurts recipients more

00:02:18.960 than it helps. It promotes dependency and can work against market forces. Without institutions like the

00:02:24.720 rule of law, without free trade and infrastructure to get products to market, foreign aid puts the cart

00:02:29.760 before the horse and often simply enriches corrupt government officials and props up tyrannical leaders

00:02:35.280 in the developing world. When you combine these serious structural issues with the capture of foreign aid by

00:02:40.960 terrorist groups, the argument to continue this program becomes incredibly weak. That's why Canadians need

00:02:46.560 to think twice about foreign aid. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video,

00:02:51.120 please share it and find more content like this at tnc.news.

Juno News - December 28, 2019