Juno News - March 19, 2021


O'Toole pledges not to cut foreign aid


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

221.96417

Word Count

1,338

Sentence Count

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 so about a year ago erin o2 put out a tweet that said foreign aid can wait right now the
00:00:11.000 truder government should prioritize canadians now this was in the context obviously of the
00:00:15.200 beginning of the pandemic we didn't really know anything about covid and there was a lot of
00:00:19.260 discussion over canada sending ppe to different countries or should canada support financially
00:00:23.640 maybe some countries that are having difficulty with tackling covid or stopping the spread of
00:00:28.240 the virus and again this is all about a year ago so hindsight is going to be 2020 on this one
00:00:31.960 and so now we have a bit of a different opinion and erin o'toole has stated that a conservative
00:00:39.080 government if elected would not cut foreign aid so that's simply off the table nothing is going to be
00:00:44.360 cut we can't let bad actors be the ones handling the rollout of the response to the pandemic this
00:00:50.000 is quite in sharp contrast to andrew sheer again the previous conservative leader who proposed about a
00:00:54.360 25 foreign aid cut and said that we should instead be redirecting those funds to kids in conflict
00:00:59.780 zones it's also in very sharp contrast to maxine bernier who said that we should basically stop all
00:01:05.140 foreign aid and so there's a lot of different opinions here between um sheer previously and
00:01:10.380 bernier and now between o'toole and bernier so a lot of different things now the couple questions on
00:01:15.540 this first of all is this a smart move politically well that's really up to you guys what do you guys
00:01:19.200 think is this a smart move for a tool to be taking up is that something that would cause you to support
00:01:23.880 him or to possibly not support him again what are your thoughts on bernier in this issue so that's
00:01:29.100 really something for you guys to decide and to let me know in the comments very curious to see what you
00:01:32.320 guys think but the overall question is the idea of foreign aid and what are some examples of foreign
00:01:38.240 aid that might be good or bad and a couple of different ways to think about it because i think it's a
00:01:42.520 little bit more complex than simply writing checks to other countries now there have been a lot of really
00:01:48.660 crazy examples of people giving foreign aid for different projects different things but one of
00:01:54.240 the places i would recommend you check out is candace malcolm's documentary green hypocrisy there's a
00:01:59.360 whole series there and it's produced by true north and candace who is great really recommend you check
00:02:04.520 that out because it talks a lot in certain segments about canada supporting or giving funds for other
00:02:10.380 countries to support them in their battle against climate change so that's one of the streams of
00:02:14.800 foreign aid but i want to tie in something else that is maybe not the traditional foreign aid that
00:02:20.480 may be thought of something as maybe the good kind of foreign aid again if you even support this idea
00:02:25.280 of foreign aid and that is something called operation impact now i spoke about this on a previous video
00:02:30.360 and operation impact is basically a canadian forces operation where we are supporting the militaries of
00:02:36.280 countries like lebanon jordan iraq and kuwait really helping them build capabilities to enhance
00:02:41.500 security in those countries maybe to combat extremism or things like isis in iraq and that ties hand in
00:02:47.340 hand with the nato mission in iraq which canada is supporting and is going to be winding down
00:02:51.560 eventually handing over really a lot of that role from canada to denmark so that's foreign aid but i
00:02:57.560 think a lot of people really get confused when they think about foreign aid they tend to think of
00:03:01.160 it as just writing checks to other countries or sending money abroad but there's other types of things
00:03:06.180 which could be considered foreign aid and i want to bring this to your attention and see what you guys
00:03:09.620 think so this military aid now this is going to cost canada money so it's going to cost us money
00:03:14.620 it's going to potentially put canadian forces personnel at risk especially in a country like
00:03:18.900 iraq which might be considered in some parts of war zone an active war zone or even a semi-active
00:03:23.060 war zone so that is sort of the cost to us but on a certain level the idea with this type of mission
00:03:30.520 is to help the iraqi military to combat isis or extremists now it's possible that some of these
00:03:36.600 extremists might want to commit a terror attack in canada and so really the question is is that
00:03:41.880 something that is of benefit to canada right we're supporting a mission in iraq where they're going to
00:03:46.800 be better equipped and better able to tackle isis and that will theoretically stop a terror attack
00:03:52.120 here so is that maybe an example of foreign aid what do you think that fits into foreign aid and if
00:03:56.960 you do is that a type of foreign aid that you agree with other types of foreign aid that not maybe
00:04:02.960 directly cash related would be maybe the justice department sending some retired justices or judges
00:04:07.840 or someone to assist with the justice department or justice system in another country maybe that is
00:04:13.860 something that again it doesn't really it result in us sending over a check costs money maybe that's
00:04:19.540 beneficial maybe it's canada trying to get some kind of votes at the un we tried for un security
00:04:25.620 council seat it was not clear why we really needed that seat or what the focus was or what it was even
00:04:29.680 going to cost canadians at the time but you know maybe that's something that you would support maybe
00:04:34.240 you think it's a good idea for canada to be involved in a sort of you know i will support you on this you
00:04:39.720 will support me on that kind of thing is that maybe something you would support does that color your
00:04:44.160 idea of foreign aid now these are all sort of different questions and i think it's important to
00:04:50.160 think about foreign aid in a lot of different levels because obviously we have a number of ways we
00:04:55.300 can think about it the last one that i want to bring up before we wrap it up here is the sort of
00:04:59.360 idea that politicians are looking at this in a very different way than we are because their
00:05:04.400 timeline is is really shorter than ours right they really are looking at the next couple of years
00:05:10.180 maybe two four eight years right so trudeau wanted to get that un security council seat that's a
00:05:15.460 fairly short-term goal that's not necessarily going to affect what canada is doing you know 10 20 30
00:05:20.640 years from now but maybe if we give foreign aid to a country and we build up a trade relationship
00:05:24.840 maybe it will pay large dividends 10 20 30 40 years from now but is that something that politicians are
00:05:30.740 looking at is it something that we should be looking at is it something that we should be
00:05:33.600 forcing our politicians to look at a lot of really deep stuff and i think there's a lot of really
00:05:38.000 interesting stuff to discuss here so let me know in the comments what do you think about foreign aid in
00:05:41.600 general what do you think about maybe different types of foreign aid do you think that there should be a
00:05:45.380 political calculus on foreign aid a lot of really big questions and really curious to see what you
00:05:49.900 guys think i know the audience here is very engaged i always really enjoy reading your comments so
00:05:53.880 definitely let me know what you think so again for true north i'm sam ashkenazi thank you so so much
00:05:58.760 for watching this video let me know in the comments and i'm excited to read them take care