On this date in 2009 the Globe and Mail reported on an Innovative Research study gauging the attitudes of Canadians towards foreign aid. “Most Canadians want to give to poorer countries, and many want to give far more - but the idea of linking aid to our economic interests turns people off, a new poll finds,” the story by Campbell Clark said. “Arguments that aid brings commercial benefits actually undermine support for foreign aid, suggesting that Ottawa's move toward focusing aid on countries with deeper trading ties won't win Canadians' backing. ‘For them, it's not about selling stuff. It's not about us getting an advantage. It's about us giving money for development,’ said Innovative Research Group pollster Simon MacDougall.”
More than 60 per cent of Canadians also felt that international aid does more good than harm. In addition, the survey reported that 49 per cent of Canadians supported “more than doubling aid to late prime minister Lester B. Pearson's goal of 0.7 per cent of the size of the Canadian economy - an increase to about $10-billion per year. (Canada now spends about $4.1-billion on aid.)”
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.