The Pros and Consof

Canada’s Foreign Aid

Pros

• Support development and reduce poverty.

• Makes for a more secure world.• Develops good relations with other

countries.• Hopefully they will return the

favour.

• Enhances foreign trade. Aid creates jobs in the receiving country. Those people spend money, hopefully on Canadian goods.

• A lot of aid is “tied aid”: receiving country must spend the money in Canada.

• Therefore helps Canadians; a form of government aid to industry.

• Develops military alliances.• It’s the “right thing” to do.

Reduces human suffering.

Cons• A burden on taxpayers; taxes high

enough.• A lot of foreign loans never get repaid.• This just causes the receiving country

to be even more poor as it tries to pay the loans off.

• Creates dependency, not independence.

• Sometimes foreign aid gets spent in the wrong areas: the military and not on the poor.

• Have to be careful that aid does not create bitterness or enemies by helping one country and not another.

• A lot of problems still in Canada (eg., Native communities) so why spend hard earned taxpayers dollars in another country.