the blog quebecois

i think we are saved
it's falling from the skies
it's calling from the graves
open your eyes boy

patty griffin

CTV:

Finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations have agreed to a historic accord cancelling at least $40 billion US worth of debt owed by poor, developing countries.

Britain Treasury chief Gordon Brown said 18 of those countries -- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa -- will receive much-needed relief of 100 per cent of the debt they owe to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

At the meeting of G-8 finance ministers in London on Saturday, Brown said that now was "not a time for timidity, but a time for boldness."

Here's a bold idea that will kill the debt problem for once and for all: stop this utterly phony cycle of pushing contingent aid (here's some money, but only if you use it to buy Canadian tractors/wheat/whatever) and then grandly forgiving the debts a few years later.

We last went through this at the turn of the century (the Jubilee campaign) and it apparently did as much good as all the previous debt-relief efforts, because here we go again.

You want boldness, Mr. Brown? Why not open your markets up to the products that poor countries produce? That'll benefit far more people than big showy wads of cash that at best get ground up by bureaucracy and at worst end up in Swiss bank accounts.

Sure, you won't get the glamorous photo-ops with the likes of Bono and Bob Geldof, but that's a perk I'm sure you could do without. I know I could. (Especially with Geldof. Is that guy sleeping on a park bench or what?)