Jim Morris, head of the world’s largest food aid agency, was in Ottawa
last week to praise Canada’s role as one of the leading supporters of
the United Nations World Food Program.
He was rewarded with an additional $7.9 million Canadian commitment to
feed Africa’s hungry.
But behind his flattery was the reality that during the nine-year
Liberal rule, Canadian support has been cut by 60 percent.
And even as the WFP faces some of the most difficult hunger, war and
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deprivation conditions in recent memory, its budget is not much more
than half of what is needed and it is falling. The United States and
Japan are joining Canada in cutting funding.
“I come before you at a time when I suspect the World Food Program has
more challenges before it than ever in history,” Morris told the House
of Commons foreign affairs committee Nov. 5.
Last year, it fed 77 million people. This year, close to 30 million
people in southern Africa and on the Horn of Africa face potential
starvation because of drought.
Yet the WFP budget has fallen from $1.9 billion to $1.7 billion. Morris
estimated that $3 billion would be needed to fully meet the challenge.
“These are trying times,” said the Indiana Republican appointed this
year to head the United Nations agency.
Officially, he said he was in Ottawa to thank Canada for being one of
the WFP’s top 10 donors and a “creative” force that has helped build a
railway in southern Africa to move food and sent avalanche experts into
Afghanistan to clear roads to allow food distribution.
But he also used meetings with foreign affairs minister Bill Graham,
prime minister Jean Chrétien and international development minister
Susan Whelan to plead for more support.
Whelan announced the additional $7.9 million for food and aid to
southern Africa after a Nov. 4 evening meal with the UN bureaucrat.
“Canada is committed to providing food aid and other health and
nutrition interventions in the region to bring some relief to the
famine-stricken populations,” Whelan said.
When Morris was asked during his Parliament Hill appearance what Canada
has been doing, he was blunt.
“In terms of Canadian dollars, your support for the World Food Program
in 1990 was $164 million,” he told Liberal MP and agriculture committee
chair Charles Hubbard.
“Last year, your support was $59 million, so for whatever reasons that
you will appreciate, your support is about 40 percent of what it was 10
years ago. I’ll leave the rationale for you all to sort through.”
