Muhammad Yunus / Grameen Bank of Bangladesh - Bits & Pieces
Post
18/10/06, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Enterprise is better than aid, (Source).
16/10/06, Preston Manning, Mandela's dream has been unfulfilled, (Source).
17/10/06, Padma Rau, Interview with Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, (Source).
18/10/06, CP, CTV reveals senators' costly week in Dubai, (Source).
19/10/06, Editorial, Why Bouchard is right, (Source).
20/10/06, The Facts: The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, not On-Line.
18/10/06, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Enterprise is better than aid, (Back).
Nobel Peace Prizes are not supposed to go to those who believe the poor can fend for themselves.
Yet, this year's worthy winner, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, is essentially a commercial operation and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, has clearly spelled out politically incorrect views regarding poverty: "Grameen believes that charity is not an answer to poverty. . . . It creates dependency. . . . Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty." The bank lends tiny amounts to village dwellers so they can start small businesses. The scale can be so modest as to involve the purchase of a cow in order to sell milk. No collateral or credit history is required, the system works on trust and peer pressure: Lenders are placed in groups of five, with part of the group guaranteeing the loans of the rest. If a loan is not repaid, the community shuns the borrower.
More than six million people have borrowed money from Grameen; the bank makes millions in profit. It charges higher interest rates than most banks, but since the principal is repaid before the interest -- and interest is calculated on the basis of diminishing principal -- borrowers end up paying less than they would pay other banks. Thanks to these loans, which very poor and uneducated Bangladeshis have put to entrepreneurial use, many people have been able to pull themselves out of extreme poverty.
At its inception, Grameen Bank was partly owned by the government because the founders figured that was the only way to channel foreign loans from outside sources. Today, it is a totally private and profit-oriented operation in which borrowers themselves own shares.
For half a century, wealthy nations -- and rock stars -- have focused on foreign aid as the way to spur development. Foreign aid started with U.S. president Harry Truman's Point Four Program at the end of the 1940s, partly to pre-empt the spread of communism. To judge by ever-increasing budgets and last year's call at the UN for a doubling of aid by 2015, it continues to be the fundamental focus of efforts to bring about prosperity in poor countries. No attention is paid to the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa, the region to which most of the foreign aid has gone in the past quarter of a century, per capita income has dropped by 11 per cent.
Numerous government programs involving handouts and training also have failed to do the trick in many countries. What the poor really want is an environment in which undertaking a profitable venture is not a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. The world is full of examples of poor and uneducated communities that have been able to create wealth, thanks to entrepreneurship. After looking at cases of entrepreneurial success around the world for the past year, the conclusion is overwhelming: The best way to fight poverty is to eliminate barriers that currently hold back private enterprise among the poor.
Half a century ago, William Mangin, an American anthropologist, went to live in one of the shantytowns that had sprung up around Lima. He found the poor were entrepreneurial and that through voluntary co-operation, they were able to provide many of the services the government was not delivering, including the adjudication of disputes. He wrote a number of scholarly papers concluding that these urban, poor Peruvians were "not the problem but the solution." A few years later, anthropologist Keith Hart reached the same conclusion in Kenya. If the world had listened to them, half a century of misguided ideas about development, of useless fund transfers that often ended up in Swiss bank accounts of dictators and their cronies, and of schemes that entrenched dependency might have been avoided.
Nobel prizes tend to go to those who think wealth is a zero-sum game whereby rich nations are rich because poor nations are poor.
The Nobel award to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank is a good occasion to reflect on the colossal error of judgment the rich have made about the poor and a reminder that enterprise, not aid, is the real answer to poverty.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author of Liberty for Latin America, is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute in Washington.
16/10/06, Preston Manning, Mandela's dream has been unfulfilled, (Back).
There must be a better way to promote development in South Africa.
Last month, my wife Sandra and I spent three weeks travelling in southern Africa with a group of Canadian friends. Most of our time was spent in South Africa with a visit on Sept. 24 to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
Sept. 24 is Heritage Day in South Africa, an important national holiday dedicated to the celebration of the rich diversity of its people. It also has special significance for me as it was on that day eight years ago that I met Nelson Mandela following his farewell address to the Canadian House of Commons.
Immediately after his speech, a small reception was held in the Speaker's Chambers at which the federal party leaders had a chance to meet and talk with him.
I took the opportunity to ask a question: If there was one single thing that Canada and Canadians could do in future to fulfill his dream for South Africa, what would that thing be?
He took my hand, looked me in the eye, and softly spoke two words: "Economic development." If significant economic progress for the South African people did not follow hard on the heels of the efforts to achieve reconciliation and establish democracy, all his dreams for South Africa would be in mortal danger.
This Sept. 24, I read excerpts from Mandela's House of Commons speech to my friends and recalled this conversation with him. Naturally the question arises: Has the standard of living of South Africans significantly improved since the ending of apartheid, and are their future economic prospects bleak or promising?
The answer is not simple. According to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, South Africa's gross domestic product was $112-billion (U.S.) in 1994; today it is more than $150-billion, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 3 per cent.
But GDP per capita, which is a better measure of the economic wellbeing of individual South Africans, has grown by only about 1 per cent a year, from approximately $3,000 per capita in 1994 to around $3,300 per capita at present -- hardly a significant enough increase to fulfill Mr. Mandela's dream. Unemployment remains unbelievably high in South Africa (officially at 25 per cent and unofficially around 40 per cent) and more than five million South Africans still live on less than $1 a day.
Then there is the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS, so powerfully described by Canada's Stephen Lewis in Race Against Time. According to the UN, there are now more than 5.5 million South Africans infected with HIV and 1.2 million AIDS orphans. Life expectancy in South Africa has dropped from 62 years in the early 1990s to 45 today, and is still declining.
Imagine the prospects for the Canadian economy if 20 per cent of our citizens were infected with a deadly disease, more than a million Canadian children were without parents, unemployment was six times higher than it is now, and life expectancy was cut in half?
In Mr. Mandela's address to the House, he offered both an insightful observation and a challenge: "In the interdependent world in which we now live, rich and poor, strong and weak are bound by a common destiny that decrees that none shall enjoy lasting prosperity and stability unless others do too . . . We urge you to join with us in seeking to redirect the [global trade] system and its [financial] institutions so as to cater to the needs of development and the interests of the poor."
The previous Liberal government in Ottawa responded to this invitation in a largely ceremonial manner. For example, the 2003 Canada-South Africa Declaration signed by Jean Chrétien and President Thabo Mbeki promised, among other things, to "upgrade diplomatic representation in Toronto and Cape Town" and "develop a framework for cultural co-operation and promote cultural diversity." While commendable, these actions were probably not too encouraging to the millions of South Africans affected by poverty and disease. The government also responded to Mr. Mandela's challenge in a more conventional manner -- mainly by increasing traditional foreign aid to South Africa, promoting expanded trade and providing technical assistance.
However, one wonders if there isn't an alternative approach, one that will be more effective and more compatible with the values and philosophy of the new Conservative government.
Free enterprise and free trade (both of which conservatives support) have generated unprecedented levels of wealth but they have not significantly reduced the glaring inequities between rich and poor on a global scale. While critics of capitalism and free trade look to the redistribution of wealth itself as the answer, an alternative solution is to broaden the distribution of the tools that create wealth -- property rights, access to capital and other financial instruments, human capital development, access to information and technology, and access to markets.
A growing body of evidence exists to support this alternative. Hernando de Soto in The Mystery of Capital presents the expansion of property rights as the key to broader inclusion of the poor in the market system. Marguerite Robinson explores the benefits of microcredit in providing sustainable finance for the poor in The Microfinance Revolution. C. K. Prahalad in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid addresses the challenge of poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship and profitable market-based enterprise. Thomas Friedman, in his well-known book The World is Flat, highlights the benefits of bridging the digital divide via cost-effective, market-driven technological distribution. And measures for increasing the access of poor people and nations to trade and investment markets are well presented by William Cline's Trade Policy and Global Poverty and Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization.
These books, many of them the work of policymakers rooted in the underdeveloped economies they seek to help, provide a solid foundation for conservative governments such as the Harper administration to reorient their foreign-aid and developmental-assistance policies along such lines. What better place to start than in our trade and development relations with South Africa, accepting Nelson Mandela's Heritage Day challenge to "redirect the system" in new ways to meet the development needs and interests of the poor?
Preston Manning is a former leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons, a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute, and president of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. His daughter, Mary Manning, a former investment banker and hedge-fund analyst covering South Africa, contributed to this article.
17/10/06, Padma Rau, Interview with Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, (Back).
"This Will Advance our Cause Tremendously."
This year's Nobel Peace Prize went to Muhammad Yunus in recognition for the micro-credit system he set up in his home country of Bangladesh. SPIEGEL spoke with Yunus about what the award means to him and to the fight against world poverty.
[photo AFP, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. His micro-credit system provides mini-loans to the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh.]
SPIEGEL: You already have received 60 international prizes for your micro-credit system. Now you've won the Nobel Peace Prize. Were you surprised?
Yunus: It is fantastic; the Nobel Prize will make all political leaders and governments around the world take notice. We have been fighting poverty for more than 30 years, and I hope that this will advance our cause tremendously. Perhaps it will even convince the world to confront the issue of poverty on this planet.
SPIEGEL: You developed this system of micro-credit to help the poorest of the poor in your country, Bangladesh. How do you try to get other developing countries to pick up on this idea?
Yunus: Bangladesh is poor, I grew up here; but several other countries have already put our idea into practice. Of course there are still plenty of countries that do not care about the misery of the poor. I can only hope that there, too, political leaders will slowly change their attitudes.
SPIEGEL: Your work has been made more difficult by international terrorism. How do you handle this additional challenge?
Yunus: Peace is the precondition for everything else. Unless violence comes to a stop, one cannot attack the roots of poverty. Families can only focus on improving their lives in times of peace.
SPIEGEL: What message would you like to deliver to terrorists?
Yunus: I would tell them that we have to occupy ourselves with the roots of evil, across the board. The United Nations' millennium goal is to reduce poverty by half, by the year 2015. Now that I have won a Nobel Prize, our efforts to turn the UN project into reality will surely be advanced. If we manage to accomplish our own goals by 2015, then the struggle against the remaining poverty would be just a small additional step.
SPIEGEL: When did you actually hear that you had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?
Yunus: Oh, I have been nominated several times. Which is why I didn't really pay attention this time. My delight is all the greater.
18/10/06, CP, CTV reveals senators' costly week in Dubai, (Back).
TORONTO -- Canadian senators waited in an expensive Dubai hotel for seven days after a failed attempt to reach Afghanistan when the military had warned them not to attempt the trip in the first place, CTV News reported yesterday.
Liberal Senator Colin Kenny had hoped to take his National Security Committee to Kandahar province for a fact-finding trip, as well as a visit to Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates that is trying to become a global business hub.
CTV said in a story posted on its website that four senators and three staffers ended up spending seven days in Dubai, where they stayed in a posh hotel at $500 (U.S.) per night.
The total hotel costs were more than $30,000. Plane fare, meals and other expenses added more.
CTV said that during their time in Dubai, the Canadians had only one official meeting with security officials and a briefing from Canadian officials.
Conservative Senator Arthur Meighen defended the trip.
"We shouldn't have cancelled Dubai as long as there was a chance we'd get into Afghanistan," Mr. Meighen told CTV. "It's important for parliamentarians to show our men and women over there that we support the mission."
However, John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said the trip was simply a "junket dressed up as parliamentary business, pure and simple."
19/10/06, Editorial, Why Bouchard is right, (Back).
Lucien Bouchard has drawn heat by stating the obvious: Actions have consequences. If Quebec prefers its current rules to rules that would let it compete more productively in the world, it will stagnate.
In an interview Monday with the French-language TVA network, the former Quebec premier said: "We don't work enough. We work less than Ontarians and infinitely less than Americans. We have to work harder." Immediately the news cameras found workers who bake pizzas for 10 hours a day and couldn't work harder if they were chained as galley slaves, but at last report those people weren't among the many employees in a province with a bloated public service and militant unions whose contracts allow their members unaffordable leisure within their working hours.
Quebec as a whole is living beyond its means. It taxes its people more heavily than other provinces and has a much higher debt per capita than other provinces -- 44 per cent as of March, 2005, far ahead of the second highest, Nova Scotia, at 34.1. (The national percentage is 25.3.) Something has to give.
To offer the excuse of a so-called fiscal imbalance with Ottawa -- a charge the province regularly makes -- is to live in denial of a deeper set of problems. Quebec's population is aging more rapidly than others. It isn't having children, and its intake of immigrants isn't about to balance the aging. That means more health costs on the way and fewer workers to support those no longer on the job. The "Quebec model" of industrial subsidies and generous social-welfare programs (inexpensive child care, frozen university tuition fees, electricity sold below market value) is costly, while the income-tax load is uncompetitive with other jurisdictions. The province's union movement has won great gains for its members at the expense of productivity gains that could help Quebec invest more and compete more efficiently.
For a snapshot of how ingrained that problem is, consider Montreal's municipal maintenance workers, who are guaranteed minimum staffing and a four-day work week. When city investigators tracked three work crews in January over 90 hours, they found that actual labour accounted for only seven hours; the rest were spent driving around, shopping and having snacks in shops. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to Quebec, but it illustrates the nature of the difficulty.
Mr. Bouchard has been here before. He and others delivered the same diagnosis in a 10-page manifesto released last October: in part, that the tax system discourages investment, that Quebec should reduce income taxes and raise consumption taxes, that French-speaking graduates have to be more fluent in other languages, that the province has to raise tuition fees (coupled with income-contingent loan repayment) and massively invest in education and training, and that rejecting change "runs the risk of turning us into the republic of the status quo." Those who see no danger of stagnation will see no need for worry, but they do Quebec no favours.
20/10/06, The Facts: The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, (Back).
Press Release by the Committee:
OTTAWA, Oct. 20, 2006 – In the wake of inaccurate reporting on the committee’s recent fact-finding to the UK, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates – including the aborted and long-awaited visit to Canadian troops in Kandahar – it is time to set the record straight.
CTV National News aired an item on October 17, 2006 by Parliament Hill reporter Graham Richardson that was full of inaccuracies and artistic licence. These are being spread by other media outlets. The committee does valuable work. We can’t afford to have a shadow cast over our efforts by cartoon journalism.
The gist of Mr. Richardson’s story was that committee members wasted a week in Dubai at great expense to the Canadian taxpayer while waiting to get into Kandahar, the dangerous region in which our troops are serving in Afghanistan. The allegation is that committee members had been told by military authorities that there was very little chance of getting into Kandahar, and that it was foolish of them to set forth in an attempt to do so.
First, a reminder of the nature of our committee. We aren’t tourists. We have spent long hours over the past 5 ½ years talking to soldiers, their officers and various experts related to the military about the state of the Canadian Forces and Canadian security in general, and have issued 15 hard-hitting reports about the flaws in Canada’s security system and what needs to be done to repair them.
We have criticized both this government and the previous government for not taking the protection of Canadians and their interests seriously enough, and we have clearly irritated the powers that be.
We pride ourselves on being the antithesis of the cartoon image of the Senate perpetrated by some media and by some politicians who feel there are votes to be gained in denouncing the Senate. We have worked extremely hard and take great pride in both our relentless pursuit of the truth and our bipartisan approach to controversial issues.
Before detailing our responses to the allegations in the CTV report, please consider some of these comments from individual committee members and one of our staff members:
Le Comité sénatorial permanent de la sécurité nationale et de la défense / The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence
“Using the word junket in the context of one of this committee’s trips is a joke. Anyone who travels with this committee works from dawn to dusk and often until midnight. I’ve done it twice for a total of about 15 days abroad, and I might have had three or four hours of down time in total. The staff work hard, the senators work hard, and if meetings get cancelled Senator Kenny comes up with some other work we need to do.”
Major-General (Ret’d) G. Keith McDonald, Senior Military Advisor
“People avoid sitting on this committee because it works so hard. It works hard at home, and it works hard abroad. The proof is in the pudding. Look at how many serious, in depth reports we’ve produced over the past five years. Look at how many hours we’ve spent hearing testimony. Check our schedules when we’re abroad. This report smells like a phony leak from people who don’t like the criticism that this committee has laid out concerning the treatment of the military by this government and the last government.”
Senator Tommy Banks
“As a Nova Scotian with a keen interest in the welfare of the Port of Halifax, it was important for me to see the Port of Dubai and to meet its operators. This is the fourth busiest port in the world. It is operated by DP World, the same organization that operates the terminal in the Port of Vancouver. It was also valuable to learn that DP World wishes to come to Halifax to establish its east coast port of entry into the markets of North America.”
Senator Wilfred Moore
“Look, we worked hard, and we wanted to work harder in Afghanistan. You’d think that people who are forever trying to paint the Senate as a place where people sleep would give credit to a bunch of Senators trying to go into a dangerous situation to get the facts on what Canada is doing there and whether it is worth the price we’re paying.”
Senator Michael A. Meighen, Deputy Chair
“We go where the soldiers are, because we want to know what is going to work for them in doing a tough job for Canadians. We’ve been to scores of military bases across Canada and listened to them, and we wanted to listen to them in Afghanistan. As I said in the Senate, I think it would be difficult to look the troops in the eye if they are over there and we are not prepared to go over and see how they are doing. I know that is certainly the case for me.”
Senator Colin Kenny, Chair
Putting the Facts Straight
TRANSPARENCY: The CTV report gave the impression that trip was some kind of adventure we tried to hide from the public. Not true. The travel budget was unanimously approved on the floor of the Senate. It’s out there in the public domain. The committee issued a press release to the media about the intentions of the trip. It can also be found on the committee’s website. A detailed unfolding of events regarding the aborted Afghanistan portion of the visit is attached.
WHY DUBAI? The committee has two mandates: (a) National Security; (b) Defence. One of the national security issues the committee has been most outspoken about is the lack of security at Canadian ports. Dubai is the fourth-busiest port in the world. It is also the setting-off point to fly into Afghanistan. The committee decided to spend the first part of the trip examining port security at Rotterdam and Dubai, before proceeding to Kandahar.
While in London, from September 5 to 6, 2006, committee members looked into the issue of homegrown terrorism, including lessons learned since the 2005 London underground bombings. We met with the Director General of the Security Service (MI5), New Scotland Yard’s Metropolitan Special Branch, the British Transport Police and with the Cabinet Office’s Security and Intelligence Secretariat.
Port security was the focus of the discussions September 8 in Rotterdam with representatives from the Rotterdam-Rijmond Seaport Police (De Zeehavenpolitie R-R), one of the most notable port police service in the world, and Port Security and Customs. We identified lessons for Canada on how to move beyond the implementation of the International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) Code to securing the entire supply chain as well as how Canada could benefit in terms of introducing its own proposed dedicated seaport police.
In Dubai, the September 10 –11 meetings related to port security and operations. The committee met with officials from Dubai Ports World, Dubai Customs, Police, Coast Guard, Navy and Intelligence. The committee was particularly interested in the operations at Dubai Ports World given that it manages operations at a terminal in the Port of Vancouver and plans to examine the possibility of expanding operations to include the Port of Halifax. It is important to note the significance of this because Dubai ports purchase of six U.S. port terminals was blocked by American authorities in March of this year.
KANDAHAR – WHY DID WE GO?
The visit to Kandahar stemmed from the committee’s ongoing commitment to examine the operation of the Canadian Forces and the well being of its soldiers. The committee had recently met with soldiers at Petawawa as they were finalizing their training prior to departure to Afghanistan and spoke of their training experience and equipment. In Kandahar, the committee would have reconnected with these same soldiers to see how their training back in Canada helped prepare them for the mission and whether or not the equipment was suitable for the needs of the mission. Of concern to the committee was the issue of aid development in Kandahar as in recent public hearings the committee could not be provided with accurate figures as to the amount and type of aid Canada is providing to that region. Reference the letter from the Minister of the Canadian International Development Agency contained in the annex of the committee’s recent report, MANAGING TURMOIL: The Need to Upgrade Canadian Foreign Aid and Military Strength to Deal with Massive Change.
YOU CALL THIS A JUNKET?
• CTV reported that committee members were told “weeks prior” to departure from Canada that members would not be allowed to visit Canadian troops in Kandahar. In fact, the committee Chair learned on the afternoon of Saturday, September 2 that the military was recommending that we not proceed into Kandahar as the situation was in “flux”. In fact, some members of the mission had already flown out.
• As committee members and staff were arriving in London, England, at different times, the first opportunity to inform committee members of the situation was on Tuesday, September 5.
• As the military situation in Afghanistan was subject to “flux,” the committee decided to contact the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) from London on Tuesday, September 5 and ask him to consider three proposed options for Kandahar - (1) continue with the trip as planned if the situation improved, (2) go to Kandahar and remain in camp behind the wire at the airport, meeting with soldiers, RCMP, CSIS and members of Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT); and (3) have representatives from PRT, including RCMP and CSIS, come to Dubai to brief the committee.
• A follow-up call to the CDS was placed on Wednesday, September 6 from London in an effort to verify if the situation had changed. The CDS indicated that travel into Kandahar was still not possible. However he did agree to consider the committee’s third proposal. The committee continued with the established meeting program in Rotterdam on Thursday, September 7 and Friday, September 8. The committee arrived in Dubai late in the evening of Saturday, September 9.
• As the committee awaited word from Canadian officials in Afghanistan as to what might be the final option for Kandahar, it proceeded with its Dubai schedule. The previously arranged Monday September 11 meetings on port security and with Dubai Ports World and the various security agencies – that began with preparatory meetings with staff from the Canadian Embassy on Sunday, September 10 – went ahead as scheduled.
SEPARATING JOURNALISTIC LICENCE FROM REALITY
• CTV reported that the committee booked the “Presidential Suite” at the Renaissance Hotel in Dubai that was pictured in the CTV report. Not so. The committee met in a standard boardroom style meeting room that was immediately adjacent. Its rental fees of approximately $500 CDN per day – including food – are comparable to Canadian hotel meeting rooms.
• CTV accompanied its story with background pictures of an opulent room in the hotel, presumably taken from the hotel’s website. If that room exists, it is presumably for visiting princes. committee members’ rooms were the kind of accommodation that you might expect at a Renaissance Hotel in Canada – and any journalist willing to do the legwork can quickly determine that the Renaissance is a mid-level hotel in Dubai, not where the jetsetters stay.
• CTV reported that committee members stayed in suites that cost $U.S. 500. In fact they stayed in rooms that cost $311 Canadian.
• CTV gave the impression that committee members whiled away their days in Dubai. In fact, we worked, as we always work when there are openings in our schedule. Members met eight times for a total of 42 hours to work on – amongst other things – a draft of Managing Turmoil, a report tabled in the Senate on October 5. The report gained widespread press coverage for its insights into a number of military issues – including the lack of public involvement in Canada’s deployment into Afghanistan.
• We were finally advised on Monday afternoon, Sept. 11, that option three was not going to work out, and that the situation in Kandahar continued to be in “flux.” At this point the staff commenced efforts to rebook the committee for an immediate return to Canada.
• Try as they might, this was not immediately possible, due to fully occupied flights or incurring additional costs which would have been greater than the cost of the hotel rooms.
The committee left to return to Canada at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 16, one day sooner than planned.
The committee regrets the failure to complete its Kandahar mission. It does not, however, apologize for trying. The trip might have worked, and it might have given Canadians valuable insight as to what is going right and wrong there, which seem to be in short supply.
Parliament Hill is an easy place to become paranoid, and anyone who works here should resist paranoia. But it isn’t easy. Recent events suggest that we may be seeing a concerted effort to discredit both the committee – which has been critical of both this government and the last government - and the Senate. What better way to argue the uselessness of the Senate than to discredit one of its most useful committees?
For more information:
Office of Senator Kenny 613-996-2877
Office of Senator Meighen 613-943-1421
Office of Senator Banks 613-995-1889
Office of Senator Moore 613-947-1921
(Back)
16/10/06, Preston Manning, Mandela's dream has been unfulfilled, (Source).
17/10/06, Padma Rau, Interview with Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, (Source).
18/10/06, CP, CTV reveals senators' costly week in Dubai, (Source).
19/10/06, Editorial, Why Bouchard is right, (Source).
20/10/06, The Facts: The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, not On-Line.
18/10/06, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Enterprise is better than aid, (Back).
Nobel Peace Prizes are not supposed to go to those who believe the poor can fend for themselves.
Yet, this year's worthy winner, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, is essentially a commercial operation and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, has clearly spelled out politically incorrect views regarding poverty: "Grameen believes that charity is not an answer to poverty. . . . It creates dependency. . . . Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty." The bank lends tiny amounts to village dwellers so they can start small businesses. The scale can be so modest as to involve the purchase of a cow in order to sell milk. No collateral or credit history is required, the system works on trust and peer pressure: Lenders are placed in groups of five, with part of the group guaranteeing the loans of the rest. If a loan is not repaid, the community shuns the borrower.
More than six million people have borrowed money from Grameen; the bank makes millions in profit. It charges higher interest rates than most banks, but since the principal is repaid before the interest -- and interest is calculated on the basis of diminishing principal -- borrowers end up paying less than they would pay other banks. Thanks to these loans, which very poor and uneducated Bangladeshis have put to entrepreneurial use, many people have been able to pull themselves out of extreme poverty.
At its inception, Grameen Bank was partly owned by the government because the founders figured that was the only way to channel foreign loans from outside sources. Today, it is a totally private and profit-oriented operation in which borrowers themselves own shares.
For half a century, wealthy nations -- and rock stars -- have focused on foreign aid as the way to spur development. Foreign aid started with U.S. president Harry Truman's Point Four Program at the end of the 1940s, partly to pre-empt the spread of communism. To judge by ever-increasing budgets and last year's call at the UN for a doubling of aid by 2015, it continues to be the fundamental focus of efforts to bring about prosperity in poor countries. No attention is paid to the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa, the region to which most of the foreign aid has gone in the past quarter of a century, per capita income has dropped by 11 per cent.
Numerous government programs involving handouts and training also have failed to do the trick in many countries. What the poor really want is an environment in which undertaking a profitable venture is not a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. The world is full of examples of poor and uneducated communities that have been able to create wealth, thanks to entrepreneurship. After looking at cases of entrepreneurial success around the world for the past year, the conclusion is overwhelming: The best way to fight poverty is to eliminate barriers that currently hold back private enterprise among the poor.
Half a century ago, William Mangin, an American anthropologist, went to live in one of the shantytowns that had sprung up around Lima. He found the poor were entrepreneurial and that through voluntary co-operation, they were able to provide many of the services the government was not delivering, including the adjudication of disputes. He wrote a number of scholarly papers concluding that these urban, poor Peruvians were "not the problem but the solution." A few years later, anthropologist Keith Hart reached the same conclusion in Kenya. If the world had listened to them, half a century of misguided ideas about development, of useless fund transfers that often ended up in Swiss bank accounts of dictators and their cronies, and of schemes that entrenched dependency might have been avoided.
Nobel prizes tend to go to those who think wealth is a zero-sum game whereby rich nations are rich because poor nations are poor.
The Nobel award to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank is a good occasion to reflect on the colossal error of judgment the rich have made about the poor and a reminder that enterprise, not aid, is the real answer to poverty.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author of Liberty for Latin America, is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute in Washington.
16/10/06, Preston Manning, Mandela's dream has been unfulfilled, (Back).
There must be a better way to promote development in South Africa.
Last month, my wife Sandra and I spent three weeks travelling in southern Africa with a group of Canadian friends. Most of our time was spent in South Africa with a visit on Sept. 24 to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
Sept. 24 is Heritage Day in South Africa, an important national holiday dedicated to the celebration of the rich diversity of its people. It also has special significance for me as it was on that day eight years ago that I met Nelson Mandela following his farewell address to the Canadian House of Commons.
Immediately after his speech, a small reception was held in the Speaker's Chambers at which the federal party leaders had a chance to meet and talk with him.
I took the opportunity to ask a question: If there was one single thing that Canada and Canadians could do in future to fulfill his dream for South Africa, what would that thing be?
He took my hand, looked me in the eye, and softly spoke two words: "Economic development." If significant economic progress for the South African people did not follow hard on the heels of the efforts to achieve reconciliation and establish democracy, all his dreams for South Africa would be in mortal danger.
This Sept. 24, I read excerpts from Mandela's House of Commons speech to my friends and recalled this conversation with him. Naturally the question arises: Has the standard of living of South Africans significantly improved since the ending of apartheid, and are their future economic prospects bleak or promising?
The answer is not simple. According to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, South Africa's gross domestic product was $112-billion (U.S.) in 1994; today it is more than $150-billion, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 3 per cent.
But GDP per capita, which is a better measure of the economic wellbeing of individual South Africans, has grown by only about 1 per cent a year, from approximately $3,000 per capita in 1994 to around $3,300 per capita at present -- hardly a significant enough increase to fulfill Mr. Mandela's dream. Unemployment remains unbelievably high in South Africa (officially at 25 per cent and unofficially around 40 per cent) and more than five million South Africans still live on less than $1 a day.
Then there is the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS, so powerfully described by Canada's Stephen Lewis in Race Against Time. According to the UN, there are now more than 5.5 million South Africans infected with HIV and 1.2 million AIDS orphans. Life expectancy in South Africa has dropped from 62 years in the early 1990s to 45 today, and is still declining.
Imagine the prospects for the Canadian economy if 20 per cent of our citizens were infected with a deadly disease, more than a million Canadian children were without parents, unemployment was six times higher than it is now, and life expectancy was cut in half?
In Mr. Mandela's address to the House, he offered both an insightful observation and a challenge: "In the interdependent world in which we now live, rich and poor, strong and weak are bound by a common destiny that decrees that none shall enjoy lasting prosperity and stability unless others do too . . . We urge you to join with us in seeking to redirect the [global trade] system and its [financial] institutions so as to cater to the needs of development and the interests of the poor."
The previous Liberal government in Ottawa responded to this invitation in a largely ceremonial manner. For example, the 2003 Canada-South Africa Declaration signed by Jean Chrétien and President Thabo Mbeki promised, among other things, to "upgrade diplomatic representation in Toronto and Cape Town" and "develop a framework for cultural co-operation and promote cultural diversity." While commendable, these actions were probably not too encouraging to the millions of South Africans affected by poverty and disease. The government also responded to Mr. Mandela's challenge in a more conventional manner -- mainly by increasing traditional foreign aid to South Africa, promoting expanded trade and providing technical assistance.
However, one wonders if there isn't an alternative approach, one that will be more effective and more compatible with the values and philosophy of the new Conservative government.
Free enterprise and free trade (both of which conservatives support) have generated unprecedented levels of wealth but they have not significantly reduced the glaring inequities between rich and poor on a global scale. While critics of capitalism and free trade look to the redistribution of wealth itself as the answer, an alternative solution is to broaden the distribution of the tools that create wealth -- property rights, access to capital and other financial instruments, human capital development, access to information and technology, and access to markets.
A growing body of evidence exists to support this alternative. Hernando de Soto in The Mystery of Capital presents the expansion of property rights as the key to broader inclusion of the poor in the market system. Marguerite Robinson explores the benefits of microcredit in providing sustainable finance for the poor in The Microfinance Revolution. C. K. Prahalad in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid addresses the challenge of poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship and profitable market-based enterprise. Thomas Friedman, in his well-known book The World is Flat, highlights the benefits of bridging the digital divide via cost-effective, market-driven technological distribution. And measures for increasing the access of poor people and nations to trade and investment markets are well presented by William Cline's Trade Policy and Global Poverty and Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization.
These books, many of them the work of policymakers rooted in the underdeveloped economies they seek to help, provide a solid foundation for conservative governments such as the Harper administration to reorient their foreign-aid and developmental-assistance policies along such lines. What better place to start than in our trade and development relations with South Africa, accepting Nelson Mandela's Heritage Day challenge to "redirect the system" in new ways to meet the development needs and interests of the poor?
Preston Manning is a former leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons, a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute, and president of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. His daughter, Mary Manning, a former investment banker and hedge-fund analyst covering South Africa, contributed to this article.
17/10/06, Padma Rau, Interview with Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, (Back).
"This Will Advance our Cause Tremendously."
This year's Nobel Peace Prize went to Muhammad Yunus in recognition for the micro-credit system he set up in his home country of Bangladesh. SPIEGEL spoke with Yunus about what the award means to him and to the fight against world poverty.
[photo AFP, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. His micro-credit system provides mini-loans to the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh.]
SPIEGEL: You already have received 60 international prizes for your micro-credit system. Now you've won the Nobel Peace Prize. Were you surprised?
Yunus: It is fantastic; the Nobel Prize will make all political leaders and governments around the world take notice. We have been fighting poverty for more than 30 years, and I hope that this will advance our cause tremendously. Perhaps it will even convince the world to confront the issue of poverty on this planet.
SPIEGEL: You developed this system of micro-credit to help the poorest of the poor in your country, Bangladesh. How do you try to get other developing countries to pick up on this idea?
Yunus: Bangladesh is poor, I grew up here; but several other countries have already put our idea into practice. Of course there are still plenty of countries that do not care about the misery of the poor. I can only hope that there, too, political leaders will slowly change their attitudes.
SPIEGEL: Your work has been made more difficult by international terrorism. How do you handle this additional challenge?
Yunus: Peace is the precondition for everything else. Unless violence comes to a stop, one cannot attack the roots of poverty. Families can only focus on improving their lives in times of peace.
SPIEGEL: What message would you like to deliver to terrorists?
Yunus: I would tell them that we have to occupy ourselves with the roots of evil, across the board. The United Nations' millennium goal is to reduce poverty by half, by the year 2015. Now that I have won a Nobel Prize, our efforts to turn the UN project into reality will surely be advanced. If we manage to accomplish our own goals by 2015, then the struggle against the remaining poverty would be just a small additional step.
SPIEGEL: When did you actually hear that you had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?
Yunus: Oh, I have been nominated several times. Which is why I didn't really pay attention this time. My delight is all the greater.
18/10/06, CP, CTV reveals senators' costly week in Dubai, (Back).
TORONTO -- Canadian senators waited in an expensive Dubai hotel for seven days after a failed attempt to reach Afghanistan when the military had warned them not to attempt the trip in the first place, CTV News reported yesterday.
Liberal Senator Colin Kenny had hoped to take his National Security Committee to Kandahar province for a fact-finding trip, as well as a visit to Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates that is trying to become a global business hub.
CTV said in a story posted on its website that four senators and three staffers ended up spending seven days in Dubai, where they stayed in a posh hotel at $500 (U.S.) per night.
The total hotel costs were more than $30,000. Plane fare, meals and other expenses added more.
CTV said that during their time in Dubai, the Canadians had only one official meeting with security officials and a briefing from Canadian officials.
Conservative Senator Arthur Meighen defended the trip.
"We shouldn't have cancelled Dubai as long as there was a chance we'd get into Afghanistan," Mr. Meighen told CTV. "It's important for parliamentarians to show our men and women over there that we support the mission."
However, John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said the trip was simply a "junket dressed up as parliamentary business, pure and simple."
19/10/06, Editorial, Why Bouchard is right, (Back).
Lucien Bouchard has drawn heat by stating the obvious: Actions have consequences. If Quebec prefers its current rules to rules that would let it compete more productively in the world, it will stagnate.
In an interview Monday with the French-language TVA network, the former Quebec premier said: "We don't work enough. We work less than Ontarians and infinitely less than Americans. We have to work harder." Immediately the news cameras found workers who bake pizzas for 10 hours a day and couldn't work harder if they were chained as galley slaves, but at last report those people weren't among the many employees in a province with a bloated public service and militant unions whose contracts allow their members unaffordable leisure within their working hours.
Quebec as a whole is living beyond its means. It taxes its people more heavily than other provinces and has a much higher debt per capita than other provinces -- 44 per cent as of March, 2005, far ahead of the second highest, Nova Scotia, at 34.1. (The national percentage is 25.3.) Something has to give.
To offer the excuse of a so-called fiscal imbalance with Ottawa -- a charge the province regularly makes -- is to live in denial of a deeper set of problems. Quebec's population is aging more rapidly than others. It isn't having children, and its intake of immigrants isn't about to balance the aging. That means more health costs on the way and fewer workers to support those no longer on the job. The "Quebec model" of industrial subsidies and generous social-welfare programs (inexpensive child care, frozen university tuition fees, electricity sold below market value) is costly, while the income-tax load is uncompetitive with other jurisdictions. The province's union movement has won great gains for its members at the expense of productivity gains that could help Quebec invest more and compete more efficiently.
For a snapshot of how ingrained that problem is, consider Montreal's municipal maintenance workers, who are guaranteed minimum staffing and a four-day work week. When city investigators tracked three work crews in January over 90 hours, they found that actual labour accounted for only seven hours; the rest were spent driving around, shopping and having snacks in shops. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to Quebec, but it illustrates the nature of the difficulty.
Mr. Bouchard has been here before. He and others delivered the same diagnosis in a 10-page manifesto released last October: in part, that the tax system discourages investment, that Quebec should reduce income taxes and raise consumption taxes, that French-speaking graduates have to be more fluent in other languages, that the province has to raise tuition fees (coupled with income-contingent loan repayment) and massively invest in education and training, and that rejecting change "runs the risk of turning us into the republic of the status quo." Those who see no danger of stagnation will see no need for worry, but they do Quebec no favours.
20/10/06, The Facts: The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, (Back).
Press Release by the Committee:
OTTAWA, Oct. 20, 2006 – In the wake of inaccurate reporting on the committee’s recent fact-finding to the UK, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates – including the aborted and long-awaited visit to Canadian troops in Kandahar – it is time to set the record straight.
CTV National News aired an item on October 17, 2006 by Parliament Hill reporter Graham Richardson that was full of inaccuracies and artistic licence. These are being spread by other media outlets. The committee does valuable work. We can’t afford to have a shadow cast over our efforts by cartoon journalism.
The gist of Mr. Richardson’s story was that committee members wasted a week in Dubai at great expense to the Canadian taxpayer while waiting to get into Kandahar, the dangerous region in which our troops are serving in Afghanistan. The allegation is that committee members had been told by military authorities that there was very little chance of getting into Kandahar, and that it was foolish of them to set forth in an attempt to do so.
First, a reminder of the nature of our committee. We aren’t tourists. We have spent long hours over the past 5 ½ years talking to soldiers, their officers and various experts related to the military about the state of the Canadian Forces and Canadian security in general, and have issued 15 hard-hitting reports about the flaws in Canada’s security system and what needs to be done to repair them.
We have criticized both this government and the previous government for not taking the protection of Canadians and their interests seriously enough, and we have clearly irritated the powers that be.
We pride ourselves on being the antithesis of the cartoon image of the Senate perpetrated by some media and by some politicians who feel there are votes to be gained in denouncing the Senate. We have worked extremely hard and take great pride in both our relentless pursuit of the truth and our bipartisan approach to controversial issues.
Before detailing our responses to the allegations in the CTV report, please consider some of these comments from individual committee members and one of our staff members:
Le Comité sénatorial permanent de la sécurité nationale et de la défense / The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence
“Using the word junket in the context of one of this committee’s trips is a joke. Anyone who travels with this committee works from dawn to dusk and often until midnight. I’ve done it twice for a total of about 15 days abroad, and I might have had three or four hours of down time in total. The staff work hard, the senators work hard, and if meetings get cancelled Senator Kenny comes up with some other work we need to do.”
Major-General (Ret’d) G. Keith McDonald, Senior Military Advisor
“People avoid sitting on this committee because it works so hard. It works hard at home, and it works hard abroad. The proof is in the pudding. Look at how many serious, in depth reports we’ve produced over the past five years. Look at how many hours we’ve spent hearing testimony. Check our schedules when we’re abroad. This report smells like a phony leak from people who don’t like the criticism that this committee has laid out concerning the treatment of the military by this government and the last government.”
Senator Tommy Banks
“As a Nova Scotian with a keen interest in the welfare of the Port of Halifax, it was important for me to see the Port of Dubai and to meet its operators. This is the fourth busiest port in the world. It is operated by DP World, the same organization that operates the terminal in the Port of Vancouver. It was also valuable to learn that DP World wishes to come to Halifax to establish its east coast port of entry into the markets of North America.”
Senator Wilfred Moore
“Look, we worked hard, and we wanted to work harder in Afghanistan. You’d think that people who are forever trying to paint the Senate as a place where people sleep would give credit to a bunch of Senators trying to go into a dangerous situation to get the facts on what Canada is doing there and whether it is worth the price we’re paying.”
Senator Michael A. Meighen, Deputy Chair
“We go where the soldiers are, because we want to know what is going to work for them in doing a tough job for Canadians. We’ve been to scores of military bases across Canada and listened to them, and we wanted to listen to them in Afghanistan. As I said in the Senate, I think it would be difficult to look the troops in the eye if they are over there and we are not prepared to go over and see how they are doing. I know that is certainly the case for me.”
Senator Colin Kenny, Chair
Putting the Facts Straight
TRANSPARENCY: The CTV report gave the impression that trip was some kind of adventure we tried to hide from the public. Not true. The travel budget was unanimously approved on the floor of the Senate. It’s out there in the public domain. The committee issued a press release to the media about the intentions of the trip. It can also be found on the committee’s website. A detailed unfolding of events regarding the aborted Afghanistan portion of the visit is attached.
WHY DUBAI? The committee has two mandates: (a) National Security; (b) Defence. One of the national security issues the committee has been most outspoken about is the lack of security at Canadian ports. Dubai is the fourth-busiest port in the world. It is also the setting-off point to fly into Afghanistan. The committee decided to spend the first part of the trip examining port security at Rotterdam and Dubai, before proceeding to Kandahar.
While in London, from September 5 to 6, 2006, committee members looked into the issue of homegrown terrorism, including lessons learned since the 2005 London underground bombings. We met with the Director General of the Security Service (MI5), New Scotland Yard’s Metropolitan Special Branch, the British Transport Police and with the Cabinet Office’s Security and Intelligence Secretariat.
Port security was the focus of the discussions September 8 in Rotterdam with representatives from the Rotterdam-Rijmond Seaport Police (De Zeehavenpolitie R-R), one of the most notable port police service in the world, and Port Security and Customs. We identified lessons for Canada on how to move beyond the implementation of the International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) Code to securing the entire supply chain as well as how Canada could benefit in terms of introducing its own proposed dedicated seaport police.
In Dubai, the September 10 –11 meetings related to port security and operations. The committee met with officials from Dubai Ports World, Dubai Customs, Police, Coast Guard, Navy and Intelligence. The committee was particularly interested in the operations at Dubai Ports World given that it manages operations at a terminal in the Port of Vancouver and plans to examine the possibility of expanding operations to include the Port of Halifax. It is important to note the significance of this because Dubai ports purchase of six U.S. port terminals was blocked by American authorities in March of this year.
KANDAHAR – WHY DID WE GO?
The visit to Kandahar stemmed from the committee’s ongoing commitment to examine the operation of the Canadian Forces and the well being of its soldiers. The committee had recently met with soldiers at Petawawa as they were finalizing their training prior to departure to Afghanistan and spoke of their training experience and equipment. In Kandahar, the committee would have reconnected with these same soldiers to see how their training back in Canada helped prepare them for the mission and whether or not the equipment was suitable for the needs of the mission. Of concern to the committee was the issue of aid development in Kandahar as in recent public hearings the committee could not be provided with accurate figures as to the amount and type of aid Canada is providing to that region. Reference the letter from the Minister of the Canadian International Development Agency contained in the annex of the committee’s recent report, MANAGING TURMOIL: The Need to Upgrade Canadian Foreign Aid and Military Strength to Deal with Massive Change.
YOU CALL THIS A JUNKET?
• CTV reported that committee members were told “weeks prior” to departure from Canada that members would not be allowed to visit Canadian troops in Kandahar. In fact, the committee Chair learned on the afternoon of Saturday, September 2 that the military was recommending that we not proceed into Kandahar as the situation was in “flux”. In fact, some members of the mission had already flown out.
• As committee members and staff were arriving in London, England, at different times, the first opportunity to inform committee members of the situation was on Tuesday, September 5.
• As the military situation in Afghanistan was subject to “flux,” the committee decided to contact the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) from London on Tuesday, September 5 and ask him to consider three proposed options for Kandahar - (1) continue with the trip as planned if the situation improved, (2) go to Kandahar and remain in camp behind the wire at the airport, meeting with soldiers, RCMP, CSIS and members of Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT); and (3) have representatives from PRT, including RCMP and CSIS, come to Dubai to brief the committee.
• A follow-up call to the CDS was placed on Wednesday, September 6 from London in an effort to verify if the situation had changed. The CDS indicated that travel into Kandahar was still not possible. However he did agree to consider the committee’s third proposal. The committee continued with the established meeting program in Rotterdam on Thursday, September 7 and Friday, September 8. The committee arrived in Dubai late in the evening of Saturday, September 9.
• As the committee awaited word from Canadian officials in Afghanistan as to what might be the final option for Kandahar, it proceeded with its Dubai schedule. The previously arranged Monday September 11 meetings on port security and with Dubai Ports World and the various security agencies – that began with preparatory meetings with staff from the Canadian Embassy on Sunday, September 10 – went ahead as scheduled.
SEPARATING JOURNALISTIC LICENCE FROM REALITY
• CTV reported that the committee booked the “Presidential Suite” at the Renaissance Hotel in Dubai that was pictured in the CTV report. Not so. The committee met in a standard boardroom style meeting room that was immediately adjacent. Its rental fees of approximately $500 CDN per day – including food – are comparable to Canadian hotel meeting rooms.
• CTV accompanied its story with background pictures of an opulent room in the hotel, presumably taken from the hotel’s website. If that room exists, it is presumably for visiting princes. committee members’ rooms were the kind of accommodation that you might expect at a Renaissance Hotel in Canada – and any journalist willing to do the legwork can quickly determine that the Renaissance is a mid-level hotel in Dubai, not where the jetsetters stay.
• CTV reported that committee members stayed in suites that cost $U.S. 500. In fact they stayed in rooms that cost $311 Canadian.
• CTV gave the impression that committee members whiled away their days in Dubai. In fact, we worked, as we always work when there are openings in our schedule. Members met eight times for a total of 42 hours to work on – amongst other things – a draft of Managing Turmoil, a report tabled in the Senate on October 5. The report gained widespread press coverage for its insights into a number of military issues – including the lack of public involvement in Canada’s deployment into Afghanistan.
• We were finally advised on Monday afternoon, Sept. 11, that option three was not going to work out, and that the situation in Kandahar continued to be in “flux.” At this point the staff commenced efforts to rebook the committee for an immediate return to Canada.
• Try as they might, this was not immediately possible, due to fully occupied flights or incurring additional costs which would have been greater than the cost of the hotel rooms.
The committee left to return to Canada at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 16, one day sooner than planned.
The committee regrets the failure to complete its Kandahar mission. It does not, however, apologize for trying. The trip might have worked, and it might have given Canadians valuable insight as to what is going right and wrong there, which seem to be in short supply.
Parliament Hill is an easy place to become paranoid, and anyone who works here should resist paranoia. But it isn’t easy. Recent events suggest that we may be seeing a concerted effort to discredit both the committee – which has been critical of both this government and the last government - and the Senate. What better way to argue the uselessness of the Senate than to discredit one of its most useful committees?
For more information:
Office of Senator Kenny 613-996-2877
Office of Senator Meighen 613-943-1421
Office of Senator Banks 613-995-1889
Office of Senator Moore 613-947-1921
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