Shorter Stephen Harper
I’m gonna do something about infant mortality rates in developing countries and get into the newspapers – don’t look too closely at my back yard, there’s really nothing to see there.
OK, so it’s not really a “shorter” post – read the rest anyway.
With plight of mothers, Harper seeks new G8 course
…….the Prime Minister is hoping maternal and child health will become Canada’s “signature” focus at the G8 meeting, underlining his government’s hope the group can find a lasting raison-d’être.
“Members of the G8 can make a tangible difference in maternal and child health and Canada will be making this the top priority in June,” Mr. Harper said in a statement. “Far too many lives and unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple health caresolutions.”
Golly Mr. Harper, what a noble, selfless, caring, leader of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, you are.
Inuit infant mortality three times Canadian average; children go hungry: Study
Inuit infants die at well over three times the rate of other Canadian babies, according to a massive new study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
And as if to underscore the tough situation facing aboriginal children in Canada’s North, a second study in the same journal found that 70 per cent of Inuit preschoolers live in homes where there isn’t always enough food.
“Inuit children in Nunavut are faced with health challenges that are more severe than those in Southern Canada due to the socio-economic conditions facing the entire territory,” said Dr. Isaac Sobol, the territory’s chief public officer of health.
To study the Inuit infant mortality rate, University of Montreal researcher Dr. Zhong-Cheng Luo looked at all four million births in Canada between 1990 and 2000. He then broke out those that occurred in 53 predominantly Inuit communities in the Arctic, from Labrador in the east the Mackenzie Delta in the west.
After comparing those births with deaths in the first year of life, Luo found the mortality rate for Inuit infants was 16.5 per thousand live births – a rate not seen in Southern Canada since 1971 and 3.6 times the Canadian average of 4.6 deaths.
Places like Sri Lanka, Estonia, The West Bank, and a few other countries I’d never heard of before, may be doing better than Canadian Inuit are but don’t you worry about that (gods know your various predecessors didn’t so why should you ‘eh?), you just toddle off to Europe and announce grand plans on big stages because that’s where the headlines are and, as we know, that’s the really important part of governing and getting re-elected.
Besides….. Inuit mortality rates have been comparable to those of third world countries for a long time now, it’s not really news, Canadians have never cared before, so why should they care now?
Good one. The original link in your tweet didn’t work, so I’ve sent another tweet.
On the bright side, now that he’s done ruining Canada, maybe he wants to move on to the UN.
No sooey, there is no bright side to this, not even a sarcastic one. Canadian infants are dying in the Arctic at rates three times that of other Canadians and Harper has decided he should focus on infant mortality rates in developing countries…. maybe he (and the rest of Canada) should spend a bit more time looking in our own back yard.
Why the child poverty/hunger and infant mortality rates in the north are not causing Canadian heads to duck red faced in shame everytime the media or some government blowhard at a carefully staged photo-op brings up conditions in the third world escapes me completely.
Maybe someone can take a few minutes and explain to us all why is it so easy for Canadians to ignore those things at home while being so sympathetic to the plight of others?
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by stageleft: Shorter @pmharper: Forget #Canada, I’m gonna fix other countries http://digg.com/u1LWYz #Inuit #canpoli #cdnpoli #inuit #infantmortality…
Here’s some more damning news:
Maybe the foreign press covering Harper’s Davos speech can be made aware of the situation here in our home and native land.
It’s a strike against the Liberals. Ignatieff has been beating the women and children drum in regards to international aid for the past couple months. I think it was shaping up to be the core of the Liberal foreign aid policy.
a) You get points for talking up aid and compassion on the international stage. You don’t get points for doing it domestically – too many embarassments, as you’ve illustrated.
b) Most Aboriginal votes go liberal (Nunavut was a big shock last time, but the Cons probably have it for as long as they want now), so there’s very little political advantage to doing stuff for those ridings .
c) The assimilationist thrust of Conservative policy requires a shift of resources from reserves to cities – see the CMHC funding allocations for public housing.
d) Similarly, the assault on the nation to nation basis of relationships between government and FNs requires that responsibility be shifted to the provinces in areas like education and health – with resources transferred to the province for their pains, of course.
In addition to what balb said, there is a natural human tendency to reduce such issues to ones of baseline moral clarity in proportion to one’s distance, both physical and psychological, from them. Sometimes that “clarity” is simplistic and hypocritical, sometimes it allows a view of the forest unobstructed by trees. Put another way, most people tend to be both more morally ambiguous and scummier at close quarters.
Distance from government and the general public has usually favoured aboriginal peoples, which explains not only the historical preference for dealing with the feds over the provinces (and certainly over local municipalities), but also their traditional perception of a direct relationaship with the Crown.
Harpers concerns for the developing worlds women and children came on the heels of the announcement of the charitable organizations “Right to Play” being introduced into the northern reserves??? An organization usually found in third world countries. Only In Canada you say…pity.
@debra – Pro-Democracy demonstrations and marches used to be only found in third world hell holes, too.
[...] Point, soaring at 35,000 feet over You missed the point, Charles. It was already ably explored by my steamed colleague Stageleft, but let me see if I can [...]