ANDY RIGA, ANN CARROLL of The Gazette contributed to this report, The Gazette
Published: Friday, November 10, 2006
If Bill Clinton knew then what he knows now, he would have sent books, not weapons.
The result might have been more scientists and fewer terrorists, the former U.S. president told the Montreal Millennium Promise Conference on child poverty yesterday.
In most developing countries, Clinton explained, parents must pay to send their children to public schools - "because of the strain on government budgets and the weak tax base."
But some Muslim countries such as Pakistan have networks of free madrassa schools, which "indoctrinate kids with a very militant ideology," he said.
And terrorist groups such as Al-Qa'ida use them as recruiting venues.
"During the '80s and the '90s - I take responsibility for this, too - because Pakistan was a good Cold War ally of the United States, we were only too happy to give them generous military aid," said Clinton, who was president from 1993 to 2001.
"If we had given them just one less plane and taken that money and put it into education, God only knows how many fewer terrorists and how many more engineers and scientists we might have educated."
Clinton used his 45-minute speech to lay out a blueprint for eradicating poverty. Funding education is a key component.
In a poor country, he noted, every year of schooling adds an average 10 per cent to a child's future earning capacity. Around the world, 130 million children don't go to school.
Programs that provide free food in school are cutting that number, Clinton said. And countries like Brazil have proved that attendance can also be boosted by paying parents a stipend if their kids go to class.
Through a foundation he created, Clinton now criss-crosses the globe promoting projects related to health security, economic empowerment, citizen service and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation.
In his speech, Clinton, 60, noted 10 million children die of preventable causes annually and that half the people in the world live on less than $2 a day.
"The good news is we know what to do about these challenges," he said. "We can have a significant impact on child poverty in a short time" if governments, business and non-governmental groups team up.
He said aid to and trade with poor countries must increase. More debt must be relieved. Fair trade projects must be encouraged.
Business must invest in profitable projects in developing countries to create jobs so parents don't have to send children to work instead of school.
Health care must be improved so preventable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis can be eliminated.
"If there's one thing I've learned in my increasingly long life, (it) is that intelligence, ability and willingness to work are evenly distributed around the world," Clinton said. "But opportunity, investment and systems that function, that establish that critical link between effort and result, are not.
"We know that even though it sounds quite expensive to do, it is far cheaper than letting the situation continue to deteriorate. ... All the things we can do are much cheaper than the aftermath of calamity and also, parenthetically, much cheaper than going to war.
To loud applause from the audience, he noted the United States has spent $400 billion on the Iraq war and $100 billion in Afghanistan, yet won't honour a commitment to provide $30 billion a year in foreign aid.
Outside the conference at the Palais des congres, a coalition of Quebec housing, social welfare, women's groups and union representatives rallied at noon to draw attention to poverty issues closer to home.
The groups are calling for a hike in social assistance allocations and an increase in the minimum wage.
"It's a good thing to ask the public to be generous and donate, but that shouldn't take the place of government responsibility for social programs," said Marie-Josee Corriveau, of the Front d'action populaire en reamenagement urbain.
A United Nations social and economic committee this year criticized Canada for minimum-wage levels and welfare allocations that are too low to provide its citizens a decent life, Corriveau noted.
The minimum wage in Quebec is $7.75 an hour
"A single parent of two kids could work 40 hours a week and still fall well below the low-income level," Corriveau said.
The basic social assistance allocation of $543 a month, meanwhile, cannot begin to cover everyday costs of housing, food and clothing, Corriveau added.
"It's the government that is keeping people poor," she said
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Originally Posted by johan
The religious wackos would spread there filth propaganda against the schools so hard that no one would want them there.
