UNAIDS chief urges Carney to reverse planned global health funding cuts

The head of the United Nations’ HIV/AIDS program is urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to reverse his government’s planned cuts to foreign aid and global health funding.

“My message to Prime Minister Carney, to Canada, and to all the other donors is, stay the course,” UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima told The Canadian Press on the sidelines of last week’s G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg.

“Without global solidarity, the inequality between countries will continue to widen. We will live in a more dangerous world as these inequalities increase.”

Last week, Carney announced Canada’s first-ever cut to funding for the Global Fund, a major program for fighting infectious diseases in the world’s poorest countries.

The new funding pledge is 17 per cent lower than Ottawa’s last contribution to the fund in 2022. The fund helps combat the spread of diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria through measures like providing mosquito nets and medication for HIV patients.

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The move came just weeks after the federal budget called for $2.7 billion in cuts over four years to foreign aid — and months after Carney vowed during the spring election campaign that his government would “not cut foreign aid.”

The Carney government argues the aid cut brings spending back in line with Canada’s pre-pandemic allocations.

2:38 Risk of 2,000 new HIV infections daily after US aid freeze, UN AIDS agency estimates

Ottawa increased its development and humanitarian spending during the pandemic, in part to restore stalled progress on fighting major illnesses such as AIDS and tuberculosis as governments turned their attention to COVID-19. The United States radically cut back its aid spending this year.

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Byanyima was at the G20 leaders’ summit to help present a report commissioned by the South African government on rising global inequality.

The report argues economic polarization within and among countries is generating resentment which is chipping away at political cohesion and risking instability.

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The authors call on governments to deter the spread of violence and autocracy by pursuing more egalitarian domestic policies and reforming financial systems so that developing countries can escape the debt trap caused by high interest rates and natural disasters driven by climate change.

Byanyima said Canada can look to leaders such as Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who said his country has reaped more economic benefits from gender equality in the domestic workforce over the course of decades than from oil revenues.

“When we reduce inequality between countries and within countries, we actually have stronger economies,” Byanyima said.

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She also said Canada should get behind global efforts to counter tax evasion.

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When pressed about the cutbacks during his time in Johannesburg, Carney pointed out that Canada’s share of the organization’s total funding has gone up. That’s because the fund’s total envelope has diminished.

“We’ve had to take pragmatic, responsible decisions across the board in government, which also included returning our aid budget to the level pre-COVID,” Carney said. “Within that, though, we’re focused on where it has a maximum impact, very much including on this continent.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand echoed those points to reporters in Johannesburg.

“Canada’s contribution is still meaningful. It is still material. It is still significant,” she said.

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“Africa is Canada’s largest recipient of international assistance, and our assistance will continue.”

Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe said Thursday there has been a “worrying” and “problematic” shift under Carney away from Canada’s long-standing approach to aid and human rights.

“There’s more and more links being made between international aid and international trade in the vision of Mr. Carney,” he said in French.

The cuts come as advocates mark World AIDS Day on Monday, at a time when many say humanity has the tools needed to end the HIV pandemic but not the funding to distribute necessary treatments to the right people.

Jayati Ghosh, a prominent Indian economist who co-presented the inequality report alongside Byanyima, said Canada should work to ensure developing countries can produce life-saving medicines that are often blocked by “an intellectual property regime that excessively raises the costs of essential medicines.”

The problem became prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many developing countries waited longer than richer countries to secure what turned out to be an insufficient number of vaccine doses — even as they were blocked from creating their own versions of those vaccines.

“Governments have to think, in ways beyond (foreign aid), in terms of the regulations globally that they’re helping to support, that actually worsen conditions for developing countries,” Ghosh said.

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