Dear editor,
Last month the United Nations Secretary General called for member nations to set up a billion dollar trust fund to render all humanitarian help necessary to Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa. Colombia immediately donated $100,000; Cuba has already sent 400 doctors and medical personnel; Canada, and several other UN members, has still not donated to the trust fund.
On Sunday, Canadian Chief Of Defence Staff General Tom Lawson said in a CTV interview that as a former CF-18 fighter pilot, nothing would excite him more than perhaps being confronted by an ISIL air force, adding that the “very, very accurate” bombs that CF-18 jets drop on ISIS targets cost between $35,000 and $40,000 each.
Isn’t there something wrong with this picture, where the Canadian government has committed huge military expenditures in Iraq and Syria, but is yet to commit anything to the humanitarian trust fund that the UN has set up, even when the International Red Cross pleads that Liberia is waiting on shipments of such absolute basics as body-bags and protective surgical gloves?
Bernie Smith
Parksville