
First, we must save the mothers and children. No, wait! First, we must make sure this isn't another gigantic, United Nations festival of corruption.
Then, we must save the mothers and children.
It's no secret that great humanitarian schemes can go horribly awry. Remember the UN's Oil-for-Food program in Iraq? Yes, that was the mother of all boondoggles. To this day, nobody knows how many billions were stolen.
This time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is wading into a program which is certainly gigantic: the UN's $40-billion project to cut the death rate among the world's most impoverished women and children.
Is it possible that some of that enormous pile of money could go astray? Definitely. Remember, this kind of funding is directed at places like Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen...
So, having pledged more than a billion dollars of Canadians' money to the cause as the chair of last year's G8 summit in Muskoka, Harper is now co-chairing a UN "Accountability Commission" to make sure the cash isn't pocketed by sticky-fingered autocrats and bureaucrats.
Thus far, the omens are not good. At the UN last year, Harper pledged $540 million to another grand scheme to cut the death rate of the most vulnerable. And...?
And now, donors are getting queasy.