And I thought scallops wrapped in bacon were rich...

So Paul Martin is having issues with recent pledges of other G8 leaders for promising to have foreign aid reach .7% of GDP by 2015. Its not like I entirely disagree with the Prime Minister for suggesting that striving for such a target without any attempt to make the much require structural reforms to the third world system is not the correct approach or that some of these national leaders are making the pledge to get aging rock stars off their collective backs.

After all until were see the emergence of a free trade environment and the end of subsidies in such areas as agriculture, which would allow poorer nations to make use of their most valuable asset -- a cheap source of labour -- foreign aid will never be enough to pull the third world out of a cycle of poverty.

However, what gets me is this quote from our Prime Minister:

"The reason for [the respective pledges] is that instead of dealing with the problems the way that people ought to deal with the problems, what in fact [the pledging nations are ] doing is they're giving in to short term political pressure, (to) get their pictures in the paper, make an announcement, go home to favourable headlines and then forget about it.

"Well I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that because there's an election coming. I'm not going to do that under any circumstances."

What is he thinking? That has been the sorry state of Canadian political discourse for the last year -- our Prime Minister giving into political pressure to get a favourable headline. This is the man who boasted about the politics of achievement…yet what has he achieved beyond survival and payouts to the provinces?

I mean, I agree with Paul Martin on this issue that more aid is not necessarily the solution, but he should be a little more careful with his choice of words...