"It's all smoke and mirrors"

Those are the words of an international aid worker commenting on Harper's latest announcement of the "Canadian government's" Save a Million Lives initiative. Carol Goar did what has now become absolutely necessary whenever Harper announces anything that appears to be altruistic: She checked it out before cheering. (Emphasis mine)

The first thought that popped into my head last week, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada was "launching a global initiative to save a million lives" was: Check before cheering.

I wish I could have reacted in a more open-hearted way. I'd like to feel unreservedly proud of my country and its leader.

But experience has taught me to be wary. Harper's good-news announcements always seem to come up with a catch.

In this case, there were three:

He forgot to mention that "Save a Million Lives" is a UNICEF initiative. Its partners include Canada, Norway, the United States, Britain and Australia as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and the World Bank.

Canada's $105 million commitment, announced with great fanfare by the Prime Minister in Tanzania, is the same amount Ottawa allocates to UNICEF every year. It is just packaged differently.

And Harper was reannouncing a pledge he made at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, 17 months ago.

Do you smell the dhobi doings of Sandra Buckler at work here?

Certainly the "Save a Million Lives" program is worth applauding. It will extend basic health services to expectant mothers and children in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia. It will provide micronutrients and insecticide-treated bed nets to vulnerable youngsters. And it will allow national governments to train badly needed health workers.

But Canada's contribution will not increase its overall foreign aid. It will not put more money in UNICEF's hands. And it will not get Ottawa close to its target of sharing 0.7 per cent of the nation's income with the world's poorest people.

"It's all smoke and mirrors," said one disenchanted aid worker who asked to remain anonymous for fear of exposing her agency to reprisals. "That has been the pattern with this government."

Some international development advocates go further. They warn that, as more details come to light, Canadians are likely to find that Harper is paying for this initiative by cutting other worthwhile programs.

As Harper and his gang have already proved, cutting programs is something they are very good at. Two things become clear from this government: When they review a program it is not to determine whether there is any social value received from it, but whether it fits their particular ideology, and; Charity and the distribution of wealth, even from an overwhelmingly wealthy country, is not something they believe in as a government.

That is what happened with the $139 million HIV Vaccine Initiative, announced by the Prime Minister last February at a ceremony with billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Nine months after the event, local AIDS groups discovered that a large chunk of Canada's $111 million commitment came at their expense. Community-based programs providing support to Canadians infected with the virus now face cutbacks of up to 60 per cent. Vaccine research is displacing client services.

And, no, the Harperites aren't the first ones to be declared guilty of such shifts. The Liberals did it too, as did Mulroney.

But the Conservatives have ratcheted things up a notch. They portray shifts in spending as bold new ventures. They silence aid agencies that depend on government funds. And they make it next to impossible to follow their paper trail.

Scott calls this Scrooge-like or Grinch-like, something at this time of year we can all recognize. Both are accurate terms, but as Goar continues, I think there's more to it.

The sad thing is that all this subterfuge is quite unnecessary.

Canada could easily afford to give double the amount Harper committed to the Save a Million Lives initiative in Dar es Salaam. The federal surplus is running at close to $10 billion midway through the fiscal year. Ottawa's debt-to-GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the world. Revenues continue to roll in faster than the government can spend them.

So what is holding the Prime Minister back?

Perhaps it is a surfeit of fiscal prudence.

Perhaps it is a desire to keep every spare dollar for tax cuts.

Or perhaps it is a hunch that Canadians wouldn't give him credit for an act of genuine altruism. They'd wonder about his motives, doubt his sincerity, ask where the money was coming from.

For one thing, subterfuge is a genetic thing with Harper. Look at his hero to the south. Harper has been engaged in it from the very start of his ambitious grab for power. From a scripted election campaign to a muzzling of everything government, Harper wants no one to know what is really going on.

What's holding him back? This coming Spring, that's what.

Of course he would be questioned if he suddenly increased foreign aid. But the strongest and loudest questions would come from his own base of support - those who feel the countries of the third-world are the architects of their own suffering. While others might question motives and sincerity, particularly since he has repeatedly demonstrated that nothing comes from his government without personal or party political gain attached to it, his minority base would howl like gut-shot coyotes if they saw foreign aid being increased at the expense of another possible tax cut.

No, Harper is holding back, hoping he can maneuver his way to a budget. One that buys votes. And for that, he will need all the money he can horde in government coffers. He has to be able to prove, whether a Spring budget survives a confidence vote or not, that the money is there.

Scott is quite right except that in the fictional accounts that gave us Scrooge and The Grinch, both of those characters changed.

Don't expect that from Harper.