Dear Bono, ....

Peter A. Singer
National Post
Friday, November 25, 2005

...I am sorry to miss your concert in Ottawa tonight. What you are doing for the developing world is amazing. Frankly, you deserve to add the Nobel Peace Prize to your collection of Grammys.

Tonight, no doubt, you will repeat what you have done during past Canadian U2 concerts, and flash the Prime Minister's telephone number on the screen. You will encourage fans to ask the PM to boost Canada's foreign-aid outlays to 0.7% of GDP, the internationally recognized benchmark for Western nations. Certainly, you have given Mr. Martin fair warning: You once promised you would be a "pain in the butt" to the PM if he failed to make good on the 0.7% target.

As you know, the 0.7% idea was first proposed by another Canadian prime minister, Lester Pearson, over 30 years ago. Although few countries now meet this standard, it has had a galvanizing effect on the international community. To your great credit, Bono, you have seized on this tangible target and done your best to shame world leaders into increasing their foreign-aid commitments.

But rather than focusing exclusively on the 0.7% benchmark, you should also ask fans to congratulate the PM regarding another target -- the one he set in his February, 2004, speech from the Throne. By pledging to devote 5% of Canada's research-and-development spending to challenges facing the developing world, Mr. Martin recognized that science can do as much for the world's poor as aid.

Canada's total research-and-development spending -- both public and private -- amounts to about $23.5-billion per year, so the 5% target would yield a little more than $ 1-billion annually.

In last week's economic update, the Finance Minister confirmed that the federal government would move toward that goal by investing in a variety of developing-world priorities, including "health and environmental technologies." Currently, Ottawa's own R&D spending amounts to about $5.5-billion per year, so meeting its share of the 5% target would mean about $300-million, double the current level of federal spending earmarked for developing-world issues.

You may ask, Bono, why your fans should support this 5% target. Take, for example, the problem of malaria, a disease that kills a child about once every 30 seconds, with most deaths occurring in Africa. Which of the following solutions is best: distributing insecticide-soaked bed-nets, improving access to existing anti-malarial drugs, supporting the discovery of new anti-malarial drugs, supporting the development of a malaria vaccine, or developing a genetic strategy to incapacitate a malaria-transmitting insect population?

The answer is that all of these solutions should be pursued. As you move down the list, the role of science becomes more important, the time frame becomes longer, and you also get closer to addressing the root of the problem. Of course, we should be shipping bed-nets to save children now from this humanitarian catastrophe -- that's where the 0.7% foreign-aid target comes in.

But if all we do is ship bed-nets, then 10 years from now we will still be shipping bed-nets. The development of a malaria vaccine, by contrast, would, over time, eliminate the need for bed-nets. And that's where the 5% target comes in.

This same argument plays out across dozens of health and environmental challenges facing the developing world -- including HIV, and unsafe drinking water. While the 0.7% target was a product of the old economy -- food, clothing, shelter, infrastructure and so forth -- the 5% target is looking to harness the potential of the new economy, biotechnology especially, to find lasting solutions to significant challenges in developing countries. As you say in your song, Miracle Drug, "Of science and the human heart/ There is no limit."

(On the other hand, for a government that is constrained by very real budget limits, it should be noted that some of Canada's 5% spending would count toward the achievement of a 0.7% target.
So two humanitarian, Bono-pleasing targets could be achieved at once.)

But as you know, Bono, neither of these targets is really about spending money. Rather, they are about using our resources to make a difference in the lives of people in the developing world who have, ethically, the same right to a fulfilled, healthy life as we do; but for whom, in practice, this right has been eclipsed by poverty, hunger and disease.

So how should Canada implement the Prime Minister's 5% target?

First, as I argued on these pages two weeks ago, it should build on the US$432-million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative (in which the Canadian Institutes of Health Research is already a partner) to create a Canadian Grand Challenges Program. The Gates program primarily targets infectious disease. Its Canadian equivalent should target non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes. It could also be used to provide access to safe drinking water. These are global problems, but also ones that have tragic relevance to our own aboriginal communities.

Second, we should launch a "Giving Back" program to assist the many Canadians who have immigrated to Canada from developing and emerging-market countries. Through these programs, doctors, researchers, engineers and other professionals living in Canada could share their knowledge and expertise with their countries of origin. In this regard, Canada is perhaps uniquely positioned in the world to combine two of its greatest strengths -- multiculturalism and science -- to help to bridge the technological divide that separates the developed and developing worlds.

Third, we should extend our Canada Research Chairs program -- which currently supports professors in Canadian universities -- so that it supports professors in developing-world universities, especially those in Africa.

Fourth, we should extend the focus of our Networks of Centres of Excellence Program, which helps scientists and entrepreneurs co-operate to tackle domestic problems, to global problems like climate change and adaptation.

Finally, we should scale up the existing Global Health Research Initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian International Development Agency, International Development Research Centre, and Health Canada.

If Canada shows leadership by launching these and other initiatives, then other countries may well follow our lead. Consider this: Five percent of the research and development spending of industrialized countries is $50-billion.

So, Bono, when you flash the Prime Minister's phone number tonight, ask your fans to tell him his 5% target is cool, and that these innovative initiatives should be implemented in Budget 2006.

Anyway, I wish I could be there. Good luck, tonight!

Dr. Peter A. Singer is Sun Life Financial Chair and Directorof the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics and aCanadian Institutes of Health Research Distinguished Investigator.

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