OTTAWA – Three years’ worth of vastly improved health facilities for women and children in developing countries; $1,000 tuition cuts for every student in Canada; 11,000 new construction jobs.

These are among the suggestions being offered to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on better ways to spend the nearly $1 billion earmarked for security for the G8 and G20 summits next month.

That $1-billion figure, in fact, is quickly emerging as an important benchmark, with Harper under increasing pressure to emerge from those summits with spending commitments over and above his security costs – dollars directed toward the less fortunate abroad, for instance.

But that would be a massive increase – a doubling, in fact, of the $500-million budget that International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda was boasting this week as the highest-ever aid commitment in Canada’s history. Now, however, next to the security price tag for the summits, it is looking like a drop in the bucket.

“We could make a really landmark Canadian investment in maternal and child health around the world, that would do more than any single thing to meet those millennium development goals,” says Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. “We could simply lead the world.”

The New Democrats, seeing what the Conservatives are willing to fork over for security, are calling on Canada to put $1.4 billion over five years into foreign aid directed at maternal health, as requested by the international Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

That breaks down into roughly $300 million a year – so it would take three years to spend what Harper’s government has committed to security costs for three days of meetings in Huntsville and Toronto at the end of June.

“When you can spend a billion dollars to send out sound cannons on protesters in Toronto, the least you can do is provide $1.4 billion over a couple of years to provide front-line health services to women in the Congo. It’s a no-brainer,” says NDP foreign-affairs critic Paul Dewar.

Dewar said that with $1.4 billion extra from Canada over the next five years, women and children in poor countries such as the Congo could mean more medical clinics closer to the people who need them, better transport to health facilities and a boost in “front-line” services, getting clean water and food to children, for example, who need those basics in the first years of their lives.

Oda, however, told the Commons committee on the status of women this week that Canada would be paying for its summit commitments out of the existing international-aid budget.

“Our government has been increasing its international aid by 8 per cent every year. That 8 per cent remains in the base of CIDA, in our international assistance, and then we build 8 per cent on top of that. That brings us to $500 million for international assistance, the largest amount ever in the history of Canada,” she said.

Ignatieff was in his Toronto riding having lunch on Friday and found that the $1-billion number has touched a nerve with the public.

“People came up right out of the queue and said ‘what is going on?’” Ignatieff told the Star. “The public really doesn’t like this.” In addition to boosts in the aid budget, Ignatieff said he’d much rather see the money being spent on reducing students’ tuition, creating jobs for the unemployed or even improving broadband access for rural Canadians.

In the House of Commons this week, as well, NDP MP Olivia Chow cited a number of ways to spend $1 billion.

“Three percent of that $1 billion would provide all Canadian children a nutritious and healthy breakfast or snacks every day. We can lift all seniors out of poverty by increasing the guaranteed income supplement,” Chow said.

“Canada could pay one-third of the costs of the millennium development goal and save the lives of over 10 million women and children by 2015.”

Ignatieff says that his party is going to be demanding an official accounting for security costs that he describes as “off the charts.”

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“It’s simply impossible to understand,” he said.

Irene Mathyssen, the NDP’s status-of-women critic, said she is troubled by the prospect of how this $1 billion is going to be spent – silencing protest and keeping world leaders safe, when those dollars could be stretched much farther if devoted to making lives safer abroad.

“A billion dollars for security alone. What about all the other extraneous expenses?” Mathyssen said. “I think we should be investing that in human beings.”

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