A catastrophe of potentially epic proportions is taking shape in West Africa, and the world will be judged by history on how it responded. Some countries — such as the United States, Cuba and France — have been aggressive in sending personnel and supplies. Others, most notably Canada, have been sadly missing in action.
There are dozens of individual Canadians, many of them doctors and nurses, who have courageously volunteered with international aid groups to help with the Ebola outbreak. But the Canadian government itself, perhaps more enamoured of its conceit of Canada as a newly minted “warrior nation,” doesn’t seem to place humanitarian crises in Africa high on its priority list. As a result, Canada’s contribution has been shockingly small.
Canada as an international slacker: was it ever thus? Well, no, not really. Remember Ethiopia? It was 30 years ago this weekend that many Canadians saw — on their television sets — for the first time the immense horror of a hidden famine that was killing hundreds of thousands. What followed next will never be forgotten.
On Nov. 1, 1984, CBC correspondent Brian Stewart broadcast the first of a series of riveting reports describing how women and children were dying each day in famine camps throughout northern Ethiopia. Up to that point, the Marxist-led country was virtually shut to foreign media.
The only journalists allowed into Ethiopia previously had been from the BBC, but this was just for three days in late October. In contrast, the CBC’s exclusive reporting extended for more than three weeks and it captured the scale of the disaster.
I have vivid memories of that period because I was the producer of that CBC news team. As we grimly moved from one refugee camp to another, we kept running into exhausted Canadian doctors and nurses who were horrified at the growing death toll and appalled that the world didn’t seem to know. They kept pleading with us to get the message out.
At the beginning, the authoritarian Ethiopian government denied that a famine was happening, and it was hostile to foreign media. There was no way for us to transmit the video reports directly back to Canada.
After we edited through the night, I had to fly to neighbouring Kenya to send the material home. As I lined up at the Ethiopian airport on that Nov. 1st morning, I noticed that security officials were rifling through bags and confiscating almost everything. I had to duck into the bathroom and tape the videotapes to my back in order to smuggle them through.
Before Stewart’s first report on the CBC, no one could have predicted the incredible response by Canadians and their political leaders. Canada’s new prime minister, Brian Mulroney, who had been in office only for a few weeks, was so shocked by the images he had seen on The National that he phoned Stephen Lewis, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations. He told Lewis that Canada would lead an international rescue effort in Ethiopia. As a response to the Canadian appeal, the UN soon launched what was then the greatest single humanitarian relief mission in history.
At the same time, Canadians throughout the country responded with even more passion. This triggered an unprecedented outpouring of individual contributions. In the end, Canada’s overall aid to Ethiopia in 1984-85 was among the highest worldwide, and it unquestionably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Let us fast forward to today — to the epidemic spreading through West Africa which has already killed 5,000 people.
Just this week, the U.S. government and the United Nations urgently predicted that the epidemic would spread dangerously unless more countries send help.
But the Canadian government of 2014 remained steadfast. It has refused to send any medical personnel to West Africa until their personal safety is assured, and it has urged all Canadians in the region to return home.
Thirty years ago this month, British rock artists released the bestselling song “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” to raise funds for the Ethiopian famine. Tragically, its message, however maudlin, resonates today.
Tony Burman, former head of CBC News and Al-Jazeera English, teaches journalism at Ryerson University. Reach him @TonyBurmantony.burman@gmail.com
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