By JOSEPH MCNINCH-PAZZANO

So, we’re dropping the “latte loving leftist” attack now, right? I mean, after a Conservative cabinet minister supposedly married to the idea of fiscal restraint and good-old, main street Canadian values spends $16 on a glass of orange juice, we’ve pretty much incinerated the idea that only latte-loving, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart liberals are elitists. (In case you have not been following this most expensive purchase of orange juice ever, we’re talking about International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, who is resigning her cabinet post and seat in Parliament.)

The outcry has been intense. From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calling out in loud guffaws about her extravagant spending habits to the angry Canadians furiously penning their letters to the editor to the relentless use of that infamous picture of her smoking away while peering out from under her dark sunglasses, Canadians have found their Marie Antoinette – or the closest thing we’ve seen to her since… well, by some reporters’ accounts, ever.

With $16 on a single glass of orange juice, refusal to stay at a pre-approved five-star hotel opting for a more expensive five-star hotel, $5,000 in limo expenses including a trip to the Junos (hey, can’t a girl party?), we now have the latest travesty: she spent $50 on an air purifier at Walmart so she could smoke in her office. (My favourite headline on the subject: “Oda did, in fact, smoke in her office.”) This is Watergate-style reporting right here — what would the Canadian people have done if they had not known whether Bev Oda had lit it up in the House of Commons?

Governmental transparency and accountability is at the heart of democratic oversight – it is what enables us to avoid corruption and sidestep backroom deals. The ever-present fear of a public backlash is what keeps every politician on pins and needles, endlessly obsessing over every last line in their expense report (Ms. Oda obviously excepted).

But, my beef with Oda pretty much dates backs to the day she took office as Minister of International Cooperation. And, I find all of this hoopla over the $16 glass of orange as the tipping point where a minister has to throw in the towel a bit over the top and excessive. Not because I don’t believe it was wrong and severely misguided but because I don’t know why people haven’t been more angry with Minister Oda before.

According to the Canadian Election Study, 8 out of 10 Canadians support the federal government giving aid to developing countries. That includes 6 out of every 10 people who either strongly or very strongly support it. Simply put, Canadians care about foreign aid.

Under Oda’s awful stewardship of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Canada’s reputation has declined to near-historic proportions. Jeffrey Simpson wrote in The Globe and Mail that “for those who care about Canada’s international reputation […] these are discouraging days. Everywhere, there is penny-pinching that makes no sense, a hectoring tone not appreciated by others, and a misunderstanding about how international affairs really work.”

This description fits Oda’s reign as International Cooperation Minister to a tee. In 2010, four years after Oda took over as Minister, Canada’s reputation in foreign aid had quickly diminished. In addition to failing to meet the 0.7% of GDP threshold set out by the United Nations, of 38 major aid donors, Canada ranked 29th in terms of quality and effectiveness — so even when the government did supply money, it was generally misspent.

In the coming years, Oda and the Conservative government have planned to cut a further $377 million from the foreign aid budget (because we were giving such a huge, burdensome amount already – 0.32% of our entire GDP, it was like no one was even holding the purse strings!). That means Afghanistan, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and 12 other countries will all start to lose their foreign aid funding this year. Canada has had a reputation of delivering aid to these countries for many years, but no longer.

Oda called the cuts “an exercise in accountability.” In other words, Oda was explaining that we were graciously demonstrating to these inferior nations how to save money by giving them a little tough love. (Can we all just pause to note that this brash assertion came after she laid down a $5,000 check on the taxpayers’ dime for her limo excursions?)

To me, her oversight of a massive decline in foreign aid spending to a projected point in 2014/15 where we will give less than two tenths of a percent of our entire GDP to foreign aid – moving us lower and lower down the list of foreign aid donors where we already sit in the bottom third – is a much greater and much more “fireable” offense than her orange juice or air purifier expense. Seriously, we’re writing articles on a $50 air purifier? At least she was considering the poor MP who would have to sit in her smoke-filled office after she inevitably got canned.

Her expenses are fun to write about and they’re good tibdits to poke fun at. But, in the big picture of things, her $337-million cut in foreign aid could purchase 21 million glasses of $16 orange juice and about 150 million of regularly priced orange juice. It’s 67 million pairs of shoes for children in countries where they go without. It’s 48,000 new water wells. It’s 9,000 new schools.

Let’s be outraged about that. Let’s be outraged that it took an expensive hotel stay and a Walmart air purifier to oust Bev Oda, not the disastrous foreign aid policy that this government has engaged in. Better yet, let’s hold newly-minted Minister Julian Fantino accountable for the expenditures of CIDA and watch CIDA’s balance sheet as closely as we watched Bev Oda’s expense report.

This article is republished by permission from Global Watch Project.

Joseph McNinch-Pazzano is a fourth-year student at Wilfrid Laurier University, majoring in Political Science with an American Studies Minor. In spring of 2012, Joseph founded the Global Watch Project Blog at www.josephpazzano.ca with the intent to spark discussions amongst the next generation of leaders about the most pressing challenges facing international society. With a mission to “reimagine community watch groups globally,” the Global Watch Project seeks to inspire thought leadership about North American public policy in a globalizing world including foreign policy, international human rights, and global governance.