According to the recently published Global Monitoring Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), most countries will fail to meet the goals by 2015, despite many countries being on-track to halve extreme poverty by that time.

The authors of the report propose a 6-point plan to further efforts to meet the goals, including integration of the development and environment agendas, and more and better aid. They also suggest that the currently somewhat bleak situation could be addressed if “advanced” countries lived up to their commitments as part of the 2002 Monterrey Consensus in which they committed to, among other things, foreign official development aid (ODA) at a level of 0.7% of GNP.

Canada’s ODA expressed as a percentage of GNP is currently about 0.3%; the last time it even came close to 0.7% was in the mid 80s, when it hit 0.5%. According to the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, the federal conservatives’ 2007 Budget took no significant steps towards increasing ODA to 0.7%.

In related news, a recent Ipsos-Reid poll found that Canadian youth spend a higher proportion on foreign aid than the government does. In fact, they spend 5% of their income on donations to charitable organizations that work outside of Canada. The comparison is inexact, but still this is pretty amazing.

So much for the stereotypes about selfish and lazy youth. A Statistics Canada study last year found that, on average, Canadian youth do 7.1 hours of paid and paid labour a day, accounting for both weekdays and weekends. That’s a 50 hour week.