Thanks for your considered response. As I've said before, this visualization was put together before the Canadian government had announced additional funding. I suspect the same may be the case for other countries on the list. I imagine the data set that I used will be updated with new figured shortly – when that happens, I'll update my figures.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but the point wasn't really to suggest that some countries weren't 'pulling their own weight'. Instead I wanted to put the numbers into some kind of real framework that I could understand.

Let's ignore the $5.5 million dollar figure for Canada and choose some hugely larger figure for the sake of discussion. Let's estimate high and say the figure ends up being $140M. I am only going to talk about government aid, not individual donations. What does $140M mean? As you've said – and I'll use your effective capitalization for emphasis – this is a FORTUNE.

It's several thousand times more than I make in a year.

It's 16,470,588 tickets to Avatar.

It's about 4% of Canada's annual foreign aid budget.

It's 8% of what Vancouver is spending on 2 weeks of Olympic games.

As you can see, the definition of a FORTUNE can change when we put it into different frameworks.

You know, while I'm here pissing off rampant Canadian nationalists, let's take a closer look at that foreign aid statistic. 3.45B is about 0.24% of Canada's GDP. Compare that to the Danes, who spend 0.83% of their GDP on aid (up this year from 0.82%, despite a record forecast deficit), or to the Swedes who spend about 0.92%.

Canadians like to believe that we are a shining example of global citizenry, but largely this is an artifact of the pre-Mulroney governments of the 1970s and 1980s. The Center for Glocal Development ranked Canada 11th in their Commitment to Development Index from 2009, behind countries like Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, and Australia (http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/...

This index includes factors like aid, trade, investment, and migration. As the report notes, our migration levels of unskilled immigrants from developing countries has changed very little since the 1980s (we rank 11th on the list for migration).

Like many other Canadians I grew up feeling proud about my country and about our role in the world. Unfortunately, the more I look into the actual figures, I realize that we have in many ways failed to maintain these ideals in the last 30 years.

As many people mentioned above, the government of Canada is actually giving a FORTUNE to Haiti, on top of the fortunes it has already given over the past decades. And that's on top of:

- The fortunes that Canadian citizens have personally sent to Haiti in the past days (again, on top of the fortunes they've been sending over the past decades).
- The enormous (perhaps unequaled) Haitian REFUGEE (i.e. typically unskilled labour) immigration that Canadians have accepted and embraced over the past decades.
- The fortunes that many of the employed refugees of Haitian origin keep sending back to Haiti from their new Canadian residence.

All in all (if we count refugee immigration, social programs & equal rights for refugees (not a world standard, btw), etc.) Canada always gives more than others, yet for others it’s never enough. Yes, Canada can give more. To do so, Canada would AGAIN need to BORROW more. Canada has a debt of about $500 billion – did you notice? How much Avatar screen time would that provide (or take away), $500 billion in debt?

You’re right, Jer, it is about time you find some PERSPECTIVE.