The point is that Canada needs to give more in foreign aid. Canada has promised in the past to increase our foreign aid to point seven per cent of our national income, a level agreed upon by donor nations and the UN as necessary to make serious progress towards alleviating extreme poverty in the world. Canada needs to commit to giving 0.7% of our income in foreign aid now.
You can help.
The global financial crisis puts aid spending at risk. But the poor should not pay the price for the greed and excesses of rich bankers and speculators. How can governments find billions of dollars to bail out bankers and then claim they have nothing left to fight extreme poverty that is killing 50,000 people a day?
We need you to send this message now – if we can show our government that Canadians are serious about making poverty history, they will need to respond. We are not looking for more promises that won’t be kept, but a strong, public commitment to a timeline and a plan to keep our point seven percent promise.
And the poorer nations of the world need us to keep that promise. The world food crisis and the effects of climate change are disproportionately affecting poorer nations at a time when richer nations are giving less in aid. We need your voice to be heard, send a message now.
The voices of your friends would help, too, so send them this alert by clicking here.
After three years of pressure, Parliament recently passed the Better Aid Bill which will improve the aid we give to poorer countries by focusing aid on poverty reduction. Now we need to demand that we keep our promises and give more aid to those countries that need it the most.
