Introduction
The Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) is a coalition of approximately 100 voluntary sector organizations working to end poverty and to promote social justice and human dignity for all.
CCIC welcomes the opportunity to participate in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) dialogue on foreign policy. CCIC’s response to DFAIT’s 12 questions is drawn from the body of CCIC’s policy work. Our response is guided by CCIC’s 10-point in common agenda for the elimination of global poverty. In particular, CCIC’s response focuses on aid and trade policy issues as they relate to human security and development.
The 1995 Policy Review and Since
1. Which values and interests bear most fundamentally on Canada’s foreign policy? How can Canada’s foreign policy better reflect the concerns and priorities of Canadians?
The primary values and interests that should drive Canadian foreign policy are global social justice, peace and respect for the planet’s ecosystems.
In 1995, the United Nations (UN) proclaimed 1997-2006 the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty with the theme "Eradicating poverty is an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humankind." On the issue of addressing global poverty, there has been a huge gap – in Canada particularly since the mid-1980s – between pledge and performance.
The existence of this gap is one of the reasons why, in 1998, CCIC and its members groups put forward a 10-point agenda for global action on the elimination of poverty. This ten point agenda speaks to many of the primary values and interests that should underlie Canadian foreign policy:
1) Promoting sustainable development;
2) Upholding human rights;
3) Creating an equitable global economic order;
4) Achieving gender equity;
5) Improving the lives of children;
6) Building peace;
7) Promoting global food security;
8) Promoting individual and corporate social responsibility;
9) Reinvesting in Canada’s Foreign Aid program; and
10) Creating new opportunities for citizen participation.
The elimination of global poverty can be used as both a goal and a standard to measure the coherence among the different components of Canadian foreign policy and to further a people-centred focus.
Canada’s foreign policy can better reflect the concerns and priorities of Canadians by:
§ Acknowledging the global elimination of poverty explicitly as an attainable goal.
§ Recognizing, that over the past 50 years, the majority of Canadians have shared core values rooted in community interests such as poverty alleviation, universal health care, respect for diversity, upholding human rights, environmental protection and the promotion of global security through peace.
§ Recognizing that international investment frameworks, including trade agreements and structural adjustment programs, have, in the majority of cases, failed to adequately address or protect these core values.
§ Acknowledging that the goals of eliminating poverty, promoting fundamental social justice and protecting the environment are shared across boundaries. Canada’s foreign policy mandate should explicitly acknowledge the primacy of social and environmental domestic legislation and international environmental and social agreements over trade and services agreements. Canada’s foreign policy mandate should also explicitly recognize that environmental and social problems need to be addressed at their source.
§ Acting on the core values of Canadian foreign policy within a framework which respects cultural diversity.
§ Building more effective and balanced partnerships between Southern and Northern countries, and among governments, civil society and the private sector. In particular, the Government of Canada needs to be consistent across all forums, and promote the participation of civil society in national and international policy making at home and abroad. The recent Voluntary Sector Accord is an example of one way government and civil society are interacting. Initiatives that more directly involve civil society in policy formulation should be made a standard part of all foreign policy consultations.
2. Amid recent global changes, should Canada continue to endorse a “three pillars” approach to its foreign policy objectives, or should the current balance be adjusted?
The Government of Canada needs to rethink its “three pillars” approach—namely, the promotion of prosperity and employment, the protection of our security within a stable global framework and the protection of Canadian values and culture. We need to ask what kind of global relations make Canadian prosperity, security and values possible. In particular, Canada’s foreign policy objectives need to be re-examined from a perspective that acknowledges the urgency of addressing widespread global poverty and underdevelopment.
Canadian foreign policy, particularly trade and aid policy, must systematically address the lack of prosperity of the world’s poor. It must address the insecurity caused by poverty. And it must promote values that build global social justice, peace and respect for the world’s ecosystems.
Fundamental to the eradication of poverty is the right to human security, a safe environment, clean water, universal health care, education and other basic rights. The eradication of poverty is the single greatest contributor to global human security. The inclusion of a “prosperity” directive in Canada’s foreign policy framework that assigns a higher priority to facilitating commercial profits than to the overall economic and social well-being of people is inimical to the pursuit of “security”.
Poverty, inequality and the lack of human rights are major sources of conflict and instability. Addressing global poverty trends and human rights has become an ethical and political imperative. Arrested development and the vast economic disparities that separate us on the planet do not cause events like those of September 11, 2001 but they do set the stage for the more than 40 conflicts on the planet today. Global peace will remain out of reach for everyone unless we all have a share in the common future.
Canadian foreign policy should explicitly acknowledge that the eradication of global poverty is an attainable goal. Poverty eradication, as defined here, involves advocating for a more socially just distribution of the planet’s finite resources. It also involves ending government support for economic growth practices which exploit people and the environment and deprive developing countries of critical resources.
The pursuit of neo-liberal economic models among nations of the global North has not yielded a better, more prosperous life for all. Instead we have witnessed growing inequities globally.
The gap between rich and poor has more than doubled in a little more than a generation despite steady growth during this period in the world economy and Northern national economies. United Nations figures released in 1998 (as part of that year's United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report) indicate that for every hundred dollars of economic growth, $86 had gone to the world's richest one-fifth and only $1.30 had gone to the world's poorest one-fifth. In 2002, the UNDP released data indicating that the richest 5% of the world's people now have incomes 114 times those of the poorest 5%.
At least 1.3 billion people around the world – mostly women and children – live in absolute poverty on less than $1 U.S. per day. In their review of donor aid commitments, the authors of Reality of Aid 2002 characterize Northern donors as "never richer, never meaner." Wealth per person in donor countries has doubled since 1961, approaching $30,000 in 2000, while aid given by donor countries per person is less than what it was four decades ago.
As a minimal starting point, Canada should work to achieve United Nations targets known as the Millennium Development Goals, including reducing the proportion of those living in poverty by half by 2015. Cutting the proportion of people living on $1 a day by half in 2015 would still leave about 800 million people living in absolute poverty and the majority of the world’s population would still be considered poor (living on under $2 a day).
World leaders committed their governments to providing universal access to basic education, healthy drinking water and a new measure of gender equity as part of the Millennium Development Goals package. Yet donor economies have come nowhere near providing the two-fold increase in international aid flows needed to achieve these basic objectives, let alone deal with the nearly one billion people who would continue to live in absolute poverty.
CCIC welcomes the Government of Canada’s February 2003 budget increase in foreign aid spending, which had been derailed for over a decade. Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2003/04 is expected to reach $3.2 billion and $3.4 billion the following year, fulfilling Ottawa’s commitment to an 8% annual increase over three years. Canada should meet its own foreign aid commitments with targets and timelines, while encouraging that other industrialized nations to do the same.
The United Nations has estimated that globally an additional U.S.$ 50 billion annually in aid is required to meet the basic commitments of the Millennium Development Goals. For Canada to reach its share of the global contribution towards these goals, CCIC has calculated that over the next 13 years Canadian aid would have to grow by 10% to 13% each year. In other words, the 8% annual increases the Canadian government is projecting, though a welcome start, are not enough.
Even with an 8% increase, Canada’s ODA as a percentage of our Gross National Income (GNI) remains the same at an estimated 0.27 %. This is still well below the internationally agreed to 0.7% of ODA to GNI. Although aid is projected to double by 2010, at this rate, it will still take until 2040 for Canada to meet its United Nations commitment.
Canada must ensure that its policies on international trade and ODA take into account the perspectives of locally-based civil society organizations as well as state agencies in preserving local economies and services. The renewed emphasis by donor states on rebuilding government capacity in developing countries, while necessary and long overdue, should not take place at the expense of support for locally-based civil society.
The Comprehensive Development Framework—and the Canadian International Development Agency’s new aid directions—rightly place "local ownership" at the centre of the idea of aid effectiveness. But loans to developing world economies from global financial institutions, through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and other mechanisms, are layered with multiple conditions. In 1999, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) attached an average of 114 conditions to loans to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. These conditions sharply limit the development choices of developing country economies.
In a “post-September 11th” world, human development (economic equality, democracy, human rights and environmental integrity) is the only real foundation for international peace and security. The current political and media focus in the U.S. and elsewhere on waging war—the “war againgst terrorism”, the “war against Iraq” frequently obscures the most fundamental challenges to peace and security. The gravest (and long term) threats to international peace do not come from wars between nations. They come from internal political and social disintegration and the undermining of peoples’ livelihoods in the world’s developing economies. If this pervasive "every-day-terror" is to end, local economies and public services in the developing world need to be preserved and enhanced.
3. Canada is a member of many international organizations, including the G8, NATO, the Commonwealth, La Francophonie, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Arctic Council. Should our participation in any of these be strengthened, or adjusted?
CCIC favours a fair trade and multilateral approach to Canada’s work within the international system. Canada’s contribution to international organizations needs to be both consistent, in terms of policy, and independent. The values and interests that should be fundamental to Canadian foreign policy are identified in the response to question 1, and should be reflected in the actions Canada takes within all international organizations.
Canada, as a Northern country with a large economy, a history of peace-building and active participation at the United Nations, is in a strong position to promote greater inclusion of Southern country and civil society concerns in international fora.
The Government of Canada is to be commended on its support for multilateralism, its decision last year to support the Kyoto accord and its recent attempts to work through the United Nations to resolve the Iraq crisis, rather than supporting unilateral action by any one country. However, it is also true that in recent years, particularly since the signing of the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and subsequent trade challenges under NAFTA’s Chapter 11, the integrity of Canadian foreign and domestic policy has at times been compromised by an apparent reluctance to outline a clear and consistently independent (i.e. “made in Canada”) position. Among the concerns that emerged from a September 2002 forum, held at the request of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, on Canada-Europe relations (hosted by the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development) was "that Canada should not be in a position of merely adopting policies made in Washington."
With respect to multilateral institutions, the Government of Canada should seek cooperation with other states on global issues of human rights, disarmament, peace-building, poverty, human security, labour, intellectual property and the environment. However, the federal government should ensure that trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) do not enjoy de facto jurisdiction over these issues at the expense of other multilateral mechanisms: the International Labour Organization (ILO), Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), and the UN respectively. At the same time, Canada should promote trade rules that work in favour of poverty eradication.
Since joining the OAS in 1990, Canada has repeatedly stated its interest in promoting and protecting human rights in the hemisphere. Unfortunately, however, this stated interest has not translated into concrete action: Canada has not signed on to several of the Inter-American Human Rights instruments, most notably the American Convention on Human Rights and the San Salvador Protocol. Until it does so, Canada will remain effectively mute on human rights issues in the Americas. The Government of Canada has the potential to play an important role in the promotion of human rights in the Americas and should support this commitment by signing on to these important Inter-American Human Rights instruments.
Canada’s leadership at the international level, in particular at the G8 in terms of raising the issue of African development, is welcome and should be continued. The Government of Canada’s renewed emphasis on aid effectiveness as well as the announcement that half of the recent aid increases will be devoted to Africa are applauded by the international development NGO community. These are important policy initiatives that can address poverty, inequality and injustice in Africa and contribute to new partnerships with African governments and citizens.
However, Canada’s approach to discussions at G8 preparatory meetings and summits, should not have the effect of shutting out the concerns of developing countries and civil society. For example, G8 leaders, including Canada, welcomed NEPAD’s (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) “focus on investment-driven economic growth and economic governance as the engine for poverty reduction.” (G8 Action Plan, page 1). However, NEPAD failed to address debt, the re-building of regional and national markets and the productive capacity of Africa's national economies. The plan had little, or no, sign-on by African legislatures and parliaments, let alone African civil society organizations, before it was discussed among the G8 countries in Genoa and Kananaskis.
While there are some positive initiatives in the Canada Fund for Africa and in CIDA’s renewed commitment to Africa, such as substantially increased support for basic education in its recent Africa aid allocations, a significant portion of the fund is devoted to an export-oriented growth strategy for Africa. This strategy has not succeeded in bringing benefits to Africa’s majority poor populations in the past.
G8 and other economic fora initiatives intended to address poverty reduction need to be developed with greater input from both recipient countries and civil society groups. Canada should review all such initiatives to ensure that this input is included.
With the prospect of half of new aid resources being devoted to Africa in the coming years and the need for an overarching development framework to guide the allocation of these resources, Canadian civil society organizations working with counterparts in Africa can provide unique perspectives for synergistic foreign policy initiatives in support of sustained African poverty reduction.
Security
4. In promoting the security of Canadians, where should our priorities lie? Should Canada give a higher priority to military combat operations? To sectors such as intelligence gathering and analysis? Or should we focus on broader security measures, such as combating environmental degradation and the spread of infectious disease? What should be our distinctive role in promoting global security?
"Security for a few is insecurity for all." Nelson Mandela
CCIC has consistently urged the federal government to adopt a common security agenda which would invest in peace-making and peace-building as both a moral and global security imperative.
Common security means going beyond “alliance security” arrangements and the military security considerations of a particular nation state. The dangers and needs we face are global. They must be addressed with reference to a common global reality. Common security also calls for the democratization of security decision-making. Moreover, approaching security through a common security lens emphasizes the importance of human security.
Human security and peace must be defined in much broader terms than the absence of violence and war. Security includes meeting the goals of equality, health, education, employment and democracy. The cornerstone of security is inextricably linked to meeting the social, political and economic needs of people and their environment.
Canada’s priorities with respect to security clearly lie in accepting that global poverty can be eliminated and that Canadian foreign policy should treat its elimination as a priority. Canada’s foreign policy mandate should also accord priority to dealing with environmental degradation and infectious diseases by recognizing that these problems need to be addressed at their source and not compromised by the wording of trade or commercial agreements.
CCIC’s response to question 5 notes that Canada should focus on peace-building and peacekeeping rather than combat missions. Rather than adopting a reflexive response to external threats which is combative and holds the potential to infringe on civil liberties, a common security agenda, as proposed by Canadian NGOs, stresses global collaboration between peoples, equity within and between societies, and the resolution of the underlying causes of poverty and conflict. As noted in the response to questions 1 and 2, many of the threats to global security emerge from poverty and its related symptoms. Curtailment of civil liberties and freedoms through the passage of anti-terrorism legislation (for example, Bills C-17 and C-36), does nothing to eliminate these causes.
5. How does the military best serve Canada’s foreign policy objectives: though national and continental defence; combat missions in support of international coalitions; peacekeeping; all of the above?
Canada’s foreign policy objectives and values are clearly best served through peace-building and peacekeeping initiatives within the realm of multilateral fora such as the United Nations. This traditional role should be strengthened and funded accordingly.
Canadian foreign policy has, in the tradition strongly influenced by Lester B. Pearson, positioned the armed forces as “honest brokers” between two opposing sides when participating in international peacekeeping efforts. Canada, in historic and geopolitical terms, is uniquely positioned for peace- building and peacekeeping work.
Yet since the first Gulf War, Canada through participation in U.S. and NATO led military ventures has placed its armed forces in both potential and real conflicts of interest. This conflict of interest is both logistical and moral and can be summed up as follows: How can Canada having participated in combat missions led by the United States or NATO, then assume the role of a “neutral” party in a United Nations peacekeeping effort involving the same conflict? The short answer is that the Canadian military cannot be a credible peacekeeping force if Canadian foreign policy is inconsistent on Canada’s role in armed conflict outside its borders.
CCIC commends the Government of Canada’s decision not to participate in the recent war against Iraq. This is a return to Canada’s more traditional role and we welcome it.
Canada has had and can continue to have a significant influence in how peace-building and peacekeeping objectives are realized in international fora. Conversely, Canada’s influence when participating in combat coalitions is extremely limited.
Peacekeeping and peace-building involve not only participating in international missions, but ensuring that Canada’s foreign policy mandate supports through the UN and other multilateral bodies, a range of disarmament initiatives including nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the abolition of weapons of mass destruction. Especially in light of recent nuclear tensions, Canada should stop exporting nuclear technology including CANDU reactors.
6. Should Canada do more to address conditions giving rise to conflict and insecurity beyond our borders? If so, where?
As noted in question 5, Canada should adopt a common security approach.
Canada should work to make the world safer for all people, by promoting common security, providing diplomatic support for peace processes and by collaborating with all sectors of society to foster locally rooted peace-building efforts in war-torn and war-threatened societies. Moreover, global security will elude us all if the vast economic and political disparity which keeps the world in turmoil is left un-repaired.
Canadian foreign policy should also support nuclear and small arms disarmament and military conversion as part of a common security defence policy. That policy should provide a mandate to Canadian military forces that focuses on international peacekeeping, domestic emergencies and Canadian coastal and territorial patrol.
Arms sold to foreign governments are often used against their own citizens. The toll of war on civilians is enormous. Worldwide, since 1960, four out of five casualties of war have been civilian. Although Canada is not one of the worst offenders, Canadian military exports continue to go to human rights violators and to countries involved in armed conflict.
As a minimal starting point, Canadian regulations should be tightened to prohibit the export of military equipment and parts to countries in conflict or with serious human rights violations. The federal government should introduce legislation subjecting all military commodity transfers to a public impact assessment review to ensure a positive impact on the security of people living in the recipient country. These regulatory/legislative changes would address situations such as the one that arose when between September 1998 and February 2000, when 33 Canadian surplus twin Huey military helicopters, originally sold to the U.S., were upgraded and redirected to the Colombian military, a recognised perpetrator of gross human rights violations.
At the international level, the Government of Canada should actively promote a more comprehensive and transparent registry at the UN for the production, trade and stockpiling of small arms.
Those who suffer the direct and indirect consequences of war and the military spending that support it, have been deprived of their ability to sustain themselves. Ultimately, economic security cannot exist without physical security. Money that should be invested in education and health is diverted to military purposes, sometimes under the aegis of programs administered by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) that place limits on social spending but no limits on military spending.
Canada can do more to address conditions giving rise to conflict and insecurity by regularly and critically reviewing its support for multilateral financial and trade policies, particularly those directed at helping the world’s poor. It can do more by moving its resources from IFI programs that fail to support the core values outlined in the response to question 1 to those that do.
The policies of International Financial Institutions, international trade agreements and the unilateral foreign policy of the United States, have significant influence on many of the conditions that can give rise to global conflict and insecurity. For example, Canada has supported a number of structural adjustment (SA) initiatives, undertaken by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, through its development assistance programs. Many of these SA initiatives have been abject failures, leading to further marginalization of some of the world’s poorest people. Canada is in a position to influence the direction that IFIs and international trade bodies choose to take on a number of issues.
Prosperity
7. How should Canada take advantage of its location in North America to increase prosperity while promoting our distinctive identity?
As noted in the responses to questions 1 and 2, Canada’s foreign policy can better reflect the concerns and priorities of Canadians by explicitly acknowledging the global elimination of poverty as an attainable goal.
Canada can use its position within North America to promote fairness and equity in international relations within the hemisphere. The question is not so much about increasing prosperity as improving the quality and fairness of prosperity. It also needs to be asked whose prosperity question 7 refers to. Canada’s distinctive identity, its security and stability, all benefit from an increase in global prosperity.
Canada should adopt a more consistent multilateral/global perspective on issues such as poverty eradication, international cooperation and people-centred human development in its dealings with the United States. Canada’s cultural and political sovereignty is actually weakened when it fails to clearly articulate principled foreign policy positions even if they differ from those put forward by the United States.
The ability of Canada to maintain its distinctive identity depends in large part on its ability to assert sovereignty and jurisdiction over its own affairs. This ability is significantly compromised by trade agreements that give priority to investor rights over citizens’ rights and that are enforced by adjudication processes that, while binding on Canada, are not part of Canada’s judicial system. The rulings that emerge from such processes (under NAFTA Chapter 11 and the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, for example) threaten to compromise many of the core values that distinguish Canadian society and thereby compromise the quality of prosperity enjoyed by Canadians. These problems are compounded in developing countries. In general, trade agreements should not undermine national governments’ ability to make appropriate social policy in the public interest of their citizens.
8. What should Canada do to help make the benefits of globalization more widely shared within and among all countries?
Canada should work towards the globalization of human rights, labour standards, democracy, sustainable human development and responsible management of the world’s ecosystems. As mentioned in our response to questions 3 and question 10, this includes ratifying and supporting relevant international conventions, such as those in the area of human rights. At the same time, Canadian foreign policy should focus on the measures required to address the negative impacts of globalization: economic exploitation of people, unchecked resource exploitation and the destruction of ecosystems.
Globalization has been primarily about global economic trade liberalization. Global trade should be a means for countries to achieve broader public and social ends, not an end in itself. Canada should work within the international trade system to ensure that trade agreements address poverty and that trade is fair.
Since 1999, CCIC and its members have been holding deliberative dialogues with Canadians from various walks of life on issues such as globalization and trade. More than 1,000 Canadians across the country have participated in three-hour forums to consider what values should underlie our approach to globalization and to trade (the dialogues were specifically on trade in food). These citizens consistently found common ground on the importance of fairness in trade and respect for environmental sustainability.
Trade and investment agreements must address the special needs of small economies of the South and work to provide more space in negotiations for the concerns of poor countries. This is particularly important as trade barriers fall and Southern economies lose protection for their own countries in order to gain access to Northern markets. Increasingly the economies of Southern countries are tied into the global economy. Change is occurring rapidly, but the cost of that change is being borne disproportionately by the poor. The economic benefits of globalization are being captured primarily by financial institutions and their investors. Indeed, the underlying point of question 8 is that benefits of globalization have been unequal.
Canada should work at the WTO and other trade bodies to ensure that fair trade principles are incorporated into these organization’s governance structures. A fundamental premise of fair trade is that the human rights of farmers, workers and others involved in the chain of production and trade are respected. At minimum, countries that are party to trade agreements should meet or exceed labour, health and environmental standards set out in international treaties and by the United Nations and other multilateral bodies. Internationally, compliance with such standards should take precedence over the imposition of trade rules.
In May 2003, CCIC will release Crossroads at Cancun: What Direction for Development?, CCIC’s brief for the 5th WTO Ministerial meeting. This brief provides a series of recommendations on how global trade can be redirected in order to achieve progress on development issues. Crossroads at Cancun sets out five key action areas for Canada in current round of WTO negotiations. In the brief, CCIC proposes that the Government of Canada should advocate for
§ Supporting developing countries in their calls for no new issues for negotiation (and focus on implementation concerns);
§ Making development central to agricultural trade rules;
§ Addressing the development imperative for medicine and food security in TRIPS;
§ Preserving the scope for regulation, flexibility and public services in GATS;
§ Democratizing the WTO.
Canada must support developing countries’ ability to use simplified trade defences against unfairly subsidized food imports. These defence mechanisms must be accessible for use by low-income developing countries and could include mechanisms such as simplified countervail measures, or other flexibilities to use tariffs. This would help ensure openness to a diversity of national economic development strategies within global rules, particularly regarding the depth, scope and pace of trade liberalization and regulation of foreign investment.
While agricultural reforms have been imposed under the banner of bringing free market principles to Africa and other developing countries, the wealthy, notably the United States and European Union, have continued to highly subsidize their own farmers and agricultural exports. Canadian farmers are also penalized under the effects of subsidization.
With respect to the mitigation of Northern trade policy impacts on developing economies, Canada should work at the upcoming WTO to ensure that that the Doha Development Agenda more closely resembles fact than fiction. At the upcoming FTAA Ministerial in November 2003, Canada should also work to ensure that development objectives to meet the needs of the poor are realized.
To ensure that the benefits of globalization are more widely shared within and among countries the Government of Canada should:
§ Work in international fora to bring about the cancellation of all IMF, World Bank and other IFI debt incurred by highly indebted poor countries;
§ Promote international agreements that regulate transnational corporations and their impact on employment and social standards, community well-being and the environment;
§ Work internationally to implement measures to control currency speculations, such as the Tobin Tax. Canada should push for the Tobin Tax to be placed on the agenda of the G8, UN, World Bank and IMF;
§ Promote reform of IFIs to ensure they focus on poverty eradication and sustainable development;
§ Work to implement the Millennium Development Goals;
§ Adopt legislation requiring companies to disclose information about economic, social, environmental and health impacts of their operations worldwide.
9. Should Canada focus on cultivating new economic partnerships with emerging powers such as China, India, Mexico and Brazil?
Whatever partnerships Canada pursues should be governed by the overriding principles outlined in CCIC’s response to question 1. Though growth may be needed to reduce poverty, there are no guaranteed gains in poverty reduction from increased market access or even from increased export growth in developing countries. Indeed, expanded trade can mean rising inequality and poverty, where export growth:
§ produces gains that are captured by industry or wealthy exporting elites;
§ increases industry damaging to the environment or livelihoods of the poor; or
§ comes at the expense of larger more important domestic sectors.
The Mexican experience under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been linked to the suffering of small-scale basic grains producers due to lower prices and the import of subsidized crops, the proliferation of the low-paying, non-unionized jobs in the maquila industry, and the failure of the Mexican government to protect the communal land-holdings of indigenous peoples. In terms of increased economic partnership with Mexico and Brazil, CCIC is concerned about the potential of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) to aggravate poverty as a result of the lack of democracy surrounding FTAA negotiations as well as the omnibus nature of the proposed FTAA agreement. In some instances sectoral trade agreements may be less damaging to the economies of poor countries. However, in all cases, fundamental human, social and environmental rights need to be upheld.
As a precondition to any negotiations involving international trade, the governments involved must recognize and enforce the protection of human rights, international health, safety, environment and labour standards (including the right to organize and join unions). Moreover, trade agreements such as the FTAA must preserve the scope for governments to pursue public services such as health care, education and access to clean water.
Values and Culture
10. Are values such as human rights, democracy, respect for diversity and gender equality ones that Canada should continue to advocate in all parts of the world? If so, what are the best ways of doing this?
Canada should continue to advocate for human rights, democracy, diversity, gender equality along with the other values that are central to the ten point agenda for eliminating global poverty outlined in response to question 1.
The abuse of human rights in its own right is an enormous global problem. It is also a major impediment to ending poverty. People who can organize themselves without fear of persecution are far more likely to insist on a reasonable return for their labour, particularly when it contributes to the wealth of domestic elites and transnational corporations.
Throughout Latin America, in the face of growing inequality, advocacy for labour, human and indigenous peoples rights is met with abuses by police and military forces, abuses which historically have been met with impunity. For example, during the past decade, more than 40,000 Colombians have been killed in politically motivated violence. Human rights groups in Colombia are documenting 20 killings or forced disappearances per day. In Guatemala, seven years after signing the Peace Accords, conditions of injustice and impunity continue with cases of human rights abuses.
Canada should recognize and abide by UN, OAS, ILO and other international conventions, and insist that other countries do the same, vigorously and consistently prosecuting human rights abuses and disbanding paramilitary groups. Canadian aid should be targeted at those who are working to build peaceful solutions and direct benefits to the poor. Canadian international cooperation organizations want the protection of internationally recognized labour rights and ILO to be central to the trade and investment practices of multilateral organizations. Improving living standards is a fundamental part of what development is all about.
The federal government should allocate additional resources to increase the capacity of the labour sector in Canada and overseas to support human rights, democracy and sustainable development. This should include a process for assessing and improving the impact of development assistance on core labour rights where these are most threatened.
International cooperation organizations in Canada are also concerned about gender equality and the protection of women and children. The face of poverty has been and continues to be overwhelmingly female – 70% of the 1.3 billion people who live on less than $1 a day are women. Women perform 2/3 of the world's work, receive less than 1% of the world's income, own less than 1% of the world's property.
The Government of Canada should support women organizing for their human rights in all aspects of foreign policy and through development assistance programs. Increased financial and policy resources should be made available for organizations promoting an end to violence against women and children.
Children who grow up malnourished, uneducated, abandoned, sold into prostitution, forced into child labour have few opportunities to make the world a better place. Their struggle is simply to survive. And the cycle of poverty is continued.
The federal government should increase investment in programs and education for Canadians that promote the rights of children around the world. Screening mechanisms should be developed that address the rights of children in all Canadian aid programs.
One of the most basic challenges facing people in poverty, particularly children, is food security. Hunger is one of the most basic and telling signs of poverty. The existence of widespread hunger, when enough food is produced to feed everyone, is an open wound in the fabric of the planet. The failure of governments to make greater collective progress in this area is unconscionable.
Canada should continue to work to entrench the right to food as the framework for tackling food security. Internationally, The World Food Summit commitments to reduce global hunger by half by 2015 (to reduce the number of hungry from 800 million to 400 million) should be implemented with specific benchmarks and timetables. Canadian foreign policy should support trade measures designed to protect small farmers, including support for developing countries’ ability to use simplified trade defences against unfairly subsidized food imports. In keeping with Canada’s own values and agrarian history, the federal government should support farmer-controlled marketing options, including non-profit and co-operative agencies.
As part of insisting that countries recognize and abide by international labour and human rights conventions, the federal government should undertake comprehensive social and environmental assessments of all major Canadian export credit initiatives (including those that fall under the Canada Account and those undertaken by the Export Development Corporation - EDC). These assessments should be public, undertaken independently of EDC, and examine human rights impacts on gender, labour, agricultural and other practices.
More generally, at the level of consultation and policy development, federal government policies and programs should be structured to ensure a more equitable gender balance and greater representation from labour, environment, human rights, development and other civil society sectors. Canada should continue its practice of including civil society representation in the official delegations to world conferences and events.
11. Should Canada seek out opportunities for fostering global intercultural dialogue and interfaith understanding?
The Government of Canada, and in particular DFAIT, should cooperate more directly with civil society organizations to identify opportunities and provide forums for public engagement.
CCIC takes as its starting point the values and experience of more than 90 organizations that it represents within the Canadian church, labour, and development communities. Organizations like the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, Oxfam Canada, Médecins Sans Frontières, World Vision, and the Canadian Labour Congress, have worked for over 30 years in partnership with communities and counterpart organizations in developing countries to end global poverty and promote sustainable human development. Many of CCIC’s members are organized around citizen involvement on a voluntary and local level.
The Government of Canada should encourage and fund public deliberation of important global issues as part of government policy development and in particular promote the participation of and new roles for civil society in foreign policy.
12. What are the best means for Canada to make its culture and experience known abroad?
Actions ultimately speak louder than words. The Government of Canada cannot pay lip service to fundamental aspects of Canadian culture, such as the goals of poverty eradication and improved universal health care and at the same time support multilateral trade arrangements that contribute to defeating such goals in other parts of the world.
The federal government should be unequivocal in its support for poverty eradication, universal health care and related goals. If Canada is to restore the international reputation as a friend of Southern countries, that it enjoyed prior to the mid 1980s, it must be seen to act decisively in support of its own cultural values. Canada can better make its own culture and experience known abroad by promoting and strengthening the civil society sector globally (through promotion of human rights and civil liberties; support for democracy, appropriate legal and fiscal frameworks, and targeted development assistance).
Recommendations
CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY SHOULD:
Recommendations in response to Question 1
1. Acknowledge global elimination of poverty explicitly as an attainable goal and objective.
2. Recognize that over the past fifty years, the majority of Canadians’ shared values are rooted in community interests such as poverty alleviation, universal health care, income security, human rights, environmental protection, respect for diversity, and the promotion of global security through peace.
3. Recognize that pursuit of international investment frameworks, including trade agreements and structural adjustment programs, have, in the majority of cases, failed to adequately address or protect these core values.
4. Acknowledge that values of social justice and protecting the environment are shared across boundaries.
5. Acknowledge the primacy of human rights legislation and international environmental and social agreements over trade and services agreements.
6. Recognize that environmental and social problems need to be addressed at their source.
7. Respect cultural diversity while acknowledging universal human rights.
8. Build effective and balanced partnerships between Southern and Northern countries, and among governments, civil society and the private sector.
9. Strive for consistency across all forums, and maximize the opportunities for the participation of civil society in national and international policy making.
Recommendations in response to Question 2
1. Work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including reducing the proportion of those living in poverty by half by 2015.
2. Ensure that its policies on international trade and ODA take into account the value of locally-based civil society organizations, as well as state agencies, in preserving local economies and services.
3. Meet foreign aid commitments with targets and timelines, while encouraging other industrialized nations do the same.
4. Define the protection of Canadian values and culture to include the promotion of social justice, human rights and environmental protection through cross-cultural linkages and respect for other cultures.
Recommendations in response to Question 3
1. Cooperate with other states on global issues of human rights, poverty eradication, common security, labour, democracy and the environment.
2. Ensure that trade bodies such as the WTO do not enjoy de facto jurisdiction over issues such as security, labour, intellectual property and the environment at the expense of other multilateral mechanisms: the ILO, MEAs, and the UN respectively.
3. Fulfil the commitment to promoting human rights in the Americas by signing on to the Inter-American human rights instruments, including the American Convention on Human Rights and the San Salvador Protocol.
4. Develop G8 and other economic fora initiatives intended to address poverty eradication needs with greater input from both recipient countries and civil society groups. Review all such initiatives to ensure that this input is included.
Recommendations in response to Question 4
1. Accord priority to dealing with environmental degradation and infectious diseases by recognizing that these problems need to be addressed at their source and not compromised by trade or commercial agreements.
2. Adopt a common security agenda which has as its starting point, global collaboration between peoples, equity within and between societies, and the resolution of the underlying causes of poverty and conflict.
Recommendations in response to Question 5
1. Strengthen and fund accordingly peace-building and peacekeeping initiatives within the realm of multilateral fora such as the United Nations.
2. Implement a common security defence policy, focusing Canadian military forces on international peacekeeping, domestic emergencies and coastal patrol.
3. Support peace-building, nuclear and small arms disarmament and military conversion.
4. Support, through the UN and other multilateral bodies, disarmament initiatives such as nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the abolition of weapons of mass destruction.
5. End export of non-medical nuclear technology, including CANDU reactors.
Recommendations in response to Question 6
1. Foster locally rooted peace-building efforts through promotion of common security at the UN and through an independent foreign policy for peace.
2. Promote a comprehensive and transparent international registry at the UN for the production, trade and stockpiling of small arms.
3. Tighten Canadian regulations on the export of military equipment and parts to countries in conflict or with serious human rights violations.
4. Subject all military commodity transfers to a public impact assessment review to ensure a positive impact on the security of people living in the recipient country.
5. Address conditions giving rise to conflict and insecurity by regularly and critically reviewing support for multilateral financial and trade policies, particularly those directed at helping the world’s poor.
6. Move Canadian resources from IFI programs that fail to support the core values outlined in the response to question 1, and transfer them to programs which support core policies and values.
Recommendations in response to Question 7
1. Focus on poverty eradication as an attainable goal.
2. Adopt a consistent multilateral/global perspective on issues such as poverty eradication, international cooperation and people-centred human development in dealings with the United States.
Recommendations in response to Question 8
1. Work towards the globalization of human rights, labour standards, democracy, sustainable human development and responsible management of the world’s ecosystems.
2. Focus on the measures required to address the negative impacts of globalization: unchecked resource exploitation, the economic exploitation of people and the destruction of ecosystems.
3. Work at the WTO, in FTAA negotiations and other trade negotiations to ensure that fair trade principles are upheld.
4. Advocate in the current round of WTO negotiations for:
§ Supporting developing countries in their calls for no new issues for negotiation (and focus on implementation concerns);
§ Making development central to agricultural trade rules;
§ Addressing the development imperative for medicine and food security in TRIPS;
§ Preserving the scope for regulation, flexibility and public services in GATS;
§ Democratizing the WTO.
5. Support developing countries’ ability to use simplified trade defences against unfairly subsidized food imports.
6. Ensure that the benefits of globalization are more widely shared within and among countries by:
§ Working in international fora to bring about the cancellation of all IMF, World Bank and other IFI debt incurred by highly indebted poor countries;
§ Promoting international agreements on investment that regulate transnational corporations and their impact on employment and social standards, community well-being and the environment;
§ Working internationally to implement measures to control currency speculations, such as the Tobin Tax. Push for the Tobin Tax to be placed on the agenda of the G8, UN, World Bank and IMF;
§ Promoting reform of IFIs to ensure they focus on poverty eradication and sustainable development;
§ Working to halt the transboundary trade and smuggling of toxics and non-medical radiological materials;
§ Working to implement the Millennium Development Goals;
§ Adopting legislation requiring companies to disclose information about economic, social, environmental and health impacts of their operations worldwide.
Recommendations in response to Question 9
1. Govern partnerships (including with Mexico, Brazil, China, India) by the overriding principles outlined in CCIC’s response to question 1.
2. Enforce the protection of human rights, international health, safety, environment and labour standards (including the right to organize and join unions) as a precondition to any negotiations involving international trade.
3. Preserve the scope for governments, in entering into agreements such as the FTAA, to pursue public services such as health care, education and access to clean water.
Recommendations in response to Question 10
1. Include a process for assessing and improving the impact of development assistance on core labour rights where these are most threatened.
2. Allocate additional resources to increase the capacity of the labour sector in Canada and overseas to support human rights, democracy and sustainable development.
3. Insist that countries recognize and abide by UN, OAS, ILO and other international conventions, vigorously and consistently prosecute human rights abuses and disband paramilitary groups. Canadian aid should be targeted at those who are working to build peaceful solutions and direct benefits to the poor.
4. Support women organizing for their human rights in all aspects of foreign policy and through development assistance programs.
5. Make increased financial and policy resources available for organizations promoting an end to violence against women and children.
6. Increase investment in programs and education for Canadians that promote the rights of children around the world.
7. Develop screening mechanisms that address the rights of children in all aspects of Canadian aid programs.
8. Continue to work to entrench the right to food as the framework for tackling food security. Internationally, World Food Summit commitments should be implemented with specific benchmarks and timetables.
9. Support trade measures designed to protect small farmers, including support for developing countries’ ability to use simplified trade defences against unfairly subsidized food imports, and support farmer-controlled marketing options, including non-profit and co-operative agencies.
10. Undertake comprehensive social and environmental assessments of all major Canadian export credit initiatives (including those that fall under the Canada Account and those undertaken by the Export Development Corporation - EDC). Make these assessments public and undertake them independently of EDC, examining human rights impacts on gender, labour, agricultural and other practices.
11. At the level of consultation and policy development, federal government policies and programs should be structured to ensure a more equitable gender balance and greater representation from labour, environment, human rights, development and other civil society sectors.
Recommendations in response to Question 11
1. Cooperate more directly with civil society organizations to identify opportunities and provide forums for public engagement.
2. Encourage and fund public deliberation of important global issues as part of government policy development and in particular promote the participation of and new roles for civil society in foreign policy.
Recommendations in response to Question 12
1. Promote global citizenship.
2. Promote and strengthen the civil society sector globally (through promotion of human rights and civil liberties, support for appropriate democratic, legal and fiscal frameworks, and targeted development assistance). |
