The Halifax Initiative is a coalition of human rights, environmental, faith-based, development and labour organizations. Our objective is to transform the international financial institutions to achieve poverty eradication, environmental sustainability and the full realization of universal human rights.

The Halifax Initiative supports the review of Export Development Canada’s Environmental Policy and disclosure practices, and is grateful for the opportunity to provide input to the review process.

1. Project environmental and social standards
a. Compliance

Revised June 2008

In 1999, Amnesty International raised alarms about the killing of four indigenous people protesting a hydroelectric dam in Colombia that has devastated their food source and, if completed, would flood most of their land.

In 1998, an accident at a mine in Kyrgystan resulted in two tons of cyanide entering a river. A lack of an emergency response plan worsened the disaster, leaving two people dead and over 600 hospitalized.

To access the submission, click here.

► Spring Meetings at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund – Some Highlights

Reform of The International Monetary Fund (IMF) – As the IMF staggers through a budgetary and identity crisis (Issue Update 2, 2006), the IMF’s financial committee agreed to a number of changes to both IMF governance and its role. On governance, the Committee proposed reapportioning great voting power to fast-growing economies, such as South Korea, China, Mexico and Turkey, to reflect its place in the global economy. In terms of its role, it proposed the Fund look at how to be more effective in tackling spillover effects from individual country’s economic policies, by monitoring the impacts on the global economy of such issues as the US trade deficit, trade surpluses in Asia, and China’s pegging its currency to the dollar.

December 9, 2004

August 23, 2004

Mr. Ian Gillespie
President and CEO
Export Development Canada

June 15, 2004

Mr. Fraser Reilly-King
Halifax Initiative
153 Chapel Street, Suite 104
Ottawa ON KIN 1H5

Re: Compliance program file number 2236-4-1-2003

Dear Mr. Reilly-King:

This letter is a follow-up to my letter of May 7, 2004 and should serve as the conclusion of the Halifax Initiative complaint.

Your letter of complaint dated July 28, 2003 regarding the Cernavoda 2 nuclear power plant transaction came within EDC's compliance program. It was accepted and followed the compliance program process. A recommendation that a compliance audit be conducted was made to EDC Executive Management (Management) in October of 2003.

Management accepted the recommendation and the work was divided into two parts.