Prepared by the NGO Working Group on the Export Development Corporation, a project of the Halifax Initiative

The Canadian Export Development Corporation (EDC) is the main source of publicly supported export financing in Canada, designed to complement the private financial sector wherever possible. A federal Crown corporation, EDC provides Canadian exporters with financing products to help their customers, and with commercial and political risk insurance, particularly for higher-risk and emerging markets. In 1998, EDC worked with 4,183 customers in 200 countries, helping Canadian companies to generate nearly $35 billion in sales and foreign investments.

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Debt aspects related to export credit agencies
The cancellation of Third World debt has been a rallying cry of social movements for years, gaining in volume and numbers in 2000 as a result of the global Jubilee movement. Much attention has been focused on the debts owed by poor countries to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, export credit agencies collectively own more debt of Third World countries than the World Bank and the IMF combined.