Halifax Initiative

NGO Working Group
on the Export Development Corporation
A working group of the Halifax Initiative

Background paper
for the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade Hearings on Bill C-31 on the Export Development Act

October 15, 2001

The NGO Working Group on the Export Development Corporation is a coalition of 17 Canadian non-governmental organisations concerned about the social, human and environmental impacts of export credit agencies. The NGO Working Group has been participating fully in the legislative process on the Export Development Act since 1999, including the SCFAIT hearings in 1999, the public consultations on the EDC’s disclosure policy and environmental review framework, and the international campaign to reform export credit agencies which has focused on the OECD’s Export Credit Guarantees process.

 
 
"Taxing Currency Transactions for Development"
January 2001
 

ABSTRACT

The Dakar Manifesto
Africa: From Resistance to Alternatives

Dakar 2000: From Resistance to Alternatives

Dakar, Senegal, 11-17 December 2000 

The Dakar 2000 conference brought together leaders of NGOs and social movements from all over Africa to analyze the debt crisis and the impacts of IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes on African populations. Conference participants also considered strategies for resistance to the neoliberal model and highlighted alternative approaches.

The Köln Debt Initiative: An Initial Response

In many ways, it can be seen as the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end.-Roy Culpeper, President the North-South Institute

The Köln Initiative, measured by its rhetoric, is two steps forward, one step backwards. In reality we may not have moved much at all.- Derek MacCuish, Programme Coordinator, Social Justice Committee of Montréal

The Halifax Initiative, a broad-based coalition of Canadian non-governmental organizations, welcomed the desire to improve the HIPC Initiative by the G7 governments expressed in the Köln Debt Initiative. Unfortunately, this welcome is qualified by the concern that two major issues remain unresolved, so that the effort to lift the debt burden of the poorest countries remains insufficient. The welcome is also qualified due to a wariness of the gap between what the G7 may wish and what the IFIs may do.