G8-G20 summits fall flat, ignore call for sustainable future
This month “Fortress Toronto”, with its 18,000 strong security forces and four kilometer chain link fence, bore witness to a Peoples’ Summit ripe with ideas and alternatives, petitions signed by 1.75 million asking leaders to invest in the future now, a 25,000 strong peaceful protest, media stunts galore, some regrettable violence, and two deeply disappointing summits.

1st February 2010

Ref: Immediate debt cancellation for Haiti

Dear Ministers Flaherty and Cannon,

We are writing to commend the government’s efforts to date to mobilise emergency assistance for disaster relief in Haiti and for speaking to the urgency and importance of debt cancellation for the country. The call to cancel Haiti’s remaining multilateral debt, including last week’s highly concessional $102 million loan from the IMF, benefits from a strong Canadian voice. We urge you to keep demonstrating such leadership in the government’s interventions at the Bretton Woods Institutions, and at Haiti’s largest multilateral creditor, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Revised July 2009

Revised June 2009

December 12, 2002

Mr. James Wolfensohn
President
The World Bank Group
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20433 U.S.A.

Dear Mr. Wolfensohn,

We are writing to express dismay at the recent Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman report on the MIGA guarantee of the Bulyanhulu gold mine and to request your urgent intervention.

The CAO is a mechanism that non-governmental organizations have pushed hard to establish. Your personal support for the initiative played a major role in ensuring that the CAO was established. As all parties have observed, the CAO's effectiveness rests on the respect and trust it enjoys amongst the public: integrity, transparency, even¬handedness and thoroughness are thus critical to all aspects of its work.

Excerpts from a letter sent to the IMF & WB (July 1999)
Excerpts from a letter sent to: Tom Bernes, Executive Director for Canada, International Monetary Fund
Terrie O'Leary, Executive Director for Canada, World Bank

13 July, 1999

Dear Ms. O’Leary and Mr. Bernes,

I am writing, belatedly, on behalf of the Halifax Initiative, and the NGOs who joined us, to thank you both for meeting with us while we were in Washington for the Spring meetings. The meeting on April 26th, as well as the related meeting with Minister Martin on the 28th, was useful in learning more about the unfolding debt and financial architecture discussions as well as current Canadian positions in these areas. We also appreciated the opportunity to question you about the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) process and to briefly discuss the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI).