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Courage endorses Canadian Foreign Policy Institute Call to Reassess Canadian Foreign Policy

The Courage Coalition has endorsed the recent Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI) call to Reassess Canadian Foreign Policy. Canadian foreign policy has consistently failed to reflect our commitments to international solidarity and the rights of all peoples to dignity, health and security. Canada’s government and political parties are not devoting adequate attention to developing and implementing a socially just foreign policy for Canada.

In recent months, Courage has issued a number of statements concerning Canada’s foreign policy, including:

• a call for the Canadian government to break from its endorsement of the U.S. efforts to undermine democracy in Venezuela, to end sanctions and extend solidarity through humanitarian aid to Venezuelans.
• a call for the Canadian government to end sanctions against Iran and to act to support Iranian public health services and to send relief to Iran
• a call to Canadian politicians to  speak up and support international law  in regards to human rights for the Palestinian people, including their self-determination and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.

Some issues that many Courage members are concerned about, and following closely, include:

• Canada’s bombing of Libya in 2011 as part of a push for regime change that led directly to a civil war that has been raging since 2014, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands
  
• Canada’s military involvement in a 2004 coup d’état in Haiti, and implication in 16 years of suppression of democracy in that country
  
• Corporations in Canada supplying billions of dollars in arms and training to Saudi Arabia as they conduct a brutal assault on Yemen, in which tens of thousands have been killed, and as a result of which hundreds of thousands of children are “severely malnourished,” with millions at risk
  
• The rise of regimes that systematically attack democratic rights in India and Brazil, and Canada’s diplomatic and economic complicity in those processes.

The continued service of Canada’s foreign policy to the interests of extractive industries, militarism and profiteering at the expense of Indigenous and human rights, workers, democracy, international law and environmental responsibility is unacceptable.

Courage’s commitments to international solidarity, decolonization, self-determination and environmental justice align with CFPI’s call for a fundamental reassessment of Canada’s foreign policy. Along with our collective endorsement, Courage members are encouraged to support the campaign here.

WHAT: Community groups and unions hold joint press conference to warn against deficit burden being placed on most vulnerable 

WHEN: Wednesday, August 5th, 11am

WHERE: Casa del Popolo (back terrace), 4873 St. Laurent, Montréal, Quebec

Speakers :

Dave Bleakney, 2nd National Vice-President at the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

Thibault Camara, Le Québec c’est nous aussi.

Manuel Salamanca Cardona, Immigrant Workers Centre.

Dolores Chew, South Asian Women’s Community Centre (SAWCC).

Alexandre Rochette Legros, Courage Coalition, Montréal chapter. 

Nakuset, Executive Director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.

Media contacts :

Stefan Christoff, Courage coalition 438-936-1948

Manuel Salamanca Cardona, Immigrant Workers Centre, 514-267-5770

As the Federal Liberal government announced a $343B deficit for 2020, community organizations, labour unions and social activists are stating loud and clear that the bulk of responsibility for this economic imbalance must not be placed on poor and working people who are already disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and longstanding free market economic policies. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, these organizations have continued to serve people who have been hardest hit by the pandemic.

Although many mainstream reports about the deficit focus on the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the wage subsidy program for businesses, less discussed is the $750 billion that Ottawa gave to the banking sector as a bailout this year. Such reports also neglect to mention the extreme, pre-existing wealth inequalities within Canada, where wealth inequality has been steadily growing since the 1990s.

A 2019 report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives outlined how income inequality in Canada grows when racial inequality is taken into consideration. Based on figures from the 2016 Census, it shows that racialized women earn 59 cents for each dollar earned by non-racialized men, while racialized men earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by their white male counterparts. Given such findings, community groups and organizations serving communities who live the inequities outlined in this study, and community members themselves must be supported rather than placed at the centre of any austerity framed response to budgetary deficits. 

Meanwhile, even the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) has publicly estimated that wealthy Canadians are hiding at least $25 billion from taxation in offshore tax havens, and the Liberals have done nothing serious to recover these funds. 

The Liberal Government’s cosy relationship with Bay Street financial institutions must not form the guidelines for economic policy to tackle the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the dignity and lives of working people and the poor must be the focus of economic policy. 

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