Canada

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Make Poverty History's presentation to the Standing Committee on Finance. The committee is holding its pre-budget consultations. Make Poverty History presented to members of the committee and submitted a brief containing five recommendations for the Federal 2011 budget. Make Poverty History's brief to the committee can be found here.

As a new intern, it's been a great experience working with the Make Poverty History. I was particularly inspired working on Stand Up and seeing all the creative ways people across Canada and around the world organized to send the message that we want to see our leaders work to eradicate poverty.

Governments in developed countries have spent trillions of dollars in response to the Global Financial and Economic Crisis that began in 2008. This has led to large fiscal deficits, including in Canada.

If deficit reduction is pursued primarily by spending cuts, especially for social programs and international aid, this could further harm the poor in Canada and the poorest and most vulnerable people in the developing world, who have already suffered most from a financial and economic crisis that they did nothing to cause.

The UN MDG Summit ended today by adopting an Outcome Document and Action Plan that re-commits governments around the world to renewed efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

While an impressive number of countries were represented at the meeting in New York at the highest level, and while there were some encouraging new commitments made, civil society groups were not convinced that this summit generated sufficient momentum to achieve the 8 goals in the 5 years that are left.

With of the help of our supporters, we sent letters, hosted events, engaged with our MPs, and broadcast our message to media outlets across the country. From coast to coast to coast, we put Stand Up on the map with over 100 events hosted and supported by committed activists like yourself.
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