The Green Party of Canada does not support the decision to freeze international assistance. We believe that we must work tirelessly to ensure that Canada meet its commitment to allocate 0.7% of GDP to ODA within the next decade and to meet the Millennium Development Goals. We must help our world meet the most basic of goals: to make poverty history, reduce disease, foster democracy, and support ecologically sustainable economies. Specifically, we will revamp CIDA to focus more on developing community-based green economies, on poverty alleviation and programs to combat and adapt to climate change, especially strengthening its Partnership Branch for the delivery of ODA.

We will work to achieve all of the Millennium Development Goals, including the goal to improve maternal health. We will fund maternal health programmes that focus on primary health care and family planning, including access to safe legal abortions. We will significantly increase Canadian overseas development assistance focused on improving the education, and the social and economic power and status, of women and girls. We will advance the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and ensure its principles are at the core of Canadian foreign policy. We will reinstate funding to groups such as MATCH, Planned Parenthood and KAIROS.