May 15, 2025
The Right Honourable Mark Carney
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Email: pm@pm.gc.ca
Re.: Canada’s role in building “a world guided by solidarity, justice, and sustainability”
Dear Prime Minister,
Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada congratulates you on your recent electoral victory. As the official international development organization of the Canadian Catholic Church and a longtime partner of Global Affairs Canada, we set forth in this open letter our aspirations for government action.
In our letter of two months ago, we had been appreciative of your emphasis on Canadian values and the importance of international aid. Since then, we have been reassured by your undertaking for Canada to work with Pope Leo XIV “to build a world guided by solidarity, justice, and sustainability.” We hope this commitment will orient the government’s action on the global stage even as it addresses urgent domestic and regional priorities.
Canada cannot build a world guided by solidarity without stepping up international aid. To prevent the irresponsible retreat in this regard of peer countries like the United States and the United Kingdom from exacerbating humanitarian crises, Canada must substantially increase international aid funding. Our aid budget must eventually reach 0.7 per cent of our gross national income, a target that was agreed to in 1970 but never met.
In a world guided by solidarity, Canada must also reprise a lead role it had played 25 years ago. In this Jubilee year, when Canada presides the G7, we urge you to convince G7 leaders to cancel or remedy unjust and unsustainable sovereign debts. For the sake of the 3.3 billion people whose countries spend more on debt servicing than on health or education, Canada must seek to reform the global financial system to prevent future debt crises.
A world guided by justice is not one in which Canada stands by as international law is flagrantly violated. As we rightly and repeatedly condemn Hamas, we cannot overlook Israel’s killing of nearly 53,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier this week, the Security Council heard that “Israel is deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians….” With Israel’s blockade pushing Gazans to the brink of famine, we are glad foreign minister Anand agrees and asserts that “we cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool.”
Given how ineffectual such assertions have been over the past 19 months, we want you, as an avowed pragmatist, to change tack to decisive action. Canada must courageously use strong diplomatic, political and economic measures to compel Israel to resume the ceasefire it violated and to allow the resumption of aid delivery and humanitarian work by UNWRA and other UN partner agencies. This must be accompanied by support for international courts; a comprehensive arms embargo against Israel; official recognition of Palestinian statehood; and work toward an internationally mediated peace process.
Finally, to build a world guided by sustainability, Canada must significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and increase its international climate and nature finance commitment for developing countries. Having governed two central banks and served as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, you are uniquely well-equipped to understand and address this need.
As a prime minister who knows that markets are “indifferent to human suffering,” you also understand the need for corporate accountability. We therefore implore you to enact strong mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation that compels our corporations to prevent, report and redress abuses of human rights and the environment across their global operations and supply and value chains.
Seizing what you have so astutely identified as a “hinge moment” in our history, we trust that you will work to fulfill our aspirations and secure our country’s moral leadership on the world stage. As a recently elected prime minister said, “That’s the Canadian thing to do.”
Yours sincerely,
Luke Stocking
Interim Executive Director
CC: The Hon. Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs; The Hon. Randeep Sarai, Secretary of State (International Development)
