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Canada and Third World Countries
What are some of the major problems faced by "Third World" Countries
today? Who should be held responsible for these problems? Why? What has
Canada done to help "Third World Countries"?
There has always been a dominant country in the world that sets the
economic standard throughout powerful countries. Canada has always been a
top rated economic country, usually behind the United States and other
large Commonwealth countries. Starting back in the early to mid 60's,
Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau decided to use Canadian revenue as
foreign aid. These included "Third World".
Some of the major problems faced by "Third World" countries today
include poor towns which have had a lack of food sources due to the serious
poverty, lack of clean drinking water, lack of good sanitation systems,
lack of good living conditions, lack of jobs and there is no industry,
therefore no import or export revenue. The governments of the "Third World"
countries have done horrible jobs of creating good living conditions for
their people and in all have not tried to bring their country out of their
economic slump.
As Canada entered it second century, Prime Minister Trudeau called for
a complete review of Canada's foreign policy. Starting in 1968 interested
Canadians including politicians, journalists, professors, business leaders,
financial experts, as well as church and labour leaders were invited to
offer opinions and advice in what was called the Trudeau Review. The
ending of this meeting brought about six foreign policy booklets which
outlined the benefits of Canadian foreign aid. Some of these benefits
included to help the Canadian economy grow stronger, to keep Canada
independent, to work for peace and security, to promote fairness and
equality for everyone and to improve living conditions for all people
throughout the world.
The Canadian foreign policy review suggested that Canada strengthened
it's ties with Latin America. Trudeau visited Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela
in 1976. Canada's trade with Latin America increased from $1099 million in
1970 to $3418 million in 1976. Also Canada gave an increasing amount of
development funds to a number of Latin American countries.
Canada, in 1973 had a major concern about the middle east and made an
effort to bring about a lasting peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 1050
Canadian military specialists became part of the United Nations emergency
force where they tried to maintain a cease fire by providing supplies,
transportation and communication during the 1973 peacekeeping role.
The Trudeau foreign policy review recommended that Canada was to work
hard to support the United Nations and make it an effective organization
for international co-operation. Canada contributed heavily, and still does
so, to all the U.N organizations that are striving to help poor nations and
are working toward the disarmament of nuclear weapons and human rights.
Canada contributed the ninth largest share of the regular annual budget to
the United Nations.
Another issue that faced Canada was the fact that China's membership
in the United Nations brought Canada into conflict with some other U.N
members, especially the United States. Since 1966 Canada had said that it
was becoming increasingly more important that China be represented at the
U.N. At the time, the U.N only recognized the former government of China
which was established on the island of Taiwan.
The Canadian government prides itself on sending foreign aid to
developing countries. In the 1970's there was an estimated 4.2 billion
people on the earth, more then 2.5 billion of them were starving. It was
also estimated that by the year 2000 the starving population could double.
Canada tried very hard to provide these needy "Third World" countries with
the best possible aid.
Without the help of Canada as well as other "First World" countries
such as the United States and Australia the "Third World" countries would
not be around for this long and would have absolutely no hope of survival.
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