The United Nations Millennium Campaign and its partners today launched an online petition “OK to 0.7,” through which Canadian citizens will demand that their government keep its promises to allocate 0.7 percent of Gross National Income to foreign aid. The petition was developed by Montreal-based communications firm Cossette. It demands that Canada deliver on commitments which are critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals – the set of promises made by rich and poor countries to work together to eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2015.

Ironically, it was Canadian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester Pearson who first developed the internationally-recognized standard that rich countries should commit 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income to aid for poor countries. Yet today, Canada remains among the least generous of donor nations. Canada’s aid as a percentage of its economy ranks 14th out of 23 donor nations and equals 0.3 percent of national income, less than half of what the government has promised. Now, the government has announced that it will freeze aid levels beginning in 2011.

The petition is available for all Canadian citizens to sign and will be delivered to world leaders attending the G-8 in Canada this summer by the civil society groups Make Poverty History and At the Table. Click here to sign the petition