The Jubilee 2000 Debt Petition signed by over seventeen million people worldwide (and over 635,000 in Canada) was presented to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the G-7 Summit in Cologne, Germany on Saturday, June 19, 1999. A delegation of sixteen Canadian church activists was present throughout the summit to press for the key  points of the Jubilee 2000 Debt Campaign and to present the petitions signed by Canadians.

Below appears a copy of the text of the Canadian version of the petition that was presented to the Canadian government in May of 1999. While the petition phase of the campaign is now over, the petition text and information are provided here for reference purposes.

For current information on the Debt Campaign, see the news page. See also the following links:

• Read the press release and analysis of the G7 proposal by the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative. You can also read an analysis prepared by the European Network on Debt and Development. 

• Read the statement describing the G7 governments' proposal on debt relief (see also, "Plan for Debt Forgiveness") for the world's poorest nations presented at the Summit.

• You can also read a comment by Archbishop Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, on the Köln G-7 Agreement on Debt Relief. See also the The Statement of the South African Council of Churches on the Köln Initiative (25 June 1999).

Petition Text

We, the undersigned, believe that the start of the new millennium should be a time to give new hope to the impoverished people of the world.

To make a new beginning we believe it is time to cancel the backlog of unpayable debts of the most impoverished nations.

We call upon the leaders of lending nations to write off these debts by the year 2000.

We urge these leaders to take effective steps to prevent high levels of debt building up again. They should promote sustainable economic and social development instead of supporting measures demanded by international financial institutions that erode health care, education and the environment, further impoverishing the poorest populations of the world.

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