Presented by Ken Georgetti on Wednesday, 23 June 2010

(Check Against Delivery)

Sisters and brothers, delegates and honoured guests.

On behalf of the Officers and 3.2 million workers who are members of the Canadian Labour Congress, welcome.

We are pleased to be hosting this event during the World Congress.

Trade union development cooperation is an important dimension in building strong international solidarity.

It gives me real pleasure to see so many of our partners from Africa, Asia and the Americas in the room tonight.

We have learned much from each other over the years of our partnership.

We look forward to continued exchanges in the future.

Through international development cooperation, workers are influencing public policy, both in the North and in the South.

Workers must continue to raise their voices and show politicians the faces of those who have paid the personal price for the greed of global corporations.

Every worker has a personal story to tell.

They are the stories politicians around the world must hear, so that workers can influence the political decisions that affect their lives every day.

I am proud of the work that trade union development cooperation does to build that capacity so that workers' voices are heard.

If we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals, if we are to succeed in implementing a decent work agenda, we must continue to build that capacity.

That is why this work is so important.

These are challenging times.

Governments around the world are under pressure to cut their budgets from the very financial elites who caused this crisis.

And we know from experience, at least in Canada, that the first cuts are always to international development and aid budgets.

Here, we have a long tradition of public funding for international development, through the Canadian International Development Agency – CIDA.

But recently in Canada, funding for these activities has become more difficult to get – and not, we feel, due to budget constraints.

Many of our partner organizations are experiencing cuts to their project funding for reasons that can only be political and ideological.

It remains vitally important to continue to push our government to continue to fund the important international work of trade unions and of our social partners.

Canadian trade unions continue to support programming with our brothers and sisters in the South.

Many Canadian unions have negotiated, through collective bargaining, special funds to support their international work.

There are a number of representatives of these special union funds here at this event, and they are also attending this Congress.

They will be happy to share their experiences with you.

I would like to end by acknowledging the work of the Trade Union Development Cooperation Network.

Led by the ITUC, it provides a useful forum for ITUC affiliates, solidarity support organizations, and the Global Union Federations to exchange information and share experiences and approaches to making our work more effective.

The CLC is proud to play a role in the Network.

I know you will have a fruitful discussion this evening.

I want to thank the CLC's international staff for organizing this important event.

Thank you for coming and have a good evening.