Regarding: Canada commits $300M to global COVID-19 fight (June 28)
Canada must end its sanctions
While I strongly support Canada helping other countries to fight COVID-19, I cannot reconcile this initiative with the fact that Canada is preventing food, vital medicines and equipment from reaching many countries because of our sanctions against these countries. Among the 19 counties that Canada is illegally sanctioning are Syria, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea. The blocking of vital medical aid and food is a violation of international law.
Suspending these sanctions would save lives at no cost to the federal government.
The Trudeau government has ignored requests to end these sanctions from myself and many others. At the international level, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has declared, “I am encouraging the waiving of sanctions imposed on countries to ensure access to food, essential health supplies, and COVID-19 medical support. This is the time for solidarity not exclusion … Let us remember that we are only as strong as the weakest health system in our interconnected world”
I would ask readers to apply pressure on Trudeau to remove these sanctions by signing a parliamentary petition initiated by Henry Evans Tenbrinke and sponsored by Hamilton Mountain MP Scott Duvall at https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-2630.
-Doug Brown, Burlington