NEWS RELEASE

March 25, 2009

FOCAL FORMING NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR THE
FULFILLMENT OF SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS MANDATES

Thursday, March 26, 2009
9 am – 12 pm
Escabus Room, MacEwan Conference and Events Centre
MacEwan Student Centre, 2nd Floor (East End)
University of Calgary

The Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) and the Latin American Research Centre at the University of Calgary are hosting one in a series of consultations across Canada as the first step in founding a national alliance to support Canada and other Organization of American States (OAS) members and give real meaning to the Summits of the Americas process.

Traditionally, these civil society consultations have happened in Latin America and the Caribbean, not North America. “These meetings give Canadian citizens the opportunity and ability to help shape the hemispheric agenda,” said Racquel Smith, Project Manager for FOCAL’s Inter-American program. “The Summits are not one-off events, but an ongoing process with action plans that can make a significant contribution to improving the quality of the lives of the citizens of this hemisphere.”

Civil society groups, academics, and business leaders will meet to discuss the 2009 Summit’s official theme, Securing Our Citizens' Future by Promoting Human Prosperity, Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability, hosted by Trinidad & Tobago on April 17-19, 2009. They will also discuss how to convert Summit mandates into government mandates. Other meetings are planned in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. A report will be presented to the OAS and the Active Democracy Network , which FOCAL helps to coordinate.

Canada helped institutionalize citizens’ participation in the summits process at the 2001 Quebec City Summit. For that Summit, FOCAL and its partners, Corporación Participa of Chile and the ESQUEL network, organized the first transnational civil society consultations with over 900 representatives participating before the Québec City Summit. More than half of the 243 civil society recommendations generated by these consultations were included in the Québec City Plan of Action. The Summit of the Americas is the only meeting of all of the democratically-elected Heads of State in the Americas.

To attend, RSVP by email to Tiffany Weagle by email at larc@ucalgary.ca.

To schedule an interview with Racquel Smith, contact Peter Moore, Communications Director, at 613-562-0005 x255. For more information, visit FOCAL’s Inter-American program website.

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The Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) is an independent, non-partisan think tank dedicated to strengthening Canadian relations with Latin America and the Caribbean through policy dialogue and analysis.