Canadian Christian organizations, led by KAIROS Canada, are calling on Canadians to join a global movement to end the mounting global debt crisis by signing the Canadian petition for Jubilee 2025.
The petition, which aims to collect 100,000 signatures in Canada by the end of 2025, will be combined with a global initiative urging world leaders to cancel unjust debts, establish a United Nations mechanism for debt resolution and prevent future cycles of crushing debt.
The global goal is 10 million signatures, working with ecumenical and civil society partners around the world, focusing on debt cancellation, international financial reform and climate justice.
In Canada, KAIROS Canada is leading the campaign in collaboration with Citizens for Public Justice, Development and Peace – Caritas Canada and the Office of Religious Congregations for Integral Ecology (ORCIE).
The Canadian Council of Churches has been active in developing the campaign and will be inviting its member churches to support it. The Canadian focus of the campaign also includes Indigenous rights and justice in Canada and globally as an integral part of economic and ecological justice and debt reform.
Pope Francis inaugurated the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope on December 24, 2024. The Global Ecumenical Jubilee Committee and Caritas Internationalis quickly followed with the launch of the Turn Debt into Hope campaign for Jubilee 2025.
This is a worldwide ecumenical movement advocating for systemic change to address global economic inequality and the burden of unjust debt.
Canada is hosting the G7 Leaders’ Summit in June 2025 in Kananaskis, Alberta. KAIROS and its partners will leverage this event as an opportunity to urge Canada to include debt cancellation and debt restructuring in the agenda, and advocate for their implementation.
The global campaign will call for debt cancellation at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in South Africa and the Climate Change COP30 in Brazil this year.
The idea of Jubilee has deep roots in faith traditions and scripture themes of forgiving debts, caring for people and the land, and ending poverty and inequality.
The Jubilee 2025 campaign is inspired by the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which mobilized millions of people of faith world-wide and achieved significant goals, including the cancellation of USD $100 billion of debt in 36 low-income countries.
From 1998 to 2001, the Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative (CEJI) led Canada’s Jubilee 2000 debt cancellation campaign with support from The Canadian Council of Churches and a working group of churches, inter-church coalitions, ecumenical agencies and faith-based organizations.
CEJI was the country’s most successful faith-based advocacy campaign. It mobilized 640,000 Canadians to petition for debt cancellation for low-income countries. The Canadian Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative’s success led to the creation of KAIROS in 2001.
Many countries in the Global South are currently facing a new debt crisis. Although billions of dollars in global debt were cancelled in 2000, the global financial system was not restructured to prevent future crises. The current debt crisis is exacerbated by rising interest rates, inflation, conflict, climate change, inequities and other contributing factors.
According to a 2024 report from German NGOs Erlassjahr and Misereor, 130 countries in the Global South are navigating a “slightly critical” debt situation, with 24 countries in a debt situation that is “very critical.”
Forty-eight countries, representing 3.3 billion people, spend more on servicing their debt than on education or healthcare, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
The debt crisis also undermines sustainable development and climate action. Countries in the Global South are currently spending five times more on debt repayments than they are on addressing the impact of the climate crisis. For many, public debt has grown so large that repayment is impossible, burdening future generations.
Moreover, wealthy countries exploit resources from low-income countries in the Global South and from Indigenous territories, often causing severe ecological and human rights harm, creating an ‘ecological debt’ owed to the people of these countries and to Indigenous peoples in Canada and globally.
The Jubilee theme highlights the urgent need to address the devastating impacts of the debt crisis around the world, amplifying the voices of partners who are advocating for a just and sustainable model of development, sometimes at risk to their lives, offering hope and a path forward by raising awareness and advocating for meaningful change.
For more information and to sign the petition visit: kairoscanada.org/jubilee-2025-canada.
KAIROS Canada hosted a launch webinar February 19.