Dear editor:
Canadians often contribute to the better well-being of other people in the world. This was true with the fair trade coffee and is more and more true with other fair trade consumer goods, such as chocolate.
The purchase of fair trade certified products has important consequences.
It allows many producers to receive reasonable prices for their products and numerous workers and little producers to climb out of poverty. It also has positive environmental impacts.
We believe that about 15,000 slave children works on farms and cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, which supplies 35% of the world’s cocoa. In Western Africa, they are 300,000 children under 14 working on such plantations, doing hard and dangerous labour. Overall, 14 billion workers live from cocoa plantations, several of them earning around 300 $US per year for their work and production.
I feel we should all work towards a world where solidarity is at the heart of economic development. A fair trade Easter is an immense step in this direction.
Bruno Marquis
Gatineau, Q.C.
