In less than 7 days, 500 people have sent their ‘scrap the summits’ message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. With just 7 days to go until the summits are planned to take place, we would like to double or triple the number of messages sent!
To send the message below to the prime minister, please go to http://canadians.org/action/2010/scrap-summit.html.
And please share this web-link with others and encourage them to send messages too.
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Prime Minister Harper,
I am outraged the federal government is spending more than $1 billion on the G8 and G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto, Ontario June 25-27, 2010. Given the overall costs, and the 16 hours of formal and informal meetings that are planned, the bill comes in at about $75 million per hour for these summits.
One billion dollars could be better spent on any number of urgent international priorities such as providing access to clean drinking water worldwide and immediate action to address climate change.
To put this in perspective, a child dies every 8 seconds from drinking dirty water. During the G8/G20 weekend, 21,600 children will die because they have been denied the fundamental human right to clean water. The billion dollars being spent on the summits would save those children and millions more.
The place for national leaders to meet isn’t behind barbed wire fences in small groups of eight or twenty, but rather in the General Assembly at the United Nations. That’s what the United Nations was created for, and it has the buildings, infrastructure and appropriate security in place for gatherings of world leaders. These G192 meetings should also include a true dialogue with broader civil society. The narrower corporate interests should not have the kind of exclusive privileged access that they now enjoy.
Prime Minister Harper, I demand that you scrap the summits and spend this money on meaningful international priorities.
I await your reply.
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