Council of Canadians activists were at the fence in La Malbaie today and provided these comments via Facebook.
A team of Council of Canadians activists – Leo Broderick, Andrea Furlong, Sujata Dey, Mark Calzavara, Marion Moore, Anne Levesque – challenged the G7 today and their comments and actions were noted in various news reports:
CTV – “Leo Broderick, chair of the Council of Canadians, was on-hand [in La Malbaie] to speak to the media and denounce the summit altogether. ‘The G7 is highly undemocratic’, he said. ‘We have been calling for a number of years now that if countries should meet like this, all countries under the United Nations – 197 – should be here to take part in those discussions.’ ‘We’re also saying that the agenda the G7 represents is a neo-liberal agenda, it’s an anti-people agenda, it is an anti-environment agenda’, Broderick added.”
Le Soleil (in French) – “‘We’re here to say no to the G7. It must be the last one.’ A dozen members of the Council of Canadians, who says advocate progressive policies, demonstrated Thursday morning in the area of free expression La Malbaie. …The Council of Canadians has been denouncing the holding of G7 for anti-democratic meetings for several years, says Leo Broderick. ‘The G7 agenda is a neoliberal agenda, it’s an anti-population agenda, an anti-environmental agenda. The issues of climate change, immigration, and social inequality are completely ignored,’ says Broderick.”
Handelsbatt (in German) – “Numerous groups and organizations have joined together to form an ‘anti-G7 alliance’. This includes the Canadian-wide active ‘Council of Canadians’. ‘G7 summits are used to promote free trade agreements that are against the public interest, violate the rights of indigenous peoples and workers, and drive the neoliberal agenda of tax reduction, deregulation and privatization’, the Council said.”
Journal de Quebec (in French) – “G7 opponents posted themselves in the ‘free expression zone’ at the edge of the security perimeter. Representatives of the ‘Council of Canadians’ and ATTAC-Québec have denounced the undemocratic nature of the summit, according to them, since it does not represent all the countries on the planet. They also said that the policies of member countries are responsible for increasing social inequalities.”
La Presse canadienne (in French) – “Representatives of the two organizations made the trip to La Malbaie to demand the end of these multilateral meetings, which are characterized by their deep ‘hypocrisy’. A banner on which one could read ‘Dernier G7’ was also hung on the fence surmounting the concrete walls.”
The Canadian Press – “‘It’s the free speech zone here, but we’re just preaching in the desert, because in my opinion the G7 leaders won’t really come here’, said Sujata Dey of The Council of Canadians.”
Badische Zeitung (in German) – “An online petition ‘Make this the last G7 summit’ was launched this week. This calls for an end to what the initiators consider to be expensive summits. Instead, the United Nations General Assembly should be the scene of such debates, not a rotating summit with only seven participants. Already on Thursday evening a protest march is to take place in Quebec.”
The Council of Canadians will continue to participate in marches, civil society forums and creative actions against the G7 through to June 9.
To sign our Make this the last G7 summit petition, please click here.
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