“Canada is not for sale!” “The people, united, will never be defeated!” “Billionaires not welcome!”
Thousands filled the streets of Toronto on Monday, chanting and marching in opposition to the CEO summit convened by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
As I told the crowd gathered at Nathan Philips Square, this is not an investment summit but a privatization summit – with airports at the top of the list. Carney’s plan is to sell off public infrastructure we need to help fund private infrastructure we don’t—climate-killing pipelines and LNG terminals, AI data centres, mines on unceded Indigneous lands. Public money will cover the risk, while investors make off with the profits.
Demonstrators were greeted by a massive police presence outside the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), as they jeered and heckled the billionaires and CEOs arriving at the Canada Investment Summit’s opening gala dinner in hulking, tinted-window SUVs.
The street mobilization was the culmination of a weekend-long counter-summit, organized by the Council of Canadians at OCAD University, in collaboration with 8th Fire Rising, World Beyond War and over 50 other groups.
The “Many vs. the Money” summit opened with a sold out keynote talk by journalist and author Naomi Klein and U.S. scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in the OCAD Auditorium. The next day, participants returned for a full day of workshops, skillshares and panel discussions about the privatization summit and the aggressively pro-corporate agenda that the federal government has been pursuing, under the cover of the trade war with Trump.
Panels tackled AI data centres and LNG projects, health care privatization and military spending, Indigenous land rights and the critical minerals rush. The emphasis throughout was on making connections, between issues, people and organizations. Over 800 people registered for the counter-summit, which closed with a resistance concert in Grange Park next to OCAD.
Our efforts managed to pop the bubble of glowing media coverage that Mark Carney’s CEO summit had received until then. Dozens of media outlets, including CBC News, CityNews, Global News, the Toronto Star and Reuters, covered our Monday morning press conference, creating space for a movement critique of this generation-defining power grab currently underway to reach a much wider audience.
Even commentators on the right took notice. “For a movement supposedly wandering the political wilderness,” wrote Tasha Kheiriddin in the National Post, “the Canadian left made a lot of noise in downtown Toronto Monday night.”
The kaleidoscopic array of groups in the streets against the billionaires’ summit reminded Kheiriddin of the Occupy Wall Street protests that challenged the 1%: “The demonstration reunited an old-school coalition of labour unions, Indigenous activists, environmentalists, housing advocates and anti-war groups under a new(ish) slogan: ‘The Many vs. The Money.’”
The unity visible in the streets was built through the process of organizing the counter-summit and deepened during a movement roundtable held on Saturday, where representatives from over 50 groups discussed next steps in the fight against the corporate agenda.
The day after the protest, Prime Minister Carney confirmed to the billionaire investors at his summit what we had feared: Canada’s four largest airports (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary) are indeed on the auction block. To sweeten the deal even more, the Carney government announced a $36 billion corporate tax cut, pleasing lobby groups like the Business Council of Canada and the Oil Sands Alliance to no end.
The announced privatization provoked a widespread backlash, with many recalling how badly the public got fleeced with the sale of the 407 highway in Toronto. Carney himself seems uncomfortable with the word “privatization,” insisting that his government is merely “selling a concession” to foreign investors. Ministers are now denying that they are selling off Canada to foreign investors, or claiming that air travellers won’t face any “unjustified” price hikes post-privatization. Even sympathetic columnists are wondering if this move was a political misstep.
More and more people are seeing the gulf between the government’s “Canada is not for sale” rhetoric and the reality of its billionaire-friendly “Canada Inc.” agenda. This wouldn’t have happened without our efforts to contest the summit.
The Council of Canadians was made for moments like this. Throughout our 40-year history, the Council acted as a movement hub that can unite activists and organizations from many different quarters at key moments to challenge corporate rule.
I’m immensely proud of what we accomplished over the past few days and excited for what is to come. We said loudly that Canada is not for sale, and gave the billionaires the welcome they deserved.
More than that, it feels like we’ve kicked off a movement. A movement you can be a part of. A movement that is just getting started.
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