MONTREAL (CP) - Several hundred people gathered in downtown Montreal on Sunday to voice their opposition to a World Trade Organization meeting to be held in the city.
The protest is expected to be one of just several demonstrations against the three-day meeting, which begins Monday.
About 25 trade ministers representing a cross-section of WTO members will assess progress and discuss how to persevere with the Doha Development Agenda, named after the mandate for negotiations on a new trade treaty that was agreed to in 2001 in Doha, Qatar.
Bud Freed, who belongs to several anti-poverty groups, travelled to Montreal from Sudbury, Ont., for Sunday's No One Is Illegal protest, which featured anti-capitalist, antiwar and anti-poverty groups.
"We don't have a voice within the actual agreement being signed in our name," Freed said in an interview.
"We're talking really about tightening borders on people and loosening them for corporations to the point where environmental controls and agreements on aboriginal issues are being thrown out the window for a quick buck for some of the world's richest elite."
Samira Rahmani, one of the organizers of Sunday's march, said the international trade agenda is driven by capital and profit and affects not just goods and services but also human beings, including domestic workers from the Philippines who are exploited.
"We stand in opposition to the commodification of people and valuing people only for their potential to provide profit," Rahmani said.
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