MONTREAL (CP) - An eclectic group of activists ranging from anarchists and communists to refugees and housing advocates held a peaceful protest in downtown Montreal on Sunday to voice their opposition to a World Trade Organization meeting to be held in the city.
The march, billed as a family-friendly event, was one of just several demonstrations against the three-day meeting, which begins Monday. Bud Freed travelled to Montreal from Sudbury, Ont., for Sunday's No One Is Illegal protest, which featured anti-capitalist, antiwar and anti-poverty groups.
Freed and other demonstrators said they wanted to draw attention to the impact trade and trade negotiations have on refugees, immigrants and indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world.
"We don't have a voice within the actual agreements being signed in our name," said Freed, who belongs to anti-poverty and antiwar groups in the northern Ontario city.
"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."
The informal gathering of about 25 trade ministers representing a cross-section of WTO members will assess progress made to date with a trade treaty known as the Doha Development Agenda. The meeting will likely be the last chance for the ministers to take stock of the negotiations and determine what kind of flexibility is still needed heading into a crucial full-scale WTO meeting in September in Cancun, Mexico.
While Sunday's protest, which drew about 1,000 people, unfolded peacefully under a heavy police presence, organizers have promised civil disobedience Monday and throughout the meetings in an attempt to halt the WTO's progress in Montreal.
Samira Rahmani, one of the organizers of the demonstrations, said the international trade agenda is driven by capital and profit and affects not just goods and services but also human beings whose labour is exploited in developed countries such as Canada.
"We stand in opposition to the commodification of people and valuing people only for their potential to provide profit," Rahmani said.
Everyone gathered for Sunday's march participated in their own unique way.
Some came out as a family, with small children in strollers or dwarfed by the large placards they carried. Others waved flags from their homeland, such as Pakistan, while others chanted and banged homemade instruments such as pots and large plastic pails.
Shamim Rizvi marched with family and friends to draw attention to her fight to avoid deportation to Pakistan.
Rizvi, a Muslim, fled her home 18 months ago to escape religious persecution after her brother was killed and her husband was attacked.
She said the Canadian government recently rejected her claim for refugee status because she and her husband and three-year-old son spent a year in the United States before coming to Canada.
"We are not in a condition to go back to Pakistan because our life is not safe over there," said Rizvi, who was a school teacher for 15 years.
Before the march started, Jasmin de la Calzada, a spokeswoman for the Filipino Women's Organization in Montreal, addressed the crowd to criticize the poor treatment of many Filipino domestic workers seeking landed immigrant status in Canada.
She said many Filipinos are forced to leave their country, or stay and live in poverty, because the Philippines does not have the resources to adequately support its population.
"All the natural resources have been plundered by the United States and other nations," said de la Calzada.
"And 100 per cent of the profits by corporations who have taken over the land are repatriated back to their own country like Canada or the U.S."
Earlier in the day, a group representing Quebec's agriculture producers held a news conference to discuss their fears the WTO talks will have a negative impact on the province's dairy and poultry producers.
The producers have formed a new coalition to support Canadian negotiators, who join many developing countries in calling for the complete elimination of $300 billion in agriculture subsidies.
Laurent Pellerin, chairman of the Union des Producteurs Agricoles, said he doesn't want to see disputes over agriculture subsidies destroy entire communities in Quebec the way Canada's softwood lumber dispute with the United States has hurt British Columbia.
"Now is the time to act, not when the text is completed," said Pellerin.
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