Why are people protesting at the G20 summit?
I don’t know exactly why they are protesting but i would also like to know. Some of the things I think it might be: One thing is that the government should NOT have put it in the most busy area of Toronto. They should have known this would happen. They have closed down 100’s of shops in the area for the time being. To hold this summit it has cost Canadian government over a million dollars. In the next ten years Harper is giving 3rd world countries over a billion dollars, there arent even a billion people in Canada, there is only 40 million or so. That is like $6000 per person.
There are always demos at these conferences. It’s because the 20 richest countries get to decide how the poorest countries are meant to survive. People protest against big government, multinational corporations & international finance. The World Bank lends money to impoverished nations but they don’t just lend – they expect to be paid interest on the loans. This means that the money that should be being used to improve the economic health of poor countries is actually being used to pay off the interest. Thus, countries remain poor because their budget is committed to paying interest to the world bank – that is us, the rich people – , instead of going to infrastructure, health, social welfare, famine relief, transport, education, housing, clean water etc. Watch the film, “The Girl in the Cafe” with Bill Nighy. Explains it all. In 2000 the Pope asked for all World Bank loans to poor nations to be written off. We demonstrated in Australia, where conference was held, but nothing happened.
