Rally for People First! We Deserve Better!

Women will gather at the Sir John A MacDonald statue on the south part of the Queens Park lawn, to give voice to the impact of G8 and G20 decisions on women. Take the lead for maternal health with full reproductive rights, for an end to women's poverty, for women's equality at home and globally!

Join thousands of people on Saturday, June 26th, at Queen's Park in Toronto to let the leaders of the G20 nations know their Summit must be about working people.

While G20 leaders and their guests meet in Toronto, a few dozen of the world's most powerful CEOs will meet in another hotel just a few blocks away. Their meeting has been organized with the full support of Canada's government and the G20 Finance Ministers, to whom they have been promised exclusive access.

By contrast, the organizers and participants of the People's Summit – a meeting of unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), development agencies, community organizations, people of faith and environmental activists from around the world – will hold their own Summit – and it won't benefit from special government assistance nor will its participants be granted exclusive access to any G20 Ministers.

We'll be saying the G20 Summit should be all about people who work for a living. This G20 should be about helping working people recover from the recession. It should be about helping governments recover the billions of dollars they spent to rescue financial institutions from their own incompetence, and the billions of dollars they still need to spend on economic stimulus. They have promises to keep.

This is why working people and their unions will rally at Queen's Park and march through the streets of Toronto on June 26th. We want the G20 to be about more than helping wealthy corporations and powerful CEOs get back to business as usual, as if the recession never happened.

Leaders of the world's richest and strongest economies need to know that working people will not sit quietly and pay for the mistakes of others. Our own government's attempts to silence debate and democracy is another reason to join us in our rally to have our voices heard on June 26th. That's why women, whose hard-won rights have steadily been eroded by this government since their election in 2005, will be leading the march through the streets that day.