Caption: Protesters at CANSEC on May 27 opposed the militarization plans of NATO carried by the US and other leading imperialist powers including Canada (Courtesy: Koozma J. Tarasoff, Website: http://www.spirit-wrestlers.com)

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Written by: Barbara Waldern

Albertan mass organizations have been collaborating to prepare a demonstration and people’s counter summit to the G7 Summit in Alberta. Delegations from British Columbia and other provinces are joining them on June 14, 15 and 16.

The Group of Seven (G7) are the core imperialist states allied with the United States (US, Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany and the UK). Their leaders partners including the EU and special guests meet annually in different host countries. Canada is the host every seven years; it was confronted by thousands of “anti-globalization” protesters in Kananaskis in 2004. Canada was the host in 2018, and will again face protests in 2025.

The G7 Summit is being staged at the Kananaskis Lodge in the regional park about 100 kilometres from Calgary from June 15 to 17. This venue will be heavily fortified and away from the public eye. Protest activities are taking place in downtown Calgary, also to be heavily guarded, with the aim of informing and influencing the general public, as well as demonstrating disagreement with the G7 and its agenda.

The G7 members collectively had 29 per cent of the world’s GDP in 2024. They are all former colonial and colonial settler states who are today all subjects of the US corporate empire.

The US economy and US-led imperialism is in acute crisis and can only react with more militarization. The G7 must address the crisis.

G7 Finance Ministers met to prepare in Banff in April 2025, concluding the meeting with a public Joint Statement. Their public statement exposed an agenda of global domination and security of imperialist interests in highlighted regions beyond the borders of each G7 member state. While they declare they are acting in the interest of peace, like NATO the Finance Ministers are contradictorily obsessed with intervening and militarizing against liberation struggles and independent governments to preserve control of their world order. Thus, the G7 agenda can be understood as the NATO agenda and reveals the US/NATO’s control over governments within its membership.

Canadian nationalists alarmed by US hostility and trade barriers, and defending Canadian sovereignty, will no doubt be roused to make a show of opposition in Alberta around the time of the G7 Summit. As all the G7 countries support the Zionist entity, its occupation and genocide of Palestinian territories, Palestine solidarity activism will surely rise to the occasion, too.

Strong on building workers’ and national liberation struggles for genuine and lasting peace with social justice, The International League of People’s Struggles in Canada (ILPS-Canada) has led the call to organize to expose and oppose the G7 Summit this year. ILPS-Canada is reaching out to allies and other anti-imperialist formations to join in a broad, united response. Filipino and Palestinian liberation sectoral and solidarity organizations have heeded the call. So have some groups within the Canadian peace movement; the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network having endorsed the anti-G7 activities, a few in the Network are supporting the mobilization such as several Peace Councils of the Canadian Peace Congress, the Global Peace Alliance in BC and the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War. They will all converge with climate justice and Christian social justice movements.

Other forms of dissent are happening across Canada. There will be a webinar about NATO and the G7 on June 10. Organized by the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network) Also, WILPF is hosting a feminist take on the G7 on June 10 from 5p.m. to 7 p.m. in Ottawa at the Global Centre for Pluralism. ILPS-Vancouver and friends are staging a rally on NATO and the G7 on June 21.

The G7 is one of ILPS-Canada’s three mobilization targets of their 2025 campaign against militarization. Another being the Canadian Security arms industry exhibition (CANSEC), its members in central Canada again collaborated with anti-imperialist and peace organizations to demonstrate against CANSEC in Ottawa on May 28 and 29. The active opposition to CANSEC building over recent years, this year’s mobilization was bigger than ever.

In addition, the campaign targets the Abbotsford Air Show and its complementary event, the Aerospace, Defense and Security Exhibition (ADSE) in Abbotsford just outside Metro Vancouver from August 7 to 10. There will be more work to build a coalition of opposition to take action and discuss the Abbotsford Airshow and ADSE.

These mobilizations show the determination to unite broad-based collectives concerned with peace and justice to counter the imperialist war drive and war industry. Clearly, the Liberal government plan, allegedly for nation-building and sovereignty, puts the nation and the world in danger because of its reliance on militarization of Canada, especially the north, to save a tiny parasitic minority. There is no future for the people on that road.

The oligarchies and wealthiest families of the world are intent upon extending the system of exploitation and plunder and are willing to destroy nations and the planet to defeat liberation struggles. Segments of people recognize the double-speak; they realize more militarization is not a solution to their predicament. More see the necessity to speak up and act against genocides, occupations, war profiteering, exploitation of the people and the Earth and general immorality and savagery that the G7 carries out.

Barbara Waldern is a peace activist residing in Metro Vancouver, BC, who, holding a Masters in social science, has worked in international educational support services.

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