Draw the Line: Tell the Carney Government to Pick a Side

We’re all feeling it. The very act of asking a friend or acquaintance “How are you?” feels fraught.

The truth is the world feels overwhelming right now. Our neighbours to the south seem on a speedy path towards fascism. Billionaires and oligarchs keep scoring major wins at our expense, while the political leaders who serve them seem triumphant. We’re watching a genocide unfold in real time before our eyes in Gaza. Across the planet communities are being devastated by fossil fuel-induced extreme weather events.

Here at home, the rejection of far-right politics and anger at U.S. President Donald Trump led many Canadians to vote for Mark Carney’s Liberals in the last election. But many of those voters are rapidly experiencing buyer’s remorse, as the Carney government dramatically ramps up military spending, greenlights new fossil fuel infrastructure, abandons core climate commitments, seeks to align our border and immigration policies with Trump’s, and prepares to slash spending on vital public programs.

Despite the super-rich amassing extraordinary wealth since the pandemic (as of this year, 78 Canadian billionaires hold $520 billion in wealth), and even as income inequality in Canada reaches record levels, the Carney government is instituting tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich. Meanwhile, in 2024, food banks in Canada recorded two million visits — double the level of 2019.

Carney made tantalizing promises during the 2025 election, including to “build, baby, build” at a speed not seen since the Second World War. But most voters understood this to be a promise about housing, transit and a clean electricity grid — not pushing fossil fuel projects over Indigenous objections.

And now — via a jaw-dropping $9-billion increase to military spending this year alone and tax cuts (cutting income taxes, abandoning the digital services tax and reversing efforts to more fairly tax capital gains) — the Carney government is manufacturing a fiscal crisis and preparing to impose what may well be the most damaging austerity since the mid-1990s.

Our government remains far too acquiescent to the oligarchies that have long dominated our lives — the big grocery chains, the fossil fuel corporations, rental real estate investment firms, war contractors and big tech corporations. These profiteering companies need to be urgently brought to heel if we are ever to restore affordability to our lives. With disorienting speed, we’ve gone from “elbows up” to appeasement, and from “maîtres chez nous” to welcoming massive investment in fossil fuel projects from some of Trump’s biggest corporate backers.

Yet in the face of all this, far too many of us feel ourselves alone in the belief that none of this is acceptable. It’s time to break down that sense of isolation.

These are troubling times, but we refuse to stand by while the government and Canada’s richest corporations hoard wealth, gut our public services, fuel climate collapse, attack migrants, exploit Indigenous lands and ignore Indigenous title, and prop up a genocide. That’s why we’re building an unprecedented, cross-movement mobilization to fight for better.

That’s why it’s time to come together in common cause to say: “Enough is enough!”

Together, we can demand that Prime Minister Carney and the Canadian government pick a side: injustice, violence and climate destruction — or a just and safe future for all of us.

As many of you have hopefully heard by now, on Saturday, Sept. 20, people across the country (and world!) are uniting to “draw the line” — for people, for peace and for the planet.

Join us

Draw the Line is a cross-movement effort initiated and co-convened by 350 Canada, Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac), Migrant Rights Network, Seniors for Climate, Indigenous Climate Action, Sacred Earth Solar, Council of Canadians, World Beyond War and many others, and now endorsed by over 200 organizations from across Canada. We are building a historic alliance to rise to this moment and invite everyone who believes in justice, good work and a livable future to join us.

Together, we are uniting behind five demands:

1. Put people over corporate profit. Fund our families and communities.

Most of us can’t make ends meet — wages are low, rent is sky-high, groceries are unaffordable. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Carney has ordered a 15 per cent cut to our public services while billionaires and corporations get richer off our suffering. We refuse to normalize mass poverty while the wealthy hoard billions. We call on the federal government to tax the ultra-rich and windfall profits, end fossil fuel subsidies and invest in the affordable housing, food, health care, transit, education, arts, public services and good jobs that our communities need to thrive.

2. Refuse ongoing colonialism. Uphold Indigenous sovereignty.

Canada is founded on settler colonialism and the exploitation of Indigenous land. Canada continues to enforce colonial violence through mass incarceration, child apprehensions, the underfunding of services, and destructive development across Indigenous lands. The same government claiming reconciliation criminalizes land defenders, violates the right to free, prior and informed consent and prioritizes corporate profit over Indigenous rights. We demand genuine economic sovereignty for Indigenous communities; justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people; the return of land to its rightful titleholders; and funding for Indigenous housing, languages, land-based economies and Indigenous-led climate solutions. We demand Land Back now!

3. Stop blaming migrants. Demand full immigration status for all now.

One in 20 people in Canada are migrants without permanent status. Temporary status means you can’t stand up for your rights. Migrants who grow food, build communities and care for the sick face exploitation, wage theft and exclusion from services. Yet our politics are now obsessed with migrant-blaming. About 1.2 million people are being forced to leave Canada this year because their study and work permits aren't being renewed. That means over 3,000 workers are forced to leave jobs — or put another way, our communities are losing over 3,000 friends — every day.

When working people are urged to blame migrants for housing costs and job shortages, we stop asking why billionaires own half the rental market and why corporations are getting richer by the day. When young workers are pitted against temporary foreign workers, we stop demanding living wages and affordable education for everyone. When workers turn against migrants, we stop building the solidarity that could actually challenge the system crushing us all. We refuse to accept this division, and we demand permanent resident status for all migrants in Canada.

4. End the war machine. Stand for justice and peace.

Canada is joining the global arms race and massively increasing its military spending alongside NATO partners, while cutting funding from health care, housing and public services. The Carney government plans to increase military spending by $9 billion this year, to quadruple it by 2030 and to spend a stunning five per cent of GDP on militarism in 10 years.

The Carney government has signalled a willingness to join Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence system — a reckless scheme to put missiles in space for the first time that would cost us billions and would leave us locked in the house with a regime that is moving dangerously towards fascism. Canada is arming and propping up Israel’s genocide in Palestine and fuelling global conflicts that enrich weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin.

We refuse to let war profiteers prosper while people suffer. We demand an immediate two-way arms embargo on Israel, cancelling Canada’s plans to balloon its military budget, and a foreign policy based on diplomacy and peace building.

5. End the era of fossil fuels. Protect Mother Earth.

Our planet is burning while fossil fuel companies rake in record profits, yet Prime Minister Carney greenlights new oil and gas projects — decisions that in 2025 can only be described as wilful acts of arson. While federal government spending to confront the climate emergency — our gravest security and civilizational threat — lags at 0.7 per cent of GDP, Canada is subsidizing corporate polluters, even as communities face floods, fires and extreme weather.

Trapped in debt and least responsible for emissions, the Global South suffers most from climate impacts, with millions displaced. The Carney government abandoned the consumer carbon price but has replaced it with nothing and is now reconsidering and walking back other promised climate policies.

The solutions to the climate crisis — to mass electrifying our economy — are ready and waiting to be deployed at speed and scale. But instead, we have been subjected to painful incrementalism, an approach that is not only failing to bend the emissions curve at the pitch and pace required, but also keeps giving the fossil fuel industry time to regroup, forcing us to waste time and resources re-prosecuting fights we have already won.

We refuse to let Big Oil cook the planet while people suffer. We call for an end to the fossil fuel era and a just transition to a 100 per cent renewable energy economy that puts workers, Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities first. We demand Canada end all fossil fuel subsidies, kick fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists out of our politics, make polluters pay, invest in a Youth Climate Corps and publicly owned east-west electricity grid, and do its fair share globally by cancelling unjust debt and funding climate solutions in the Global South with grants, not loans.

Together, we can win

The Sept. 20 action connects five movements — economic justice, Indigenous sovereignty, migrant justice, peace/antiwar and climate justice — because the same corporations and politicians that put profit over people are harming us all.

The One Per Cent needs us divided because united, we're unstoppable.

We have to “draw the line.” On one side, the billionaires; on the other, the rest of us. On one side, the deportation judges; on the other, the rest of us. On one side, the war profiteers and the climate destroyers; on the other, the rest of us. On one side, divide and conquer; on the other, unity, power and collective well-being.

We need to unite across our movements because that is the only way we win.

Over 60 Draw the Line actions are planned in communities across Canada, with more added daily. You can find the action closest to you here.

See you on Sept. 20!

Signed,

Anjali Appadurai, executive director, Padma Centre for Climate Justice

Andria Babbington, president, Toronto and York Region Labour Council

Beth Clarke, executive director, Wilderness Committee

Kim Fry, co-ordinator, Music Declares Emergency Canada

Shanaaz Gokool, executive director, Leadnow

Syed Hussan, spokesperson, Migrant Rights Network

Seth Klein, team lead, Climate Emergency Unit

Naomi Klein, author and co-director, UBC Centre for Climate Justice

Melissa Lem, president, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

David Mastin, president, Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario

Serena Mendizabal, managing director, Sacred Earth Solar

Liz McDowell, senior campaigns director, Stand.earth

Kai Nagata, communications director, Dogwood

Dru Oja Jay, executive director, Council of Canadians

Amara Possian, Canada team lead, 350.org

Nathan Prier, president, Canadian Association of Professional Employees

Wyanne Sandler, national network director, For Our Kids

Rachel Small, Canada lead, World Beyond War

David Smith, chair, Seniors for Climate

David Suzuki

Sarah Wilbore, program director, Greenpeace Canada