Toronto, Canada — About 500,000 people led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, paraded on the streets of Montreal, Canada, on Friday to call on the country’s authorities to remedy the climate crisis. Thunberg, 16, led the march, considered to be the largest in Quebec history, in which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also participated along with his family.
Before the start of the march, Trudeau held a private meeting with Thunberg. After the meeting, Thunberg stated that he pointed out to Trudeau that he is not doing enough to respond to the climate crisis although he added that it is the same message it conveys to all political leaders.” My message to all politicians in the world is the same: listen and act according to the best unified scientific thinking. I’m not trying to focus on individuals but on the whole,” explained the young Swedish activist who has become the face and voice of the climate crisis movement. It is not the first time Thunberg has criticized Trudeau and Canada, the world’s fifth largest oil-producing country.
Greta with the president of Canada. Source: AP
In June, Thunberg stressed on Twitter that at the same time as Trudeau is alerting the climate crisis, he is allowing the expansion of pipelines to increase the export of oil from bituminous sanddeposits, considered among the most pollutants in the world.” At the same time as declaring a climate emergency, they approve the expansion of a pipeline. It’s a disgrace. But of course it’s not just in Canada, unfortunately we can see the same pattern all over the world,” he wrote on June 19.
Thunberg, who participated in the Montreal march accompanied by Canadian indigenous leaders, addressed attendees to the protest and declared that “at least today we are here 500,000. You should be very proud. We’ve done this together and I can’t thank you enough for being here.” But the activist redoubled her criticism of Canada and her native Sweden.
You are a nation that is supposed to be a climate leader. Sweden is also supposed to be a climate leader,” he said.
In both cases it doesn’t mean anything. In both cases they are simply empty words. We’ve told them to join science but they don’t listen to us,” he added.
For its part, Trudeau on Friday defended the approval of the pipeline expansion because, he said, his Government has “a national climate plan that will reduce our emissions and meet our 2030 targets that also include getting a better price per our oil resources.” After meeting with Thunberg, Trudeau participated along with hundreds of thousands of people in the march that toured Montreal to protest, among other measures, against his government’s policies.
Surrounded by a strong security deployment, Trudeau walked the streets of Montreal with his wife, Sophié, and their children. That did not prevent several people from trying to clash with the Canadian prime minister, and the Mounted Police had to apprehend an individual who tried to throw eggs at Trudeau.Trudeau, who is in the middle of the general election on 21 October, he also took advantage of the Montreal march to announce that if he is re-elected as prime minister, his government will plant 2 billion trees to fight the climate crisis. In addition to Montreal, tens of thousands of people, in many young school-age cases, participated in other climate crisis protests in major Canadian cities, such as Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec City.
