WATCH: Protesters hit Carney gala, stop at police line outside AGO

TORONTO — A “Many vs. The Money” march left Nathan Phillips Square on Monday night and stopped at a police barricade outside the Art Gallery of Ontario, where Prime Minister Mark Carney was hosting a closed gala for global investors at his first Canada Investment Summit. Organizers had billed a crash of the dinner; they reached the fence, not the room.The march left Nathan Phillips Square after 7 p.m. and filled Queen St. W. toward the Art Gallery of Ontario. Hundreds if not over a thousand people were in the crowd by the time it hit the police line, shutting down the streets between the square and McCaul St. A heavy police line held the AGO fence, bringing the march to a halt. The gala continued on the other side and despite a loud response from the crowd, the barrier did not break.The coalition — Council of Canadians, World BEYOND War, unions, housing and climate groups, migrant-rights organizers and some First Nations speakers — spent the weekend at a counter-summit at OCAD University with Naomi Klein and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, then marched under a banner that treats the two-day summit as an auction of public assets. The target list on their own site includes airports, toll highways, water plants, housing, Indigenous land, oil and mineral deposits, tax breaks and military contracts..On the square, the argument was not only where the money comes from. It was the projects. Carney is chasing about $1 trillion in project capital over five years — private, public and institutional cash for more than 160 mining, energy, technology and infrastructure files — and says the tariff fight with President Donald Trump makes that capital urgent. When asked by the Western Standard where the trillion should come from if not private money, marchers did not offer a Canadian-built mine or a pension-funded grid. They offered higher corporate taxes, a wealth tax on families worth more than $25 million, and an end to “polluting.”“It’s both,” one organizer-aligned speaker said when asked whether the fight was the source of the capital or the files themselves. “The same people who caused this trade war are the people Carney is cozying up to… more oil projects that are polluting our waterways… data centers that have no jobs… an LNG plant that is going to be built in South Korea and floated over here. There are no jobs there for Canadians. It’s just an extraction of our resources.”Another said Canada already has the capital and “don’t need foreign investment that is going to end up sucking more money out of the country.” A third called the guest list — BlackRock, Blackstone, and reports of state-linked money from the Gulf and Asia — “evil money” taken “off the backs of ordinary working people around the globe.”Palestine signs moved with the energy signs. One speaker tied the guest list to Gaza, Iran, Cuba and a “100-year” Ukraine commitment and called the investors parasites..Inside, Carney is chasing about $1 trillion in project capital over five years — private, public and institutional money for more than 160 mining, energy, technology and infrastructure files, not a personal fundraiser. Premier Doug Ford is selling 15 unnamed Ontario projects and calling the province “one of the most investable places anywhere in the world.” Stephen Harper is slated to close the summit Tuesday. The march calls foreign capital a sell-off and names pipelines, LNG and oil as the problem in the same breath. Carney has already eased some of Justin Trudeau’s climate brakes to court resource industries during the tariff fight with President Donald Trump, and the people in the crowd want those files pulled. If the capital stays out, the jobs and the deficit do not vanish — they land on taxpayers, including the West that already ships the crude oil the room is being asked to fund.

WATCH: Protesters hit Carney gala, stop at police line outside AGO

Related Stories

Eby silent as Carney asks premiers to restock U.S. alcohol

Alberta delays school flag restrictions and weekly national anthem mandate

WATCH: Protesters at Queen’s Park cite healthcare, autism supports and privatization as top Ford failures

EYRE: Time for courage — out-of-control government spending must stop