Police said two people were arrested for mischief after a protest against Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government drew thousands to Parliament Hill on Saturday morning.
The “Draw the Line” protesters called on the Liberal government to prioritize human rights and climate change and to reverse planned cuts to the public service, and it brought together other issues like migrant justice, Palestine and labour rights.
Similar protests were organized in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Charlottetown, among other cities across Canada.
People in the Ottawa contingent gathered in front of the Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday morning and marched down Wellington Street before turning left onto MacKenzie Avenue and joining a Gatineau contingent that had started at Maison du Citoyen.
The large group of protesters then marched to the United States Embassy on Sussex Drive before ending at the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights monument near city hall.
Many wore keffiyehs, a scarf symbolizing Palestinian nationalism and resistance, and held signs calling on Canada’s government to divest from fossil fuels and to implement an arms embargo against Israel.
Protesters also waved Palestinian flags and banged on drums, yelling pro-Palestinian and anti-fossil fuel chants.
Indigenous people with the Ottawa River Singers sang and drummed in front of the Prime Minister’s Office as protesters arrived.
“Today’s march is a cross-country day of action. Many communities are rising today to resist Prime Minister Carney,” said Aseel Qazzaz, vice-president external of CUPE local 4600 at Carleton University and a member of Labour for Palestine.
“We are resisting Prime Minister Mark Carney’s anti-migrant, anti-Indigenous, fossil fuel-driven policy.”
Elder Albert Dumont of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg also spoke on Saturday morning, warning protesters about the destruction of water systems across Canada and the world.
“We are living in a world where the water is dying. It’s under attack by industries, by corporations. It’s under attack by millionaires who want to become billionaires and billionaires who want to become trillionaires. People are putting the economy first, and they don’t talk about the health of water,” he said.
“I see children here, and I wonder what the state of water is going to be like when they’re my age.”
A group of protesters also clashed with police after they tried to paint a mural on Wellington Street in front of the Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday afternoon. Dara Wawatie-Chabot, a land and water defender from Kitigan Zibi and Barrière Lake Québec, said in a news release that the mural was a visual representation of protesters’ demands.
“This mural shows what we’re fighting for. It’s not just a protest — it’s a vision of the future we want: one rooted in care, solidarity, and justice,” the statement read.
The Ottawa Police Service said in a social media post on Saturday afternoon that two people had been arrested for mischief and Wellington had been closed temporarily to facilitate removal of the paint.
“Reminder: Threats of violence, property destruction, or other unlawful conduct are not protected under the Charter,” the post read.
What are the demands?
The protest came after the House of Commons reconvened last Monday and ahead of the fall budget, expected on Nov. 4.
Key demands include upholding Indigenous sovereignty, increasing taxes on the ultra rich, full immigration status for migrant workers, ending war investments and ending oil and gas infrastructure projects.
Among those demands include a reversal of planned staff cuts to the public service.
Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), said the cuts may potentially be the biggest to the federal public service that Canada has ever seen.
“That’s not just cuts to jobs, it’s cuts to programs that Canadians rely on,” Prier told the Ottawa Citizen.
“We’ve seen this before. We saw this in the ’90s with (Jean) Chrétien’s 1995 budget, where people talked about a balanced budget operation. Balancing the budget meant gutting health care, meant gutting housing, meant gutting funding to post-secondary education, and those are the crises that we’re all living in right now. So we can’t let that happen again.”
Prier said the cuts would disproportionately hurt historically marginalized groups like Indigenous and immigrant communities.
“We’re hearing that (the public service) have been working on skeleton crews for a while now. This notion that the public service is bloated is a lie that the oligarchs have kind of sold to privatize the public sector … Public-service salaries, benefits, pensions, things like that are less of the operating budget (proportionally) than they were under (Stephen) Harper,” he said.
“We’re actually talking about people trying to deliver on these commitments that politicians make to Canadians being blamed for the deficit that they didn’t cause. It was tax cuts to the rich that caused the deficit. Let’s be real about this.”
Prier said he wanted Carney to hold onto election promises to cap the public service instead of cutting it as budget deliberations continue.
“If they’re serious about this and this isn’t just an ideological austerity agenda, which is what it seems like, let’s find real efficiencies in there that doesn’t mean cutting public service jobs or programs that Canadians need right in the middle of an (economic) crisis,” he said.
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