MEDIA RELEASE: Thousands of Canadian Youth Protest For Third Time

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 27, 2019



CANADA: For the third time this year, on Friday, May 24, thousands of Canadian students participated in a national day of climate action. Globally there were 1879 strikes in 133 countries. Canadian youth from coast-to-coast-to-coast struck again – this time in 104 locations – which meant Canadian youth were responsible for more than 5% of all strikes globally and it was not even our “official” day of our action.

The October 2018 IPCC Special Report on 1.5 C shows that limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C is achievable but will require unprecedented transformation in all aspects of our society. The world has already warmed by one degree. Currently, with business as usual actions, the world is on track to a world warming above 3C.

The youth are literally fighting to save their future.

We are in a climate emergency. Currently, over 10 million Canadians live in cities and municipalities that have declared climate emergencies. And now, parliamentary motions have been introduced in Ottawa in the House of Commons and by the New Democratic Party of Ontario at Queen’s Park for Canada and Ontario respectively to declare climate emergencies.

FridaysForFuture is a movement that began in August 2018, after 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis. She posted what she was doing on Instagram and Twitter and it soon went viral. On the 8th of September, Greta decided to continue striking every Friday until the Swedish policies provided a safe pathway well under 2 C and line with the Paris agreement – and the Fridays For Future movement was born.

Fridays For Future Canada History: Canada was the third country in the world and the first country in the Americas to conduct a Fridays For Future strike in solidarity with Greta Thunberg on Friday, November 2, 2018. Because there was no “map” at the time, volunteers fund-raised to build this website to connect Canadian youth strikers to each other and the media in preparation for the 2018 international climate negotiations and beyond.

During the international climate negotiations on Friday, December 7, 2018 there were nine youth groups in Canada conducting Fridays For Future strikes. Canadian youth strikers in Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Sudbury made it onto the CBC National News and Greta shared her appreciation on Twitter and Instagram.

Many youths in Canada are now striking regularly. For the first global strike of 2019 on March 15, there were 85 strikes in Canada with 150,000 youth on the streets of Montreal. There were 98 strikes for Canada’s national strike on Friday, May 3, 2019.

For more details about Fridays For Future Canada’s history please scroll through our Facebook page.

Fridays For Future Canada is a grassroots organization and is 100% decentralized. We primarily aim to curate and connect the strikers. The youth are leading the way and the map will connect you to leaders from coast to coast to coast:

https://fridaysforfuture.ca/event-map/

Global events will occur from September 20-27, including EarthStrike – with Fridays For Future youth joining together with adults and unions to save the planet.

Greta Thunberg has empowered Canadian youth and Fridays For Future Canada is unstoppable. Go youth. Thank you adults for supporting us.

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