MONTREAL—Montreal’s protest movement has found its next target: an international economic conference featuring Stephen Harper.

Student and anti-capitalist groups are staging demonstrations outside a downtown hotel that is hosting the International Economic Forum of the Americas, starting Monday.

Riot police and protesters have already assembled outside the hotel — where Harper and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney are scheduled to address the conference Monday.

Protesters are heckling delegates as they enter through the police line, telling attendees to “go home” and calling them “fascists.”

The crowd over the lunch hour remained relatively small, with only a few dozen protesters. However, there was heavy security inside the event; even journalists covering the prime minister’s speech were to undergo searches by the RCMP.

The protests followed Montreal’s tumultuous Grand Prix weekend which saw vandalism, arrests and clashes between riot police and anti-capitalist demonstrators.

A conference speech scheduled for Wednesday by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is also expected to draw the ire of protesters.

An anti-capitalist group blames Greenspan as being largely responsible for the global economic crisis.

Delegates at the four-day economic conference include political, economic and regulatory officials from around the world.

Montreal’s student protests, which have lasted four months, have swelled to include various causes — including opposition to capitalism.

A few dozen protesters amassed outside the gate to the hotel Monday. Riot police have created a human wall to keep demonstrators on the hotel grounds.

Two mini-buses full of more-heavily-armoured provincial police are waiting outside the gate.

Protester Priscillia Laplante believes the Harper government’s policies are squeezing poorer people in Canada.

“He goes completely against what the middle and lower classes believe right now,” said Laplante, who also wants to send a message to conference delegates and Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

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“It’s no longer just a question of education, it’s a question of rights, it’s a question of social class and we believe it should be fair for everybody.

“I think that if we look for solutions together, it will be possible to find them.”

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