Canada

Thursday April 29th: 7pm EDT
Registration here
Organised by Science for Peace

More info here

More info here

more info here

More info here

A Fast to Stop the Jets has been announced for April 10 & 11 2021.

Across Canada, public fasts and vigils will honour those who have been killed by Canadian war planes and reject Canada’s plans to buy 88 new bomber jets. Around the world individuals are joining by fasting in their locations in solidarity.

April 10 will mark the beginning of the 10th anniversary of the Global Days of Action on Military Spending: GDAMS 2021. Our fast will join this global effort to reduce spending on war.

Register now using the form below. We will follow up with additional information shortly.
https://nofighterjets.ca/fast/

1). We will be asking our members (100’s across Canada) and all of our followers on our social media (FB, IG and Twitter) to print or create the #movethemoney sign and tag and post it.

2). We will be creating graphics to highlight Canada’s military spending and releasing them throughout the GDAMS month. We are hoping to receive recommendations from our members with credible sources on what they’d like to highlight and then creating graphics with the specific comparisons.

We are hopefully going to be putting out an article alongside debuting the campaign with information for canadians on why we must #movethemoney.

Unfortunately, the physical protesting and advocacy that we so often do is not possible so there will be, to our knowledge, no physical protesting.

Please, visit our website here.

Intergenerational evening of eating, drinking, dancing, and celebrating the unstoppable women who are working tirelessly to build a more peaceful world. VOW Peace Gala in Toronto, called on Government of Canada to reduce military spending & re-allocate to urgent environmental and social needs, to build affordable housing instead of warships, and to say no to NATO and its 2% GDP target.

Call on Government of Canada to “Reduce military spending and re-allocate to urgent social and environmental needs”. In opposition to NATO’s 2% GDP target. Organised by Hamilton Coalition and Canadian Voice of Women.

The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) held a peace vigil outside the NATO Association of Canada headquarters in downtown Toronto corner of Harbour Street and Bay Street. This action was in solidarity with the International Peace Bureau’s Global Day of Action Against Military Spending. This year is the 70th anniversary of NATO, this male-dominated nuclear-armed military alliance and Cold War relic that threatens our security. NATO members are the world’s largest weapons manufacturers and arms companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics fund the NATO Association of Canada. NATO puts intense pressure on Canada every year to increase military spending, which diverts public funding away from urgent social and environmental needs. VOW called for the Canadian government to withdraw from NATO and work through the United Nations on disarmament and the Sustainable Development Goals that will bring genuine human security. No to NATO; yes to peace, nonviolence and sustainability! Organized by the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW).

Members of Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace (NSVOW) joined the Global Day of Action on Military Spending by holding a small rally outside the Halifax Central Library on Thursday. Protesters conducted a penny poll, and participants also took pictures with banners offering alternatives to military spending. NSVOW member Kathrin Winkler spoke with the Chronicle Herald about the significance of the day (you can read the news and see a video here). The protest also aired in Global News that evening. The public was invited answer the question, “If I had 1.75 trillion dollars (approximate worldwide annual spending on the military), I would #move the money to __.”  They were then invited to take selfies with their answer.

People voted with quarters provided by the organisers what they considered the national priorities should be, the results being:

Health and Education:  73  Environment:  64

Women and Children:  52  Arts and Culture:  36

Peace:  36  Military:  2

Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace, a chapter of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, produced a video to support GDAMs, claiming to stop the Wars and to stop the Warming. Watch the video here!

A call was issued during the AGM of Conscience Canada to the Canadian government, that recently sold a new consignement of arms to Saudi Arabia, to reallocate military spending to urgent social and environmental needs.Look at the photo here!

April 28th, 2017

Organized by Science for Peace and Voice of Women, Gretchen Roedde was a guest speaker at this event for the Global Day of Action Against Military Spending.

More info here.

April 28th, 2017 Halifax
At Halifax Central Library, Spring Garden Road
Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace (NSVOW)

At the Halifax event, the public was given the opportunity to identify their priorities for taxpayer spending, by placing 25 cent quarters (supplied by NSVOW) in jars labeled:  Arts & Culture, Environment, Health and Education, Military, Peace, and Women & Children.
Read more…

April 26th, 2017.

3rd March 2017
On 3rd March the members of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) wrote a letter to the minister of the defence department Harjit Sajjan, to protest the dangerous and destabilizing Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) overseas operations and to call for a reduction of military spending and a re-allocation to urgent social and environmental needs.

Find out more…

Read the full letter…

Read Voice of Women for Peace news on GCOMS!

Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) was there at Yonge and Dundas in Toronto taking action !

Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace took to the streets to conduct the survey– “What would you do with the $1.75 trillion being spent globally each year on the military?”

What would you do with 1.7 trillion dollars?

This is what volunteers from the Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace asked people outside the Spring Garden Road Library in Halifax on GDAMS day.The local group is a branch of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace that works toward peace education. The event was organized to create public awareness about the fact that huge part of the national budget  goes to military spending, and a small amount  goes to social programs, education, environment and health. They set up a game with quarters, where people would put a quarter into jars labelled education, women and children, health, environment, arts and culture and military.Out of the 100 people who participated, more than half said they wished the money would be spent on education or the environment instead.

View here the pictures of the event.

Watch below the video from a Toronto event for GDAMS 2014 published by Science for Peace, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade and Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Read here the GDAMS 2-page hand-out for Canada, distributed by the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace.

The 6-page document explaining “Why Canada Needs to Demilitarize: Facts & Figures about the Defence Budget” with lots of graphs about spending was also produced. Read the illustrated document here.

Blog entry: 2013-04-15 Global day of action on military spending by Kathleen Walsh.

Science for Peace held a panel, watch the video here.

The Canadian Voice Of Women For Peace called on the federal Government to redirect military spending to invest in urgent human and environmental needs.

They organised a petition. VOW Peace activists collected signatures on the streets of Toronto on the Global Day of Action Against Military Spending.

Below, Nova Scotia Canadian Voice of Women for Peace activists engaged members of the public, asking them to sign the VOW petition calling for a 50% reduction in Canada’s military spending, and a redirection of that money toward the social and environmental needs of  Canadians.

Read their report here. Read the press article: Halifax groups want military spending cut back (the Herald News). Read a blog entry about this action.

Ceasefire Canada created a word cloud on the Global Day of Action on Military Spending asking this question: How would you spend the money? They received nearly 400 ideas of how Canada could better spend the money wasted on weapons and war. Read the ideas here.

Halifax Peace Coalition

Media coverage here and here.

See the joint statement here.

Science for Peace

“We held a public forum at the University of Toronto. Speakers were Bill Robinson, who had recently published a report on Canada’s military spending, John Siebert, the president of Project Ploughshares, who also spoke on Canadian military spending, and Professor Sergei Plekhanov of York University, who gave a history of global military spending over the past fifty years or so. All the speakers presented power point graphs and engaged in a question-and-answer discussion with the audience.”

A protester against military spending on the F35 outside the national election debate in Ottawa: