FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hamilton, ON

January 5, 2023

PICKET OF MINISTER KARINA GOULD’S NEW YEAR’S LEVEE

The Hamilton Coalition to Stop The War (HCSW) is pleased to announce that it is planning to hold an informational picket outside of Minister Karina Gould’s New Year’s Levee this Sunday, January 8^th, at 1 pm. The picket is part of a Canada-wide weekend of protest against the announced purchase of 16 F-35 fighter jets by the Trudeau government.

In addition, the picket will oppose the Trudeau government’s continuing support (in arms, funding, and personnel) for the Zelensky government in Ukraine.

Doug Brown, a Burlington resident and co-chair of the HCSW, noted that “The Trudeau government’s F-35 purchase is a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money, for several reasons. First, these fighter jets aren’t designed primarily to defend Canada. Rather, they were developed to lock Canada into a US military command structure for offensive NATO operations overseas, just as Canadian F-18’s did so destructively in the former Yugoslavia and Libya, for example. Second, the lifetime costs of these war machines (plus those of purchasing new warships and drones) means that ordinary Canadians will be denied financial, environmental, and health security, as growing funds directed to military budgets means other budgets shrink. Third, the F-35’s enormous carbon footprint (60,000 litres of fuel per hour of flight) will effectively cancel out Canada’s ambitious carbon reduction goals.

Ken Stone, Coalition Treasurer, added that “The war in Ukraine is a US-proxy war that has been 30 years in the making – ever since the US and other NATO countries decided to break their promises to the last Soviet President Gorbachev that NATO would not expand one inch eastwards of a reunited Germany. Furthermore, the US and NATO (including unfortunately Canada) staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014 to overthrow the elected government of Victor Yanukovich, which coup put into power a government that waged war on its own Russian-speaking population in the Donbas, undermined the Minsk Agreements, and created the conditions for an inevitable war with the Russian Federation. This war, now in its 11^th month, has the potential to mushroom into a wider European war and even into a nuclear confrontation with Russia. If Minister Gould was truly ‘passionate about the welfare of Canadian families’, as she claims, she would use her influence to try to de-escalate the conflict and to engage Canadian diplomats in seeking a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine.”

He further added: “Canada needs an independent foreign policy. We should get out of NATO, the aggressive US-led military alliance that drags us into every conflict of the US empire.”

The picket will take place outside the Art Gallery of Burlington at 1333 Lakeshore Road, Burlington.

For more information, please call Ken Stone at 905-383-7693 or 289-382-9008