Today, a supporter of Last Generation Canada was arrested for painting the Bank of Montreal Museum in downtown Montreal pink, while 12 others on site were searched and temporarily detained by Montreal police. The action comes one day after two Last Generation Canada supporters were arrested for blocking Rue Saint-Denis. It’s all part of a three-week action phase that also includes a planned disruption at Montreal’s upcoming F1 race. The group is demanding the Canadian government create a Climate Disaster Protection Agency to help people whose homes, communities, lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by extreme weather worsened by the burning of fossil fuels. The group wants the government to pay for the agency by levying punitive taxes against the ultra-rich, as well as fossil fuel executives and bank CEOs, who are profiting from the climate crisis. 

Starting at around 9:00 am ET, Ben Welcher, age 33, covered the front of the Bank of Montreal Museum on Rue Saint-Jacques with washable pink paint. Twelve others stood nearby as support but police soon swarmed the area. All thirteen Last Generation Canada supporters were searched and detained for over an hour, with Welcher arrested. Further details regarding his conditions are to come.

When asked what compelled them to take action, Ben said this:

“I’ve watched us go from not having a wildfire season to having towns burn down every summer and being told it’s ‘normal,’ while other countries suffer the worst flooding and droughts in recorded history. If this was our new normal, it would be awful enough – but here in Canada, we’re still polluting, now more than ever, and the devastation we’re facing today is just a wake-up call for what’s to come. We don’t even have infrastructure in place for the disasters we’re facing right now. And so I’ve been watching long enough. If politicians, new technology and polite protests were going to save us, they’d have done it already. We can still have a more prosperous world, but it’s not being offered to us unless we take it. Our politicians don’t have to listen to CEOs over ordinary people, but they do because we haven’t been exercising our power. That’s no longer something we can survive.”

Today’s action comes as devastating wildfires continue to burn across Canada. Thousands of people have had to flee their homes, with First Nation communities enduring particularly harrowing conditions. In Manitoba, two people have already died this season, while in Alberta, wildfire threats have even led to the evacuation of oil sands workers. This deadly start to another catastrophic wildfire season is a sobering reminder that the worst is yet to come. Science shows the situation will only get worse, particularly if our government keeps supporting billionaires and subsidizing fossil fuels. 

It’s clear – billionaires, bank CEOs and fossil fuel companies are waging war on humanity. The climate crisis is decimating people’s lives across the world and in Canada. Governments, oil and gas companies, and the banks that prop them up, have known about the devastating and deadly consequences of burning fossil fuels for decades. Despite this, Canada has continued to bankroll the industry. Canadians remain unprotected in the face of climate disaster. The social contract is broken – it’s time for Canadians to disrupt business as usual to ensure our protection and make the rich pay for what they’ve done.