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Carney at it again

This letter with a few KB personalizations is from World Beyond War. 

I am extremely concerned about the upcoming budget. 

Government announcements over the past few months point to a budget that will steal tens of billions of dollars from health, education, public services, and climate action, and pour it into buying American weapons systems and quadrupling Canadian military spending to record-breaking levels.

This is appalling. War causes destruction, harms ordinary people and is a terrible place to be spending money when crucial services that improve life for people are being cut. 

I am upset that this budget will bring tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country while the rest of Canadians find life increasingly less affordable; increased border militarization and attacks on migrants at a time when our neighbours to the south are being menaced by their own government and more people than ever have their homes made unlivable by climate change; and ongoing subsidies to new fossil fuel infrastructure, mega pipelines, and large-scale extraction projects, to be pushed through Indigenous lands without consent when we urgently need significant mode shift on energy and transportation. 

We need a budget that puts communities over corporate greed. 

A budget that makes bold investment in food and homes – not bombs; in welfare and healthcare – not warfare. 

We must reject a Trump-inspired foreign policy based on genocide, militarization, and warmongering, and instead fund health, education, housing, and a liveable future built on peace and liberation for all. 

Specifically, I am calling on your government to: 

1. Cancel plans to quadruple Canada's military spending. Reject Trump’s “Golden Dome” scheme to put the first missiles into space. Cancel Canada’s planned purchase of F-35 bomber jets. End the ramp up of border militarization and deportation of migrants from our communities. 

2. Make bold investments in housing, food, healthcare, transit, education, childcare, arts, and good jobs. Reverse plans to slash 15% of public spending and enact massive layoffs and job cuts. 

3. Tax mega-corporations, the ultra-rich, and the fossil fuel sector and end all corporate handouts and subsidies.

4. Fund a just transition to 100% renewable energy and end all investment in fossil fuels. Invest in a Youth Climate Corps, a People’s Power Grid to enable electrification and the scale up of renewables, and climate solutions for the global south. 

5. Fund Indigenous housing, languages, land-based economies, and climate solutions. No development or extraction without free, prior and informed consent.

Will you act with courage and reject a budget that guts our public services, attacks migrants, exploits Indigenous lands, fuels climate collapse, ramps up war and militarism, and allows Canada’s richest corporations to hoard wealth while ordinary people suffer? 

I look forward to your response.

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