On October 24 and 25, the G20 will be meeting in Montreal. Regrouping the G7, certain key emerging markets (e.g., Brazil, India and China), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the G20, a Paul Martin initiative, “promotes discussion, and studies and reviews policy issues among industrialised countries and emerging markets.

Considering who we will be hearing from during the meeting, Alternatives decided to ask some people whose voices will not be heard what they would say if they had 20 seconds to speak to the G20:

Hector de la Cueva lives in Mexico City and represents the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade.
Everybody is talking about the fight against poverty, but the irony is that while institutions, governments and so on talk about fighting poverty, poverty levels continue to grow.

We need to confront poverty and inequality, and not just make speeches and talk about so-called anti-poverty programs, but take serious measures to prevent poverty, and not have agreements that prolong social exclusion. This means we need to start re-examining the institutions and agreements that are doing everything they can to increase poverty.

Gaetan Heroux works with the Ontario Coalition against Poverty – OCAP.
I would spend my 20 seconds at Dundas and Sherburne (a disadvantaged section of Toronto), talking to poor people. I have no desire to speak to the G20, I think it’s a wrong tactic to think you can walk into that room by yourself, or maybe representing a few people, and pretend that you can influence that process. So, my energy is much better spent at Dundas and Sherburne, going to a drop-in and talking to people about what is going on in their lives, rather than going and talking to these men.

Gerard Greenfield is a labour research activist based in Hong Kong.
Since the mid-1990s, The Financial Times has been running full-page advertisements, which read: “Capitalists of the world unite.