U of T students and members of the community joined to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty. Ministers from the 34 countries of the Americas (excluding Cuba) met in Ecuador last Thursday to take part in the seventh summit on the FTAA. The protestors said the FTAA is a threat to publicly administered services, including education.

U of T’s involvement was organized by a committee including representatives from APUS (Association of Part-time Students), ASSU (Arts and Sciences Student Union), SAC (Students’ Administrative Council), GSU (Graduate Students Union), and individual students.

Emily Sadowski, president of APUS, said that resisting the FTAA is relevant to all students, not just because of its potential impact on education, but as citizens in general.

The approximately 200 people who took part in the march gathered outside of Simcoe Hall, where a Governing Council meeting was scheduled to take place. Sadowski said the meeting spot had a special connection to the protest. “We wanted to show the similarities between the way that Governing Council rules U of T and the way that the ministers rule over the countries, in terms of the corporate connections—so who’s making the decisions and who are they benefitting?

“The Governors (at U of T) who are tied with banks, financial institutions, and other corporations are directly benefiting from things like raising our tuition.”

A small contingent of students also joined the protest to express their support for capitalism and free trade. They carried placards with slogans saying “Capitalism is Sexy!”

The students said they were protesting to detract from the campaign urging students to join the Canadian Federation of Students.

Kiley Thompson, a SAC representative for University College, said, “We’re basically here because we don’t support the CFS agenda against free trade. They try and cloak it by saying that somehow it’s against our education and it’s going to privatize and deregulate our education…and whatever odd claims they have…We’ve had NAFTA in place for ten years and our public education is still standing.”