‘We’ve quadrupled in size’: Canada's Million Person March for Children predicts even bigger protest for parental rights

Kamel El-Cheikh, the Ottawa businessman and Muslim activist who inaugurated the Million Person March for Children (#1MillionMarch4Children) in September 2023, is deep in the planning stages for a second annual march, planned for Sept. 20. He told The Post Millennial in an exclusive interview that he fully expects to exceed the 1.5 million that he says the march attracted last year from coast to coast in Canada.

El-Cheikh organized the demonstration to support parents who are often frustrated with school boards and governments that push gender ideology and the LGBTQ agenda on children and won’t even allow parents to be informed if their kids decide to change their pronouns.

Some provincial governments are pushing back against the gender ideology agenda. Last February, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced that teenagers under 17 would no longer be able to access sex change operations and those under 15 would be banned from being prescribed puberty blockers.

“Our team has actually quadrupled in size,” El-Cheikh says. “We had people working with us indirectly in New Brunswick. We didn't have officials in New Brunswick [last year]. We have officials now. We had people in Saskatchewan the same way.”

He says that much more organization should result in even more people participating on the ground. “This year, we actually have First Nations officials from BC like Colin Big Bear,” who wears “his heart on his sleeve.”

“Okay, so we are in our infant stage. We've been around for 14 months. That means we're still babies,” he says. “I like to build things because, you know, as a CEO, I take things from a business perspective, and I apply them to charity somehow. And for us, we've attracted some of the best people in the country. And this thing we want Canadians to know, this is yours. This is a non-partisan movement. We all have different opinions, but one thing we have in common is we are one nation, one flag,” El-Cheikh says.

What we're saying is, you know what, as politicians and the mainstream media and social media try to divide us based on the way we look – we all bleed the same, so let's bring this nation together.”

Last year’s march was barely reported in the mainstream media and when it was, some journalists focused on the much smaller counter-protests that promoted “gender-affirming care," otherwise known as child sex changes.

Is El-Cheikh at all worried that some participants in the march – whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish – will not focus on the purpose of the protest but get sidetracked by the war in Gaza that has been the focal point of so many often ugly protests across Canada and the United States since that conflict began on Oct. 7?

“This movement is based on Abrahamic text, and I'm saying the Torah, the three books of Moses, the orthodoxy, the Bible, the original testaments and the Quran,” El-Cheikh says, noting that it also embraces Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs because the march is “based on unconditional Canadian love.”

He was going to have a follow-up protest in late October after the tremendous success of the first march but he decided against it because there was so much anger and division over the war in the Mideast. “But we, if you look at the Bible, there are elements that always promote patience as a virtue. In the Quran, it says in the law, ‘God is with the patient.’”

El-Cheik says for a time “some immature influencers” dominated the conversation about religious unity, making extremist statements about Muslims wanting “to pass Sharia law” or making anti semitic statements about the Jewish community.

“There are young influencers that went viral because of some of the stuff [they were saying] that was incredibly ignorant; they have some growing up to do, some of them are 17 years old and just saying really mean things that I think, when they’re 25 and 30 … they will like to take back,” he continued.

“You know what? We’re a patient bunch. Let's build this movement.”

El-Cheik and his Hands Off Our Kids action team also organized a boycott of Pride flag raising ceremonies in June, now known as “Pride month” in Canada and also the beginning of what the Trudeau government now calls “Pride season.” He believes the opposition resulted in a reduced enthusiasm for Pride parades in Canada throughout the summer. 

The organization succeeded in getting 50 percent participation in schools across Canada as students either did now go to classes or refused to watch the official raising of the “Pride” flag. It all culminated in the One Nation Under God protest on June 14 where parents came to Parliament Hill to celebrate the success of the boycott and to pray for the nation.