Petition Launched Against Kanye West Pan American Games Headlining Gig

The Stronger hitmaker will take to the stage alongside rapper Pitbull and Toronto native Serena Ryder at the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto on 26 July (15), marking the end of 20 days of competition between athletes from the Americas and the Caribbean.

Following the announcement about West's gig earlier this week (13Jul15), critics took to social media to share their outrage at organisers for not recruiting Canadian artists for the event, and one has now launched a petition on Change.org to have him replaced.

The petition reads: "The Toronto Pan Am Games have proven to be very important for Torontonians this year and have triggered a unified sense of pride in our city. It would only be just to ask a proud Torontonian (or even a Canadian for that matter) in the music industry to perform...

"The options for Toronto artists are far from limited and choosing someone like Kanye West raises several concerns among the people. Why was a local artist or group not chosen and supported, just as our local athletes are throughout the games? Toronto Pan Am Games organising committee please reconsider your decision as we will NOT be attending Kanye West's show."

The petition has garnered over 30,000 signatures.

Saad Rafi, chief executive of the Toronto host committee, has defended his decision to have West perform, telling Canadian newspaper The National Post, "I wouldn't actually call Pitbull and Kanye West American artists. These are international artists, and the world has embraced these artists. You don't sell billions of records and billions of views without appealing across a broad, broad spectrum."

The 2015 Pan American Games kicked off on 10 July (15).

Kanye's headlining performance at last month's (Jun15) Glastonbury festival in England also led to a petitioned call to find another bill topper, but organisers refused to heed the growing opposition to their choice of act and the gig went ahead.