Prairie, a member of the Communist League's Central Committee, explained that the convention discussion had been centered on the steps the party needs to take to organize, structure, and transform itself by "fusing with the working-class resistance and emerging groups of vanguard fighters."

Only by acting decisively to carry out this proletarian perspective, he said, could the Communist League advance the forging of "a leadership capable of leading the working class and its allies in the struggle to replace Canada's capitalist rulers with a government of workers and farmers."

Other speakers on the panel included Vuk Krcmar-Grkavac, a leader of the Young Socialists; Carlos Catalán, a sewing machine operator in the Union of Needletrades, Textile and Industrial Employees (UNITE) and a leader of the Communist League in Montreal; and John Wilson, a coal miner from the United States and a leader of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) fraction of the Socialist Workers Party. The panel was chaired by Maria Isabel Le Blanc, a leader of the Communist League in Toronto.  
 
Reconnaissance team meets fighters
Krcmar-Grkavac spent the week prior to the convention as part of a cross-country socialist "reconnaissance team" that met and talked politics with workers, farmers, and youth involved in struggles in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and northern Ontario. The number and scope of the fights the team was able to take part in show that "the ruling class is unable to carry out its stepped-up attacks on workers and farmers without provoking substantial resistance," he concluded.

In Alberta, for example, the team participated April 15–16 in rallies of 3,000 people in Calgary and 6,000 in Edmonton protesting Bill 11, the latest and deepest of the attacks on public health care by the provincial government headed by Conservative premier Ralph Klein. Bill 11 would permit provincial government funding of private hospitals and clinics. It is the most serious attempt by any government in Canada--provincial or federal--to privatize a section of the public health-care system won through the struggles of workers and farmers over decades. These actions sparked daily protests the following week at the provincial legislature in Edmonton.

The rallies were made up of workers from a wide range of unions, farmers who came by the busload from different rural communities, and large numbers of both youth and retired working people. This broad social movement is emerging in the wake of rising labor resistance in Alberta that includes strikes against the Calgary Herald newspaper, Labatts and Molsons breweries, Weyerhauser paper, and Canbra, a canola-processing plant.

In Saskatchewan, the team was invited to talk to farmers who had been part of last February's sit-in at the provincial legislature. This was one of a series of actions organized by farmers since last summer to demand emergency government aid in face of a devastating economic crisis resulting from the sharp decline in the price farmers receive for their products combined with the mounting costs of production.

Over the past year Saskatchewan farmers have organized tractorcades blocking the province's major highways, rallies of up to 10,000 farmers and their supporters, and the sit-in.

"They feel the depth of the crisis," the Young Socialists leader explained. "They know they're being robbed. And they're looking for a way to fight." Team members were able to sell five subscriptions to the Militant, two to the Spanish-language Perspectiva Mundial, and more than $500 worth of Pathfinder books to workers and farmers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. One of the farmers bought a copy of issue no. 4 of the Marxist magazine New International because she wanted to read about farm cooperatives in Cuba. She also volunteered to visit local libraries to encourage them to carry Pathfinder books.  
 
Defense of the Cuban revolution
Carlos Catalán was one of the 250 youth from across Canada who attended the 12th Congress of Latin American and Caribbean Students in Havana at the beginning of April. He reported on the growing resistance of workers and peasants in that region of the world to the devastating impact of the capitalist crisis. The Montreal garment worker pointed to the powerful attraction of Cuba's socialist revolution to fighters like these and stressed that defense of the Cuban revolution was central to the efforts to build a communist party and youth organization in Canada.

SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters spoke during the convention about the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service raid that had just taken place that morning in Miami on the home of distant relatives of Elián González, the six-year-old shipwrecked Cuban boy. The U.S. rulers have done everything they can to use this incident to attack Cuba's sovereignty and campaign against the Cuban revolution. Their actions, she stressed, can only be understood as part of "the 40-year war to the death between the dictatorship of the proletariat in Cuba and U.S. imperialism. That's why the months-long massive mobilizations of the Cuban people are so important. They have won the battle for world public opinion," she said.

Communist workers and youth have the responsibility to bring into the intense discussion provoked by the INS assault "a class perspective that working people can't get from any other source," Waters insisted. They need to explain how the imperialist rulers are taking advantage of the support among working people in the United States for returning Elián to his country to burnish the public face of the INS--the most hatred police force in the United States..

The U.S. rulers are not acting to defend the rights of Elián González, much less Cuban sovereignty, she pointed out. "They are doing it to strengthen the imperial force of the executive branch of the government so they can use the same powers against working people and fighters whenever they need to do so." She pointed to the then-impending assault on protesters camped on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a graphic example.  
 
National rights of the Quebecois
Catalán described the intense political discussion that took place among participants at the Havana youth conference when the delegates from Quebec arrived and put up the Quebec blue-and-white fleur-de-lys flag, a symbol of the fight for the national rights of the Quebecois. Their action was challenged by some delegates from other parts of Canada who thought it was provocative and divisive.

The Quebecois delegates took the initiative of calling broadly attended meetings two evenings in a row and patiently explained why they're fighting for Quebec independence, the reality of the national oppression they face, and why working people across Canada will be united and strengthened by fighting for Quebec independence, not divided and weakened as opponents claim. Catalán pointed out that the self-confidence and determination of the Quebecois youth showed the impact that the rising working-class resistance is having on the capacity of the oppressed to fight for their rights. He also said that the capacity of the Young Socialists to advance a working-class perspective within this discussion attracted a number of the participants from Canada towards the revolutionary socialist youth organization. Two joined in the process of building and participating in the conference with the Young Socialists.

SWP leader and coal miner John Wilson stressed that a key component of the SWP orienting to the vanguard clusters of workers and farmers who are resisting the bosses' life-and-limb-threatening intensification of work and brutalizing conditions has been the rebuilding of its UMWA fraction. As a result the SWP now has seven working miners, including three in union mines. Nine months ago it didn't have one.

In order to link up with the growing resistance--including in coal regions--the SWP needed to restructure the party, reducing the size of many long-standing branches of the party in major metropolitan centers while establishing branch organizing committees in six new regions of the United States.

"Through reaching into the coalfields and living in the coal communities the SWP has a completely different purchase on what is happening among working people there" and the resistance that's "welling up underneath the surface," Wilson insisted.

In the week before the convention a socialist worker from the United States and a Young Socialist from Toronto traveled to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to talk to coal miners who have been fighting attempts by the Canadian government to close the region's last remaining coal mine. Convention delegates discussed how the Communist League could reach out to coal miners in Canada, who remain an important component of the labor movement.  
 
Looking toward the prairies
Branches of the Communist League currently exist in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, the most weighty proletarian centers in the country.

Michel Prairie reported that convention delegates adopted a series of proposals to make it possible in the coming months for the League to respond more rapidly and flexibly as its branches and fractions organize to fuse energies and action with the resistance that is taking form.

The proposals included freeing up human and financial resources needed to allow the party to expand its geographic reach. The existing branches will be moving into smaller and less expensive headquarters, for example. On the eve of the convention both the Toronto and Vancouver branches made this decision. The weekend following the convention the Montreal branch moved into more sustainable premises.

Prairie explained that all three branches faced a major challenge to strengthen the League's fractions in the meatpacking division of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) and in UNITE by rapidly moving to eliminate one-person fractions and organizing political work along the axis of the fight to transform the unions into organizations for revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

This involves organized, detailed, and competent work by communist workers to link up with the ongoing skirmishes in the plants where they work and to increase the standing of the party among the most combative and class-conscious workers.

The convention also decided to take the first steps towards establishing a branch organizing committee on the prairies, where the resistance of workers and farmers has been deepening.

Setting up an organizing committee in the prairies won't transform the work of the party, Prairie explained. "It is what we do as a party to more effectively respond to the fights that is decisive," he said. The starting point of local units, whether branches or organizing committees, must be "doing whatever is necessary to deepen their participation in the class struggle."

This conclusion was reinforced by the experience of the Socialist Workers Party. In addition to Wilson, other leaders of the SWP reported to the convention how the party had begun to transform itself over the past year and a half. Beginning with an Active Workers Conference held in Pittsburgh in July 1998 the SWP had acted on the need to "structure party branches and union fractions through mass work."

Norton Sandler, organizer of the SWP's Trade Union Committee, gave a report to convention delegates on initial conclusions communists in the United States have drawn from these experiences. Sandler was one of the fraternal delegates from the SWP who participated in the convention. In addition, fraternal delegates attended from communist leagues in France, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, as well as from a group of communists in Iceland. The Young Socialists in both Canada and the United States also participated as fraternal delegates.

Sandler explained that reaching out to "places where you can see the proletarian movement in formation" took the party to places it could not have anticipated in advance. By taking steps to respond, the party became more open to seeing and being affected by the deepening resistance of vanguard layers of workers and farmers. "It's not that the class struggle, like some supranatural force, changed us," Sandler noted. "We had to act first. That's the starting point. But the more we followed the natural lines of resistance of the working class, the easier it became to see what we need to be doing to reorganize and restructure our branches and fractions as we become part of the vanguard forces that are coming together.

"And this process is only beginning," Sandler stressed.  
 
Communist trade union work
Prairie reported that to carry out this proletarian perspective the convention reaffirmed the League's effort to build national fractions in UNITE and in the meatpacking sector of the UFCW. At the center of this effort is the priority of getting members who are working by themselves into union fractions of two or three members in a workplace. The majority today are in fractions of one.

Joe Young, a worker at Agromex--a pork processing plant near Montreal, Quebec--underlined the importance of getting jobs at the heart of production: sewing machine operators in garment and cutting operations in meatpacking. This was one of the proposals adopted by the convention. Because of their decisive role in production these workers will play a key role in the labor resistance, the fight to transform the unions, and in the forging of a working-class leadership.

During the convention Young and several other delegates who are meat packers described the ongoing guerrilla resistance to the brutal working conditions and the complete disregard of workers' health and safety by profit-hungry bosses. He explained that at his workplace there are always people off work as a result of repetitive-motion injuries, knife cuts, or falling equipment. At the same time the company forces injured workers to do "light duty" to reduce its worker compensation costs.

"Because of these conditions," Young maintained, "we need to join together with our co-workers in figuring out how to wage an effective fight to defend workers' health and safety. We also need to pay special attention to working with League members injured on the job to help them be part of the union fractions we are building."

Young also sharply described the conservatizing impact on communist workers of being alone in a factory without a fraction of one or two other communist workers to collaborate with.

John Steele, a meat packer and UFCW member in Toronto, explained how just over a year ago workers in his plant at Quality Meats were forced to take a 40 percent wage cut and lose many benefits after a four-month strike.

Nevertheless, they continue to find ways to resist the employers' attacks and fight for safer working conditions.

Steele described how workers in the boning room acted to protect themselves from two ammonia leaks. The foreman refused to take any action to stop production and clear the area. In response, a number of workers left the area returning only after the toxic gas was cleared up.

The Toronto meat packer emphasized the importance of communist workers becoming more a part of these fights, which often take the form of guerrilla job actions. "Socialist propaganda on the job, while important, cannot be our starting point. We have to be at the center of the fights being waged by our co-workers," he said.

Sandler added that the end of the labor retreat has now increased the possibility and necessity of building fractions whose work is centered on the strategic goal of transforming the unions into weapons of revolutionary struggle.

"You can measure your progress toward this goal by the standing of the party in the eyes of co-workers involved in common activity with us," the SWP leader affirmed. "As we become more part of these fights our co-workers get more confidence in us, our reliability, and our competence." As a result they want to get to know the party more and to work more closely with it.

Some will decide to join. Our perspective is that "organizing committees will become branches through recruitment," Sandler noted, "not by transferring members in from other cities." More youth will be attracted to the Young Socialists and the party as they carry out this common proletarian perspective. The party will be transformed in the process.  
 
Publishing Pathfinder books in French
One of the decisions of the convention, reported by Prairie--who is director of the Communist League's French-language publication program--was to assign important human and financial resources to the translation, editing, and publishing by Pathfinder of four new "basic works of the communist movement" in French--The History of American Trotskyism, The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, and Socialism on Trial by James P. Cannon, the founding leader of the SWP, as well as In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky, one of the central leaders of the October 1917 Russian Revolution.

"Having these books in French is crucial for winning fighters whose first language is French to the communist movement and building a homogeneous party in Canada," said Prairie. "This is key to building the communist movement in Quebec, where 80 percent of the population is French-speaking."

In the past three years Pathfinder has published the French-language translations of The Changing Face of U.S. Politics and Capitalism's World Disorder, by SWP leader Jack Barnes, and the issue of Nouvelle Internationale with the SWP resolution "U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War."

Prairie stressed the irreplaceable contribution by supporters of the communist movement internationally and in Canada to keeping in print and expanding the use of Pathfinder books.

The convention reaffirmed the importance of pursuing the effort to substantially increase the number of supporters of the Communist League involved in the international effort to digitize all of Pathfinder's titles so that they can be rapidly and more cheaply reprinted and made available to fighters when needed anywhere in the world.

The crucial participation of supporters in the French-language publication program of the Communist League and in the work of Pathfinder Press Distribution in Toronto, which ensures that orders for Pathfinder books are rapidly dispatched to commercial bookstores as well as to workers, farmers, and youth who need them across Canada, is subordinate to the international priority of completing the digitization of Pathfinder books as soon as possible.

Before and after the public meeting, attractive displays of Pathfinder books were on sale in the entering hall, including copies of several newly reprinted titles with more legible fonts and in some cases redesigned covers. Two on-line Internet screens attracted dozens of participants, showing how two databases are used to organize the work of the more than 140 volunteers helping with the digitizing of Pathfinder books and with the French-language publication program.

The meeting ended with an appeal for contributions to a $10,000 Communist League Party-Building Fund launched at the convention. Rosemary Ray, who participated in the Vancouver-Toronto reconnaissance team, explained that the campaign aimed to help finance the French-language publications program, subsidize the large quantity of Pathfinder books that had been made available to participants in the OCLAE conference at less than cost, and cover the expenses of the cross-country teams that took place before the convention, as well as future teams. Some $6,070 in contributions and pledges was collected from participants at the meeting. The nine-week fund drive ends June 25.

On the final day the delegates met in a closed session to elect a new Central Committee, the body responsible for directing the work of the party nationally between conventions. The convention took the opportunity to elect a substantially renewed Central Committee.

Assigned by the convention to act as a nominations commission, the outgoing Central Committee proposed to release two longtime party leaders who had served on the Central Committee for several decades and to elect a committee that would include a new generation of party leaders. Half the members of the party's incoming Central Committee are in their 20s, and the average age of Central Committee members dropped from 54 to 38. The members of the new Central Committee are Carlos Catalán, Christian Cournoyer, Michel Dugré, Maria Isabel Le Blanc, Michel Prairie, and Joe Young.  
 
 
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