Participants in the meeting discussed struggles that they have been involved in over the past months by farmers, meat packers, hospital workers, bus drivers, and workers in the bakery, refinery, chocolate, and household appliance industries. Members of the Communist League and YS in attendance came from Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

These are examples, Communist League leader Michel Prairie said in his report to the meeting, of the "resistance of working people to the productivity drive of the bosses and the austerity drive of the provincial and federal governments. These struggles take place in the context of a slowdown in the world capitalist economy and the political instability that engenders. We are finding that the branches of the Communist League and its organized units in the trade unions have more opportunities to recruit youth and workers to the Communist League and Young Socialists," he said.

"Our experience shows that workers on the picket lines and many working people and youth who are involved in social movements welcome the participation of communists as co-fighters in their struggles. They welcome not only the solidarity we bring but the working-class perspective on a broad range of questions as well as Pathfinder books, the Militant, and Perspectiva Mundial, which explain the lessons of more than 150 years of struggle of the modern working class," he said.

Today a large majority of members of the party in Canada are either garment workers or meat packers. Those who work in unionized shops are members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). In addition to these industrial union fractions, branches of the Communist League are taking steps to establish themselves in workers districts in the three cities, together with local chapters or members of the Young Socialists in the area.  
 
Ruling class preparation
In his report Prairie reviewed some of the recent developments in bourgeois politics in Canada, particularly the deepening crisis of the right-wing Canadian Alliance, which is the official opposition in the federal parliament. There is also a developing discussion in the trade union officialdom and academic circles over the future of the New Democratic Party (NDP), a union-based social democratic organization.

In the November 2000 federal election the Liberals won a third consecutive term, capturing 173 seats in parliament. The Canadian Alliance won 67 seats, a gain of 9. The NDP lost six seats, barely holding onto its official parliamentary status with 15 representatives elected. Its share of the popular vote dropped to 8.5 percent. And now, in the context of a bitter struggle within the Alliance over efforts to oust rightist leader Stockwell Day, polls show that support for the Alliance has dropped to about 8 percent.

"The move within the Canadian Alliance to oust Stockwell Day, as well as the splintering of the Alliance, is not generated by the current level of working-class resistance," said Prairie. "The Canadian Alliance crisis reflects the differences among Canada's capitalist rulers about how far and how fast to move against the democratic rights, wages, and benefits of working people as they prepare for the bigger class confrontations that they can see are on the horizon.

"At this time, the major capitalist families don't need an openly antiabortion, anti-immigrant, pro-death penalty, and anti-Quebec party whose claim to fame is a leader like Stockwell Day who pushes the culture war against the rights of women and other basic rights won by working people. The Conservative governments in Alberta and Ontario and the Liberal government in Ottawa are doing a satisfactory job for the ruling class already. That's the underlying cause of the Alliance crisis.

"The growing discussion over the future of the NDP has another source," Prairie continued. "It directly reflects the ongoing weakening of the trade unions in Canada. "While the resistance of workers is increasing," explained Prairie, "there is not yet a broad radicalization among workers and working farmers. That will come as the rulers inevitably intensify their attacks.

"As the unions weaken," he said, "the influence of the union bureaucracy within bourgeois politics is less than it has been in decades. As a result, the NDP--which at bottom is the political arm of the trade union officialdom and has sharply shifted to the right under the productivity drive of the ruling class--is in decline."  
 
Branches and union fractions
"The Communist League needs to move forward on two fronts at the same time," Prairie explained in his report. "We have to strengthen the political work of our union fractions and at the same time build branches that establish a base in workers districts through selling subscriptions to the Militant, setting up regular street-corner tables of revolutionary literature and going door to door, and make the Militant Labor Forum a weekly political event. The Pathfinder bookstores and the activities organized out of them to link up with the resistance in the city and the region are the bedrock of a workers district branch, which at bottom is a political, not a geographical perspective."

Participants in the discussion gave numerous examples of the work of the Communist League in building such branches and union fractions today.

Joe Yates, a leader of the party and a garment worker, reported that in Vancouver the Communist League and Young Socialists have broadened their political reach in the city, knowledge of the labor movement, and collaboration with a layer of workers by consistently relating to strikes of meatpacking workers and bus drivers in the area.

At Superior Poultry, a months-long strike forced the company to recognize the UFCW and sign a contract. Meat packers at Fletcher's Fine Foods fought the company's drive to impose a 40 percent wage cut for almost a year. Workers from both of these strikes, as well as striking bus drivers, have spoken at the Militant Labor Forum in Vancouver on their struggles. Several striking bus drivers have become subscribers to the Militant and three have purchased the new Pathfinder book Cuba and the Coming American Revolution by Socialist Workers Party leader Jack Barnes.

Some of these workers also attended a class sponsored by the Communist League and the Young Socialists discussing the article by Karl Marx, Trade Unions: Their Past, Present, and Future. As a result of this effort communist workers in Vancouver have recruited a new member to the Young Socialists and a new member to the national supporters formation of the Communist League.

"Is there something special about Vancouver?" asked Michel Prairie. "The answer is no. By linking up with working-class resistance through consistent and determined work the Vancouver branch is transforming itself. This can be duplicated in every other city in which there is an organized communist presence."

From Montreal, meat packer and UFCW member Al Cappe reported on discussions he has had on the job which led to six young co-workers buying copies of the French-language edition of the Pathfinder pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism, one copy of the Marxist magazine Nouvelle Internationale, one copy in French of Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, and one copy of the pamphlet Why Working People Should Support the Fight for Quebec Independence.

"The day-to-day resistance on the job makes co-workers search for answers they can only find in books and pamphlets like those distributed by Pathfinder," said Cappe. "Young rebels are attracted to our ideas if we present them clearly and forthrightly."

Toronto meat packer Tony DiFelici reported that some co-workers at Quality Meats where he works have experience in the fight against the military dictatorship in Burma and are attracted to strikes and struggles in Canada. "Last week one co-worker went with me to the picket line at Christie Biscuits. He told the workers that we should strike Quality Meats when our contract expires," he said.

While there, Christie strikers said 70 workers on strike against Petrocan recently came to the picket line to show their solidarity. These unionists reported that workers at the Christies plant in Montreal have refused overtime in support of their walkout. Visits by communist workers to both picket lines, and articles in the Militant on the two strikes, have contributed to the collaboration between the strikers.

Socialist worker Michel Duclos, who works as a sewing machine operator in Toronto, said by setting up regular literature tables in the workers district where the Communist League branch is located, party and YS members have increased sales of Pathfinder and the Militant and boosted attendance at the weekly Militant Labor Forum. The area is multinational and includes workers' neighborhoods, a shopping district, and industrial areas.

"Yesterday I participated at one of these tables," said Vancouver YS leader and meat packer Gabriel Charest. "It's great to be able to point down the street to the Pathfinder bookstore to encourage workers to visit it."

Sylvie Charbin, a UNITE member from Montreal, explained that workers at Jack Victor where she is employed organized to make the company put guards on some sewing machines after one worker seriously injured her foot when scissors from a machine fell on her. "This kind of resistance generates discussion on broader questions," Charbin said, describing how a co-worker who sharply disagrees with her on why civil rights for gay people are important for the unity of the working class as a whole came back to her asking for more discussion. "This shows the space that exists inside the working class for civil discussion of controversial questions," said Charbin.  
 
Publishing the books workers need
Young Socialists are working with the Communist League to build a broad delegation of youth from Canada to attend the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students being held in Algiers, Algeria, August 8–16. Thousands of youth from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, and the Pacific will be attending, including hundreds from revolutionary Cuba. Discussions will center on the multifaceted international struggle against imperialist domination.

"We have been able to work with a number of youth who are organizing to raise the substantial funds needed to fly to Algiers," reported YS leader Natalie Stake-Doucet, a garment worker and UNITE member in Montreal. "A number of fighters who are attracted to this kind of anti-imperialist festival, will be attracted to the working-class perspective of the YS," she pointed out.

In his report Michel Prairie, who is editor of Pathfinder's French-language publications, described the "explosion" of French-language titles being produced by Pathfinder through the efforts of an international team of volunteers. Three French-language pamphlets are being produced in time for the World Youth Festival. One is Pathfinder Was Born with the October Revolution by Mary-Alice Waters, which is already available in English and Spanish. The book describes the historical continuity of Pathfinder's publishing program.

The efforts of the Pathfinder volunteers will also ensure that French-language readers at the Algiers youth festival will be able to purchase some of the most important speeches and writings of Thomas Sankara, the central leader of the 1983 Burkina Faso revolution in Africa. Sankara was assassinated in a pro-imperialist coup. Volunteers are currently preparing the French and Spanish-language editions of Sankara's Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, previously published in English. And they are working on a new French-language pamphlet, We are the Heirs of the Revolutions of the World by Thomas Sankara, containing a number of his most important speeches.

Pathfinder's French-language publishing program is central to the building of the communist movement in Canada. Volunteers in France are also part of the international team. Prairie reported on recent sales efforts by volunteer Pathfinder sales representatives to get Pathfinder's 23 French-language titles into bookstores in Paris and other major French cities.

"Volunteers in Canada have also dramatically increased sales of Pathfinder books to a range of bookstores across the country in the first half of this year," Prairie said. "Sales have more than doubled this year in comparison to this time last year. Sixty-percent of the sales are to stores other than Pathfinder bookstores, many of them for the first time in Quebec. This is a reflection of the increased thirst for these books by workers, farmers, and youth, and of the effort by a new layer of volunteers to sell them to commercial bookstores."

The evening preceding the conference many of the participants attended a fund-raising barbecue to mark the beginning of the Communist League's fund drive. The drive, with a goal of $7,000, will help ensure the maintenance of the French-language publishing program and the League's international work. It will conclude on September 16. The 30 people attending the event contributed $350 towards the goal.

Natalie Stake-Doucet is a sewing machine operator and a member of UNITE in Montreal. John Steele is a meat packer and a member of the UFCW in Toronto.  
 
 
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