MONTREAL — Katy LeRougetel, a bakery worker and Communist League candidate in the Oct. 3 Quebec provincial elections for the riding of Anjou-Louis-Riel, and fellow CL candidate Félix Vincent Ardea in the Montreal riding of Marquette, have been knocking on workers’ doors and joining labor actions like Labour Day in Montreal and Toronto Sept. 5, introducing the party’s campaign.
They plan to turn in petitions to get on the ballot in the next few days, already having gathered more than the requirement of 100 signatures each.
LeRougetel and campaign supporter Mark Grieve met Kevin Watson at Toronto’s 150th anniversary parade. An elementary school teacher and union member, Watson talked about the 2020 teachers strike that was cut short as the pandemic hit. Although class sizes were to be capped, “they keep increasing to 30-plus students, and teachers wages have not gone up as much as the rate of inflation,” he said. “If we’re to win on big social issues like these,” LeRougetel said, “unions need to draw other working people into the fight.”
“No matter who you vote for, you vote for the bosses,” Jacques Langlois, a union worker in a galvanizing plant, told CL campaigner Annette Kouri as he signed to put LeRougetel on the ballot Sept. 3 in Anjou. “And they don’t like unions. It’s gotten worse in the plant since the company was bought out by Americans.”
“I’ve worked for U.S. and Canadian bosses — at Bombardier, for example — and they’re both bad,” replied Kouri.
“True, in the end they’re all the same,” Langlois agreed. Pointing to the French-language edition of In Defense of the US Working Class, he said, “I’ll take that book. We have people from all over the world where I work, I’ll take it in.” He doesn’t read English but got the Militant to take in for co-workers.
Campaigners raised their support for Ukrainian independence against Moscow’s invasion, and explained their opposition to sanctions on Russia. Some at the Montreal Labour Day action voiced support for Russia, saying it was defending itself against NATO, Vincent Ardea told the Militant. He said, “Supporting the Ukrainian people’s fight for their self-determination is crucial to building a revolutionary workers’ party today.”