MONTREAL — “You’re the first people to do this here!” construction worker Danny Lelièvre-Copez said when Communist League candidate Katy LeRougetel knocked on his door in a neighborhood in LaSalle here March 9.
“We need to make Canada independent,” Lelièvre-Copez told LeRougetel. He said he thought that tariffs imposed on U.S. imports in response to Washington’s protectionist measures on Canadian goods “will make us stronger in the long run. We don’t even make our own bricks anymore in Canada. We need to develop industry here.”
LeRougetel said she opposed Ottawa’s protectionist policies. “Whatever decisions the government makes, it’ll be to defend the bosses’ profits,” she said. “Workers have to start from our own interests as part of an international class. There are two Canadas, one of the ruling rich and then there are the workers and small farmers who produce all the wealth.”
“So your approach is kind of unity so everyone can be happy?” Lelièvre-Copez asked.
“The Communist League says unions need to fight for a government-funded public works program to create jobs at union-scale wages to build the housing, day care centers, roads that we need,” LeRougetel said. “The CL advances a program to mobilize working people to take political power into our own hands.”
“That sounds good. But I think we need to build an independent Canada, too,” Lelièvre-Copez said, as he signed to put LeRougetel on the ballot. “Good luck with the campaign!”
LeRougetel is running in the riding of Dorval-Lachine-LaSalle. CL campaigners are in the home stretch of a campaign to get 150 signatures for each of the party’s two candidates, LeRougetel and Philippe Tessier, well over the 100 required to get on the ballot for the election that’s expected to be called in the coming days.
LeRougetel also spoke to service station worker Joanne Bolduc March 8.
“The ruling rich are at each others’ throats,” LeRougetel said. “They’re fighting over who gets to pillage which part of the world and we cannot get sucked into their wars — trade wars or military wars. The Communist League says workers need to organize in our own name.”
“Tariffs won’t help us,” Bolduc said.
LeRougetel pointed to union strike struggles, where workers “gain confidence in our own capacities as a class. But we need more,” she added. “We need a class break with the rulers and their parties, we need a party of our own to organize the fight to take political power.”
“Anything’s possible,” Bolduc said as she signed to put LeRougetel on the ballot.