MONTREAL — Campaigning together here Aug. 8-9 were Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal; Philippe Tessier, CL candidate for mayor of Saint Leonard; Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of New Jersey; and Kevin Dwire, SWP candidate for mayor of Minneapolis.
The communist candidates got a serious hearing on picket lines of striking Rio Tinto aluminum workers in Sorel, east of Montreal; locked-out aerospace workers in nearby Laval; on workers’ doorsteps and street tables in working-class neighborhoods; as well as at a barbecue organized by Guinean immigrants in Montreal.
“We get a big reception when we explain to workers this system can’t be reformed and that we have to build our own party to fight for a workers government to prevent another world war,” Kuniansky told a well-attended Militant Labor Forum the candidates addressed Aug. 9.
“With Moscow’s war against the Ukrainian people, the decisive turning point in Israel’s drive to defeat Hamas and the threat of a new Holocaust, and the imperialist powers’ tariff wars, working people sense the world is headed toward more wars.
“The decisive issue now in Israel’s defensive war is to defend its existence as a refuge for Jews and to finish off Hamas. Israel is acting despite opposition from the major imperialist powers, including Washington, Ottawa, London and Paris — which call for an end to the fighting and creation of a so-called two-state solution that would allow Hamas to live and rebuild. The imperialist clamor is backed by top layers of the Israeli military and security establishment, as well as middle-class layers in Israel that are transmission belts for Washington’s pressure.
“You have to start with what will strengthen the working class,” Kuniansky said. Dealing a death blow to Hamas and incorporating the Palestinians into Israel would create more favorable conditions for Jews, Palestinians and others to come together in common struggles, she said, and build the working-class leadership they need to advance the interests of all the toilers, including the national aspirations of the Palestinian people and the special national question of the Jews.
International working-class unity
Kevin Dwire reported that while campaigning door to door in Montreal he met an immigrant worker from Syria who supported the Druze national minority there. They have recently come under military attack by the new Syrian government, which was pushed back by Israel’s defense of the Druze. He told Dwire that he had participated in a demonstration in Ottawa to support the Druze.
“The internationalization of our class today is one of our strengths,” Dwire said. “It helps advance the labor movement.”
Winning unions to a fight for amnesty for all undocumented workers is a “fight for the soul and unity of the labor movement,” he said. “The superexploitation of immigrant labor is a key source of the bosses’ profits, as well as a tool the capitalist rulers use to try and keep the working class divided.
“We are not living in ordinary times today,” Dwire said, describing a series of initiatives taken by labor unions to help lead fights to win freedom for workers arrested by U.S. immigration cops and threatened with deportation.
No to national chauvinism, war
“Wielding tariffs or free trade, the capitalist rulers battle against each other for markets and profits. Either way, working people go to the wall,” Dwire said.
“I visited the Rio Tinto picket line with some of my co-workers a couple of weeks ago and discussed the tariff conflict between Washington and Ottawa,” said Tessier, a conductor for the Canadian National Railway and member of the Teamsters union.
“One striker told me, ‘We’ll see what happens with the tariffs. That’s the business of the bosses. We have to fight for the wages we need.’” Tessier contrasted this fighting spirit with the course of Canada’s trade union officials, who have become junior members of the Liberal government’s “Team Canada” campaign against Washington.
This same Liberal government has been making preparations for new wars, attacking crucially needed democratic freedoms that working people need, like the right to assemble, protest and speak freely, as well as the right to strike.
Since last summer, Ottawa has used anti-labor laws to order striking rail, port and postal workers back to work. “Now it has introduced the so-called Strong Borders Act, a sweeping attack on the rights of immigrants and the entire working class. And it has announced a huge increase in military spending over the next decade.”
Tessier explained that Ottawa, along with other imperialist powers, is preparing for future wars, as competition between them for the markets and resources sharpen. Ottawa’s patriotic propaganda and its protectionist tariffs is aimed against fellow workers worldwide, especially in the U.S., who are the most important and powerful ally of workers in Canada.
“The history of the revolutionary workers movement can’t be understood without seeing the importance of joint struggles by workers and other exploited producers on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border,” he said.
The candidates urged those in the audience to help build and join the communist movement, and to join in the effort to collect the signatures necessary to put LeRougetel and Tessier on the ballot for the Nov. 2 election.
“The Communist League is the only party in Canada that explains the need to build a proletarian party to organize the working class to take political power,” Tessier said. “We point to the example of the Bolshevik-led 1917 Russian Revolution and the 1959 Cuban socialist revolution, led by Fidel Castro.”
Throughout the weekend, campaigners collected 17 signatures for LeRougetel and five for Tessier. They need 81 more to hit their goal of 300 for LeRougetel and 62 more to reach the goal of 150 for Tessier. They also sold three Militant subscriptions, four books on revolutionary politics and history and a number of copies of the Militant.
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