MONTREAL — Canada’s ruling rich and their government in Ottawa are calling on workers and our unions to support and collaborate in their trade war with Washington. But this class-collaborationist course is a deadly threat to the labor movement and must be rejected.
On April 21 Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed some of Canada’s top bosses, capitalist politicians and union officials to a new “advisory committee.” It was set up to back the government in its sharpening trade conflict with the U.S. rulers during negotiations over adjustments to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement.
The committee includes the CEOs of Canadian National Railway, the Bank of Montreal and steel giant ArcelorMittal Dofasco; top capitalist politicians from the Liberal and Conservative parties, such as Erin O’Toole, former Conservative Party leader, and Jean Charest, former Quebec Liberal premier; plus Magali Picard, president of the Quebec Federation of Labour and Lana Payne, president of Unifor.
Carney celebrated formation of the bloc, claiming “Canada is strongest when governments, workers, businesses and industry leaders pull in the same direction” as part of “Team Canada.”
Payne expressed her agreement, saying Canada needs “workers, employers and government at the table” together to “sustain and grow our country’s industrial base.”
The idea that this is good for workers and strengthens our unions is a deadly illusion. Canada, like all capitalist countries, is a class-divided society. The bosses can only thrive off our labor.
Workers whose labor power creates the profits for the billionaire families who control Canada and its economy have no common interests with the bosses and their governments. The ruling rich always act to resolve the crisis of their profit system at our expense. It’s their industries; not “ours.”
Over the last two years Ottawa has issued back-to-work orders against every major strike that has broken out in federal jurisdiction, including by rail workers, port and postal workers, and Air Canada flight attendants.
The provincial governments have joined the assault on our right to strike and other democratic freedoms we need to defend our class against their efforts to drive down workers’ wages and working conditions to defend their profits.
Class against class
The executives of Canadian National Railway and their investors have led the assault of the rail bosses against safe working conditions on the railroads, livable schedules that allow workers to have a family life, and wages that keep up with rising prices. Over 20 railway workers have died on the job since 2013 as a result of the rail bosses’ drive to prioritize their profits over workers’ safety.
Every corporate boss on Ottawa’s new trade committee acts exactly the same way — to defend their profits against workers’ demands for better wages and working conditions.
At the same time as the bosses and their government are waging war against workers and farmers at home, the rulers are preparing for wars against working people abroad. Ottawa plans to quadruple military spending over the next decade to 150 billion Canadian dollars ($110 billion) a year. Rival capitalist countries are doing the same, as they all march us toward another world war.
Today, as in the period before World Wars I and II, trade wars are a precursor to shooting wars. The capitalists relentless assaults on workers at home flow from the same dog-eat-dog thirst for profit that drives their wars abroad.
Working-class solidarity
The idea that workers and our unions should support Canada’s capitalist rulers either in their trade wars or their shooting wars is a deadly trap.
It puts working people in Canada up against our class brothers and sisters in the U.S. — potentially our most important ally — as well as the exploited and oppressed worldwide who are fighting growing attacks by the capitalist rulers.
Richelle Stewart, secretary treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 in Alberta, issued a strong and instructive statement of support for 3,800 striking JBS meatpacking workers in Greeley, Colorado, last month. She explained that working people in the U.S. and Canada face common working conditions and challenges.
From “Brooks [Alberta] to Greeley we share a commitment to safe workplaces, fair wages, and protecting the rights of every member. Solidarity is our most powerful tool,” the statement said. Union President Thomas Hesse added, “When workers unite across borders, we are strongest together.”
Joining with the bosses and their governments in conflicts with their capitalist rivals deals a body blow to that working-class solidarity, as well as to the need for the unions on both sides of the border to join together in fighting against the rulers’ attacks and charting a course independent of their governments and political parties.
Instead of joining Carney’s “Team Canada” in its trade war, the unions should mobilize working people and our unions to defend our right to strike, fight to unify the working class by taking on Ottawa’s deportation of thousands of immigrant workers each year, and stand in solidarity with working people across Canada and around the world who are fighting for their rights.
This course points us in the direction of breaking with the bosses’ lesser-evil scam of capitalist politics, and building a mass working-class party that will lead the fight in defense of our class interests to take political power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers. And replace it with a workers government that will join the worldwide fight for socialism.