MONTREAL — Canada’s capitalist rulers are stepping up their attacks on immigrant workers, including record-high deportations by Ottawa, as well as a series of new anti-immigrant laws.
The Alberta government of United Conservative Premier Danielle Smith has called a referendum to be held in October on proposed moves to cut government services in health and education for new immigrants. The government’s goal is to deepen divisions between those who have papers and those who don’t have immigration documents acceptable to authorities.
In a televised address Feb. 19 Smith said that immigration was “out of control,” resulting in the Alberta government’s budget deficit. She blamed immigrants for the crisis in the province’s education and health systems.
“Immigrants are our co-workers, our neighbors, and essential members of our communities,” Candace Rennick, national secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, responded the next day. “They work in our hospitals, our schools, our municipalities and our social services. They are the backbone of our economy. Scapegoating newcomers will not fix overcrowded classrooms or emergency room waiting times. Properly funding public services will.”
If passed, the referendum would impose a one-year residence in the province requirement before immigrants could qualify for any government social programs, and require payment of a “user fee” for any health or education services. It also proposes “means testing” for eligibility to access social services.
Another measure in the referendum would mandate that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents or those with an Alberta-approved immigration status would be eligible for province-funded programs. When pressed by reporters, Smith wouldn’t explain how her government will define what an “Alberta-approved immigrant” is.
Jumping on the bandwagon, Federal Conservative Party Official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre said his party planned to put forward a motion in the federal Parliament to “cut back deluxe benefits for fake refugees and deport noncitizens and foreign nationals who do crime.”
“Here’s the issue that we have,” Smith said March 7 in her regular call-in radio show. In addition to the fact “we have to provide support programs for any Canadian citizen, or permanent resident,” the province will be burdened “with the recent Supreme Court decision that just came out in Quebec” to provide services to “anyone who shows up in Alberta.”
On March 6 the federal Supreme Court overturned the Quebec government’s law excluding asylum seekers from using the provinces’ subsidized day care network for their children. The court ruling also extended day care eligibility to those without work permits.
Growing working-class resistance
The court ruling reflects working-class resistance in Canada to government attacks on working people as the rulers seek to put the growing crisis of their capitalist system on our backs. This includes attacks on the rights of workers without papers, as they look to divide the working class and set us against each other.
Last fall the Alberta government ordered 51,000 Alberta teachers back to work after a two-week strike, imposing contract terms they had already rejected. That strike, backed by a Common Front of unions, fought against overcrowded classrooms and the erosion of public education, and for wages that would allow teachers to keep up with inflation.
Their struggle won support from the vast majority of the population in an inspiring show of working-class unity.
“The unions need to build a broad campaign in defense of immigrant rights to undercut the Alberta government’s efforts to divide us and to ensure the defeat of this anti-working-class referendum,” Joe Young, the Communist League candidate in October’s Quebec provincial election, tells workers as he campaigns.