MONTREAL — “There are growing conflicts among rival capitalist powers, which are marching humanity toward a third world war, and Canada’s imperialist rulers are an important part of these sharpening clashes,” Joe Young, the Communist League candidate in the recent Quebec elections, told a Militant Labor Forum here Oct. 17.
“The rulers in Ottawa have massively increased military spending in preparation for future wars. Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney acts to defend the interests of Canada’s capitalist class, at home and abroad. We need to build a working-class party to lead working people in their millions to take political power out of their hands,” he said.
Canada’s rulers are in a trade war with their counterparts in the U.S., a declining but still the most powerful imperialist power. Ottawa is responding to Washington’s tariffs with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. They’re looking to find new trading partners to reduce Canadian capital’s dependency on the U.S.
Over 70% of Canadian exports and 46% of its imports come from trade with the U.S. Deepening international competition and the trade war were important factors in the loss of 68,000 jobs in Canada in September, 49,000 of them in Quebec.
Canada’s rulers have used this tariff war to foster Canadian nationalism. Both Carney and Conservative leader Pierre Polievre spoke at a number of chauvinist “Canadian unity” rallies leading up to the Oct. 19 Alberta referendum. One item there calls for organizing a vote on independence for Alberta, which was voted down. Carney said, “Canada is facing real threats to our economy, to our security, to our way of life. We have to be strong and we are stronger together.”
“But there is no we! There is them and us,” Young explained. “Canada is a class-divided society. The 1,200 steelworkers on strike at National Steel Car for safer working conditions, where seven workers have been killed on the job since the 1970s, are taking on a Canadian boss, Gregory Aziz, not one from the U.S.”
Our unions need to be internationalists, Young added, pointing to the example of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 in Alberta, which sent a powerful message of solidarity to 3,800 striking UFCW members at JBS meatpacking in Colorado. It said that the union stands “shoulder to shoulder” with “our brothers and sisters in Greeley,” and “we know when workers unite across borders, we are strongest together.” This is the kind of solidarity that’s needed.
Cross-class Canadian unity is a trap
On Sept. 21 Carney’s Liberal government in Ottawa introduced the “Building Canada Strong Act,” known as Bill C-39, which has now passed second reading with the support of the Conservatives. It would expand the circumstances under which the federal labor minister can act unilaterally to end a strike or lockout, a further attack on the right to strike. Over the last couple years, Ottawa has moved to shut down important strikes, including in rail, on the docks and more.
On Oct. 13 the Canadian Labour Congress organized a town hall meeting by Zoom to help prepare a fight in defense of the right to strike. Two days later there were actions in some 21 cities across Canada. “This is an important fight that will continue, whatever happens with Bill C-39,” Young said. “But the CLC’s support for Carney’s ‘Team Canada,’ a class-collaborationist alliance of bosses and labor, deals a blow to the fight to defend the right to strike.”
With this election, the Parti Quebecois returned to power in a minority government, with only 28% of the vote, the lowest vote for a ruling party in Quebec’s history. People voted for the PQ despite its position for independence, which polls show is only supported by 30% of the population. Workers were voting against the highly unpopular Coalition for Quebec’s Future, which received only 13% of the vote and failed to win a single seat in the legislature. But, Young pointed out, voting for capitalist lesser evils is not the way forward for working people. Instead, we need to build a party of our own.
“Because of the victory won by successful mass struggles opposing discrimination against French-speaking Quebecois decades ago, the demand for Quebec independence today is no longer a fight against the national oppression of the Quebecois. Rather, it is an attempt to further the interests of a layer of Quebec capitalists and middle-class hangers-on. The chauvinist PQ campaigns call to slash immigration to Quebec in half, falsely claiming immigrants are responsible for the shortage of housing and needed social services, is reactionary and divisive.”
The CL campaigns for permanent residence for all immigrants in Canada and an end to deportations. “We demand a massive government-funded public works program to create jobs to build housing, schools, hospitals and provide the social services working people need,” Young said.
“Election campaigns like the one the Communist League ran this fall, where we campaigned not only in Quebec, but across Canada and in the U.S., are a step toward building the internationalist working-class party we need,” he said.
“There is a federal by-election coming up in the Montreal area and the CL plans to run. Join us to build the Communist League!”