By Dave McKee
So, three weeks after the abrupt resignation of his Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, and amid a growing chorus of Liberal MPs and regional party caucuses calling for him to move aside, Justin Trudeau announced on January 6 that he will step down as Liberal Party leader.
Through their (current) favourite mouthpiece, Pierre Poilievre, corporate profiteers used the announcement as an opportunity to press for an immediate election – one which polls consistently suggest would be handily won by the Conservatives. This aligns nicely with the designs of much of the business community in Canada, who have been opportunistically pressing for an all-party united front to respond to Donald Trump’s tariff threat. These private monopoly corporations are hoping to consolidate and extend their power by integrating with Trump’s anti-social, anti-democratic, anti-union and warmongering policies.
However, sensing that his party will be trounced, Trudeau prorogued Parliament until March 24, rather than resuming on January 27. During that time, the Liberals will presumably select a replacement for Trudeau. Upon returning in March, we can expect the opposition parties to table a non-confidence motion and trigger a federal election.
Trudeau and the Liberal Party brass are hoping that the additional two-month break will buy them enough time to steady their floundering ship and allow them a fighting chance at the ballot box. No doubt, part of this “reset” will involve aligning their policies with the priorities of monopoly corporations, to undercut some of Poilievre’s popularity while committing to the same pro-austerity, pro-privatization agenda.
But prorogation also provides working people, and specifically the labour movement with an opportunity. It offers a nearly three-month window in which the Canadian Labour Congress, its provincial federations and affiliated unions, together with unions outside the CLC and the labour centrals in Quebec, can press hard for a political agenda that clearly puts working-class need ahead of corporate profiteering. In the process, the labour movement could set the tone for the next federal election – which we all know is coming very soon – and mobilize millions of working people into the political struggle.
Imagine the effect of a sustained all-labour campaign to highlight the need for government action to reduce prices on necessities like food, housing and fuel, and to increase incomes for working people including unemployed workers and retirees. What about a cross-country mobilization for full employment, given that two million people are still out of work and that full-time jobs are diminishing and being replaced by part-time employment? Or what of a coast-to-coast-to-coast call for real action on the housing crisis, complete with rent rollbacks, rent control, a tenants’ bill of rights, and a massive construction campaign to build millions of badly needed units of truly affordable publicly owned and publicly provided housing?
This is when we need labour to spark a real discussion about the need for strong and expanding social programs like health, education, childcare, and climate and environmental clean-up and protection. Now is the time for the union movement to call for an end to the government’s plans, supported by all parties in Parliament, to jack military spending by more than 100 percent to $80 billion in less than a decade, and in the process drain the public coffers of any capacity to protect and expand social programs and infrastructure.
It’s a big call, sure – but working people need the labour movement to move into and lead this kind of action, based on working-class politics and class struggle unionism.
If it doesn’t happen, the next three months are sure to be dominated by political discourse that sells an agenda based on austerity, militarism, privatization and growing inequality. And the election that comes out the other end of that discourse will have little on offer but more of the same, with labour and the working class left further behind.
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