Keegan Webster and Matthew Webber
The leader of the Communist Party of Canada was in Fredericton to deliver a wide-ranging talk at Marshall D’Avray Hall on the cold and snowy Sunday afternoon of February 23. Liz Rowley, the first woman to head Canada’s second oldest political party (founded in 1921), has been travelling across Canada to raise awareness of the political and economic challenges facing the country, discussing the need for students, people’s movements and the working class to organize and fight back.
Rowley sums up the current situation in Canada, in North America and across the world, as “dire.” The genocidal actions of the Israeli state in Gaza continue in spite of a “ceasefire” boasted by the Trump administration, which has announced plans for a policy of ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Rowley reminded her listeners that Israel has been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which hopes to send a team to Gaza to investigate further. Access to Gaza remains tightly controlled by Israel and therefore difficult.
Rowley characterized Canada’s government as a “lapdog” of the US, mainly due to the economic integration of the two countries – by which she means Canada becoming dependent on the US – after Canada signed various free trade agreements over the last few decades. Canada’s political integration with the US naturally followed, and Canadian foreign policy became more and more subjugated to US imperialism and to NATO. NATO is no longer a defensive organization, if it ever was, and no longer has any purpose other than expanding and maintaining US military dominance.
China’s growing economy and international influence challenges the US and its aspirations for unipolar world power, and this explains the Trump Administration. They are the imperialist response to a perceived threat. After the USSR was dismantled in the early 1990’s, the gloves came off US imperialism just as the mask fell off NATO. The US believed it could dominate the world unilaterally – through economic means if possible, through force if necessary. Russia and NATO agreed decades ago that NATO would not expand east from Germany. “Not one inch,” went the now infamous assurance to Gorbachev.
This agreement was hailed as an expression of goodwill between Russia and NATO members. The then leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, upheld his end of the bargain and withdrew the Red Army from Eastern Europe. The goodwill was short-lived. NATO went on to violate the agreement on various occasions, chalking up more and more members over the years. NATO now surrounds Russia, which responded aggressively to what it saw as a threatening situation in Ukraine by invading it in 2022. The situation in the Ukraine continues to develop, but it now seems that Trump wants Ukraine to negotiate a peace with Russia. The US is hungry for the resources and markets to be gained in Ukraine, and its leadership now sees war as an impediment.
Military thinkers on both sides of this conflict (in the US and in Russia) think that a “limited” nuclear conflict is possible through the “tactical” use of nuclear weapons. Rowley explained that this type of thinking is a danger to the entire planet and must be resisted. We must build a strong global movement for peace and disarmament, including in Canada. Such a movement could push back against nuclear brinkmanship, as well as NATO’s ridiculous request for member countries to increase their military spending to 5 percent of GDP as military spending. It currently sits at less than 2 percent in Canada, and the added expenditure would represent a $70 billion increase to the federal budget. The arms manufacturers and military-industrial corporations in the US would profit fantastically, but this level of funding would be unsustainable in Canada. It would necessitate aggressively cutting social spending and imposing heavy austerity measures. Rowley stated the Communist Party supports getting out of NATO, as well as other US-led military alliances such as NORAD.
Rowley points out that the military is the greatest producer of greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Instead of increasing funding to the military, Canada should increase funding to healthcare, education, poverty relief, re-industrializing Canada and job creation in secondary industries. Canada should reclaim domestic industry and manufacturing from US ownership. We need to increase wages, shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and improve working conditions for all.
Referencing a pamphlet produced by the Communist Party of Canada for its “Roll Back Corporate Prices, Roll Back Military Spending” campaign, Rowley explained that corporate profits during the pandemic increased, as did inflation (especially grocery prices and housing costs). In response to the pandemic, banks increased interest rates; now they are planning and preparing for large-scale defaults on credit card debt and mortgages. Many people lost their jobs, and now many may lose their homes.
“The future looks very grim and people are rightfully very angry,” Rowley stated, explaining that the Conservatives and Liberals, always the parties of big business, are trying to exploit this anger. Tories like Poilievre are using Trump-style demagogic tactics, scapegoating Liberals, workers and immigrants. Yet people have little confidence in the NDP. Voters identify them as part and parcel with the Liberals.
Not surprisingly, polls show a rising interest in socialism in Canada. In response, ruling-class messaging has begun to flirt with fascism to discredit the idea of socialism. Rowley cited the news website The Tyee, which recently exposed Poilievre’s rhetoric conflating socialism and fascism. Meanwhile, the Conservatives as a whole are getting in bed with religious reactionaries and fascist groups. Poilievre’s decline in the polls is due to his association with Trump and Trump-style politics after the President’s threats to Canada of massive tariffs and annexation. Voters are right not to trust him.
However, new Liberal leader Mark Carney talks about “overspending,” by which he means social spending like the CERB payments during the pandemic. Carney has said that Canada should increase “capital spending” (particularly for the military).
In terms of the upcoming federal election, the best realistic outcome at this point would be a minority government. Despite the right-wing shift of both the Conservative and Liberal candidates, a minority government can buy time to build up popular progressive movements and form a left political coalition that promotes a working people’s agenda.
In her concluding remarks, Rowley emphasized that our current crisis is the result of a global capitalist system in decay. The choice we face is a future of socialism or barbarism. She firmly believes that Canadian workers want the benefits that socialism can deliver: free education and healthcare for all, national and Indigenous rights, social equality and progress, sovereignty, and sustainable economic development. Socialism is working class political and economic power. The job of socialists is to expose the system, propose alternatives that will truly benefit people, and reverse their growing impoverishment and disempowerment. But people must get organized and confront the question of who holds power in this society if we are to challenge and change the system.
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