By Adrien Welsh
The political winds have certainly turned the tables on this federal election.
In autumn, the only hope for the Liberal Party seemed to lay in buying time before a House of Commons that was ready to throw it out with the garbage. Pierre Poilièvre and the Conservatives, on the other hand, were eager for an election as soon as possible.
Against that backdrop, Justin Trudeau announced both his resignation and the prorogation of Parliament until March 24. This maneuver, which most perceived as clumsy, was deliberately engineered. The Liberal’s best hopes are linked, on the one hand, to a new leader and, on the other, to the situation created by Donald Trump’s arrival in the United States. The latter has galvanized Canadian nationalism and, above all, presents the Conservatives and Poilièvre as Trump’s fifth column.
It’s a gamble that seems to have borne fruit. Banker Mark Carney, voted the best candidate to face Trump, raised nearly $2 million in his campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party – promoting an all-Conservative socio-economic platform.
So, with the tables turned – the predicted moment of Conservative hegemony having clearly dissipated – the Liberals were tempted to call an election sooner than expected.
But does this mean that the working class has to choose between one or other of capital’s competing options? Each of these options is only looking to shift the burden of capitalism’s crisis onto the working class. And the more that crisis deepens, the more apparent becomes imperialism’s panicky agenda, and the more blurred become the nuances between Liberals and Conservatives.
The NDP continues to play its milquetoast role of “guarantor of social peace,” while the Green Party is calling for a shift away from social issues and towards an environmentalism that is inoffensive to the bosses but certainly anti-worker. The Bloc Québécois is reaching for the nationalist one-upmanship card – regardless of whether the rhetoric is left-wing or right-wing – to satisfy the interests of a section of Quebec capital that sees independence as the best avenue to secure its fortune in the North American imperialist stronghold.
But working people don’t have to settle for such a limited approach. We don’t have to negotiate the weight of our chains, especially when it’s clearer than ever that capitalism has run its course. In an imperialist regime, no section of capital is patriotic. No section of capital is progressive. And no conflict between the largest corporate monopolies can be resolved other than by war.
The way out of this capitalist crisis is through continuous and determined struggle. And as the Communist Party states, that struggle needs to be in the streets as well as in the political arena.
Building a stronger Communist Party is key to this.
Clarté
Translated from French by PV staff
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