By Drew Garvie
This August, the Communist Party of Canada launches a major cross-Canada campaign against militarism and austerity, mobilizing for Labour Day and the International Day for Peace on September 21. Tens of thousands of leaflets and posters will be put to use across Canada, exposing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s dangerous twin policies: a $150 billion yearly military budget (the highest since WWII) and brutal 15-percent cuts to all public services.
Carney’s plan – to hike military spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2026 and 5 percent by 2035 – squanders public wealth on fighter jets, warships and the US “Golden Dome” missile project. Simultaneously, his government imposes the deepest austerity cuts in modern history, slashing tens of billions from public services. All federal departments have been charged with reducing spending by 15 percent over three years, with half of that coming next year, except the RCMP, the Department of National Defence and Canada Border Services Agency.
These cuts dwarf Stephen Harper’s 10-percent reductions and echo Jean Chrétien’s 1990s dismantling of social programs, which sparked today’s crises in healthcare, housing and inequality.
The CPC campaign, anchored by the slogan “Peace & Prosperity, Not War & Austerity!” which the Party used in the spring’s federal election, highlights that a 75-percent reduction in military spending could fund any of the following annually: 330,000 social housing units, 3,000 primary schools, 40 hospitals or 1.3 million living-wage jobs.
“This isn’t about defence,” states the campaign leaflet. “It’s a massive subsidy to arms dealers serving US and Canadian monopoly interests in controlling markets overseas. Meanwhile our communities crumble. We desperately need housing, schools, hospitals and good jobs – exactly what this war budget steals from us. The capitalist class chooses war and profits. We choose peace and people’s needs.”
Carney’s agenda exploits Trump’s tariff threats to impose policies even Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper couldn’t implement. It was the Liberal government of the 1990s that seriously restructured the Canadian state into its current neoliberal form, but unlike Chrétien’s cuts, which reduced military spending, Carney combines austerity with unprecedented militarization.
The Communist Party stresses the urgent need to rebuild Canada’s peace movement, linking war spending to heightened risks of nuclear and world war, the acceleration of climate collapse, and the militarization of Canadian society emboldening far-right political forces.
The CPC demands immediate cancellation of military increases, reversal of all austerity cuts, withdrawal from NATO, and massive new social spending to expand health, housing, education and jobs.
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