Communist Party of Canada – Parti Communiste du Canada

The Communist Party of Canada condemns the federal government’s decision to increase military spending to $58 billion annually by 2029, in the process raising NATO funding from 1.29% to 1.76% of GDP, with a promise to continue the increases until military spending reaches 2% of GDP. According to the government these funds will be used to buy and build offensive weapons to be staged in the Arctic under NORAD,  to produce and export weapons, munitions and vehicles for use in foreign wars, including some that could be used by police and military at protests and picket lines in Canada. These funds could also include nuclear submarines if Canada joins the AUKUS group which is building a nuclear powered submarine base in Australia. 

Public revelations of plans by Internal Public Safety Canada to prepare for a ‘tactical’ nuclear war in Europe – or North America – hark back to the worst, most dangerous days of the Cold War and McCarthyism in Canada and the US.

In the 1950s the public was told to prepare for a nuclear war with the USSR and to protect themselves by building bomb shelters in their back yards. Many of those people who built these “shelters” also planned to mount machine guns on the top to keep out their neighbours who didn’t build bomb shelters.

In response to a call-out from the Canada-wide Peace & Justice Network and the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) in the United States, more than a dozen rallies, pickets, and seminars are taking place this week (October 15-23) in nine cities across the country.

The unifying theme of these actions is to denounce the rising tide of militarization and war around the world, to bring public action to the increasing risk of direct confrontation between the major powers and the unthinkable possibility of a thermonuclear war, with all the consequences that will entail for the future of humanity.