DEFEND Democracy – Reject the People’s Party of Canada
The far-right People’s Party of Canada has worked hard to portray itself as a friend of working people and an opponent of the wealthy and privileged. The Conservative Party has attempted the same sleight of hand, with less success, because working people still remember the Harper government and the hardship it delivered during and after the 2008-09 economic crisis.
In fact both parties represent the interests of the wealthy and privileged, and are committed opponents of working class and democratic rights and interests. Not a big surprise since the People’s Party is a far-right splinter formed when its leader, Maxime Bernier lost the Conservative Party leadership race in 2018.
The difference between them is not about policy. Both support vast privatization of public services and assets; extensive deregulation and corporate tax cuts; sharp reductions and restrictions on labour and democratic rights; and austerity measures such as those imposed by the EU and the German banks on Greece in 2010 resulting in mass unemployment, impoverishment, and a huge drop in wages, pensions and living standards. This is the Big Business agenda for Canada today.
Both have links to far-right organizations including the white supremacist Rebel News, and personalities such as Charles McVety whose scurrilous campaign against an updated health curriculum in Ontario focused on new immigrants with little English, who were told that teachers were sexual predators who would attack their children.
Both are Islamophobic, xenophobic, racist, transphobic, and threaten women’s reproductive and equality rights. Both support the gun lobby, are climate change deniers and big supporters of the oil and gas multi-nationals. Both support privatization in health care.
The difference between them can be summed up in Bernier’s call to mob violence, in the same vein as Donald Trump before and after the attack on the Capitol building last January. In a grotesque distortion of socialist ideology, Bernier tweeted out in a Kelowna video “When tyranny becomes law, revolution becomes our duty”. It is the green light to the mobs of People’s Party members and supporters, the white supremacists, the anti-vaxxer militants, Islamophobes, misogynists, anti-communists, and all manner of haters to threaten hospital workers, block hospital access and access to schools, and disrupt and dog political campaigning with threats and violence.
This clear threat to democracy and to the physical well-being of front line workers and the public is the reason why the media cannot treat Bernier and his People’s Party as just another political voice in this election campaign. Bernier is spewing hate speech and encouraging acts of hate and violence by his members and supporters including white supremacist and white nationalist groups and individuals.
This is not a political opinion, it’s a dangerous assault on working people, and on democracy. And it’s illegal under Canada’s hate laws, and should be prosecuted with the full force of the law. This should start with the PPC’s deregistration by Elections Canada.
Bernier’s tweeted message had one other purpose: it was a deliberate effort to seize on and exploit the justified anger of the unemployed, the youth, the bankrupt small business people and farmers, who are the victims of the Big Business parties and corporate profits and greed. It was an attempt to turn workers against each other, and to direct their anger away from corporations and governments onto one another, with disastrous consequences.
Far from spreading “freedom”, the People’s Party threatens labour, social, civil and democratic rights and gains secured in hard struggles over the last 75 years. What has happened in the US can happen here in Canada is this is not stopped now.
Working people have seen far-right populist and fascist movements in Canada before, and have successfully resisted and defeated them. In this election we’re seeing the face of the far-right once more. Defeating the People’s Party at the polls will set the stage for defeating them in our communities after the election.
The Communist Party stands with racialized peoples, the Indigenous nations, the Acadians, immigrants, women, Muslims and Jews, the 2/sLGBTiQ community, youth, and the labour and democratic movements in English-speaking Canada and Quebec, and all those who stand against hate. We say NO to racism and reaction!
Say NO to the far-right People’s Party of Canada.
Central Executive Committee
Communist Party of Canada