Miguel Figueroa, leader of the Communist Party of Canada, makes an appeal that the people can stop this dangerous legislation in its tracks.
Feb 202015
Feb 042015
Déclaration du Comité exécutif central du Parti communiste du Canada, le 5 février 2015
Partout au Canada, l’alarme est sonnée contre le projet de loi C-51, la soi-disant « Loi anti-terroriste 2015 », qui donne à l’État canadien de nouveaux pouvoirs pour criminaliser la dissidence publique. En premier lieu, il vise celles et ceux qui sont critiques des politiques d’austérité néolibérales, de la destruction de l’environnement, et de la guerre impérialiste. Ce dangereux projet de loi conservateur aiderait en outre à transformer le SCRS en une force de police secrète, échappant au contrôle du public ou même du Parlement. Le Parti communiste du Canada soutient que le projet de loi C-51 ne peut pas être « amendé » ou « amélioré »; il doit être rejeté par le Parlement, et le SCRS lui-même devrait être démantelé et non pas renforcé.
Ce projet de loi constitue peut-être la plus grave menace pour la liberté d’expression et pour les libertés civiles au Canada depuis l’époque de la Loi des mesures de guerre qui, de la Première Guerre mondiale jusqu’aux années 1970, a été proclamée à plusieurs reprises par les gouvernements afin de suspendre les droits démocratiques, permettant des incarcérations massives de groupes ethniques particuliers, de communistes, de dirigeantes et de dirigeants syndicaux et d’un large éventail de forces démocratiques au Québec, jusqu’à ce qu’elle fusse finalement abrogée par le Parlement en réponse à une large pression publique. Continue reading »
Feb 042015
Visit our anti-Bill C-51 campaign site here.
Across Canada, alarms are being raised against Bill C-51, the so-called “Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015” which gives the Canadian state sweeping new powers to further criminalize public dissent. In the first place, it targets those critical of the corporate agenda of austerity, environmental destruction, and imperialist war. This dangerous Tory legislation would help further transform CSIS into a secret police force beyond the control of the public or even Parliament. The Communist Party of Canada warns that Bill C-51 cannot be “amended” or “improved”; it must be rejected by Parliament, and CSIS itself should be dismantled, not expanded.
This Bill constitutes perhaps the most serious threat to free speech and civil liberties in Canada since the era of the War Measures Act, which was proclaimed by governments several times from World War One to the 1970s to suspend democratic rights, including mass incarcerations of targeted ethnic groups, Communists, trade union leaders and a broad range of democratic forces in Quebec, until it was finally repealed by Parliament in response to massive public pressure. Continue reading »
Nov 182014
In the wake of the violent events in Ottawa and Quebec last month, the Communist Party of Canada warned against attempts to use such incidents to impose new restriction on civil liberties and democratic freedoms. The Harper government is clearly adopting such a strategy, in an effort to intimidate Canadians against expressing criticism of Conservative policies, by expanding the frightening scale of mass surveillance of the activities and communications of the people of this country. We join with many others to warn that this trend towards police state tactics will have dangerous consequences for democracy and freedom.
Instead of adopting an “evidence based approach” to dealing with violent crime, the Harper government is engaged in a blatant attempt to frighten Canadians into silence. The Conservatives strategy is to use various hot-button issues to head off serious debates, such as their claim that terrorist threats pose a mortal danger to the entire country, or that “cyber-bullying” can only be stopped by giving police sweeping new powers to monitor virtually all online communications. Continue reading »
Oct 232014
The Communist Party of Canada warns against the attempt by the federal Conservative government to use the recent events in Ottawa and St‑Jean‑sur‑Richelieu as justification to restrict civil liberties and democratic freedoms. Even before these unconnected incidents the government had been preparing new so‑called “anti‑terrorism” legislation to expand the legal scope for CSIS and other security agencies to spy on the activities and communications of Canadians, and to allow “disruption” tactics – a euphemism for the authority to arrest anyone considered a potential threat, even those who have not engaged in any illegal activity. This chilling legislation will be brought before Parliament shortly, perhaps in an even more draconian form.
Ever since taking office, the Harper Conservatives have directed state security agencies to profile and focus on those they consider “enemies”, such as environmentalists opposed to the expansion of the tarsands and hydraulic fracking, Aboriginal movements which resist the destruction of their traditional territories by governments and resource corporations, or groups CSIS vaguely labels “multi‑issue extremists”. CSIS already operates beyond the reach of Parliament and exists to suppress political dissent. The expansion of police state powers will accelerate this drive to label Canadians as “potential terrorists,” creating a basis for even more severe police spying and repression against, the labour and democratic movements and grassroots opposition forces. Continue reading »
Sep 242014
The Communist Party of Canada opposes the renewal of imperialism’s war in Iraq, under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State (IS), and calls for Canada’s immediate and complete withdrawal from the US‑led military intervention.
The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect is being fed to the people of Canada in order to justify a new war in Iraq. In this narrative, intervention is promoted as necessary to save the people of Iraq and Syria from IS terrorism.
But this argument obscures the fact that the main and most immediate threat to peace and to the people of the Middle East is from imperialism. It was the United States, together with its allies in NATO and Israel, who spearheaded the invasion of Iraq in 1990, and who carried out the murderous sanctions through the decade of the 1990s, and who again invaded and occupied the country from 2003 on. It is the imperialist states who have waged a terrorist war against the people of Syria, in which 100,000 people have died and millions displaced. It is imperialism that has supported Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the apartheid policies against the Palestinian people, and Israel’s repeated military strikes against Gaza. Continue reading »