Mark May Day by building a united post-election struggle for peace and prosperity

May Day greetings to all those fighting for peace, progress and socialism around the world and here at home in Canada. We have a world to win! And an increasingly short time to do it as militarism and war take precedence globally and environmental crises expand and deepen.

In Canada our new Parliament has shifted even further to the right, dominated by Liberals and Tories who see their main job internationally to increase military spending on NATO, NORAD, on militarization of the Arctic, on fighter jets and warships, and to “create jobs” by expanding military production here at home.

This will increase carbon emissions, which the Liberals and Tories hope Canadians will ignore, and will only address high unemployment among youth if sending them off to war is viewed as “employment” (though jobs at vets’ hospitals will certainly expand).

The new Parliament is also planning to fast-track new pipelines for the oil companies, which will be a huge cost for taxpayers through subsidies to the energy monopolies. The biggest cost will be to the environment, and to the increased devastation to communities in Canada – and abroad – that expanding climate change will bring.

The new Parliament’s war agenda doesn’t stop there, however. The costs of this escalating and inflated militarism will be enormous, and they’ll be loaded onto the shoulders of the working class and working people in Canada, through cuts to wages and incomes, benefits, pensions, and privatization of universal social programs like Medicare, education and childcare, and public services like Canada Post which is being privatized now.

This is the time for workers to demand that the labour movement unite and fight to block this agenda and to protect the vital gains like Medicare, EI, pensions and so much more that militant labour struggles fought for and won over the last eight decades.

Trump’s tariffs have already led to a severe recession in auto and steel cities like Windsor and Sault Ste. Marie where autoworkers and steelworkers have already seen mass layoffs affecting whole cities. And this is just the beginning, as workers in Alliston, Oshawa, St. Catharine’s, Hamilton and elsewhere can attest. And that’s just Ontario. What about the losses still to come in BC, Quebec, the Atlantic and the prairies, and the North where the rare minerals are, that Trump wants?

Further, the pre-existing problems of high prices of food, fuel and housing; high interest rates; privatized and under-funded services and social programs; under-funded cities; and high unemployment and falling wages and living standards are still with us. This is about massive and unrestrained profiteering, which the new Parliament – like the previous one – supports whole-heartedly. That’s capitalism. And Trump and the US government are a reflection of where capitalism globally is headed if it’s not stopped by the working class and its allies – while there’s still time – in the period ahead.

These are all issues that the Communist Party was talking about in the April 28 election, advocating policies to address them and to radically change course from “austerity and war” to “prosperity and peace.” It was a message and a set of policies that a lot of voters were interested in and supported.

Unity can win!

But it’s not the agenda that the new Parliament is going to deliver. To the contrary, workers are going to have to fight harder than ever to hold on to what they have, and to stop the drive to war on workers and on the world that the new Parliament intends to deliver.

This is the time for workers to demand solidarity and unity with workers around the world that are fighting the same exploitative corporations, the same threats and attacks from US imperialism and its allies, including the Canadian government. It’s time to demand Canada speak up against Israeli genocide in Gaza and to demand recognition of a Palestinian state, to demand an end to the genocide in Sudan, and an end to the blockade of Cuba, for a start.

This is the time for workers to demand that the labour movement unite and fight to block this agenda and to protect the vital gains like Medicare, EI, pensions and so much more that militant labour struggles led by class struggle union leaders and members fought for and won over the last eight decades.

This must address the continuing exclusion of Unifor from the CLC. This is the time for unity, and a united struggle across the country and the whole labour movement. It’s also the time for labour and the democratic organizations and movements to come together, and to fight together, for the public services and social programs, for peace and disarmament, and for labour and democratic rights which are all under attack today.

As in the past, it’s militant leadership and militant struggle by labour, hand in hand with the democratic and people’s movements, that can stop the corporations and their governments in Ottawa and across Canada from carrying through the vicious corporate agenda that about to be loosed on workers and their families across the country.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada