Keynote address delivered by Elizabeth Rowley, leader of the Communist Party of Canada at the occasion of the Parties 38th Central Convention in Toronto.
Comrade Chair and Comrades:
We open this convention with a warm welcome to all of the Delegates and Alternates who have traveled from all over Canada to attend this 38th Convention of our Party, which takes place just one week short of the 95th anniversary of our Party’s birth on May 28, 1921. Continue reading »
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed in early February by 12 countries, including Canada. Negotiated behind closed doors, this deal will guarantee the “right” of investors, at the expense of working people. Politicians and the corporate media claim that trade deals “create jobs” and boost tax revenues. But under capitalism, corporations (both Canadian-based and foreign-owned) boost profits by slashing employment, avoiding environmental oversight, and demanding lower taxes. The TPP requires ratification by the legislatures of all the signing countries. Mobilize now: tell Parliament to reject the TPP! Continue reading »
Email: manitoba@cpc-pcc.ca
The 3rd Memorandum debt refinancing pact signed between the Troika (European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank) and the Syriza-led government in Greece will have disastrous effects on the Greek working class and working people. It constitutes a monumental betrayal by the Syriza (social democratic) party of its previous promises to stand up to the European bankers and to end and reverse austerity imposed by previous bourgeois governments. The various attempts by Syriza (or its supporters abroad) to justify or excuse this sell-out agreement – or to deflect responsibility away from the Tsipras government in Athens – fail to alter that basic reality.
As the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) correctly noted in its recent statement, the government is essence is burdening the people with a new loan worth 86 billion € and savage measures that accompany it, such as the further reduction of the people’s income, the new heavy taxes, the maintenance of the new property tax, the significant increase of VAT on items of mass popular consumption, the reduction of pensions, the implementation of a new and worse social-security regime, the gradual abolition of supplementary assistance for poor pensioners, and the wholesale privatization of public assets.
There is a new mood in the Canadian labour movement – the mood to resist. This was the propellant at the May CLC Convention, where incumbent president Ken Georgetti was narrowly defeated, and a groundswell replaced the inertia of rest with the demand for action. The winner, Hassan Yussuff, was successful after adopting the action program of Hassan Husseini and the “Take Back the CLC” movement which captured the discontent that has been maturing for years. The defeat of Georgetti, moving Hassan Yussuff to the helm, the re-election of Barb Byers and Marie Clark Walker, and adding prominent CUPW activist Donald Lafleur, was the delegate mandate for militant action.
In Ontario, following the dormancy of the Samuelson years, the OFL under the leadership of Sid Ryan displayed concretely what can be accomplished if labour takes the bull by the horns and implements independent political action. There is no doubt that the decisive defeat of the Hudak Tories in the Ontario election was due in large part to the campaigning and mobilization of the labour movement. This was not just a defeat for a political candidate, but for the reactionary agenda of the “Right‑to‑work” pro-corporate movement. The blow struck by Ontario labour will weaken the whole anti‑labour agenda. Nevertheless labour is under siege across the country. From the BC teachers to Québec municipal workers to the Nova Scotia nurses, the pattern is the same. The corporate sponsored attack on social programs, pensions, education and Medicare is an assault on those who provide and defend those programs. Labour must not rest to relish success. The Ontario fightback should be a game plan for a major defeat of the federal Tories in 2015. Continue reading »
For Canadians to exercise genuine people’s rule over the collective life of the country, they must control Canada’s economy. Democracy therefore requires socialism: the social ownership of the machinery, raw materials and other means of production used to sustain and enhance human life.
Socialism in our country will develop along lines democratically decided by the working class and its allies. It will exhibit unique features, reflecting Canada’s history and current level of development, and its rich and diverse cultures and social traditions. Socialism will develop at its own pace, and with its own content, based on the planned, balanced and proportionate development of the economy through public ownership of the means of production. There is no universal model of socialism, nor any pre-determined timetable or schedule its development must follow.
But socialism will not be re-invented from scratch. Careful account will need to be taken of the important positive and negative lessons on the building of socialism from the experiences in many countries over the past century. Where appropriate, these experiences and lessons will have to be creatively applied to the building of socialism in Canada.
Despite setbacks in the revolutionary process, this is the historical epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale, a process in which the working class plays a central and growing role in advancing democratic, progressive and revolutionary transformations.
It is particularly important to assess the experiences and draw certain lessons from the development of socialism in the first workers’ state – the Soviet Union – and to understand why socialism was overturned, and capitalism restored, after more than seventy years. The question demands the most searching thought and discussion, for two reasons. On the one hand, understanding both the great achievements of the Soviet people and the external and internal causes responsible for their grave setback can help Canadians in building socialism while avoiding the repetition of what went wrong there. Secondly, the defeat of socialism in the USSR is a powerful ideological weapon in the hands of monopoly capitalism, which it uses in order to convince workers and progressive-minded people that socialism does not work. By negating socialism as the revolutionary alternative to capitalism, big business seeks to discourage the workers and weaken their class struggle, and instead lead them to find an accommodation with the prevailing capitalist order.
We reject the bourgeois contention that socialism is a failure, that it is an inherently inferior and unworkable alternative to capitalism. Socialism was weakened and ultimately crushed in the USSR (and in other former socialist countries) as a result of a complex combination of interrelated internal and external circumstances and contradictions which culminated in its defeat and the temporary victory of counterrevolution.
The October 1917 Socialist Revolution in Russia marked a genuine new dawn in human social development. For the first time in history, workers set out to build a new society free from exploitation and oppression. The Soviet Union scored many great social achievements, overcoming unemployment, illiteracy, starvation, homelessness, and deep alienation. Socialism in the Soviet Union transformed an economically and culturally “backward” country to one of the world’s leading powers, and made great advances in culture and science.
These achievements were all the more remarkable, considering the relentless imperialist pressures against the USSR throughout its history. In its unflagging efforts to crush socialism, imperialist powers twice undertook direct military invasions (in the first of which Canada participated). They applied harsh economic sanctions, and precipitated an immensely expensive and dangerous nuclear arms race to bleed the USSR white, while sustaining a prolonged ideological and propaganda war, and resorting to outright subversion and sabotage.
Internationally, the Soviet Union played the decisive role in the defeat of European fascism in World War II, championed the cause of decolonization, supported liberation movements throughout the Third World, and provided vital assistance to the newly emergent states. Its peace policy also restricted – though it could not entirely suppress – imperialism’s tendency to military aggression.
Socialism also benefited the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, greatly strengthening the pressure on the ruling classes to grant substantial concessions to working people in the form of labour rights, the forty-hour work week, unemployment insurance, women’s rights, health care, public education, and pensions.
The internal causes of the crisis and defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union were not rooted in the intrinsic nature of socialism, but rather involved distortions and outright departures from socialist theory and practice. They arose, in part, from the extremely difficult conditions under which socialism was built.
Pre-revolutionary Russia was a sprawling, but economically under-developed country. It had a massive peasant population, but a relatively small working class. Poverty and illiteracy were rampant. The First World War, and Civil War that followed, worsened the conditions which confronted the young Soviet republic. However, owing to the unslacking hostility of imperialism – not least, from Nazi Germany, which invaded in 1941 – it was necessary to bring about modern industrialization at a stupendous pace.
In large measure, the adverse objective conditions forced the Soviet government to accelerate the socialist transformation of economic and social life, rapidly jumping over many transition stages in building socialism which would have made for a much more balanced process of development. One of the serious errors was the failure to retain the independent character of Soviet trade unions as the self-defence organizations of Soviet workers.
In these conditions, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to assume the task of comprehensively representing the leading role of the working class. The Soviet working class itself was battered and massively decimated by the two brutally destructive wars fought on Soviet soil, with the places of the fallen and the administratively promoted being taken by inexperienced new workers recruited from the countryside. This partly explains, but does not justify, the way that the operations of the Party increasingly merged with the functions of the state, in particular with the administrative-bureaucratic apparatus which necessarily arose to centralize and tightly control the country’s scarce and depleted resources. Nor do these difficult conditions justify the serious violations of socialist legality, purges, and serious crimes against innocent people.
Important economic successes were achieved with central economic planning for several decades. It was not planning as such, but rather stifling rigidities and a myriad of other distortions in the principles of socialist construction, combined with external imperialist pressures that undermined the ability of socialist societies to master the scientific and technological revolution. As a result, the USSR and other socialist countries fell dangerously behind the developed capitalist countries in labour productivity and the material standard of living. This had destabilizing consequences.
The Party itself became ever more integrated into the administration of the state. The functions of the elected Soviets (people’s governing councils) became increasingly formal in character. Genuine popular governance with open criticism gave way to bureaucracy and commandism. Over time, the political connection between the Party and the working class and people as a whole suffered. Inner-party democracy was also eroded, too often replaced by careerism and opportunism inside the Party.
Great strides were made in advancing the conditions of Soviet women, especially on the job. But sexist limits to the emancipation of women were allowed to pass unchallenged.
All these negative developments reflected a degeneration of the central role of socialist democracy in the construction of a workers’ state and stunted the development of the political role of the working class and its allies in leading this transformation and the building of a new socialist society. Indeed, the violation of socialist democracy and legality was a major factor in eroding the people’s participation in the government and in the state and led to widespread cynicism and social alienation.
There was also a dogmatic ossification of theory which increasingly sapped the Party’s dynamism and prevented a real analysis of concrete conditions and problems in the building of socialism. Serious theoretical errors resulted – in estimating the world situation, in underestimating the resilience of capitalism, in proclaiming the irreversibility of socialist advances and relying on a military balance of forces between socialism and capitalism, as well as errors and insensitivity. For instance, the national question was proclaimed to have been fully “solved,” and socialism was all but declared to have eliminated the need for any ecological concern. The shutdown of public and inner-party debate on such questions adversely affected the foreign and domestic policies that flowed from these mistakes. The most costly result of the stagnation of Marxist-Leninist theory was the weakening of the Party itself, including its ability to identify and combat the rise of bourgeois, reformist and openly counter-revolutionary ideology within and beyond its own ranks.
In the presence of these internal and external factors, opportunist and counter-revolutionary forces gained the upper hand within the leadership of the Party, and finally brought about the collapse of the Soviet system and with it the other socialist states of Europe. Since the collapse of socialism, working people in these former socialist countries have faced massive privatization and the theft of social property, mass unemployment and poverty, the drastic erosion of education, health care and other social rights, the rise of organized crime and corruption, and the rise of ethnic and racial hatred.
In contrast to the conditions that existed in the early years of the former Soviet Union or in other countries, socialism in Canada will be built on a highly developed economic and technical base, with a highly trained and educated working class, a developed infrastructure, valuable natural resources and a diverse set of secondary and tertiary industries. These conditions, combined with the lessons – both positive and negative – which can be derived from earlier socialist experiences, have the potential to provide a sound foundation for the construction of a socialist Canada.
Building socialism requires the establishment of a new, socialist state, led by the working class and its allies. A socialist state is essential to plan and organize production and distribution, to break the power of the capitalist class, to extend democracy so that the creative power of the working people is turned to the building of a new, socialist society and to prevent the counter-revolutionary restoration of capitalism.
Ample historical evidence testifies to the fact that reactionary capitalist forces will not give up their power and privilege voluntarily. They will try to halt the democratic process. The danger will inevitably arise of capitalist violence against the socialist state and the expressed will of the majority of the people. This cannot be overlooked except at severe cost. The working class and its allies, when they achieve socialist power, will be justified in using the power and authority of the state to protect the democratic will of the majority against the minority, who will strive to restore their lost positions. The nature of the laws and measures enacted to protect working class power will depend on the amount of resistance that the reactionary capitalist elements offer to socialist law and order.
The peaceful transition to socialism, which is desirable, depends not only on the wishes of the people but on the relationship of forces at the time. The maximum unity and single-minded purpose of the people, the united participation of the widest masses of the working class in political struggle, and the forging of unity with the small producers (farmers, fishers and artisans) and with the middle strata of the population, will be crucial to withstand and paralyze capitalist violence and political reaction. The working class must be ready to use all forms of struggle to combat capital’s inevitable resistance to social progress.
For the first time in Canada’s history, however, the majority of the people will rule the country and establish a genuine democracy. The dictatorship of capital over labour – the rule of the minority over the majority – will be abolished and replaced by a socialist democracy in which political power will reside with the working class and its allies. For the first time, the interests of the Canadian people will be the prime determinant of our economic, political and cultural life.
Irrespective of the form it will take, the socialist state, from the point of view of its class essence, will represent working class rule. Marx referred to this as “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” In practical terms, state power will be exercised by the great majority of the Canadian population – over the former capitalist minority.
The political life of the socialist state will be more profoundly democratic than anything achievable under capitalism. Millions of working people will participate in the administration of the country’s affairs.
In order to establish the widest possible unity for the building of a socialist Canada, our party advocates agreement on a common program of all political parties and people’s organizations that recognize the necessity of a revolutionary social transformation and the leading role which the working class must play.
While it is impossible to know for certain the exact form that a socialist Canada would take, our party’s conception of that socialist state includes the following:
Our party advocates the formation of a multi-party government of those political forces that agree on the achievement and building of a socialist society. In such a multi-party government, all parties willing to participate in building socialism would make their contribution, and opposition parties too could make a positive contribution providing they abide by the laws and the socialist constitution.
Although capitalism prepares the material prerequisites, socialism does not develop spontaneously, but must be built in a prolonged struggle against the old and for the new. Immediately on its establishment, the workers’ state will undertake the task of organizing and leading, step by step, the transition of Canada to socialism.
It cannot be said today through just what stages this historical process will have to pass, or that it will involve only advances and no retreats. The pace at which socialist construction can proceed will depend on the democratic will and class struggle of the Canadian workers and people generally, and on the strength of the resistance put up by the capitalist exploiters, as well as on the international context.
The socialist government will have to replace the old capitalist state by a new socialist state. In order to reorganize the Canadian economy and society generally for the benefit of working people, it will have the duty to enforce the constitution and code of laws of the Canadian socialist republic, to maintain popular rule, and to protect socialist property and the rights and personal property of the individual.
The rights of the people will be proclaimed and the means provided by which everyone can exercise those rights. New technologies will make it possible to cut red tape and official arrogance in governmental operation and the workplace.
Freedom of speech, press, association and assembly will be guaranteed in the constitution. Working people and their organizations will have the media of mass communication at their disposal. Church and state, and church and school, will be separated. People will have the right to hold, practice and advocate religious or non-religious views. Fundamental civil rights, including the prohibition of arbitrary arrest and police action, the access of all citizens to the courts, habeas corpus and trial by jury will be embodied in the laws and constitution. The judiciary will uphold the constitution and laws of the socialist state and protect the rights of the individual, including the right to personal privacy.
The socialist government will enact the social ownership of the economy’s financial and industrial sectors, lands and resources and transportation and communications.
The functioning of the economy will require that small and medium non-monopoly businesses continue to operate for some time as part of the overall economic plan, under a variety of forms of property and of production, under conditions established by the socialist government. In addition to state enterprises and private enterprise, there will be producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives and, where conditions warrant, joint state-and-private enterprises.
The individual ownership by working people of personal possessions, homes and cottages, pensions, savings and insurance policies will be guaranteed. The Canadian people themselves will decide, in the light of circumstances, on any compensation for the expropriated property of big capitalists.
Socialist planning of the economy, employing the latest scientific and technological advances and relying on the creative abilities of the working people, will make it possible to provide full employment and to end regional disparities across Canada. Social programs will be progressively expanded to take the place more and more of items of private consumption previously obtainable only for a price. Accordingly, the role of the market in Canadian society will be progressively diminished and replaced with production for use. The benefits of new technologies and higher productivity will be used to reduce working hours and heavy physical labour and provide working people with more time for meaningful leisure and culture.
Production will be planned to meet the changing material and cultural needs of the people, while at the same time halting and reversing environmental degradation and destruction caused under capitalism. The needs of the Canadian and the global environment will be respected, and development strategies will be selected in such a way as to minimize the exhaustion of resources. Production can be planned to meet the needs of our people without the profit-driven promotion of over-consumption that accompanies mass poverty in the world today. A socialist economy will create the conditions necessary to fully implement the prudent and efficient use of natural resources and a planned management of the environment, but vigilance and scrutiny must be ongoing.
By removing the heavy toll exacted by the capitalist class in the form of profit, rent and interest, and parasitic speculation, and by eliminating the tremendous waste caused by military production and wars, economic crises, overproduction, planned obsolescence of consumer goods, unemployment, cut-throat rivalry, and competitive advertising, the socialist state will place at the disposal of society huge amounts of previously wasted resources.
Under socialism, the creation of social wealth has only one objective – to further the interests of the people, by raising living standards, improving and extending social services and unleashing the cultural forces now stifled by corporate domination.
Once socialism is established, it will guarantee the right to a job to every Canadian by law. Wages will be paid according to the quantity and quality of work and level of skill performed.
Since industry will be owned by the working people, the bourgeoisie will disappear as a class; consequently, the conditions will be created for ending the conflict between labour and capital. New social relations, socialist in character, will come into being in which the interests of the workers, engineers, scientists and managers will be harmonized.
Side by side with the operation of a revolutionary people’s state, Canadian democracy will increasingly rest on non-governmental institutions of the people. Under socialism trade unions will not only have the rights which they need to function in a capitalist economy – to organize freely, to negotiate, and to strike – but they will participate in the processes of government, and take an active part in the management of the production process and planning bodies at the workplace, regional, provincial and Canada-wide levels. Labour rights will be constitutionally guaranteed. Trade unions will conclude collective agreements with socialist industry, progressively raising wages, shortening hours and improving working conditions. They will have the power, backed up by the courts, to enforce health and safety laws, to administer social and health insurance and to supervise measures for the mental and physical health of workers.
Farmers will be guaranteed security of tenure on the land they cultivate by law and will be relieved of the burden of debt imposed by the finance and industrial monopolies. Farmers’ marketing co-operatives will be a medium of trade between town and country. Where economies of scale can be achieved by combining smaller farms into production co-operatives, the socialist state, through affordable loans and other means, will facilitate this process for interested farmers.
The socialist state will promote the development of science and technology, of accessible and inclusive programs for amateur sports and physical exercise, and a democratic people’s culture. State support will stimulate the creative process and build the conditions for a flourishing of the arts. Freedom of artistic expression will be constitutionally guaranteed
The material conditions for totally overcoming the various forms of gender oppression will be provided under socialism. It will be important for socialist society to value fully all women’s social and economic contributions, to ensure gender equality in both paid and unpaid work, and to make gender equality permeate all aspects of life. Socialist society will eradicate poverty. The care of children, the sick and the elderly must no longer fall to women but to all adults, with high-quality childcare available to all workers. Gender equality also means zero tolerance for violence against women, Trans and non-binary people in any form. A strong commitment to solidarity between men and women is involved in bringing about and maintaining a socialist Canada. Eradicating gender inequality will be crucial for putting capitalism altogether behind us and advancing to a higher stage of society.
A socialist society will protect the rights of children and young people. Educational opportunities will be available to all in a fully democratized and free public educational system, at all levels. Tuition and learning materials will be free, and students at post-secondary institutions will be given living allowances. Employment training for youth will be provided.
The great burden of insecurity will be lifted from the people. Full social services will be provided. Access to quality health care will be guaranteed. High quality childcare and assistance for child rearing will be provided. Senior citizens will have access to a full range of social services. No one will go hungry or homeless in a socialist Canada. Family law will remove the patriarchal concept of privilege for the heterosexual nuclear family, and instead fully recognize the variety of family forms and sexual orientations.
Socialism creates the conditions for the fundamental and fully democratic solution of the national question. The constitution of a socialist Canada, firmly based on the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, will guarantee the voluntary union of free and equal nations. The essential rights of national minorities and ethnic groups will be constitutionally guaranteed.
A socialist Canada will have to correct the historic and ongoing injustices which the Indigenous peoples have experienced, while providing all-round assistance to the furtherance of their national rights and aspirations. Indigenous people will achieve full and complete equality in all aspects of life, as all vestiges of racism and discrimination are rooted out. Co-operative and public ownership can make it possible for Indigenous communities to do away with class exploitation. Economic and other forms of assistance will be necessary so that Indigenous peoples can protect and develop their languages, cultures and values. Indigenous rights will be spelled out expressly in the socialist constitution.
Collective rights will be protected and advanced in such a way as to secure also the essential individual rights of Canadians. Above all, the right of democratic decision-making and the right of lawful dissent must be protected.
The Constitution will declare that all power derives from the people and is exercised at all levels of government through their elected representatives. The right of recall of representatives by their electors, the right of access to information, and the right of petition and criticism of government or any branch of it must prevail. Through the elected organs of government and through trade union, factory committee, farm, community and professional organizations, the masses of the people will take part in the administration of Canada in a new and more democratic way than at any time in the past. A people’s army and a popular militia will be formed to preserve socialist law and order and to assure the defence of Canada.
Canada’s relations with all other countries will be governed by principles of equality, peace, friendship, open diplomacy, cultural and scientific exchange and trade on mutually advantageous terms.
It will be illegal to practice or advocate mistreatment or discrimination on the basis of national, ethnic or Indigenous origin, gender, racialization, age, disability, sexual orientation, or religion.
Socialism will create new social and economic relations of equality. The exploitation of one class of people by another will be abolished – the essential condition for building a new society in which human rights are ensured.
Socialism will not only alter the basic institutions of society in a radical way,; it will create the conditions for the free and unfettered development of humanity as a whole. Building upon the human capacity for practical intelligence and caring solidarity, which people have always shown themselves able to display in some measure, even under the most adverse conditions, socialism will in time change the whole tone of people’s day-to-day relations with one another. People will start to take increasingly direct charge over their affairs collectively. Labour itself will become, in Marx’s words, “not only a means of life, but life’s prime want.” People will tend to become less socially passive and competitive, and more critical-minded and co-operative.
A new people will emerge in time, free from bigotry and prejudice, reared in a humane and friendly atmosphere. Creative labour for the good of society and the individual will be characteristic of the citizens of a Canadian socialist commonwealth. They will bring into being the communist society humanity has dreamed of for centuries – a classless society founded on an abundance of material and spiritual wealth in which the state will wither away and people will each contribute according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.
Next Chapter: The Communist Party
Previous Chapter: For a people’s Government
The central fact of political life in Canada is that state power is in the hands of Canadian finance capital. In capitalist society, the owners of the large-scale means of production, trade and finance control the state machinery: the armed forces, police, judiciary, and civil service. The capitalist state is thus an instrument of class rule. A small minority – the exploiting class – rules in fact over the great majority of the people who create all the wealth and provide all the services.
The Canadian people in the past waged a revolutionary struggle for democracy,: for representative institutions, universal suffrage, and popular liberties. In 1837, popular anti-colonial uprisings led by the democratic forces of French and English Canada revolted against colonial officialdom and the reactionary and privileged strata (the Family Compact in Upper Canada and the Chateau Clique in Lower Canada). The revolutionary uprising of the Métis and Indigenous peoples followed in the West. But these struggles took place before and during the period of the birth of industrial capitalism in Canada; they opened the way to the development of industry and the political rule of the Canadian capitalist class.
The Canadian state bears the imprint of its colonial origin: the retention of a monarch of another country as the head of state, and still in possession of the ill-defined “royal prerogative.” The Senate is still appointed from the privileged class.
At Confederation, the British government confirmed the claim of the Canadian capitalists to legislative sovereignty within Canada, while they in return undertook to keep the Dominion within the Empire. The result was commitment to British foreign policy and wars, and acceptance of the role of Canada as a raw materials supplier.
With the growth of capitalist monopoly, Canadian bourgeois nationalism asserted itself. The Statute of Westminster (1931) declared the “equality of status” of members of the Commonwealth. But this was also the period of the rise of the United States to world dominance; and the Canadian bourgeoisie, ever more closely linked with U.S. monopoly interests, proceeded to make this country dependent on U.S. imperialism. Since the Second World War, this process has led to far-reaching measures of economic, political and military integration with the U.S.
By offering a “free choice” between the political parties representing capitalist interests, and by its control of the agencies that mold public opinion, the capitalist class has been able to maintain its class rule. This includes the state financing of election expenses for the biggest political parties, parties which are increasingly similar on the main questions of concern to the people. At the same time, the smaller, progressive and revolutionary parties are being squeezed onto the electoral margins, or off the electoral platform altogether. More and more, important policy and state affairs are removed from the parliamentary arena, and instead decided by Cabinet or its non-elected officials in the state apparatus, by appointed judges and courts, or in conformity with the terms of bilateral and multilateral agreements imposed on the Canadian people. A similar anti-democratic trend exists at the provincial and municipal levels of government. The already-restricted democratic decision-making afforded by bourgeois “parliamentary democracy” is eroding quickly. A growing alienation from bourgeois politics is developing among working people for all of these reasons.
As economic crisis deepens, finance capital increasingly wields the coercive arm of the state to thwart the legitimate struggles of the people, stripping away the mask of state neutrality. The state and its institutions do not stand above social conflict – the state is a partisan, active, and increasingly authoritarian force on the side of finance capital.
More and more the state intervenes directly to attack and undermine free collective bargaining, and the right to strike, picket, and organize. There is a steady increase in the use of the police and the courts, of strikebreaking and scab herding, against picket lines and demonstrations. Vital democratic reforms to protect and extend the rights of labour, women, 2S/LGBTiQ people, and immigrants, and to combat racism and discrimination, are systematically blocked and dismantled. Deregulation, privatization, and the dismantling of decades-old labour laws and benefits , are a central part of the assault.
Part of the attack on democracy is seen in the increasing monopolization of the mass media, and in the decreasing state support for a democratic Canadian culture. This is combined with a massive infusion, mainly from the U.S., of mass, corporate culture that is also often violent. The mainstream press and media act as the voice of finance capital and right-wing forces. The corporate media are becoming an ever-more sophisticated and powerful instrument to manipulate public opinion, by parroting pro-monopoly propaganda, filtering out conflicting news and analysis, and silencing expressions of anti-capitalist dissent. The development of new information technologies, such as the Internet, creates the conditions for an unprecedented flow of information. A free flow of information is a threat to state monopoly capitalism, however, and as a result, useful information is often hidden in a glut of commercial advertising. Finance capital is attempting to strengthen its domination and effective control of the Internet.
The spokespersons of the bourgeoisie praise ‘the rule of law’. They maintain that Canada is an exemplary democracy, in which all citizens are equal before the law, protected by the Charter of Rights and Liberties. Capitalist “equality” does not guarantee even minimal economic rights let alone a more equal division of society’s production.
However, they do not mention that this so-called “democratic” bourgeoisie rules the vast majority of the population through an economic dictatorship. The Canadian bourgeoisie claims with pride that the judicial branch of government is independent of the legislative and executive branches. Yet, the judiciary is appointed by the executive and reflects its class character.
Trade unionists are arrested and imprisoned for putting the collective rights of their members above the rights of the boss. Less and less tolerance is seen from the police at peaceful demonstrations. Exceptional measures are becoming less and less exceptional, and more and more repressive.
There is a class approach to crime and punishment – a two-tier justice system. Laws and penalties are very severe for criminals who commit petty offenses, but powerful offenders get off with light penalties, if any. Large companies and the rich who pollute the environment or violate worker health and safety regulations are treated as having committed minor offenses and are rarely jailed or deprived of their property.
As well, the justice system bears the imprint of its colonialist and racist construction: Indigenous prisoners are over-represented in the prison population, Black and Indigenous people are over-policed and harassed in communities across the country, and the notion of an equitable access to legal defense has become a fiction, given the grossly insufficient funding of legal aid programs.
Corruption, bribery, and organized crime are part of capitalist development. Many of the great wealthy families acquired their wealth through illegal activities in earlier generations; they and their descendants have later morphed into honourable ladies and gentlemen. Theft by the rich becomes legalized and exploitation valued.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment are a particularly dangerous part of the state apparatus. Working in tandem with the CIA and other imperialist security agencies, CSIS and CSE constitute an attack on the democratic and civil rights of Canadians. These agencies, which operate outside the law and beyond the reach of Parliament, exist to suppress political dissent, and have the potential to serve as a vehicle to transform Canada into a police state.
The Canadian Armed Forces are an instrument of imperialist aggression under U.S./NATO command. The Armed Forces also exist to intervene to suppress the democratic, class and national struggles of the Canadian people.
Racist and fascist organizations are permitted to operate with relative freedom by the state, and in fact receive support from the most reactionary elements within the ruling class. Visible links between these far-right organizations and prominent members of the Conservative Party exist through far-right media. Preying on the fear, insecurity, uncertain economic conditions, and a low level of class consciousness among certain sections of the Canadian people – especially the youth and the petty bourgeoisie, these groups promote prejudice, race hatred, and fascist ideology in order to divide and weaken the working class while creating favourable conditions for growth of the far-right.
In short, the repressive role of the Canadian state as an instrument of class rule is becoming steadily more exposed, as the most powerful corporate interests expand at the expense of the labour and democratic rights of the people. The already limited avenues for democratic expression and participation are being continuously and deeply eroded. The struggle to unite the labour and people’s forces in defence of democracy has thus become an urgent and central task.
Canada includes many nations. The word ‘nation’ is used in different ways, but what is meant here is an historically-constituted community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and national consciousness manifested in a common culture. Nations come into existence and pass out of existence, by forcible and peaceful historical processes, or a combination of both. It is a dynamic process in which, the creation and development of each nation occurs in a specific and different way. As a result, the struggle for a democratic solution to the national question requires an understanding and respect for these objective differences.
Among the smaller nations in Canada are Indigenous peoples who are exercising their right to sovereignty with the demand for autonomy and self-government. Among these are the Northern Cree in Quebec, and the newly created territory of Nunavut, the Nisga’a on the west coast, and others. The Acadians in the Maritimes also constitute a smaller nation in Canada. The two largest nations are English-speaking Canada and Quebec.
The crisis of confederation lies first and foremost in the refusal of the ruling class, the Canadian monopoly bourgeoisie, to recognize the right of each nation to self-determination; that is, the right to choose the form of sovereignty that the majority of the people of each nation desires, including the right to separate and form an independent state.
Sovereignty may be expressed in a free national choice of one of three following forms: a separate state, a confederation of equal nations or states, or autonomy.
For many years, the Communist Party has put forward the proposal for a new constitution based on the equal and voluntary partnership of all nations in Canada: Quebec, English-speaking Canada, the Indigenous Peoples, and the Acadians. Such a new constitutional arrangement must guarantee the protection of Indigenous inherent rights, including the right to consent over any change in their constitutional status, and on all matters pertaining to their national development.
The Communist Party proposes a confederal republic with a government consisting of two chambers: one, such as the House of Commons today, would be based on representation by population, elected through a new system of proportional representation. In the view of our Party the other chamber would be a House of Nationalities, which would replace the present Senate. Our proposal – subject to amendment during full advance consultations by the nations within the Canadian state – is that such a House of Nationalities would be composed of a guaranteed and significant number of elected representatives from Quebec, English-speaking Canada, Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) and the Acadians. Each chamber would have the right to initiate legislation, but both would have to adopt legislation for it to become law. Furthermore, the Indigenous peoples would have the right to veto on all matters pertaining to their national development.
This structure will protect both fundamental democratic principles: equality of the rights of nations whatever their size, and majority rule. Structural changes reflecting this confederal arrangement would need to be made throughout the legal system and state apparatus.
A genuinely democratic constitution would correct the historic injustices suffered by the Indigenous peoples by recognizing their full economic, social, national and political equality, and the just settlement of their land claims based on treaty rights, Indigenous claims and scrip. This includes the rights and demands of Indigenous women. The right of nations to self-determination must be entrenched in the Canadian constitution.
This fight for constitutional change is crucial to the overall struggle for democracy, social advance and for socialism. Uniting the working class across the country will not be possible without combating national oppression and fighting to achieve a new, equal and voluntary partnership of Canada’s nations.
The sharpest expression of the constitutional crisis relates to Quebec’s national status and the refusal of the Canadian state to recognize Quebec’s right to national self-determination, up to and including secession. This non-recognition of Quebec’s rights is itself an expression of the historic national oppression of Quebec – its political, economic and social oppression – since the British conquest of New France in 1763. This national oppression continues, in turn, to arouse national indignation among the Quebec people, and to spawn a nationalist and separatist movement led by a section of the Quebec bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie.
The fight to defend Quebec’s national rights and sovereignty is a pivotal social and democratic struggle. However, in the current situation the independence of Quebec as advocated by the bourgeois and petty- bourgeois nationalist parties would not solve the crisis in the best interests of workers. Quebec has reached the advanced stage of monopoly capitalism; its economic relations with English-speaking Canada are no longer those of a colonial character. The separatist solution would lead to significant additional economic hardship for both Quebec workers and the rest of the country, weakening their political unity against the common enemy – finance capital, both domestic and international – and weakening the common struggle for fundamental change.
Recent changes to Canada’s constitution have perpetuated the structural flaws and built-in inequalities of the original British North America Act (BNA Act) of 1867. The adoption of a new Canadian constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, while formally a step forward from a colonial aAct of another country, nevertheless failed to address the underlying source of the crisis of Confederation. The current constitution perpetuates the injustices and inequities of the old BNA Act. “Provincial rights” were substituted for genuine national rights, thus accentuating the trend to decentralization, while doing nothing to uphold Canadian independence or to recognize the national rights of Quebec, the Indigenous peoples, and other nations in Canada.
The Acadians, who today live mostly in the Maritimes, are also a nation. Originally 16th century settlers from France, the Acadians were driven out of Nova Scotia by the British colonialists who seized these lands after the defeat of the Kingdom of France in 1755. While significant numbers of the Acadian people remain geographically scattered in the Maritimes and Quebec, the Acadians now constitute one third of the population of New Brunswick and are the majority of the population on a large territory in the northeast of the province. They constitute a numerically important, stable community that retains its unique language, culture, history, and collective national consciousness.
As a nation, the Acadians have the right to self-determination. They may choose national autonomy and self-government within Canada, while maintaining their right to secession in the future if they so decide. Autonomy and self-government would include state support to help protect and maintain Acadian national identity within Canada.
The Métis nation emerged in the period of merchant capitalism in the 18th century based on the fur trade and was mainly situated along the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay. The assertion of national rights by the Métis in the rebellions of 1869-70 and 1885 was brutally crushed by the dominant English-speaking ruling class, who were backed by the expansionary industrial capitalism of Ontario and Quebec. Nevertheless, the resistance of the Métis led to the establishment of the province of Manitoba and helped keep alive the spirit of resistance against all national oppression in Canada up to the present. About half a million Métis live across the country, mainly concentrated in the prairie provinces.
The Indigenous peoples had been living on Turtle Island for thousands of years before the first European colonialists arrived. Prior to European settlement, the social, cultural and economic organization of Indigenous communities was progressing – depending on the development of the productive capacities of each community – from smaller, dispersed and relatively isolated tribes into more complex, organized and technologically advanced societies with extensive trade partnerships.
The Canadian government enforced its genocidal policies through the establishment of residential schools, forcibly removing Indigenous children from their communities and families. Many children did not survive the abuse, starvation and deprivation that intentionally occurred. Many survivors lost their language, culture and connection to their lands and communities. The effects are ever present today, as the last residential school only closed two decades ago. Moreover, this genocidal practice still continues through the racist foster-care system. Indigenous children are taken from their parents and primarily placed with white families, disconnecting them from their communities and culture. To justify this, the sState uses abuse, addiction and neglect as reasons for the removal of Indigenous children from their families, while conveniently ignoring and refusing accountability for the history and current effects of colonialism.
Capitalist industrialization in Canada developed at the expense of its original inhabitants. European colonization and subjugation violently interrupted the processes of development and nation-building of Indigenous societies. Their resistance to colonial encroachment was brutally crushed. A policy of genocide was adopted by the state, such as the extermination of the Beothuk in Newfoundland, the scalp bounty on the Mi’kmaq in the Maritimes, the enslavement of some and the deliberate starvation and infection of others with deadly diseases. This was followed by forced relocation onto remote and impoverished reserves, the take-over of Indigenous lands through deliberate government policies to encourage massive waves of European settler immigrants, and the abduction of children to residential schools where many were sexually assaulted and brutalized for speaking their own language. The organized suppression of Indigenous cultures, included the banning of the communal Potlatch on the west coast, drumming of the Anishinaabe Peoples, and the Sun Dance on the prairies. Such is the record of Canadian history which continues to the present day in the form of assimilationist proposals for permanent elimination of inherent national rights, opening up reserve lands for private sale, and gradual absorption of Indigenous peoples into the broader population, all in contravention of internationally recognized rights such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
In this very real sense, the policies of colonialism, driven by and serving the interests of ruling circles in the European centres and working to benefit Canada’s own bourgeoisie, are at the heart of the foundation of the Canadian state and remain in place in the 21st century. The original treaties signed by Indigenous peoples have been constantly violated, and the unceded traditional territories of those who never surrendered or signed treaties, have been turned into crown land for the profits of the big resource monopolies. The Indigenous peoples, and working people who came to Canada in search of a better life, only to be victimized by the big banking, railroad and agribusiness monopolies, have a common enemy – the capitalist state and the big corporations, which aim to maximize profits through resource extraction and exploitation of workers. The Communist Party of Canada stands for the liberation of Indigenous peoples and other oppressed nations in this country, and for the unity of the working class of all nations and peoples, to achieve genuine democracy, equality, environmental survival, and socialism.
Presently, Indigenous peoples have the highest rates of suicide, infant mortality, impoverishment, and incarceration in Canada, and a life expectancy 10-15 years lower than the average. Indigenous women and girls have been the victims of forced sterilization programs, and of thousands of murders and disappearances. Denied full social equality and human rights, and deprived of control over their inherent traditional territories, Indigenous peoples continue to resist the Canadian capitalist state’s policies of assimilation, dispossession, and genocide.
Even today, the state, acting on behalf of finance capital, is actively attempting to undermine and nullify the status and national rights of Indigenous peoples. This has produced acute poverty and oppression on the reserves and other areas inhabited by the Indigenous peoples. Denied an adequate land base, acceptable living standards, the ability to live in their traditional manner, or the opportunity to mount successful cooperative commercial operations where they live, Indigenous people for many years have migrated to urban areas where they face high unemployment, discrimination and the further destruction of their cultural identity.
The Communist Party struggles for immediate redress of historic injustices to Indigenous peoples. This must include preferential treatment in the provision of housing, health care, education, and job creation, as a priority. Furthermore, immediate achievement of national rights and just and early settlement of land claims will help to improve the prospect for the fuller development of Indigenous peoples as nations, a process that the Communist Party fully supports.
The Communist Party also supports the struggle of those nations, such as the Cree in Northern Quebec, who are seeking full recognition of their right of self-determination.
Today, there is a renewed spirit of insurgency among the Indigenous peoples. There is increasing unity between various Indigenous peoples in their individual and particular struggles against the capitalist state. The Communist Party supports the increasing unity of the Indigenous peoples in their just struggle.
Within each nation, there are national minorities whose national homeland is within the borders of another nation within Canada. This is the case for French speaking minorities living in English-speaking Canada, the English-speaking minority living in Quebec, and members of Indigenous nations and Acadians living outside their national homelands. These national minorities all have the right to educate their children and to receive state supported services in their own languages, wherever numbers warrant.
With the exception of the English-speaking minority in Quebec, all other national minorities living in the country see their rights violated to varying degrees.
There are approximately 1.5 million people in Canada defined as Indigenous (Inuit, Métis and First Nations), of whom just over half live outside First Nations reserves. Their national rights are totally denied, and they are victims of centuries of genocidal policies which continue up to the present.
There are more than one million Francophones living outside Quebec and Acadia who have continued to resist assimilation since before Confederation. While formally they have the right to receive state services and education in French where numbers warrant, in fact access to French language education and services is routinely denied, forcing Francophone communities to struggle to maintain their national identity, language and culture without any state support.
With the exception of the Indigenous peoples, Canada is a country of immigrants, old and new. Comprised of hundreds of diverse ethnic groups, who will eventually merge with French-speaking Quebec or English-speaking Canada, these ethnic groups have the right to preserve their language and heritage and to pass it on to succeeding generations through state-supported after-school language programs, and through state-supported cultural and community activities. The Communist Party recognizes that this two-sided process of merging and preserving language, culture and heritage, is of long duration, influencing and enriching the different national cultures existing in Canada.
The policy of multi-culturalism advanced by the Canadian state over the past half-century contends that the Canadian identity is formed solely by the contribution of a mosaic of different ethnic groups, equal among themselves, who have arrived as immigrants and who, for the most part, have quickly integrated and continue to integrate mainly into the dominant English-speaking nation of Canada.
This policy was created ostensibly to differentiate Canada’s multi-culturalism from the US melting pot which forces immigrants to abandon their mother-tongue and their culture when they immigrate to the US.
In fact, Canada’s multi-culturalism policy was created to deny the existence of nations within Canada, to deny their national rights, to maintain the dominance of English-speaking Canada over all others, and to maintain the power of the English-speaking capitalist class.
But the multi-national character of Canada cannot be denied indefinitely. The democratic national sentiments of the peoples will make themselves heard in their demands for recognition and redress. The Communist Party advocates a new, equal, and voluntary partnership of Canada’s nations in a new Constitution, based on recognition of the right of nations to self-determination up to and including the right to secession.
Immigrant workers from many lands have played a vital part in building Canada’s industries, railways, and agriculture. New immigrants form a considerable portion of Canada’s labour force. Immigrant workers continue to suffer from acute discrimination, arising in the main from capitalist exploitation and attitudes of national chauvinism. From its foundation the Communist Party has struggled to end discrimination against immigrant workers, working to expose how capitalism generates racism and national chauvinism, profits from low wage areas, and divides the working class to hold back the overall struggle.
Most immigration to Canada has been structured to support colonialist expansion and capitalist exploitation. In the colonial period, the English and French ruling classes not only directed white settlement that oppressed and displaced Indigenous peoples; they also exploited most immigrants as a source of cheap labour and primary production. Later patterns of immigration under the Canadian state continued racist, chauvinist, and anti-labour policies in expanding settlement and building capitalist industry. The notorious treatment of Chinese labour in the building of the CPR and of immigrant labour in the textile industry and agriculture are characteristic of how Canadian capitalists have tended to segregate and super-exploit groups of immigrant workers.
Canadian state immigration policy is also class-oriented. Temporary migrant labour programs are particularly exploitative, providing a steady stream of vulnerable workers with low wages, no benefits or labour protection, and no path to citizenship. These programs lay the conditions for enslavement and extreme exploitation, as workers are tied exclusively to employers.
There is a massive uprooting of millions of people as a result of the growing impoverishment of less developed countries, destabilizing imperialist-inspired wars and environmental disasters, and the growth of criminal trafficking in immigrants. To reduce these international movements of dispossessed people and political refugees requires progressive policies for world economic development and peace – not more repression of immigrants or elimination of their democratic rights. The communists demand priority in immigration to refugees, elimination of privileged entry to capitalist investors, phasing out of guest-worker provisions except for genuine educational, scientific or cultural exchange, and the full protection of immigrants through an immigrant bill of rights. Such a bill of rights should prioritize family reunification for existing immigrants and expand sponsorship rights to include siblings; take strong action against human trafficking, enslavement and exploitation; and streamline the immigration process to reduce class bias and language and cultural barriers.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is also seriously flawed. While formally recognizing certain fundamental rights – freedom of association, assembly, religion, freedom of the press; the rights to liberty and security, and equality without discrimination based on race, gender, religion or national origin, — it also permits the federal and provincial legislatures to simply use the “notwithstanding” clause to deny these basic human rights in practice. A Bill of Rights for Labour was denied the working people of Canada, leaving the trade union movement with no constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Municipalities continue to be denied status in the repatriated Constitution. Though the majority of Canadians live within urban municipalities, these bodies can be created and dissolved at will by provincial governments.
A new constitution would prohibit the violation of the civil liberties of immigrants. It would outlaw racism and discrimination. It would assure the democratic, cultural and language rights of the non-French, non-English ethnic groups in Canada. A new constitution must embody a Bill of Rights, and a Bill of Rights for Labour, to provide guarantees of trade union and democratic rights which apply to the people of all nations within the Canadian state. These guarantees must ensure economic, social, cultural and linguistic equality, the right of assembly, the right to organize and strike, the habeas corpus right not to be arbitrarily deprived of one’s liberty, the right to a job, to freedom of movement, to health, to education, and to housing.
A genuinely democratic constitution must be accompanied by basic structural reform. To overcome regional inequality, these reforms must be based on the necessity for all-sided economic development in all parts of Canada, combined with nationalization of natural resources, above all energy. Through publicly owned corporations, benefits from the development of natural and energy resources must serve the people of Canada as a whole, as well as industrial and social development in the provinces, where the resources are found.
The erosion of local democracy has its roots in the absence of constitutional status, jurisdiction and rights for municipalities. A democratic constitution would recognize municipalities, guarantee local municipal autonomy, and create the most favourable conditions for local democratic control.
A new constitution would unify social legislation to provide equal opportunity and high standards in all of Canada while respecting the sovereignty of Quebec, and the right to self-government of the Indigenous peoples. It would ensure that the corporations will not be able to escape responsibility for the contribution they owe to public education, living standards, and the health and social welfare of all Canadians.
Most important, a new constitution will help to remove the causes of the long-standing disunity, friction and resentment between English-speaking Canada and Quebec, and the Indigenous peoples’ inequality and national oppression.
The Communist Party sees the struggle for a democratic solution of the constitutional crisis as an integral part of the struggle against capitalist rule. The Communist Party stands for the unity of the working class in the struggle against this common enemy: domestic and international finance capital. Victory in the struggle for democracy and against political reaction, for Canadian independence, and for socialism requires a powerful alliance of the working class of English-speaking Canada and Quebec, together with the progressive forces in Indigenous communities and among national and ethnic minorities.
The historic direction of these struggles is toward the achievement of a higher form of democracy through the establishment of a socialist state and the rule of the vast majority of the Canadian people.
Next Chapter: The working class and people’s struggle
Previous Chapter: Canada in a changing world
Down through the ages, working people have dreamed of a world of freedom and equality, an end to exploitation and misery. Throughout the twentieth century, millions of people around the world rallied to the cause of socialism. Today, big business and its boosters maintain that socialism is finished, that human development has ended, and that capitalism will endure forever.
In reality, it is the capitalist system, based on private ownership of the means of production, which has no future. Having outlived its usefulness, it is incapable of meeting the needs and aspirations of the world’s peoples.
By its very nature, capitalism generates and intensifies mass unemployment and poverty, national chauvinism and exclusivism, racism, gender inequality and oppression, environmental collapse, war and reaction.
Under capitalism, democratic practices and institutions are stripped of most of their real content. Capitalist “democracy” guarantees the right of the capitalist class to dominate the economy and society and to exploit the people.
Capitalist globalization, led by US imperialism with the full support of the imperialist ruling class of Canada, is threatening the remaining threads of Canadian sovereignty and independence – that is, the right and capacity of the people of Canada to determine their own destiny. Multilateral investment and trade pacts are undermining the democratic right of the Canadian people to establish policies and determine our own course of development.
Capitalism in Canada and the world today is a crisis-ridden and decaying system. But, it is pregnant with its opposite – socialism.
The first heroic wave of the working class movement against capitalism, the Paris Commune of 1871, was crushed by brute force. The next major wave began with the Russian Revolution of October 1917, when the vast majority, the workers and their allies, took and held state power for the first time in human history. The victories of socialism, particularly in the USSR, China, and Cuba, inspired workers and peoples around the world in their struggles for liberation. Much of this wave however was rolled back by the combined economic and military might of imperialism and the socialist countries’ own serious defects.
Socialism remains the necessary next step in our country’s historical development. Only socialism makes the needs and aspirations of the people its highest priority. Only socialism can put people before profit. And only socialism can use the benefits of the scientific and technological revolution for the well-being of all Canadians, not for the enrichment of a few and for waging war. There is no alternative to socialism, no “third road.”
The achievement of socialism, based on working class power in Canada and internationally, will mark a real advance towards true democracy – the rule of the people, by the people and for the people.
In a socialist Canada, the principal means of producing and distributing wealth will be the common property of society as a whole. The exploitation of labour will be abolished. Ecological degradation will be reversed, and a planned approach to the relationship of human life with the natural environment will be implemented. Want, poverty, insecurity and discrimination, rooted in capitalist exploitation, will be ended. Socialism will finally realize a new society based on solidarity, equality and emancipation.
As it develops, socialism will provide the real basis for communism, a classless society in which, for the first time in history, the free all-round development of each individual can be the condition for the development of all.
The aim of the Communist Party of Canada is to establish a socialist and, ultimately, a communist society in Canada. The party stands for the victory of socialism throughout the world.
Next Chapter: Capitalism in Canada