The Ipsos poll taken immediately following Trudeau’s announcement that he would be stepping down as Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader showed that public support for the Liberal Party remained unchanged at 20% with or without Trudeau at the helm.
That’s because it’s not the man, it’s the government’s pro-corporate policies and actions during and after COVID. When 7 million people were unemployed and desperate, the biggest corporations seized the opportunity to raise their prices – and their profits, resulting in the largest ever transfer of wealth from pockets of the working class to the bank vaults of the biggest corporations.
The price of food rose 10.3% and rent rose 12.4% in 2022 while extreme profit margins drove profits per firm up by 68% over 2019. After tax corporate profits rose 59% to $456 billion in 2021, then jumped to an astonished $523 billion by mid-2022. This includes Loblaws whose profits rose 40% in 3 months. The oil and gas sector topped the profitable list by far with a $38 billion increase in profits – or more than 1,000 % – since 2019. Canadian banks raked in $57 billion in profits, dishing out $19 billion to Executives, while preparing for widespread bankruptcies. Corporate landlords also posted record profits while raising rents and evicting thousands of tenants.This massive profiteering was supported 100% by the Liberals and Tories and by all parties in Parliament, before, during and after the COVID crisis, while tens of thousands of small businesses went belly up, and even larger numbers of workers never regained their lost jobs and incomes, their homes and savings.
Workers were scrambling to survive before, during and after this crisis, with massive strikes in 2023 and ‘24 in both the public and private sector. In the Quebec strikes the struggle was for work and wages, as well as to protect and expand universal social programs including health and education.
Parliament did nothing to support the strikes or to oppose the back to work orders imposed time and again. No Liberal or Tory MPs ever hit the picket lines to show their support for the workers and their unions struggling to hold on to their jobs and wages, and the services that are so important to Canadians. No Liberal or Tory MPs ever stood up in Parliament to oppose the back to work orders, to vote them down, to support the workers.
Instead, the Liberals, Tories, Bloc and NDP voted to support budgets with massive military spending commitments and promises for 2% spending for NATO; for warships and fighter jets; for war in Europe, and for real cuts to healthcare and education that will end with privatization. This is in addition to complete inaction to build and supply affordable social housing and to roll-back and freeze prices on food, fuel, housing and rents which previous federal governments have done during and after WW II and again in 1975.
It was Tory leader Poilievre and his MPs who were out in the streets glad-handing with the so-called “Freedom Convoy” when they occupied Ottawa, blocked the Windsor-Detroit bridge, and thirteen took guns and weapons to launch an attack at Coutts, Alberta. This is what the Tories have shown they support.
Trudeau’s departure will not bring needed relief to millions of Canadians. Replacing Trudeau with Poilievre and the Tories will only make life harder for millions of people, and make workers’ lives harsher and more difficult as they struggle against corporations and governments intent on driving down their wages and eliminating their rights.
Working people will get relief when the policies that put corporate profits and war before the needs of people and the environment are rejected, and the parties advocating those policies are defeated. It will require a broad-based people’s coalition with labour at its centre to do this.
Today Canadian sovereignty and independence is seriously threatened by US President elect Donald Trump, who is also threatening military force against Panama and Denmark / Greenland, and continuing to threaten Mexico as well as Iran, Cuba, Russia, DPRK, China and other countries around the world.
Shamefully, Trump’s bully-boy antics have succeeded as almost every Canadian politician has hastened to reassure him that Canada will capitulate entirely to his demands that Canada spend an even greater amount of money on defence and on border security. In addition to stealing untold billions of dollars from under-funded social services, increased spending on the military and border security is obviously unnecessary as it has just been glaringly demonstrated that the only threat to Canada is the United States itself. Such increases in spending have nothing to do with the needs of Canadians. They do, however, meet the needs of the Trump political agenda to transfer the cost of US policy objectives unto the shoulders of US allies.
While trying to sound steadfast in the face of Trump’s threats, these same politicians are now bowing to Trump’s demand that the US, Mexico, Canada trade deal be renegotiated to the benefit of US corporations by making suggestions about what concessions might be acceptable. Trying to convince Trump that he needn’t annex Canada in order to plunder Canada is still capitulation.
Snuggling with Trump and the political and economic forces behind him with proposals for further integration and more militarization is the wrong response by the government and Parliament and will lead to war and disaster at home and abroad. This is the road to war, reaction and fascism in North America, and the labour and democratic movements must work together and with others to make sure it does not pass into Canada.
The three months until Parliament returns provides the opportunity to build a people’s coalition of labour and democratic forces to defend Canada’s sovereignty, to oppose militarism and protect the environment, to create jobs and raise wages and living standards, build public and social housing, fund universal social programs, and raise corporate taxes.
People’s needs, not corporate greed, war and reaction.
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada