The leader of the Communist Party of Canada was in Fredericton to deliver a wide-ranging talk at Marshall D’Avray Hall on the cold and snowy Sunday afternoon of February 23. Liz Rowley, the first woman to head Canada’s second oldest political party (founded in 1921), has been travelling across Canada to raise awareness of the political and economic challenges facing the country, discussing the need for students, people’s movements and the working class to organize and fight back.
Rowley sums up the current situation in Canada, in North America, and across the world, as “dire”. The genocidal actions of the Israeli state in Gaza continue in spite of a “ceasefire” boasted by the Trump administration, which has announced plans for a policy of ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Rowley reminded her listeners that Israel has been charged with war crimes by the International Court of Justice, which hopes to send a team to Gaza to investigate further. Access to Gaza remains tightly controlled by Israel and therefore difficult.
Rowley characterized Canada’s government as a “lapdog” of the U.S., mainly due to the economic integration of our two countries, by which she means Canada becoming dependent on the U.S., after Canada signed various free trade agreements over the last few decades. Canada’s political integration with the U.S. naturally followed, and Canadian foreign policy became more and more subjugated to U.S. imperialism and to NATO. Despite its claims to the contrary, NATO has never been a defensive organization: it is the armed wing of Yankee-European capital.
NATO was forged by the capitalists with the explicit purpose of combating the world’s first worker’s state, the Soviet Union, and the burgeoning people’s democracies of Europe. However, after the disappearance of the workers states, the raison d’etre of this criminal alliance, NATO was reinforced and expanded rather than disbanded. Without the counterweight of the movement for socialism-communism, NATO was able to unleash its lethal force on the working people.
After the counter-revolution in the USSR, NATO, led by the U.S., unleashed devastating attacks on the civilians of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya, while the invasion and intervention into Iraq and Syria by U.S.-led coalitions that left more than a million dead.
Now, China’s growing economy and international influence challenges the U.S. for its position at the summit of the imperialist pyramid. This struggle is causing a rise in militarism and an arms race. As well, despite the Russian Federation being a member of NATO’s ‘Partnership for Peace’, the growing presence of NATO on the border and the weakening of its sphere of influence contributed to the Russian Federation’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine.
Military thinkers on both sides of this conflict (in the U.S. and in Russia) think that a “limited” nuclear conflict is possible through the “tactical” use of nuclear weapons. Rowley explained that this type of thinking is a danger to the entire planet and must be resisted. We must build a strong global movement for peace and disarmament, including in Canada. Such a movement could push back against nuclear brinkmanship, as well as NATO’s ridiculous request for member countries to increase their military spending to 5 percent of GDP as military spending. It currently sits at less than 2 percent in Canada, and the added expenditure would represent a $70 billion increase to the federal budget. The arms manufacturers and military-industrial corporations in the U.S. would profit fantastically, but this level of funding would be unsustainable in Canada. It would necessitate aggressively cutting social spending and imposing heavy austerity measures. Rowley stated the Communist Party supports getting out of NATO, as well as other U.S.-led military alliances, such as NORAD and AUKUS.
Rowley points out that, within the federal government, the military is by far the greatest producer of greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Instead of increasing funding to the military, Canada should increase funding to healthcare, education, poverty relief, re-industrializing Canada, and job creation in secondary industries. Canada should reclaim domestic industry and manufacturing from U.S. ownership. We need to increase wages, shorten the workweek with no loss in pay, and improve working conditions for all.
Referencing a pamphlet produced by the Communist Party of Canada for its “Roll Back Corporate Prices, Roll Back Military Spending” campaign, Rowley explained that corporate profits during the pandemic increased, as did inflation (especially grocery prices and housing costs). In response to the pandemic, banks increased interest rates; now they are planning and preparing for large-scale defaults on credit card debt and mortgages. Many people lost their jobs, and now many may lose their homes.
“The future looks very grim and people are rightfully very angry,” Rowley stated, explaining that the Conservatives and Liberals, always the parties of big business, are trying to exploit this anger. Tories like Poilievre are using Trump-style demagogic tactics, scapegoating workers.. Yet people have little confidence in the NDP. Voters identify them as part and parcel with the Liberals.
Not surprisingly, polls show a rising interest in socialism in Canada. In response, ruling-class messaging has begun to flirt with fascism to discredit the idea of socialism. Rowley cited the news website The Tyee, which recently exposed Poilievre’s rhetoric conflating socialism and fascist versions of capitalism. Meanwhile, the Conservatives as a whole are getting in bed with religious reactionaries and fascist groups. Poilievre’s decline in the polls is due to his association with Trump and Trump-style politics after the President’s threats to Canada of massive tariffs and annexation. Voters are right not to trust him.
However, the lead Liberal candidate, Mark Carney, talks about “overspending,” by which he means social spending, like the CERB payments during the pandemic. Carney has said that Canada should increase “capital spending,” i.e., for the military.
In her concluding remarks, Rowley emphasized that our current crisis is the result of a global capitalist system in decay. The choice we face is a future of socialism or barbarism. She firmly believes that Canadian workers want the benefits that socialism can deliver: Free education and healthcare for all, national and indigenous rights, social equality and progress, popular sovereignty, and sustainable economic development. Socialism is working-class political and economic power. The job of socialists is to expose the system, propose alternatives that will truly benefit people, and reverse growing impoverishment and disempowerment. But people must get organized and confront the question of who holds power in this society if we are to challenge and change the system.