From Canada to Bolivia: Indigenous Resistance to Militarism + Imperialism

The Young Communist League of Canada - Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Canada is pleased to announce From Canada to Bolivia: Indigenous Resistance to Militarism + Imperialism, an upcoming webinar featuring special guest Evo Morales, President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The YCL-LJC Concludes a Successful Central School

By Clara Sorrenti 

From May 19-22nd, the Young Communist League held a successful Central Committee school in Toronto, Ontario attended by comrades from across the country.

This was an interesting time for the school to be held, as it coincided with the 39th Central Convention of the Communist Party of Canada. The 39th Central Convention celebrated the 98th anniversary of the Communist Party of Canada and elected a new central committee to continue forward with the work of building the Party and the struggle for Socialism.

90 Communist and Workers' Parties conclude a successful meeting in Athens

Over 173 delegates from 90 Communist and Workers Parties gather in Athens
for the 20th IMCWP

By Clara Sorrenti

In 1999, a 78-day NATO bombing campaign devastated the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians. The NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia marked the second major combat operation in its history, following the 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It was also the first time that NATO had used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council. As a response to the International crisis in Yugoslavia, The International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties was established at the Initiative of Communist Party of Greece. From the 21st to the 23rd of May 1999, 55 Communist and Workers’ Parties from 46 countries gathered in Athens, Greece. The theme of the first IMCWP was “The capitalist crisis, globalisation and the response of the labour movement”. It marked the first major meeting of Communist and Workers Parties’ since a counter-revolution lead to the dissolution of USSR in 1991.

Communist Women in Canada: Revolutionary Bios

1927: left to right: F Custance, E Lawrence, B Buhay & A Buller

Marianne Breton Fontaine & Drew Garvie

In 1917, International Women’s Day in Russia helped to launch the Russian Revolution, which ended up inspiring working people around the world, including many working women in Canada.

The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was founded in 1921 in Canada, in a barn in Guelph, Ontario under conditions of illegality. The Young Communist League of Canada was founded soon after in 1923. In this article Rebel Youth takes a look at some of the women that led the major struggles of their day and continue to inspire the struggle for full gender equality and for socialism.

Energy East: Pipeline of discord

Yan Chun-Leduc

This summer in Saskatchewan, the company Husky Energy spilled 250,000 litres of crude oil into the North Saskatchewan River, the source of drinking water for nearly 100,000 people. Water now has to be transported to villages and communities by truck. Husky Energy has paid $5 million to Prince Albert, the largest city affected by the spill, to limit the damage. This heavy oil does not float, it flows and spreads over all seabed surfaces. The consequence of this is that only half of the oil spilled into the river has been cleaned, the other half that has sunk is not cleanable and never will be. Oops.

TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline would allow for 1.1 million barrels of the same type of heavy oil per day to travel over a distance of 700 km in Quebec. This distance includes traversing more than 800 rivers, including the St. Lawrence where sixty percent of the Quebec population, or five million people, draw their drinking water. A spill of 250,000 liters of oil there would be catastrophic. But Energy East is an enormous pipeline project, with incomparably larger potential for harm than the spill in the North Saskatchewan River.

A closer look at young Communists in the federal election

Special to RY

Rebel Youth takes a closer look at four of the seven young Communists in the federal election, their ridings and why they're running. All are members of the Young Communist League and running for the Communist Party of Canada.

Hochelaga, Marianne Breton Fontaine

Hochelaga is a poor riding in the east of Montreal including the Olympic stadium. Once a working class area home to the famous Quebec folk singer La Bolduc, the area was hit hard by deindustrialization and factory closings. It has been held by the Bloc and, most recently, the NDP and provincially Quebec Solidaire is a serious contender.

Young Communist candidates demanding fundamental change

Special to RY

7 members of the Young Communist League of Canada are currently running in the federal election. Here RY looks at these candidates for the Communist Party of Canada who are demanding fundamental change.

80 years since the "On to Ottawa Trek"

Special to Rebel Youth

This spring and summer marked the 80th anniversary of the On to Ottawa Trek. Rebel Youth celebrates this militant struggle and ongoing struggles for work and wages. 80 years later capitalist crisis has again been used by a Tory government to attack the working class. Youth unemployment is reaching almost 20% in several major Canadian cities, and the majority of workers (a larger majority for youth and women) are not covered by Employment Insurance. With this in mind, we look back to past victories for inspiration today!

Our struggle for the future

May Day Greetings
Central Executive Committee
Communist Party of Canada

            This May Day 2014, more than five years have passed since the US housing bubble burst and quickly spread to a global financial crisis, the most acute and dangerous since the 1930s. The neo‑liberal agenda of the main imperialist powers had exported a global movement of unregulated and unrestrained capital, free trade agreements, a gluttony of super exploitation, theft of public property and privatization of public services, provoking a crisis so acute in its scale and breadth that it threatened collapse.

            The managers of imperialism could not repair their own damage so they bought themselves a temporary reprieve by plundering public property, expropriating public funds to rebuild bankrupted enterprises, transferring funding for social programs and superstructure from the public purse into their investment houses. They richly rewarded themselves, increasing military budgets, and corrupting markets to the extent that it has created a world unemployment crisis, terrible privation, hunger, disease and war.

            Imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, is in an incurable stagnancy marked by declining rates of profit which in turn brought on the crisis, a crisis which is not just cyclical but also structural in nature. If the rate of profit has declined, the absolute volume of profit has not.

On the dangerous developments in Ukraine

A sign at the 18th World Festival of Youth
and Students in Quito, Ecuador

Central Executive Committee,
Communist Party of Canada

The deepening political crisis in Ukraine and the threat of regional conflict, possibly an even wider war erupting over the fate of Crimea, is extremely alarming. The "war of words" emanating from Washington and Brussels is inflaming international tensions and could in turn provoke a global catastrophe. This crisis has been stoked by the ongoing imperialist strategy of the U.S. and NATO to encircle Russia, as seen in the installation of anti‑missile systems in Poland, and the integration of Georgia into the NATO alliance. Their goal is to isolate Russia and China, neutralizing potential obstacles to the drive by transnational capital based in the NATO countries to exploit the resources and labour power of the entire planet.

It is appalling that the Harper Conservative government has been playing an active role in this dangerous escalation, and that the mainstream media continue to whip up lies and distortions around recent developments in Ukraine. The claim by right‑wing forces that the March 16 referendum on the status of the Crimean Autonomous Republic is equivalent to the 1936 Nazi occupation of Sudetenland is particularly odious. The unchecked expansion of Hitler fascism led to World War Two, which killed some 60 million people, including over 27 million citizens of the USSR. As an autonomous republic, Crimea has the legal right to determine its status, free from all foreign interference.

Part 4 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

In this excerpt:

• National minorities;
• Immigrant and migrant communities, immigration;
• Problems with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
• For a new constitution;
• The struggle for socialism and the national question

National Minorities

Within each nation, there are national minorities whose national homeland is within the borders of another nation within Canada.

Francophone minorities living in English-speaking Canada, Anglophone minorities living in Quebec, and Aboriginal peoples and Acadians living away from their national homes are all national minorities with the right to educate their children and receive state supported services in their own languages, wherever numbers warrant.

Immigrant and migrant communities, immigration

With the exception of the Aboriginal 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 language and cultural 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 Canadian culture as a whole.

Part 3 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

In this excerpt:

• The Metis nation;
• Aboriginal peoples;
• The policy of genocide;
• Acute poverty and oppression;
• For immediate achievement of national rights

The Metis nation

The Metis 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 Metis 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 Metis led to the establishment of the province of Manitoba and helped keep alive the spirit of resistance against all national privileges in Canada today.

Aboriginal peoples

The Aboriginal peoples had been in Canada for thousands of years when the first white settlers arrived. Prior to European settlement, the social organization of many Aboriginal 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.

Part 2 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

The 2012 Quebec Student Strike

In this excerpt:

• Quebec's status as a nation;
• The way forward;
• Flaws of the BNA act continued;
• The Acadian people

Quebec's status as a nation

The sharpest expression of the constitutional crisis relates to Quebec’s national status and the failure 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 has in turn aroused national indignation among the Quebec people, and spawned bourgeois and petty-bourgeois-led nationalist and separatist movements there.

Part 1 of 4: Canada -- a country of many nations

Taken from Canada's Future is Socialism, The programme of the CPC.

The Big Daddy's of confederation

In this excerpt:

• A definition of a nation;
• A proposal for a new constitution 

A definition of a nation

Canada includes small and large nations, each of which 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, in each case, the path of development into nationhood is specific and different.

As a result, the struggle for a democratic solution to the national question requires an understanding and respect for these objective differences.

Amongst the smaller nations in Canada are groups of Aboriginal peoples who are exercising their right to sovereignty with the demand for autonomy and self-government. Amongst 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 Soviet experience with socialism

Excerpt from Chapter Seven, "Building Socialism" from Canada's future is socialism, the Programme of the Communist Party of Canada

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 face 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.

Force and the struggle for a socialist Canada

This article is part of an seven-part series of short quotes Rebel Youth is issuing about class struggle, revolution, civil-war, and parliamentary democracy. See also: Lenin on elections; the Communist Party of Canada on a counter-offensive against capitalism; Engels on voting and street fighting; Lenin on Democracy and Class struggle; Communist and Worker's parties on the struggle for socialism; and Lenin on tactics and guerilla war; the Communist Party of Canada on force, and a peaceful transition to socialism.

A democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance will have as its objective the democratic restructuring of Canadian society so that the interests of the majority of Canadians come first, and the stranglehold of finance capital on every aspect of life is broken. It will seek to advance the working people’s interests through all available avenues of struggle, based on massive and united extra-parliamentary action.

The alliance will strive to score electoral advances, and the winning of power by a people’s government dedicated to carrying out sweeping measures to democratize society and transform economic relations in the interests of the working class and the Canadian people as a whole.

Such a breakthrough will be difficult to accomplish given the sophisticated means at the disposal of the ruling class to manipulate public opinion, discourage political activism and otherwise influence the outcome of bourgeois elections. A crucial task for the alliance will be to defend and expand democracy and to fight against corporate and governmental attacks on the electoral process.

A democratic, anti-monopoly government, based on a parliamentary majority, and acting in concert with the united and militant extra-parliamentary movements of the people, would signal a qualitative shift in the balance of class forces in Canadian society, and open the door to the revolutionary transformation to socialism. It would involve the people in a truly meaningful way.

The people’s government would be committed to a program of action geared to serve people before profit. That program would arise in the course of the social, economic and political struggles of the working class and its democratic allies, and be subject to the widest discussion and approval among all of the forces of the alliance.

Communists will struggle to win support for the most advanced program of political, economic and social transformation possible in line with the changing conditions. The program must aim: (1) to confront and restrict the power of finance capital (both foreign and domestic), and to extend public ownership of key sectors of the economy; (2) to redistribute wealth and raise the living standards and conditions of life for the vast majority of the people; and (3) to introduce sweeping democratic reforms to enhance popular control and administration of the Canadian state at all levels of government. (...)

Although such measures would not constitute socialism, the victory of a people’s government devoted to carrying out such a broad program would mark a significant step in the struggle for fundamental change and socialist transformation.

To succeed, a people’s government would require the full and conscious mobilization of the working class and its allies outside Parliament. With each meaningful reform enacted, with each democratic measure secured, with each encroachment on the power and privilege of capital, the ruling class and its imperialist international partners would stiffen their resistance by all means at their disposal. But, at the same time, such measures can help to galvanize the masses, and promote working class actions in support of the people’s government.

This would be a period of intensified class struggle on all fronts – political, economic and ideological.

The successful implementation of the people’s program, and the pace with which it is carried out will depend on the unity and militancy of the working class and its revolutionary vanguard, and on the enduring unity of the entire democratic, anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance. Prevailing regional and international conditions will also affect the pace of social transformations.

Throughout this process there will be social and political mobilization of the working class and people’s forces to support and implement the program of the people’s government – through electoral and workplace struggles, street demonstrations and other actions. At the same time, the threatened ruling class will attempt to shake the confidence and unity of the people’s forces and to frustrate their ability to carry out the people’s program.

To preserve its class privileges and re-establish its supremacy, the capitalist class will be inclined to resort to economic blackmail and sabotage, subversion from within those sections of the state apparatus it still influences and controls, political violence and terrorism, and even open rebellion and foreign intervention. The people’s government, with the full support of the working class, will be fully within its rights to counter any such anti-democratic and illegal assaults on people’s power

From Chapter 6 of the Programme of the Communist Party of Canada

Book review: So many reds, so many beds...

The Fruit Machine, used by the RCMP until 1969

Reprinted from Geist magazine
By Daneil Francis

During the 1950s the RCMP security service employed a machine to root out homosexuals working for the federal government. Individuals suspected of being gay were hooked up to this bogus device, the so-called “fruit machine,” and exposed to pornographic images. Their physiological responses were assessed and a sexual identity conferred. Once identified, homosexuals were purged from the public service.

Ostensibly it was the Mounties’ job to look for Communist spies, but since homosexuals were vulnerable to blackmail because of their illicit lifestyle, they too represented a risk to the security of the state, or so the argument went. More than one hundred civil servants lost their jobs because of the “gay squad,” which expanded its efforts beyond the civil service by opening files on thousands of gays across the country.

Clearly it was homosexuality that was being policed, not subversion.

In their new book Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America (University of Toronto Press), the historians Reg Whitaker, Gregory Kealey and Andrew Parnaby describe the fruit machine as “the single looniest venture” in the history of the security service. But they had a lot to choose from. What their book reveals is that any Canadian who has ever held unorthodox political views or even led what might be considered an unorthodox lifestyle could take it for granted that the government was watching.

(Link to a CBC story about the Fruit Machine - RY eds)

The origins of this intrusive surveillance go all the way back to Confederation, when John A. Macdonald placed Gilbert McMicken in charge of a force of special agents to keep a watchful eye on the activities of Fenian sympathizers along the Canada–US border. But the surveillance state really got organized at the end of World War I, when the Royal North West Mounted Police was remodelled as an internal security force—the modern RCMP—and deployed to spy on labour leaders and left-wing agitators who the government believed were plotting a Bolshevik revolution in Canada.

In the 1930s the security service was asked to fulfill Prime Minister R.B. Bennett’s promise that he would grind Communism under “the heel of ruthlessness.” It was “open season on Communists and suspected Communists,” write Whitaker et al., as the political police rounded up hundreds of radicals and even deported a number who were recent immigrants. “They simply came and took him away,” said the wife of one of the men. “They had no right to do such a thing.”

Picking up the story two decades later, our authors call the 1950s “the deepest Ice Age of the Cold War.” It was not just homosexuals that the RCMP singled out for persecution; they also encouraged purges of the National Film Board, the foreign service, labour unions and universities. In a variety of ways, write Whitaker et al., public policy was made hostage to “Cold War fantasies.” Worse, they present a portrait of a country “honeycombed with secret informers,” people who were not attached to the secret service but gladly helped spy on their friends and associates on its behalf.

“What is quite extraordinary about the vast collection of dossiers on Canadians and Canadian organizations… is the amount of complicity shown by large numbers of people in police surveillance of their own associations and activities.” To a disturbing extent, we had become a nation of spies, and by the early 1980s the security service had compiled files on ten thousand suspected subversives and had made plans to round up and incarcerate them in the event of an unspecified “national emergency.” The authors do not go so far, but the picture of Cold War Canada that emerges from the pages of their book seems every bit as sinister as East Germany under the Stasi.

This is the hidden history of the RCMP, which until 1984 had responsibility for secret policing. Much of the story is already known, though Secret Service brings it together in a convenient and compelling synthesis. But it is hidden in the sense that it contradicts so much of what the public is asked to believe about the Mounties: that they are the stalwart defenders of law and justice; that they are respecting our rights, not undermining them; that they make the country a safer place. This version of the Mountie has been purveyed for years in movies, histories, tourist brochures, comic books and novels.

Famously, the force even hired out its image-making to the Disney Corporation. The result of all this massaging and spin-doctoring has left Canadians thinking that our souvenir police force was on our side. Yet behind the scenes, which is where Secret Service takes its readers, the RCMP’s agents have been violating the rights of Canadians from the very beginning of the force.

It was in Quebec where the RCMP security service finally came a cropper. During the 1960s and ’70s, agents engaged in a series of “dirty tricks” aimed at sovereigntists in that province. They broke into journalists’ offices to steal documents; they opened mail; they stockpiled dynamite to use in furtive operations to discredit separatists; they stole records from the Parti Québécois, a perfectly legitimate political party [sic]; they fabricated communiqués from the Front de Libération du Québec; and so on.

All this illegal, clandestine activity eventually led to a Royal Commission, which in turn persuaded the federal government to transfer responsibility for national security policing from a discredited RCMP to a new agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), in 1984. Which didn’t end the RCMP’s problematic involvement in terrorism matters. In 2002, when the Americans kidnapped Maher Arar, a Canadian computer engineer, and sent him to Syria to be tortured, it turned out to have been the RCMP that provided the dubious “evidence” on which the Americans had acted. (Arar was later exonerated and received an apology from the Canadian government, along with $10.5 million.)

CSIS has had its own problems, of course. Whitaker et al. call the cock-up over the 1985 Air India bombing “the worst intelligence failure in Canadian history.” But Secret Service is not simply a chronicle of police scandals and mistakes. As befits academics, the authors are extremely judicious in their treatment of individual incidents, and the result is a thorough, even-handed catalogue of most of the major security-related cases in Canada down to the present post-9/11 world. Few would argue—certainly Whitaker and his colleagues do not—that there is no role for security policing to protect Canadians from foreign espionage and terrorist violence. However, what the history shows is that as often as not, it is the police who have been the subversives, violating the rights of innocent individuals and legitimate organizations whose only “crime” was to challenge the status quo.

Communists welcome end of the gravy train for Mayor Rob Ford, but far right still threatens

The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) welcomes the Ontario Superior Court's order for Rob Ford to vacate the mayoralty of Toronto because of his contempt for the residents in not excusing himself on conflict-of-interest grounds from a council debate, itself triggered by his abuse of office to benefit a charity named after himself.   The Party supports a by-election to replace Ford and calls for the movement fighting the right-wing policies and forces behind Rob Ford to keep mobilizing, otherwise his agenda could continue under a different face.

Party Leader Liz Rowley explained that “Rob Ford had campaigned on ending 'the gravy train', but when he took office Torontonians saw that in reality this meant lay-offs, contracting out, cutting services, and charging steep fees for services the public needs and wants.    It's the corporations who backed Ford who are on a 'gravy train' of enjoying record profits, record low taxes, and municipal services at the expense of ratepayers and tenants who are paying more and more, and getting less and less.  They’re also salivating at the prospects of more privatization of city services and assets under the right-wing majority at City Hall.

Rob Ford's own exploitation of his office for his family’s benefit and his personal causes, as well as his contempt for democracy, for the public and the public interest, and for the high office of Mayor of the sixth largest government in the country, by being absent during Council meetings to coach football games amongst many other transgressions, shows Rob Ford was making a new Gravy Train all by himself and has no respect for the people of Toronto.

Congratulations are in order to the Stop Cuts Coalition and others who have had success in stopping his agenda, such as the “lifeboat” motion to moderate some of the cuts in January, but we need to keep up the mobilization because the right-wing majority on Council and the corporate interests who bankrolled Ford’s election won't rest.  They could find someone else to do their bidding, with more grace and less Gravy.”

Liz Rowley had characterized the Rob Ford administration as one where “the public is not welcome” when she was removed from City Hall for merely suggesting budget committee hearings be extended by one day to allow for all 348 registered deputants to have their democratic say.  Liz Rowley said “Rob Ford and the right-wing agenda he represents were going after our libraries, recreation centres, seniors' homes, HIV/AIDS programs, school nutrition programs, three of our child care centres, three of our homeless centres, theatres, and zoos, but his removal does not mean they are stopping.  We need to show we reject this agenda now, under any face new or old.”

“The only real guarantee that the Fords and co. will be side-lined is through the election of a progressive majority in the 2014 civic election, and through the building of a strong and progressive civic reform movement in 2013 that can unite all those forces now fighting the right-wing agenda at City Hall, to develop a progressive municipal platform and put forward a slate of progressive candidates who will fight for it in the next election.

The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) calls on the provincial and federal governments to end the chronic financial crisis in Toronto and other municipalities by providing cities with a new financial deal, including:

• provide adequate funding through statutory transfers to Toronto and all municipalities, enabling cities to provide the array of municipal services necessary in the 21st century
• stop the firesale of municipal land and assets, including public housing, schools, and parks; and reverse user fees
• upload the Harris download and rescind balanced budget legislation
• fund the capital and operating costs of the TTC and municipal transit systems; reduce fares and increase ridership
• transfer 50% of gas and road user to municipalities
• collect unpaid and deferred corporate taxes, and introduce progressive tax policies based on ability to pay
• remove education from the property tax, cut property taxes in half, and fund education through provincial general revenues
• develop a provincial and federal affordable housing plan and enact rent controls
• introduce a provincial system of universally accessible affordable quality public child care
• give cities status in the Constitution; and protect local autonomy and democracy

The Party's 10-point prescription for a People's Recovery, its alternative to the austerity policies advocated by Rob Ford, as well as Tim Hudak and Dalton McGuinty in the provincial Legislature, is available online at http://www.ontariocpc.ca/10-point-prescription-for-a-peoples-recovery.

Communist Party Condemns Proroguing of Parliament: Recall the Legislature!

Withdraw Bill 155, repeal Bill 115 and restore Free Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector!

The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) condemns Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s indefinite proroguing of the Provincial Parliament and suspension of parliamentary democracy, and demands the government recall Parliament and end its abuse of power.

Unable to pass his government’s anti-democratic “Protecting Public Services Act” (Bill 155) – which would legislate a wage freeze and suspend free collective bargaining across the public sector – the Premier wants to dispense with Parliament and try to impose his program of austerity without legislation. The government also hopes to evade any accountability or responsibility in the on-going exposure of wrong-doing by government Ministers and agencies.

The Liberals were counting on the Tories to support Bill 155, but the Tories are demanding the government go much further. The Tories are already campaigning to disembowel existing labour laws under the slogan of ‘flexible’ labour law ‘reform’. They want to eliminate the Rand Formula, make Ontario a right to work jurisdiction, and break the back of the labour movement as has been done in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other US states.

The Premier has said he will use the next months to force a negotiated wage freeze onto public sector unions. A negotiated wage freeze has the support of NDP leader Andrea Horwath according to statements made at a recent news conference filmed by CP24. While the NDP opposed a legislated freeze, they support a negotiated freeze. The NDP caucus apparently believes that working people should pay for an economic crisis caused by corporate greed and ably assisted by right-wing governments in Ontario and elsewhere. The 99% would disagree with the caucus, just as they disagreed with Bob Rae’s social contract in 1993.

The Liberals’ anti-labour, anti-democratic austerity agenda has provoked massive public opposition, including ongoing protests and demonstrations. The prorogation is bound to generate even more opposition as public outrage at the government’s abuse of power spills over.

The Communist Party calls on the Premier to immediately recall the Legislature, and move quickly to withdraw Bill 155, repeal Bill 115, and allow the province’s public employers and public sector unions to move forward to freely negotiate unfettered collective agreements.

The Premier must also take the strong medicine needed to clean up the corruption caused by years of privatization and deregulation by stealth, including ORNGE and other P3 arrangements, and by vote-buying in ridings with gas plants.

The Communist Party also demands that the Premier and the Liberal government, as well as the Tories and the NDP remove themselves from collective bargaining and let the public employers and public sector unions exercise their bargaining rights to negotiate free and unfettered agreements.

We stand with labour and all those who oppose this government’s austerity policies, and the efforts to download the costs of the economic crisis onto the backs of working people through this on-going attack on public sector wages, pensions, jobs and public services. A massive struggle against austerity in the streets and at the bargaining table is the only way to beat back the attack on wages, incomes, jobs and living standards, and save public services and assets.

Another Ontario is possible. And urgent. The Communist Party offers a 10 point prescription that is a pro-people alternative to austerity and is detailed on our web site www.communistpartyontario.ca.

Ukrainian Labour Temple plaque unveiled.

Workers of the World Unite says the main sign

On September 29, Winnipeg's Ukrainian Labour Temple finally received a plaque marking it as a National Historic Site. Close to one hundred people attended the unveiling ceremony which included performances by the hall's orchestra and choir.

The ULT and its manor continue to play an active role in Winnipeg's progressive community, including as a venue for meetings of the Communist Party's Mathew Popowich Club. (On this point, the plaque has an error.)

The ceremony was postponed for a year after Parks Canada officials received a communication from Ottawa forbidding the choir from singing the Internationale as part of the program.

The text of the plaque is:

"Constructed in 1918‑1919, this imposing building was at the centre of a radical left‑wing movement committed to improving the lot of Ukrainian workers and farmers. Housing a printing shop and the headquarters of several national organizations devoted to education and mutual aid, it also served as a base for the promotion of Ukrainian performing arts. It was a gathering place for strikers during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and for the Communist Party of Canada until the 1950s. Continuing to serve a cultural function, this neoclassical building is one of the grandest and largest labour temples in Canada."


The Temple was built primarily by volunteer labour and financed by donations and served as a key hub for Ukrainian culture and political activism at the time. The Ukrainian Labor News and other Ukrainian language publications were prepared and distributed from the temple.

In addition to being an important gathering place for the CPC, the building holds an especially historic place in the Canadian labour movement, having served as a rallying centre for trade unionists during the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. The temple was raided by authorities searching for evidence of alleged sedition and conspiracy.

The structure was designated a provincial heritage site in 1995 and it remains the only surviving labour hall associated with the turbulent events of the general strike. To this day it serves as national headquarters for the Workers Benevolent Association, established within its walls in 1922.

"I believe that proclaiming the Winnipeg Ukrainian Labour Temple a national historic site also quite rightly pays tribute to the founding members," says Myron Shatulsky, a member of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and chair of the board of directors of the Ukrainian Labour Temple Foundation.

"These socialist-minded Ukrainian immigrants, some of whom had yet to receive their naturalization papers, and facing the possibility of arrest and deportation, sought and established a path along which they could achieve a better life for themselves, their children, their descendants, and for all Canadians. It is truly a historic event."


With files from the Peoples Voice Manitoba Bureau and the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE)