The Federal Liberals’ support for the Trans Mountain pipeline makes a mockery of any promise to give Indigenous peoples the veto on developments affecting them, and to recognize Indigenous sovereignty while also trashing commitments on climate change. The difference between Tory all-out support for all pipelines, up to and including climate change denial, and Liberal support for some pipelines, despite their intended reform of the environmental review process, is at best stylistic. There is no difference of substance.
Communist Party of Canada
Reset the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
This February 14th, as in past years, marches will be held across Canada to commemorate the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The February 14th marches demanding justice have been being held for almost three decades, but the current need for action is as great as ever before.
The Communist Party of Canada continues to stand in solidarity with the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and all those fighting for an end to the ongoing violence. We demand the government act now to deliver on long delayed promises to address the violence against Indigenous women and girls and to reset the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Women and Girls.
Unifor and CLC: get back to the table!
The announcement on January 17 by the National Executive Board of UNIFOR, Canada’s largest private sector union, that it was disaffiliating from the Canadian Labour Congress, effective immediately, is a shock to millions of workers in Canada – over 3 million of whom are members of unions affiliated to the CLC, and 300,000 who are members of UNIFOR.
Many remember an earlier split in the late ‘90s, ostensibly over the same issues, which fractured the labour movement for almost a decade. During that time governments and corporations drove a vicious austerity agenda that cut jobs and wages, closed plants and factories, destroyed defined benefit pension plans, orchestrated bankruptcies under the CCAA that stole workers’ wages, pensions, and benefits – just like US Steel, Nortel Networks, and Sears are doing today. Union density was undermined, the pay gap grew wider and part-time and precarious work replaced good union jobs. Public and post-secondary education and healthcare were under sharp attack, core funding for public services and universal social programs was slashed, and the trade union movement itself came under sustained attack. Corporations raked in super-profits, half a million manufacturing jobs disappeared, and real wages, purchasing power, and living standards fell.
100th anniversary of Great October Revolution
Throughout November, celebrations around the world will mark the centenary of the outstanding political event of the 20th century: the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917. By overthrowing the Russian capitalists, landowners and aristocrats, the workers, peasants and soldiers of the Tsarist empire opened the door to a new society in which humanity’s dreams of peace, equality and democracy began to become reality. The storming of the Winter Palace, signaled by the guns of the Aurora cruiser, began the historical epoch of the transition towards a socialist society, based on cooperation and social justice, not the exploitation and oppression inherent in the profit-driven capitalist system.
The October Revolution was far more than a change in government. It was a fundamental social upheaval, a sharp break with thousands of years of class-divided societies. For the first time, the working class took lasting political power, shattering the myth that only the owners of wealth can rule.
Condamnons la répression de la Catalogne par l’Espagne – Défendons le droit à l’autodétermination
Le Parti communiste du Canada condamne la violence sauvage du gouvernement espagnol de Mariano Rajoy exercée contre la population catalane afin de l’empêcher de voter dans un référendum le 1er octobre 2017 pour se prononcer sur son avenir en tant que nation.
Selon les autorités catalanes plus de 800 personnes ont été blessées par les forces policières dont près d’une centaine plus gravement.
Tandis que chef de l’État espagnol se réjouissait d’avoir réussi à empêcher « avec toute sa force » le référendum, le gouvernement régional catalan a annoncé de son côté que plus de 90% des 2,2 millions de bulletins de votes qui ont pu être comptés soutiennent l’option indépendantiste. La police aurait par ailleurs réussi à fermer 319 bureaux de votes et saisir les urnes de sorte qu’environ 770 000 bulletins de vote n’ont pu être comptés. Malgré la répression et en tenant compte des bulletins saisis par la police, c’est environ 56% des 5,3 millions des électrices et électeurs enregistrés qui ont pu participer au vote.
Unite and fight: Jobs, democracy, sovereignty and peace
This Labour Day 2017, is the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. Against all odds, the Russian workers defended their socialist revolution against invasion, fascism and wars, at an enormous cost of 22 million Soviet lives. Their goal was to create a new workers’ state in which the exploitation of one human being by another was abolished forever.
100 years later, the peoples of the world are once again facing war, racism, exploitation and fascism, while the USSR – a great counter-weight to US imperialism and global war – has been overthrown. The world has changed, but the struggle for peace, jobs, democracy, sovereignty and socialism remains the goal of millions of workers around the world.
Today working people in Canada and around the globe are faced not only with the ongoing corporate assault against jobs and living standards, but with a US president willing to launch a nuclear war which could devastate humanity. It’s time to unite and fight – for jobs, democracy, sovereignty and peace.
Canada 150: whitewashing the genocidal history of colonialism
On National Aboriginal Day, June 21, the Communist Party of Canada sends our warmest greetings to all First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We take this important occasion to renew our solidarity with the resistance against the expansion of resource extraction industries on traditional indigenous territories, and with all those who stand for an end to racist oppression of indigenous peoples in this country.
Just ten days after June 21, hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent by the federal government to mark “Canada 150”. This year’s July 1 holiday is not a day of celebration for millions of working people who suffer from growing economic insecurity, and especially for indigenous peoples who face the highest rates of unemployment, poverty, health crises, incarceration, police violence, and countless other measures of inequality. For indigenous peoples, being forced to pay for this “party” with their own tax dollars is a bitter insult, especially since these events are being held by the Liberal Party government of Justin Trudeau, who won the electoral support of many indigenous voters two years ago, when he campaigned as a leader who would heal the damage inflicted by Stephen Harper’s Tories.
May Day 2017: Unite and fight!
Unite and fight for jobs, democracy, sovereignty, equality and socialism!
We celebrate May Day 2017 in the shadow of the Trump war machine which has moved the whole planet into extreme danger of extinction due to nuclear war and/or climate change. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, it took just 100 days in office for the Trump administration to move the Doomsday Clock to 2 and a half minutes to midnight. The world hasn’t been this close to Doomsday since 1953, at the height of the Cold War when the US openly campaigned for war with the USSR. Is this the end of history that capitalism’s triumphant spokesman Fukuyama proclaimed in the 1990s?
For the last 25 years, capitalism has had the upper hand, and the ability to demonstrate its self-proclaimed ‘superiority’. Its enormous wealth and capacity could have been put to the service of the world’s exploited and impoverished billions with health care, education, jobs, development, peace and disarmament, and action to reduce the effects of climate change. In fact this is socialist Cuba’s contribution over the past 25 years, despite the US embargo.
But capitalism did what capitalism always does – seek out new places and new ways to exploit and to profit from the misery of the many, for the benefit of the richest corporations and the wealthiest few. This is the nature and the purpose of capitalism: the exploitation of one human being and one class by another, for the private profit and benefit of the ruling class at the expense of the working people, the youth, women, immigrants, Indigenous Peoples. It is incapable of addressing the needs of the people, or the needs of the planet, because its purpose is to ruthlessly exploit both.
Unite to Stop the Right!
For Peace, Jobs, Sovereignty and Democracy – Put People before Profits
Political Report of the March 4th & 5th Central Committee meeting of the Communist Party of Canada
The International Situation
The most significant event since our October plenum, is the election of US President Donald Trump and of Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This is the worst possible electoral outcome for the US working class, for the international working class, for the environment, and for movement towards global peace, disarmament and mutual security. It is also an immediate threat to Canadian jobs and wages, environmental security, health and social programs. It sharply accelerates the attack on Canadian sovereignty and independence.
Corporations pleased with the Federal budget
The Liberals’ second budget, delivered March 22, made the corporations happy, but left working people, youth and the unemployed looking for the beef promised during the 2015 federal election, and in last year’s budget.
For the corporations and the wealthy: no tax hikes, and no new taxes, and no loopholes closed, leaving the government with no revenue to deliver on their many promises. Pointing to the US, where big corporate tax cuts have been promised by the Trump administration, the Liberals say they can’t raise corporate taxes here. But they can and should, if they want to stem the tide of right-wing populism that has swept across the US and Europe, and is fueling the Tories and the far right in Canada.