This draft document presents the political perspectives of the Revolutionary Communist Party for 2025, as adopted by its Central Committee this past weekend. Canada faces its most severe crisis of modern times, and the purpose of this document is to lay out the general lines of the political and economic processes and the critical role of communists in the struggle ahead. We invite feedback on this document as we prepare for discussion at our upcoming Congress in May 2025.
The ruling class in Canada stares into an abyss. The post-war global order, which once provided a stable framework for capitalist expansion, is crumbling. Canada, long a junior partner to U.S. imperialism, is now feeling the full force of this disintegration. The privileged position Canada once enjoyed on the world stage is under threat, and this will have profound implications for politics, the economy, and the class struggle.
The ruling class, having delayed the inevitable for years, will soon be forced to offload the costs of this crisis onto the backs of the working class. The question is not if but when this will happen.
While it is impossible to predict every twist and turn in the unfolding crisis, the general trajectory is clear. As workers are forced to confront the devastating effects of this systemic breakdown, the existing political parties and their leaders will be put to the test—and one after another, they will be exposed as incapable of offering real solutions. Through this process of struggle and disillusionment, the working class will eventually find their way back to Communism.
From the millions of workers who will be radicalized by the crisis, a new generation of revolutionary fighters will emerge. The Revolutionary Communist Party aims to forge these fighters into a disciplined vanguard, capable of leading the working class to victory in the revolutionary struggles ahead. Only through such a party, rooted in the bedrock of Marxist theory, can the working class achieve its historic mission: to overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist society.
The disintegration of the postwar order
The United States emerged from World War II as the undisputed capitalist superpower, imposing its will on the global economy. This allowed capitalism to temporarily and partially overcome one of the barriers to the development of the productive forces: the nation state. Protectionist trade barriers were dismantled, and the productive forces developed rapidly.
Canada, as a junior partner to the U.S., benefited enormously. Foreign investment flowed in, revolutionizing production and boosting labour productivity. Canadian companies gained access to the world’s largest consumer market.
But world relations are not static. When the USSR fell and China was brought into the capitalist fold, this created a dynamic that has upended U.S. dominance. The U.S. share in global GDP has declined from 40 per cent in 1960 to just 26 per cent today while China’s share has risen from 4 per cent to 20 per cent.
While the US is still the dominant power, its power is showing its limits and it can no longer impose itself on the world the way it once did. This is eroding the entire postwar order as China challenges the U.S. for economic dominance and various middle powers vacillate between the two.
Protectionism is on the rise everywhere and the United States, which was once the paragon of free trade, imposes tariffs against its major trading partners. Canada, as a small power, is getting squeezed out.
The decline of Canadian capitalism
While all Western powers are in relative decline, Canada’s decline has been particularly sharp. Canada’s share of global GDP has shrunk from 2.9 per cent in 1985 to just 2 per cent today. In 2002, Canada’s GDP per capita was 8.6 per cent higher than the OECD average; today, it is below the average. Since 2014, Canada’s per capita GDP growth has averaged just 0.6 per cent, placing it third-last among OECD countries.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these trends. Canada’s economic recovery was the fifth weakest in the OECD, and the country is set to be overtaken by the United Kingdom, despite the latter’s struggles with Brexit. At this rate, Canada will be dead last in a decade.
Labour productivity has also declined, demonstrating that this decline is not simply relative but absolute. Since 2019, goods-producing sectors have seen a 1.5 per cent annual decline in productivity, with construction productivity at a 30-year low. While Canada was the 6th most productive economy in the OECD in 1970, today it is 18th and is set to fall further.
Canada’s privileged position in the world economy as an adjunct of the U.S. economy has now become a major weakness. Much of the capital has fled to the U.S. market, attracted by low union density, anti-labour laws and lower corporate taxes. Capital investment has fled the Canadian market, with $811 billion more leaving the economy in 2023 than was invested in it
As a result, capital investment per worker in Canada has plummeted from 79 cents for every dollar invested per worker in the U.S. in 2014 to just 55 cents in 2021. This places Canada well behind the OECD average, which stands at approximately 66 cents per dollar. Even more striking is the decline in non-residential capital investment per available worker, which peaked in the final quarter of 2015. By the second quarter of 2024, every category of capital investment had fallen below its 2015 levels.
Historically, capitalism played a progressive role by driving the bourgeoisie, through competition, to reinvest surplus value back into production. This dynamic led to the constant revolutionizing of the productive forces, dramatically increasing labour productivity.
However, as we can see in Canada today, this process is not only stalling but rolling backward. This is an indictment of the capitalist system. As Marx explained long ago, any system that fails to develop the productive forces, enters a period of terminal decline with reverberations throughout all aspects of society, eventually resulting in a revolutionary overthrow of the system.
And we are witnessing the early stages of this process transpire before our eyes. Living standards are falling, social services are dysfunctional and infrastructure is crumbling. It is the working class that will suffer from this decline of Canadian capitalism. The result of this will be class struggle and, yes, revolutionary explosions at a certain stage.
Trump and the trade war
This is the context in which Donald Trump has been re-elected south of the border. Having won a thumping victory, Trump is more emboldened than ever to re-establish the glory of American imperialism. However, his approach marks a sharp departure from the previous strategies of U.S. foreign policy.
While Biden desperately attempted to hold onto the American empire overseas, the entire logic of Trump’s over the top statements—taken as a whole—is to abandon costly military adventures in far off lands and instead consolidate power closer to home. This explains Trump’s provocative statements about Canada, Greenland, Mexico and the Panama canal. Where Canada may have dodged the worst of Trump’s first term, it now finds itself squarely in the crosshairs of his protectionist agenda.
Trump is prepared to wield the economic might of the United States to export the adverse effects of the crisis of overproduction to its neighbors. The consequences for Canada, whether through annexation, economic subjugation, or punitive tariffs, will be catastrophic. The Canadian ruling class, long accustomed to its partnership with U.S. imperialism, now faces an existential crisis.
For Trump, Canada is not a cherished ally or a partner in a “special relationship”. It is merely another country riding on the coattails of American “greatness”. He views the trade deficit with Canada as a “subsidy” to Canadian industries and is determined to reverse it. To achieve this, he has ignited a trade war between two of the most integrated economies in the world.
Key sectors such as oil, automobiles, and paper products rely heavily on cross-border trade, with goods often crossing multiple times during production. The economic consequences of a trade war will therefore have a devastating ripple effect, disrupting supply chains and crippling industries on both sides of the border.
However, this is not a relationship of equals. Canada is far more dependent on the U.S. than vice versa. A staggering 77 per cent of Canada’s total exports go to the United States, while 63 per cent of its imports come from the U.S. In contrast, Canada is the destination for just 17 per cent of U.S. exports and Canadian imports represent 13.5 per cent of all imports into the U.S. Specific industries are even more vulnerable: 93 per cent of Canada’s automobile exports and 87 per cent of its oil production are destined for the U.S. market. Tariffs on these sectors will lead to economic dislocation and massive job losses.
This is the essence of protectionism: to export unemployment and shift the burden of economic crisis onto other nations. Trump has been very explicit about his intentions, stating that auto manufacturing jobs in Canada should move to Detroit. For Canada, “America First” means deindustrialization and economic decline for the benefit of U.S. capital.
But for anyone who thinks that tariffs (or counter tariffs) will actually benefit workers on either side of the border, history tells a different story.
The great epoch of protectionism—the 1930s—was ushered in following the 1929 stock market crash. In an attempt to export the effects of the crisis to other countries, the ruling class of each nation implemented protectionist measures. In the United States, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raised tariffs on agricultural and industrial products. The purported aim was to protect American businesses and farmers, and that would have worked if not for the issue that no capitalist state will allow its trade to be punished without response. America’s trade partners at the time, led by Canada, implemented their own counter tariffs and the result was the market crash of 1929 being transformed into the Great Depression.
At its height in 1933, unemployment stood at 30 per cent in Canada and in the U.S. it rose to over 20 per cent. It is obvious to see that this did not “protect jobs”. This trade war risks unleashing a similar situation today in a war of mutual recriminations where workers will suffer the most.
Protectionism could also make inflation worse. This is because it will create a situation where less efficiently produced goods locally will replace more efficiently made foreign goods. While Trump continues to claim that tariffs won’t increase inflation, the only way this would happen would be if there is a general economic collapse along the lines of the Great depression. This would create a deflationary dynamic due to the fact that workers are so poor that they cannot buy anything. Both scenarios run counter to Trump’s promises on bringing down the cost of living and unleashing a new golden age for American capitalism.
Fault lines of the Canadian federation
Trump’s aggressive rhetoric and protectionist policies has brought to light deep fault lines within the Canadian federation. These find their roots in the historic development of Canada as a nation state.
As Marx described in the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie historically has centralized the means of production and the consequence of that was political centralization. Disparate fiefdoms and provinces were tied together into one national market. This was historically progressive as it allowed for a wider area in which the productive forces could develop unhampered.
However, Canada never had a successful bourgeois revolution like in America. When the United States broke from Britain, this unleashed the development of the productive forces. In contrast, Canada evolved more gradually within the framework of the British Empire, becoming a federation only in 1867. This led to a belated and uneven development with a high level of provincialism. Today, within the Canadian state, there are more trade barriers than those between European states.
The proximity to the United States further exacerbated this development. Functionally an adjunct of the United States, each province is more economically integrated with the U.S. than with one another. While there is one “national-class interest” as Marx described in the Manifesto, the capitalists in each province at times prioritize their own narrow needs over that of the ruling class as a whole. These centrifugal forces have been on full display with the response to Trump’s threats.
Each province, reliant on its own trade relationships with the U.S., has responded differently to the threat of tariffs, often at odds with one another. For example, Alberta, heavily dependent on oil exports, has sought to protect its energy sector by cozying up to Trump, with Premier Danielle Smith even visiting him at Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, Ontario, with its manufacturing base, has pushed for a more confrontational approach, fearing the loss of auto industry jobs to the U.S.
This provincialism is not new, but Trump’s tariffs have intensified it, revealing the fragility of the Canadian federation. As economic pressures mount, the fault lines of the federation will only deepen, potentially leading to a crisis of national unity.
For the moment, it seems like the breakup of the country or annexation to the US is an impossibility. However, a lot can change on the basis of a general economic disintegration. While the centripetal tendency to unite against the foreign threat predominates, centrifugal tendencies have a powerful economic basis and can make themselves felt if provinces feel like the federal state is not protecting their interests.
Hypocrisy of Canadian nationalism
But the capitalists of each province, while fiercely protective of their regional industries and markets, are ultimately too small and weak to compete on the global stage alone. They also do not control the tariff and trade policy which is handled by the federal government. So while provincial capitalists may clash over regional interests, they ultimately need a strong central government to defend their collective interests against external threats, such as Trump’s protectionist policies.
In the face of Trump’s tariffs, the Canadian bourgeois are scrambling to “diversify” trading partners. There is even talk of eliminating internal trade barriers—meaning that the incomplete task of the bourgeois revolution to create a united national market may be completed due to the external pressure brought about by Donald Trump. The fact that one of the central tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution may be completed in this manner demonstrates the narrow mindedness of the Canadian bourgeoisie.
Predictably, this situation has led to a revival in Canadian nationalist sentiment, with national pride rising from 58 per cent to 67 per cent. Anecdotally this has been seen with the repeated booing of the U.S. national anthem at hockey games. It has also led many to want to ‘Buy Canadian’, and even to cancel travel plans to the US.
The Liberals have made a miraculous comeback in the polls, successfully positioning themselves as the true Canadian nationalist party. While the Conservatives were leading in the polls by a large margin prior to this, the fact that Poilievre has copied many of Trump’s talking points and was even endorsed by Elon Musk online has not helped him.
Another factor that has contributed to this is that historically, many older Canadians think of the Conservative party as being more pro-American and in favour of closer integration. For example, the Mulroney Conservatives signed Canada onto NAFTA in the 1980s while the Liberals were opposed at the time. The Liberals under Chrétien also refused to join the invasion of Iraq while the Harper Conservatives supported participation. This has all contributed to the Liberals being seen as the main Canadian nationalist party.
Across the spectrum we are preached to about how we must be united against the external threat. Liberals and Conservatives are joined by the NDP and the labour leaders in what they call “Team Canada”.
There are a couple of elements at play here. On the one hand, Canadian workers have genuine fears about losing their jobs or having the worst elements of American capitalism brought to Canada like private healthcare. But on the other hand, this sentiment is being cynically used by the ruling class to rally support for their own narrow interests. It is the job of Communists to unmask this deception.
For starters, we should underline the utter hypocrisy of these capitalist politicians who pretend to care about working class people. For example, while Justin Trudeau claims to be defending Canadian workers, one look at the track record of his government shows otherwise. In 2024 alone, Trudeau took away the right to strike of the rail workers, the port workers of Montreal and Vancouver and the Postal workers—all without a debate or vote in the parliament! While Liberals like to talk about how dictatorial Donald Trump is, they are happy to use anti-democratic measures such as this against the labour movement.
Equally hypocritical is the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford who is now famous for wearing his MAGA-style “Canada is Not for Sale” hats. But for someone who got caught red handed selling part of the Ontario Greenbelt to his developer friends and has privatized Ontario surgeries, the irony and hypocrisy could not be more glaring. Yes, Canada is for sale – and he has been selling it!
The same hypocrisy can be seen in Quebec. Premier François Legault, who makes a lot of noise about “defending Quebec”, sided with an American company, ABI, against a union of Quebecois workers when the company locked them out for 18 months. This year, the CAQ government has tried to force Blainville to sell a large part of the town to an American toxic waste treatment company. Quebec is also clearly for sale.
Behind the vague statements about “defending the country” or “uniting” are the veiled interests of the ruling class and this is easy enough to demonstrate with a few examples. For example, counter tariffs are widely supported—but these have nothing to do with saving jobs. This is simply a measure used by the Canadian capitalist state to protect their market and therefore their profits.
As well, the companies who have traditionally benefited the most from protections implemented by the state are some of the largest most exploitative private monopolies in the country. In particular, there are protections in place to protect telecommunications (Bell, Telus, Rogers and Videotron), airlines (Air Canada), as well as banking (RBC, TD, CIBC, BMO and Scotiabank).
But telecommunications in Canada is a complete racket and this is obvious when you look at cell phone plans. In 2023, Canadians paid an average of $7.36 per gigabyte (GB) of mobile data. This is 26 times more expensive than France for example, where the median price is $0.28 per GB.
This is because the Canadian state protects the Canadian market against telecom giants like Verizon, which has 146 million customers—almost four times the population of Canada. While Rogers and Bell have done everything in their power to make sure Verizon cannot enter the Canadian market, it is clear that they do not do this for the benefit of Canadian consumers or workers. They are doing this to protect their monopoly pricing scheme.
Equally, Canadian banks are protected from competition from American banks. While the media and the government argue that Trump is lying when he states that “Canada doesn’t even allow U.S. banks to open or do business there,” there is an element of truth to Trump’s claim. Foreign banks can only apply to have a subsidiary—which cannot use foreign capital to function—or a “branch” which has the stipulation that they cannot accept deposits lower than $150,000. This is obviously a massive hindrance and protects the monopoly that the big five have on consumer banking.
It is not hard to see why they have these stringent rules in place. The largest bank in Canada is RBC, with $159 billion in market capitalization. This is dwarfed by JPMorgan Chase, the largest American bank, which has a market capitalization of $773 billion—over four times that of RBC! So the Canadian capitalists, like any ruling class, use the state to protect themselves against the behemoth to the south.
But this is not done for our benefit. In fact, much like telecommunications, the big five Canadian banks essentially run a racket where they control 90 per cent of the market. This allows them to charge some of the highest bank fees in the world. There was even a study which compared bank fees between Canada and the United Kingdom in 2022 and showed that Canadian banks charged nearly $8 billion in excess fees!
Counter tariffs ultimately play the same role as other protections put in place to protect Canadian businesses. These are not done in our interest and working class people derive no benefit from tariffs or protectionism of any kind.
Some may say that tariffs are necessary to protect the market share of Canadian companies so that they can continue to operate and that tariffs therefore protect jobs. The issue with this is that once protectionism starts, it will be hard to find an end. Tariffs beget tariffs as each jurisdiction tries to protect itself. This can quite easily lead to a general economic downturn like we saw in the 1930s.
The main enemy of the Canadian working class is not Donald Trump, it is the Canadian capitalist class. Donald Trump is an enemy—but we cannot rely on the Canadian capitalists to defend our interests. They are only looking out for their narrow interests and will throw the working class to the wolves the first chance they get.
Recently, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated things plainly when he said:
“If I was still prime minister, I would be prepared to impoverish the country and not be annexed, if that was the option we’re facing, […] I would accept any level of damage to preserve the independence of the country.”
This represents the honest opinion of the capitalist class. These oh-so-patriotic capitalists are prepared to do anything to protect their profits. They will offload the cost of this crisis onto the backs of workers in the form of mass layoffs, factory closures and cuts to pensions and benefits.
As Marx famously said, the workers have no country. The solution is not to unite with “our” capitalists, whether they are Canadian, Albertan, Quebecois, Ontarian, etc. We cannot have any trust in our ruling class, or in any provincial wing of this ruling class.
Canada is not a poor oppressed nation dominated by imperialism. Therefore, the demand to “defend Canadian sovereignty” has zero progressive content and only means supporting the imperialist robber barons on this side of the border.
Canada has been one of the closest allies in the most reactionary imperialist alliance the world has ever seen. Just because the master is striking blows against his partner in crime, does not mean that we should rally to the support of the latter.
It is the job of communists to defend an internationalist class based analysis and approach. The workers of the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Quebec have an interest in uniting against their ruling classes. The history of our working classes is deeply intertwined. We need to expose any attempt to rally the workers to “their” exploiters.
A government of crisis
There will be a new federal government this year and whether it’s Mark Carney or Pierre Poilievre, it’s safe to say that it will be a government of crisis.
The postwar order is crumbling before our eyes, and with it, the so-called “Canadian model”—capitalism with a human face—is untenable. While the politicians tip toe around this fact, they will soon be forced to face reality. There is no road forward for Canadian capitalism similar to the one taken in the past. The hard-won reforms of the postwar period are now on the chopping block. The Canadian ruling class needs to transform the country into a more profitable playground for capital to remain competitive on the world market.
To grasp the scale of the crisis facing the Canadian ruling class, we need only examine the federal budget of 2024. The government recorded revenues of $459.5 billion against expenditures of $521.4 billion, resulting in a staggering deficit of $61.9 billion. Meanwhile, $46.5 billion was spent merely on servicing the interest on government debt—a figure set to rise to $52.1 billion in 2025.
While Poilievre has said he will eliminate the deficit “as soon as possible,” Mark Carney has pledged to eliminate the deficit by 2028. But the question remains: how will they achieve this?
Military spending, currently at $44.1 billion, is poised to skyrocket under pressure from U.S. imperialism. Meeting NATO’s target by 2032 would require nearly doubling this figure to $82 billion annually. Yet Carney and Defense Minister Bill Blair have suggested even more aggressive timelines, with Carney suggesting 2030 and Blair suggesting it could be done by 2027.
The Business Council of Canada, representing the nation’s corporate elite, has gone further, advocating for a 3% GDP target—equivalent to a staggering $120 billion per year, or nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget!
This means that in addition to eliminating the deficit, the government will need to find tens of billions more to fund this militaristic war drive. If you can do some basic math, this represents a hole of upwards of $100 billion.
Corporate subsidies, which totaled $40 billion in 2024, are also likely to increase as the trade war intensifies. The Liberal government’s $5 billion Trade Impact Program is just the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a growing stream of handouts to big business.
Meanwhile, spending on the RCMP ($20 billion) and border security ($3 billion) remains sacrosanct for the ruling class and if anything will increase under pressure from Trump.
So where will the axe fall? Both Carney and Poilievre have spoken vaguely of “reining in wasteful spending” and “cutting bureaucracy”. But Poilievre’s plan to eliminate 17,000 federal jobs would save a mere $2 billion—a drop in the bucket. His much-touted cuts to the CBC would save just $1.4 billion. These token measures are a smokescreen, designed to distract from the inevitable: deep cuts to social programs.
Federal transfers for healthcare and education, totaling $140 billion, account for 35% of government spending. As well, the federal government spent $81 billion on Old Age Security in 2024. Sooner or later, these programs will be put under the knife.
At the same time, both candidates have pledged to scrap the carbon tax and Trudeau’s proposed capital gains tax increase. The capital gains tax increase was supposed to bring in nearly $20 billion over five years and the carbon tax brought in $32 billion over the past five. Corporate tax revenue, which brought in $82 billion in 2024 alone, is also under threat as Canada faces pressures to match Trump’s tax cuts in the U.S.
The result is a perfect storm: a looming economic downturn and increased pressure for military spending, corporate welfare and corporate tax cuts. The government will be forced to slash social programs and take a hatchet to public sector jobs. This, in combination with mass private sector layoffs due to an economic downturn brought on by the trade war is a recipe for class war.
Prepare for class war
In a sober analysis of the situation, governor of the Bank of Canada Tiff Macklem stated that “a new crisis is on the horizon.” And he is not wrong. Given the fragile state of the Canadian economy, the trade war—or even simply the continual threat of one—will have disastrous effects. In response, many businesses are considering moving south to try to avoid the tariffs and maintain connections with the US market.
For example, Allied Gold Corporation is applying to list on the New York Stock Exchange. E-commerce giant Shopify just listed a new New York headquarters as a “principal executive office”. Mark Bristow, CEO of Barrick Gold, one of the largest gold mining companies in the world, has said that they are considering moving their headquarters to the U.S., directly citing Trump’s policies as one of the reasons.
This all follows on the heels of Montreal-based trucking company TFI International Inc., the largest trucking company in Canada, who announced they were going to move their headquarters but were forced to reverse this decision due to backlash. Interestingly, Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., of which Liberal party leader Mark Carney sat as chair, decided to move its head office from Toronto to New York just last year.
A whopping 56 per cent of businesses polled before the start of the trade war stated that they would proceed with layoffs if the tariffs are implemented.
And the layoffs have already begun. Hundreds of jobs have been cut by the Canada Metal Processing Group at their Quebec and Ontario plants. South Shore Furniture in Quebec cut 115 jobs while Sheertex laid off 40 per cent of its 350 employees. Furniture company Prepac Manufacturing Ltd. shut down one of its factories, terminating 170 jobs, directly citing the “altered economic environment.”
The largest layoff so far however is the liquidation of the 355-year-old Hudson Bay Company, which cited the trade war as one of the reasons that pushed them over the edge after a long decline. This means 9,500 jobs lost.
According to Toronto Dominion Bank: “This has become an existential crisis for Canada as this is likely only the beginning of the migration south.” Implicit in this situation are huge job losses.
The gravity of this economic crisis cannot be overstated and the results will be far reaching.
The Communist program to combat the crisis
While 40 per cent of workers in Canada fear for their jobs, the Canadian government is more concerned with protecting corporate profits.
The Liberals have rolled out the red carpet for corporate Canada. In February, they announced the Trade Impact Program, representing $5 billion of low cost loans and subsidies to help exporters. In March, they added another $1.5 billion to support Canadian businesses and agribusinesses negatively affected by the trade war. In total, $6.5 billion so far for the bosses!
They have also temporarily modified the EI Work-Sharing Program, which will enable companies to have a portion of wages paid through Employment Insurance. But this is no solution for the entire industries being threatened.
There is an urgent need for the labour movement to develop a correct strategy to rally the working class to fight against the looming disaster. It is only through the independent action of the working class that we will be able to protect ourselves.
The first point is the question of social spending. All around the world, all major political parties, whether they are ostensibly on the “left” or on the right—are preaching about the need to reign in so-called “excesses” and cut back on “waste and bureaucracy”. You can see this most graphically with Elon Musk, but also with Keir Starmer and Macron—and now both Poilievre and Carney are preaching the same thing.
We must expose what this actually means: massive cuts to social services, public sector layoffs, etc. The Revolutionary Communist Party completely rejects all attempts to justify passing the burden of this crisis onto the backs of working class people in the form of cuts to social programs. There is more than enough money in our society to fully fund all of the basic needs of the population.
In this climate of economic disintegration, inflation threatens to become endemic as the international division of labour is destroyed, supply chains are dislocated and goods are tariffed. Therefore, the RCP fights for every collective agreement to assure that wages are pegged to inflation. This is the only way to guarantee that workers will still be able to pay the bills.
Mass layoffs threaten entire communities. Faced with this catastrophe, the labour movement must develop a concrete plan to combat layoffs. We cannot rely on the provincial or federal governments. The only way to protect jobs is through a mass movement of strikes and occupations. No factory should be allowed to shut down or move production. This is the only way to save jobs.
In times of crisis, individual capitalists, invariably looking out for themselves, use the crisis to attack unions, increase prices and carry out layoffs or cuts to benefits. We cannot be expected to blindly trust executives when they claim that they have no other options. The Revolutionary Communist Party says: open the books! Any corporation that lays off workers or closes down must open the books so we can observe the real situation.
This is the first step towards genuine workers control. With full access to the books, the entire ruse of capitalist exploitation will be exposed. The workers will be able to expose any behind the scenes deals, demonstrate the immense inefficiency involved in capitalist production and show the way forward.
Capitalism in Canada is already on life support. Canadian governments, both provincial and federal, already provide over $50 billion in corporate subsidies each year. But this massive transference of taxpayer money into corporate coffers does nothing to protect jobs. The heavily subsidized auto-sector has continued to shut down plants with hundreds of thousands of jobs lost over the decades.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot control what we don’t own. The position of the Revolutionary Communist Party is that any company which is forced to shut down because of the crisis should be expropriated, retooled, and integrated into a vast chain of production to produce what we need. This is the only way to save jobs. There is no need for compensation as most of these companies have been handed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars over the years.
Many people, even those on the so-called “left” will call our demands unrealistic—but this is because what they deem as “realistic” is what is realistic for capitalism. We don’t accept that logic. In this situation, there is no way to protect both jobs and the profits of the capitalists.
For example, Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress has so far limited herself to calling for “changes to Employment Insurance”—meaning that she accepts that these workers will be laid off. The “realistic” trade union and NDP leaders offer no concrete steps to save jobs. In truth, their program amounts to telling workers that there is little they can actually do.
But there is a point worth addressing here. A single factory, run by the workers could never survive on its own, in a sea of capitalism. That is why this trade war exposes the entire system and places the socialist transformation of society on the agenda. What is needed is a vast movement of factory occupations, linking together dozens or hundreds of plants and warehouses.
There is no easy road. Anyone promising an easy, quick solution is lying. Any “solution” that respects bourgeois property inevitably sells out the workers in one way, shape, or form. There is no third way, it is literally socialism or barbarism.
It is the job of Communists to patiently explain the gravity of this situation and argue for class struggle methods to fight against factory closures, job losses, cuts to benefits, etc. The starting point of a correct policy cannot be a nationalist position which ultimately ends up defending the interests of the capitalists on one side of the border. It also cannot be a position that supports going back to the situation we had before. Capitalist free trade has been a nightmare for workers, with millions in the manufacturing heartlands of Ontario and the U.S. losing their jobs since the signing of NAFTA.
Ultimately, not protectionism or free trade but only a socialist plan of production can guarantee jobs by producing for human need instead of capitalist profit. We stand for class independence and militant class action to protect jobs and all of the progressive reforms that Canadian workers have won over the years. This is what the Revolutionary Communist Party fights for.
Crisis of the left
With the deep crisis of the capitalist system and millions of workers looking for answers, you would think that this would be the time for the left to shine. But everywhere we look, we see the left in a sorry state, falling apart, unable to gain support among the workers, being outflanked by right populists.
But this is not at all surprising. Ever since the Second World War, the labour movement and the left in the West has been dominated by reformism. Instead of revolution and class struggle to fight for socialism, we have been offered slow, gradual reforms through the parliament.
In fact, this has been a very useful pillar of bourgeois class rule. Time after time, the last line of defense of the bourgeoisie has been the labour leaders, who direct the anger of the workers into safe channels for the capitalist system.
But these methods are increasingly losing their effectiveness. Afterall, in order for the classes to collaborate and reach a compromise, capitalism has to give something up. But more and more, capitalism has lost the fat in the system that allowed the ruling class to offer concessions to the workers. Union contract after union contract recommended by the leaders contains concessions and eroded wages.
The crisis of capitalism has produced a crisis of reformism.
This could not be more clear than when we look at the New Democratic Party. As the crisis drives living conditions into the dirt, the big brained strategists in the NDP headquarters thought that it was a genius move to join hands with the captain of the sinking ship.
They are now reaping what they have sown from propping up Trudeau for two and a half years during the worst cost of living crisis in generations. They propped up the government as inflation soared and the Liberals supported the genocidal Israeli regime, increased military spending and took away the right to strike of dockers, rail workers and postal workers.
While hatred against the Liberals grew, Singh and the NDP were seen as complicit and therefore did not gain from the collapse of the Liberals. In fact, Poilievre, who refashioned the Conservative party into an anti-establishment outfit has eaten into a big slice of traditionally NDP voters. A recent Abacus data poll showed that Poilievre was first choice among union members while the NDP, which many unions are affiliated to, was a dismal third, behind the Liberals. Polls also show the Conservatives leading among voters 18-29 year olds which is a stark reversal of previous trends.
This is the price to be paid for reformist capitulation. Just like establishment liberalism, establishment reformism leaves a wide open field for right populists to steal the show. Only a genuine revolutionary left can provide a real alternative and channel the anger to the left.
With the trade war, unsurprisingly, Jagmeet Singh and the NDP have been virulent defenders of Canadian companies, counter tariffs, “Buy Canadian” and other policies designed to protect Canadian capitalism. Therefore, in the eyes of millions of Canadians, there is very little difference between the NDP and the Liberals. This has contributed to the resurrection of the Liberals under the leadership of former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who has eaten into the NDP vote, with the NDP set to lose upwards of half of its seats in the coming election.
Things are no better with Quebec Solidaire, the left party in Quebec.
You would think that the leaders of Quebec Solidaire would look at what was happening with the NDP in English Canada, and draw the conclusion that they should plot a different course.
Unfortunately, Gabriel Nadeau Dubois (GND) and a clique of careerists around him have done everything to transform QS from an anti-capitalist party of the streets into a “reasonable” parliamentary party that collaborates with the other bourgeois parties, with the aim of making QS “a party of government”.
But the ironic thing about reformists like GND and Singh is that their so-called “realism” produces the opposite effect to what they desire. QS’s membership has massively eroded, the party fails to enthuse anyone looking for an alternative to the establishment, and is virtually indistinguishable from the PQ. QS are now 5th in the polls, below the ragtag Conservative Party led by libertarian Eric Duhaime. Having hollowed out QS and dragged it down, GND has now announced his resignation as a spokesperson for the party! The 8-year tenure of GND is a laboratory example of the abject failure of reformist moderation.
Reformists like Singh and Nadeau-Dubois have their heads stuck in the past. They are completely unfit for the epoch we are living in and that is why the NDP and QS fail to inspire. They desire greatly for things to go back to what they consider “normal”.
But history does not permit us to go backwards. Instead, we face a new “normal” —one of deep crisis, wars, revolutions, counter revolutions. This will create sharp changes in public opinion as the masses look for a way out.
In this situation, all organizations, leaders and tendencies are being put to the test. People are disgusted by opportunist parliamentary cretinism and that is precisely why there is a surge in populist figures all over the world. There is a healthy progressive strain in this rejection of the establishment. Working class people are instinctively skeptical of the bourgeois state, and anyone too closely associated with it.
The working class needs leaders with backbone, not these exorbitantly paid professional politicians who capitulate every step of the way to the powers that be. The working class needs a real program, a socialist program, which will put the interests of the working class front and centre.
Revolutionary Communists rise to the challenge
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the bourgeoisie were jubilant, declaring that capitalism was the best of all systems and that it was “the end of history”. But these self-congratulatory fools had spoken too soon.
At the time, Ted Grant, one of the greatest Marxists of all time and founder of our International, predicted that “viewed in retrospect the fall of Stalinism would be seen as merely the prelude to an even greater historical drama: the terminal crisis of capitalism.”
This has now been entirely confirmed. This mighty system which has conquered the entire globe is undergoing massive convulsions. And this is just the beginning.
Viewed in hindsight, the political setup in a country like Canada following WWII will appear as a strange anomaly. This period, produced by the peculiar result of the war, is not coming back. A new golden age for the system, contrary to the claims of Trump, is not on the agenda.
The bourgeois politicians will continue to struggle to find a way out of this blind alley. Along this road, they will no longer be able to please both the workers and the capitalists. Confrontation is inevitable.
All of the old political parties and tendencies which grew up in the past are not accustomed to this new situation. They have no understanding of the significance of what is happening and are being destroyed by the storm of events, one after another.
The self-important liberals and reformists, who are abundant in Canada, will be swept away as millions of workers and youth search for an alternative. The right populists who may have their day in the sun have no solutions to the crisis of capitalism. They too will find themselves discredited and tossed aside.
Sharp turns and sudden changes with wild swings in public opinion are on the cards. In this context, the opportunity to build a mass communist party will become more and more favourable. And there is no mission more urgent.
The “old mole of history” is burrowing away inside the collective psyche of the masses, trying to find a way out. Canada, which is not known for revolution, will be shaken from top to bottom with revolutionary events, unseen before in the history of the country.
This is what we are preparing for. This is our time.
Join the Revolutionary Communist Party and help us to build the party that will lead the workers to victory and put an end to this rotten system, once and for all.
