The RCP is a party like no other. We don’t accept what capitalism offers. We fight for what the working class needs. We are a party of the most steadfast fighters for serious improvements in every aspect of life for working class people. We are fighting for a wholesale revolutionary transformation of society.
Housing, jobs, education and healthcare
The effects of the crisis of capitalism are felt directly by millions of working class people through eroding wages, skyrocketing housing costs and the dilapidated health care and education systems.
The RCP fights to institute a massive program of public works to confront these burning issues. We will reverse all of the cuts to social spending and massively fund and expand the health-care system. We will abolish private health care, expropriate the pharma giants and insurance companies, and include these services in a truly universal public health-care system. This would be expanded to include dental care, mental health care, optometry, and abortion services.
Through the expropriation of giant capitalist firms and the implementation of a democratic, socialist economic plan, we can eliminate unemployment while drastically lowering the work week, first to 30 and then to 20 hours a week, with no loss of pay. A national minimum wage of two thirds the average wage indexed to inflation would be implemented to immediately bring millions out of abject poverty. This, combined with a retirement age of 55, would give millions of people time for individual leisure and personal development as well as time to be involved in the democratic running of society.
Housing is one of the most pressing issues. Most families can no longer afford a house and rental prices have gone through the roof. Many of the poorest are unable to pay rent and tent cities have appeared in all major cities. The RCP will do whatever it takes to solve this problem, and that means putting human needs above respecting private property. The first step is to expropriate the parasitic landlords. All the empty housing used for speculation would be put to use. Developers’ resources would also be expropriated and used to initiate a mass program to build hundreds of thousands of homes. Through the elimination of landlordism, rents could immediately be capped at 10 per cent of wages.
The RCP fights to cancel all student debts and implement free education. Through massive investment, the crisis in the schools can be ended. Classroom size can be radically reduced through the training and hiring of tens of thousands of teachers. The education system can be expanded with the construction of new universities open to all people for life-long learning. We fight to nationalize private education institutes. We will end corporate encroachment in our universities and colleges by abolishing the unelected boards of governors. Universities and schools will be run by democratic committees of students, teachers, and other campus workers.
Workers unity against oppression
As capitalism decays, the bourgeoisie desperately foments divisions, pitting one sector of the workers against another. Communists are duty bound to fight oppression in all of its varied forms. Our sharpest tool to fight oppression is class unity. That which divides us only strengthens our class enemy. An injury to one is an injury to all.
The RCP will strike oppression at its root. We fight for equal pay for equal work and for free, high-quality child care and social services. We will free women from domestic servitude with the establishment of free day cares as well as a massive network of publicly-run and affordable dining halls and laundry services.
The RCP fights to end all of the racist immigration and asylum policies and border controls. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program would end, with everyone who works in this country being given the same rights as everyone else—regardless of where they were born. Only through workers’ unity can we fight racism and defeat the bigots.
Canadian capitalism was built on the blood and bones of Indigenous people. The land was stolen and the Canadian state used horrific methods to destroy ways of life incompatible with capitalist development. The RCP fights alongside Indigenous people against the capitalists, who seek to ram through development projects without consent and criminalize those who stand up to this corporate encroachment.
We fight to re-establish collective ownership of the land and resources. Only this way can Indigenous peoples, in alliance with the working class as a whole, win any meaningful control over their land and future development. Through the seizure of the assets of the Canadian capitalist class—acquired through the systematic plunder and murder of Indigenous peoples—we would be able to end poverty both on and off the reserves.
The unresolved national question of Quebec represents another crime of the Canadian state. The RCP defends the right of self-determination of Quebec. We fight to scrap the so-called Clarity Act which represents a clear violation of this right, and we fight against any manifestation of anglo-chauvinism. At the same time, RCP members in Quebec fight against the bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalists who are doing everything in their power to divide the workers, thereby weakening the national liberation struggle against the federal state.
We fight to unite English Canadian and Quebecois workers to do away with the oppressive capitalist federal state. We fight for a voluntary socialist union of peoples, which is the only way to achieve true self-determination.
A revolutionary solution
The RCP believes that it is impossible for the above program to be achieved within the framework of Canadian bourgeois institutions. The parliament is a useless talk shop dominated by the Liberals and Conservatives—the two wings of the bourgeoisie. These parties must be fought with equal force. Furthermore, the RCP fights for the abolition of the unelected feudal relics which the capitalists maintain as their last line of defense: the monarchy and the senate.
We have no faith in the NDP, who prop up the Liberal government and who capitulate to capitalist interests whenever they are in power provincially. The working class needs to fight attacks, no matter where they come from.
The RCP fights to re-arm the trade union movement with the best fighting methods. This means building fighting unions which mobilize the masses to defeat the boss’s attacks and go on the offensive. We must defy anti-democratic laws meant to break the trade union movement.
This can only be accomplished by a revolution inside the unions. Leaders who have chosen the road of class compromise must be replaced by fighting leaders. In order to fight corruption, union officials must be paid the same wage as the workers they represent. All union officials must be regularly elected with the right of immediate recall by the ranks.
A workers’ government
Never before has our society possessed such wealth and productive potential. But at the same time, we stand here begging for crumbs amidst the products of our own labour. This contradiction cannot be remedied with tinkering. We require a wholesale revolutionary transformation of society. Through a revolution, the RCP aims to lead the workers to power and form a worker’s government which will finally be able to put to use the productive wealth of society.
A workers’ government will expropriate the top 200 major corporations and monopolies which dominate the economic life of the country. These parasites will be taken over by the workers and their resources integrated into a democratic socialist plan of production run under workers’ control and management.
The banking sector, which acts as a drain on the economy as a whole, will be nationalized and integrated into one centralized banking system, seizing the wealth held idly by the rich while at the same time protecting workers’ savings.
Only under a socialist plan of production can we end the anarchy of the market in the natural resource, fisheries, and agricultural industries. A workers’ government will nationalize the supermarkets, agro-chemical companies, big fisheries, and food giants which destroy farmers’ and fishers’ livelihoods, as well as the oil bosses and mining companies who lay off thousands of workers while destroying the planet for profit.
A workers’ government will enact a massive expansion of production, in harmony with the environment. This would allow an immediate transition to clean energy with no loss of jobs. We will retool manufacturing plants to massively expand public transportation systems. We will finally end business practices harmful to the environment and our health while also protecting the livelihoods of workers and small farmers and fishers.
Internationalism
Canadian capitalism does not only oppress workers here—Canada is an imperialist power in its own right with mining, financial and geopolitical interests all over the world. The idea that Canada is a so-called “peacekeeping nation” is a total sham and we see this with Canada’s support for Israeli imperialism’s genocide against the Palestinians.
It is the job of workers in Canada to not simply fight for the betterment of our conditions here, but also to fight against the oppression of workers abroad. In any imperialist conflict, our main enemy is at home.
Capitalism is an international system and can only be overthrown by the world working class. Through the Revolutionary Communist International, we are building the forces of communism globally to lead the working class to overthrow imperialism and capitalism internationally.
Though the revolution will start in one country, through our combined efforts we will work to bring down the system in one country after another like dominoes.
Armed with this program and perspective, we will overthrow this horrible system in our lifetime and build a world socialist federation.
