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CP of Canada, April 1-15, 2020 issue of People's Voice


4/2/20 8:36 AM


Canada, Communist Party of Canada En North America Communist and workers' parties




The following articles are from the April 1-15, 2020, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper.


Communist Party demands emergency action to stop COVID-19 and prevent deep recession
Communist parties around world issue joint call to protect people’s health and rights
WFTU condemns sanctions as murderous, block to pandemic response
Health cuts and privatization are to blame for Ontario’s vulnerability
Kenney and COVID-19: Alberta’s double whammy
Don't demonize China – look for lessons instead
Toronto tenants organize “Keep Your Rent” campaign during pandemic
IMF abandons Venezuelans to pandemic
The struggle for French language rights in Canada is a progressive one
East coast Indigenous nation asserts its right to harvest wood
From smallpox to Covid-19 – epidemics and Indigenous peoples
The political and cultural legacy of the ‘Grand Orange Lodge of British America’





Communist Party demands emergency action to stop COVID-19 and prevent deep recession

Governments at federal and provincial levels in Canada have responded to the COVID-19 health crisis in a frustratingly uneven manner. What binds them, however, is their commitment to prioritize corporate profits above people’s needs.

In the face of this, the Communist Party’s central executive issued a comprehensive statement demanding decisive action by governments across Canada, to stop the spread of COVID-19 and to prevent a deep recession.

The statement, published on March 19, is reproduced here:

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens the health and well-being of all the world’s peoples, the most vulnerable being working people, Indigenous peoples, the unemployed, the poor and the elderly. It will take urgent action by the Canadian government, and cooperation by the international community to save tens of thousands of lives, and to prevent a deep recession or even a depression from ruining the lives of working people around the globe.

In Canada widespread privatization of public services and cuts to healthcare have increased the danger that the pandemic will spread. Over-loaded hospitals and health-care providers, combined with widespread poverty, inadequate housing, declining living standards, precarious work, have exacerbated the crisis and are the consequences of 30 years of neo-liberal policies enacted by Liberal and Tory federal and provincial governments.

In sharp contrast, the governments of China, Cuba, Vietnam, and DPRK have responded quickly and effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic in their countries, and contained the virus and treated those infected, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, through rapid deployment of healthcare resources and personnel, including the construction of sixteen emergency hospitals in the city of Wuhan and region in China, and the building of a 1,000 bed hospital in a period of one week.

Cuba and China have also sent doctors and medical teams to Italy which is now the epicentre of the virus’ outbreak in Europe, while the Cuban government is making available to all countries the 22 drugs it has developed to combat COVID-19, including Interferon alfa-2b which has proved effective in treating 1500 cases of the virus in China.

The socialist countries have been most effective in combatting the coronavirus because they can mobilize all of their publicly owned resources to address the pandemic, while the capitalist countries must deal with multi-national drug companies and private for-profit healthcare systems.

Research and technology leading to the development of vaccines against COVID-19 must not be monopolized by Big Pharma and the vaccines sold for fat profits. The vaccine patents must be publicly owned and used to secure the health and well-being of all humanity.

In Canada, hospitals and healthcare workers are confronted with a national healthcare system that is grossly under-funded after thirty years of cuts, and unable to deal with the anticipated 15 to 25 million people who will contract the virus as the pandemic spreads.

The Canadian government must take the same kind of urgent action to save lives today, and to save livelihoods as well. The announcement of an $82 billion public expenditure by the Canadian government, including $2 billion to provide immediate assistance to working people who qualify for EI, and $5 billion for those who don’t qualify and whose jobs and incomes have been negatively affected by the pandemic is a start, but it won’t be sufficient for very long. Considering the cost of housing in the cities where the majority of Canadians live, the maximum payment of $900 twice a month won’t even pay the rent.

Further, there are disturbing signs that the government may attempt to undermine civil, labour and democratic rights with the imposition of emergency measures which it claims may be needed to fight the pandemic. This must be defeated and exposed as a threat to democracy.

Immediate action needed to contain the pandemic in Canada includes:

Healthcare:
Eliminate the requirement to produce health insurance cards; provide healthcare and treatment to all who need it
Immediate funding for hospitals to open closed wards and beds, including capital funding for new hospitals, staff and equipment where needed
Immediate funding to expand hospital and healthcare staff across the country based on need, with attention to Northern and Indigenous communities, many of which have boil water advisories while almost none have hospitals or adequate healthcare facilities and staff to meet the crisis
Immediate funding for home visits to the elderly and those quarantined or self-isolated, on the basis of need, to include provision of food, drugs, and other necessities
Make prescription drugs free and accessible
Require insurance companies to cover COVID-19 and all illnesses contracted abroad by Canadian residents
Immediate funding and oversight of long-term care homes, where the elderly and infirm are in greatest danger, where staff-patient ratios are very high, and staff are contract workers often working in several homes simultaneously
Immediate funding of public health services, including expanded testing for the COVID-19 virus, and restoration of public health units closed or cut by right-wing governments



Further, the US and Canada must immediately lift the sanctions it has imposed against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Russia, among others, which block access to medicines, medical equipment, food, and other necessities, and which contribute to the spread of the virus and the resulting illness and death of the most vulnerable. Instead of sanctions, militarism and regime change, Canada must adopt a foreign policy that advocates global peace and climate justice, global public healthcare and pharmacare, public education and development based on the right to national self-determination, free of external interference.

Canada must also call for an end to the illegal blockade of Cuba, which has caused widespread shortages and rationing following the Trump administration’s tightening of the blockade and activation of chapter 3 of the Helms Burton Act.

Closing the Canada-US border will not stop the virus from spreading across North America, and across the world. Only a well-funded public health system can make a difference - a system that is completely lacking in the US and in many other capitalist countries around the world. It is the absence of a strong public healthcare system in the US that poses the biggest threat to Canada today. It also poses the most serious threat to the working poor and the unemployed in the US who have no healthcare coverage, as well as those who have coverage but no protection from the virus’ uncontrolled spread and for-profit healthcare system.

The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the economy into what will be a deep and prolonged recession, or even depression; but it is not the cause of the coming economic meltdown. It is capitalistgovernments, acting on behalf of the biggest Canadian and transnational corporations that are the cause, and that have put their greed and their drive for more and more profits ahead of people’s needs for strong public services, for a well-funded and expanded public Medicare system, for an adequate supply of affordable social housing, for good jobs, pensions and incomes that provide working people the ability to live healthy lives, for environmental action to stop climate change.

It is neo-liberal policies and capitalism on a global scale that is threatening the lives, jobs, and security of working people in Canada and around the world. Racism and xenophobia such as Trump’s recent statement that COVID-19 is “the Chinese virus” aim to transfer responsibility for the pandemic onto China and Chinese-Americans in the US, and away from the private, for-profit healthcare system in the US. Racism and xenophobia must not be tolerated and must be called out by governments and the public wherever it raises its ugly head.

The Canadian government must act quickly to secure workers’ jobs, wages and incomes, including the jobs and incomes of part-time and precarious workers, workers in the gig economy, as well as the unemployed, those on fixed incomes, in the non-profit sector, and small business owners.

Protection of Jobs and Wages:
Guarantee all workers paid sick days and eliminate doctors’ notes
Make EI non-contributory, and universally and immediately accessible to all workers including part-time and precarious workers and first time job seekers, for the duration of unemployment at 90% of previous wages or 90% of an annual livable income
Introduce a guaranteed annual livable income now
Protect workers in healthcare, long-term care and other emergency services with the provision of emergency childcare services
Introduce plant closure legislation to stop unjustified closures and layoffs
Enforce the right of all workers – organized and unorganized – to refuse unsafe work
Enforce COVID-19 health advisories in workplaces, with penalties for employers who violate the advisories; set-up hotlines to report employer violations
Loans to businesses must not be the publicly-funded corporate bail-outs of the 2008-09 economic meltdown. Public funding must buy public equity (a public share of the business), or public ownership of the business where it is in the public interest to do so (e.g. energy, banking, transportation)
Make the Bank of Canada the prime lending institution for public procurement and investment in public services and capital spending
Convert military to civilian spending for public healthcare, hospitals, beds, staff and equipment, medical research, testing for COVID-19, and for protection of workers’ jobs, wages and incomes, the sick, the elderly, and the poor

Housing:
Ban evictions, renovictions and foreclosures
House the homeless with emergency, interim, and permanent social housing
Provide emergency housing on reserves, and in Northern and isolated communities

Debt:
Defer personal debt, including mortgages and loans
Eliminate student debt
Cancel credit card debt



A People’s Recovery

Economists warn that the recession Canada and the capitalist world is now entering will be protracted and will result in high unemployment as a result of bankruptcies, layoffs and workplace closures.

Employers and their governments will try to download the costs of the recession onto the backs of workers by cutting wages, privatizing public assets and services, cutting corporate taxes, and de-regulating the profiteering activities of the biggest banks, Canadian and trans-national corporations. This will mean doubled-down austerity, and it will cripple our youth, working people, and the economy, setting us up for another recession down the road. Their goal is a corporate recovery, just like the 2008-09 recovery, that led to the current recession and the loss of good jobs, value added manufacturing jobs, unionized jobs, public services, a real drop in wages and living standards, and the absolute and relative impoverishment of the working class and the poor.

A People’s Recovery is the only way out, and the only way forward to a better life for all.

A People’s Recovery means the government must adopt a full employment strategy to create good jobs and increased wages, pensions, and incomes for all. It means rising living standards, not falling living standards. It must include an environmentally sustainable industrial strategy to create value-added manufacturing jobs, build a public transportation system that’s focussed on free public transit and rail, an energy policy that builds on renewable energy, guarantees jobs and wages to workers displaced in the shift from unsustainable to sustainable energy, and that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples to free, prior and informed consent over development on their lands. We need a recovery that includes building a million units of social housing across the country, expansion of Medicare to include pharmacare, long-term care, dental, vision, and mental health care. We need free post-secondary education, the expansion of social programs including a universal system of quality, public childcare. And we need a recovery that includes real action to stop climate change, and to end Canada’s drive to militarism, regime change, and war. Instead the massive expenditures on war must be re-directed to fund a People’s Recovery and a people’s agenda for Canada.

To win this agenda will take a united struggle of the labour and people’s movements across the country. Just as Medicare was won in the 1960s, with mass, united, independent political action, we can win this today.

As the rapid and global deployment of the corona virus and COVID-19 show, there is no time to lose.



Central Executive Committee

Communist Party of Canada

March 19, 2020

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Communist parties around world issue joint call to protect people’s health and rights

In response to the COVID-19 health crisis, communist and workers' parties around the world have issued a joint statement, demanding emergency measures to protect health and human rights. The parties recognize that, in the context of capitalism, pandemic is having a severe and multi-faceted impact on the working class, small business owners, farmers and oppressed sections of the population.

“The COVID-19 pandemic cannot conceal the danger stemming from the tragic shortages of health systems in all capitalist countries, which were known before the outbreak of the coronavirus,” states the declaration. “These shortages did not occur accidentally – they are the result of the anti-people policy pursued by bourgeois governments to commercialize and privatize health, to support the profitability of monopoly groups. This policy undermines the great scientific and technological capabilities available today to meet all prevention and healthcare needs of the people.”

The parties note that the global health crisis illuminates the failures of capitalism, as well as the necessity of socialism.

“Today's experience highlights the superiority and timeliness of socialism and central scientific planning based on popular needs, which can secure primary healthcare and prevention, hospitals, medical and nursing staff, medicine, laboratories, medical exams and everything else needed to meet the constant as well as any emergency health needs of the people.”

The statement warns that the response by capitalist governments to the pandemic is guided by their commitment to safeguard corporate profit, and that working people will be expected to shoulder the burden of financial bailouts. “The pre-existing slowdown in the world economy is now being furtherly reinforced by the spread of the coronavirus, increasing the risk of a new crisis in the coming period. In spite of the propaganda about "unity," bourgeois governments support monopoly groups in every possible way and will seek to throw the burden of the crisis onto the people.”

In all countries, as communist parties demand immediate action from governments to protect health, they are also urging an intensifying struggle against corporate policies. “Today, taking the necessary measures also requires the struggle of the peoples against the policy of supporting the monopoly groups, which sacrifices the satisfaction of the needs and the health of the peoples at the altar of capitalist profitability.”

The joint demands of the communist and workers' parties including the following:
Immediate strengthening of public health systems through expanded government funding and recruitment of full-time medical and nursing staff with full labor rights. This includes meeting the funding and resource needs of Intensive Care Units (ICUs), as well as ensuring the infrastructure necessary for the full functioning of public healthcare and research services.
Immediate free provision by governments of all necessary protection – such as masks, gloves and antiseptics – and steps taken to fight against profiteering. This includes providing comprehensive protective measures to all healthcare workers, who are making great personal sacrifices and taking great risks to fight this pandemic.
Protections for incomes and rights of the working class and people. This includes action to prevent corporations and their allies in government from using COVID-19 as a pretext for further trampling wage rights, denying leave from work, and expanding precarious employment by reducing work time.

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WFTU condemns sanctions as murderous, block to pandemic response

On March 21, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) issued a strong condemnation of the sanctions that have imposed, primarily by the United States and its allies, against countries around the world. The union body, which is organized on a militant class struggle basis and represents 100 million workers in 132 countries, argues that sanctions are murderous and hamper the worldwide effort to contain and treat the coronavirus pandemic.

“The sanctions that were imposed and are still implemented – as one means to promote the geostrategic goals of the dominant states and ensure the maximum possible profits for monopolies – cause irreparable problems to ordinary people,” said the WFTU. “The continuation of sanctions against states affected by the coronavirus is an unacceptable murderous practice against the whole humanity, that immeasurably harms the efforts to counter the pandemic. The case of Iran is characteristic, inasmuch as the US sanctions continue after having already caused around $200 billion in direct damages to the economy of a country with more than 20,000 confirmed cases and at least 1,500 deaths.”

The WFTU demands an end to the sanctions, which “in the midst of the pandemic, constitute a crime against humanity and put global health at further risk.”

In contrast to the continuing use of sanctions and blockades by the US and other imperialist countries, Cuba has dispatched a brigade of 52 doctors and health specialists to Italy, where the virus is taking a terrible toll.

Italy’s Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a WFTU member, called the Cuban brigade “an effort that must be measured by the number of inhabitants of the island, but above all by the behavior of the governments that make up the European Union, until now closed within the selfish logic of profit and the interests of their multinationals instead of their populations.”

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Health cuts and privatization are to blame for Ontario’s vulnerability

Drew Garvie

Ontario will likely be one of the provinces hit the hardest by the pandemic. The province has the most confirmed cases of COVID-19, while it is last in the country when it comes to per capita expenditures on hospitals. Almost three decades of the corporate austerity agenda has decimated healthcare and opened up the sector to privatization.

Canada’s most populous province has been leading the neoliberal austerity charge for several years with the lowest per capita spending on social programs, pushing down social spending in the rest of Canada in a race to the bottom. From 1995 to 2003, the Conservative government of Mike Harris drastically sped up the introduction of neoliberal reforms in the province, with a slash and burn approach. Between 2003 and 2018, the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne did not reverse most of the cuts and continued a slow boil austerity program that continued the piecemeal privatization of the health sector. New P3 hospitals, private clinics and health fees were introduced. Doug Ford’s Conservatives were elected in 2018 with a right-wing populist anti-Liberal message and then proceeded to introduce massive cuts and restructuring to healthcare, which have escalated significantly in the last year.

The overall results, even before the pandemic, are dramatic. Ontario has 1.4 acute care hospital beds per thousand inhabitants with Canada averaging 2 per thousand. This can be compared to Germany’s 6 hospital beds per thousand. Even the United States has more beds at 2.4 per thousand.

The Ford government’s massive cuts included healthcare. The current 18.3-hour hospital wait time is up sharply from 14.4 hours when the Conservatives were elected – a 27% increase in just 18 months.

For many communities, the situation was critical before the pandemic. In Brampton, the government recently voted against funding a second hospital, while the current hospital was operating at more than 100% capacity throughout the first half of 2019. Thousands of patients have been stuck in hallways for more than 72 hours waiting for a bed. In early 2020, Brampton city council declared a health care emergency. Brampton is not alone; forty other hospitals in the province averaged 100 per cent capacity during the same period in 2019.

Neoliberal attacks on public healthcare in Ontario have put the province in a situation where many were suffering and dying needlessly long before the pandemic hit. These deaths are now set to rise dramatically.

Doug Ford was elected on the promise of “ending hallway medicine,” which was already common under the Liberals as many patients had no access to hospital beds. However, his government seems to have followed the usual Conservative playbook of exacerbating the crisis to move towards privatization. Ontarians will remember that the Harris government’s education minister John Snobelen was caught on tape saying that he needed to create a “useful crisis” and “bankrupt” the public education system in order to privatize it.

The infrastructure for privatization was put in place in 2019 with the Hospital Restructuring Act, which sets up a centralized Super Agency to replace the fourteen Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), Cancer Care Ontario, Health Quality Ontario, the Trillium Organ donation system and many other health care services in the province. The legislation gives the Minister of Health enormous powers to order mergers and transfer and close services. It is the most severe restructuring of health services in the recent history of Ontario and is designed to give the Super Agency the power to privatize. The new agency includes members like Charles Lammam from the free market extremist Fraser Institute, Shelley Jamieson from the multi-national long-term care corporation Extendicare, and Elsye Allan from the corporate think tank C.D. Howe Institute.

Further privatization of health care has already started with the government’s new home care bill, by removing home care from public oversight and contracting out to provider companies.

However, the Ford government was probably not expecting the pandemic to highlight their dirty work and they have been forced to put some of their cuts and restructuring on hold due to the emergency. On March 12, the government announced they would put their cuts to public health units on hiatus for this year. They had planned to eliminate 25 out of 35 local public health units, putting more pressure on municipalities to continue to maintain services provided by the health units like vaccination programs, infectious disease outbreak investigations and restaurant inspection.


Even in the face of COVID-19, the government has indicated that further cuts to healthcare are still coming. As recently as the end of February, Health Minister Christine Elliot said, "We want our public health units to be doing their work in their individual areas, but that doesn't mean things are coming to a stop. They will be started again, as soon as the immediate priority has passed.” After halting the restructuring to public health units in March, Ford said “we’re taking it year by year,” when asked why he was not permanently stopping the cuts.



The pandemic threatens everyone’s health, around the world and across Canada. What is required is a massive, coordinated, response which provides the economic, health and social supports necessary to overcome the crisis. It is abundantly clear that the purposefully underfunded healthcare system in Ontario needs to be immediately strengthened and that profits in healthcare only come at the expense of immense human suffering.

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Kenney and COVID-19: Alberta’s double whammy

PV Alberta Bureau

Energy price wars and global pandemics would be a challenge for any economy. Price wars, pandemics and Jason Kenney’s budget are a recipe for disaster.

Kenney has come out with a budget that would have been bad for Albertans even if there were a strong healthy economy – cutting education, health care and care for the vulnerable, while doubling down on dependency on just the energy sector, reducing the diversity of the economy. Kenney’s budget is based on a view of the world that could be called simplistic. Events in just a few short weeks have shown it to be a hallucination. Energy prices have tumbled, and we suddenly need more nurses and doctors than ever to cope with a global pandemic.

Energy and the economy

We need to start investing in the future, not the past. Energy prices have plunged due to Russian and Saudi decisions about their production, making it very clear that Alberta, and Canada as a whole, are not major players and will never be able to control the price of the product. $100 a barrel oil turns out to be a temporary fluctuation, and Saudi Arabia alone could produce enough oil at $20 a barrel to supply the world until the internal combustion engine is history.

Subsidies, unpaid taxes and royalties rebates amount to some $1.6 billion to $2 billion a year just at the Alberta government level, while leaving us holding the bill for orphan wells estimated at some $260 billion!

Instead of ever increasing subsidies, tax cuts, royalty holidays, and a free pass on polluting for oil and gas companies, we need to hold them accountable for unpaid taxes and for paying to clean up their own mess, up to and including nationalization. Enormous numbers of jobs could be generated by reducing the contamination in the oil patch, in accordance with the international legal principle of “polluter pays.”

For decades governments in Alberta have done virtually nothing to make our economy more robust in the face of fluctuating energy prices, not even bothering to collect the rent. Norway’s oil fund reached the $1 trillion US mark in 2017, amounting to $235,000 for every person in the country. Alberta's fund at the same time, with a twenty year head-start in the oil business, was $17.2 billion or $4,150 per person in the province. This contrast is equivalent to the Alberta government giving away about $230,000 on behalf of every individual in Alberta to corporations that take the money and run.

It really is time to divert the massive direct and indirect subsidies to the traditional energy sector into more job-creating sectors. These include wind, geo-thermal and solar power; modernizing the energy grid; rebuilding transportation systems, public housing programs and retrofitting existing buildings for energy efficiency; diversifying and processing agricultural products; and developing manufacturing, just to name a few. That’s the way to guarantee good-paying jobs for Alberta workers, while also improving our quality of life.

Global economy and global pandemics

COVID-19 is not the first new virus to appear this century and it will not be the last. The globalization of the economy and world travel makes it inevitable that the normal, unending and inescapable mutation of viruses will have world-wide effects. What is different is that this pandemic has arrived when the global economy was already in a fragile state, trending towards recession. It is not surprising that a new pandemic is more frightening when working people are already feeling the stress of economic insecurity.

But it is also clear that in an interconnected world, cuts to health care are not a good idea – not just from the point of view of public health, but even for the economy. We need a well-funded health care system with excess capacity to cope with emergencies like COVID-19. It is now absolutely clear that “efficiency” in the healthcare system is not efficient at all. If our health facilities are already functioning at maximum capacity, any additional needs will overwhelm them. Any new epidemic will be more severe and last longer than it needs to, with more economic impact as well as more human suffering.

Kenney has announced that he will delay firing nurses until the pandemic crisis is over. How about not firing them at all, so that we won't go into the next epidemic with a worse shortage of nurses?

Privatized services are not the answer. A two-tiered system, where the wealthy can afford more prompt and better care, will not help the great majority of the population, and it won’t do the wealthy any good either when the virus is invited to remain in circulation by abandoning the care of much of the population. In fact, an emergency like this makes it clearer than ever that health care is indivisible – it must be a public good or nobody gets any good out of it.

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Don't demonize China – look for lessons instead

Peter Miller in Chongqing

I’m in China during the pandemic and it’s pained me to see anti-Chinese propaganda gaining ground in the West, including in Canada.

Instead of blaming China for a virus that knows no borders, we should be looking to China for lessons on how Canada should respond to the COVID-19 crisis. During the height of the crisis in China, both in Chongqing where I live and all over China, residents followed rules on how often they could go out. For me, I could only leave my apartment complex once every two days to go shopping for groceries. This was labelled as "authoritarian" by writers in the Western press, but instead of being authoritarian, it was clearly a measure needed to quell the spread of the virus.

China did not have enough hospital beds in places of the epicentre of the crisis, like Wuhan, but hospitals were quickly built over 10 days. Touching videos of nurses and doctors unable to be with their children because of the quarantine were shown on China Global Television Network (CGTN), with the recognition that this temporary hardship was necessary in order to defeat the virus and to not risk spreading the disease to one’s families.

I left China on February 20 to come back to Canada, but I headed back to China on March 11 after being asked to come back for work. I went back before Justin Trudeau advised people to stay in Canada, but I’m thankful I came to a country that is clearly safer and doing more to defeat the virus. Today, most of the new cases in China are imported from abroad so there are measures to stop a second spread of the virus. For myself, just like all other new arrivals into China, I am on 14 days of quarantine in my apartment after arriving back in Chongqing. I have my temperature checked every two days by nurses, and I have also been tested for COVID-19 just in case I am asymptomatic. There is a camera pointed at my apartment door to make sure I don’t leave. You might think this is overkill, but the camera does not impinge on my privacy and is instead a sign of just how serious this virus must be taken.

Every day that I am in China I worry about people back home in Canada. Neoliberal governments there have not been taking the virus seriously enough. Sure, there have been efforts to encourage people to practice social distancing, but I don’t see the massive investment by Canadian governments in creating more hospital beds and more ventilators that will be needed very soon. A friend of mine who is showing symptoms is having great difficulty getting tested, while I was tested in China as a precautionary measure. Nurses, doctors, and patients with mild symptoms are being left to fend for themselves and self-quarantine after spending time in the ER, when instead the state should find adequate places to quarantine people without them risking getting their friends and families infected. The list of issues I see in Canada goes on and on, and governments need to be held accountable.

The Liberal government will use this virus as an excuse to cut back on working people in Canada, but we can’t let them do it. Instead, we must demand better public health care, more robust unemployment insurance and free education. While we work to defeat this crisis, we should also be investing in green jobs to defeat the even more existential climate change crisis. Don’t fall for anti-Chinese propaganda – instead, demand more from your governments.

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There’s no self-isolation for (or from) the climate crisis

Fridays for Future moving online to fight for action, build movement

Dave McKee

Social distancing is a reality for most people right now, but that doesn’t mean that collective action stops. Whether it’s tenants fighting against pressure from landlords, women campaigning for pay equity or workers resisting corporate profiteering, people have quickly begun to shift their activism online during the coronavirus pandemic. In the process, they are developing new and effective means for outreach, education and engagement.

Such is the case with Fridays for Future and the struggle for climate justice. The organization has held weekly rallies, pickets, vigils and banner drops in communities across the country, to push the demand for climate action to the centre of public view and discourse. They have also connected the climate crisis with politics of colonialism, racism and xenophobia, austerity and neoliberalism, and have mobilized to publicly support the struggles of Indigenous peoples, migrants and racialized people, students, poor people and others. The ability of groups like Fridays for Future to organize large public gatherings, particularly those that are linked to global days of actions, has forced the mainstream corporate media to take notice and provide coverage of the movement (if not all of the demands) for climate justice.

The coronavirus has put all that public work on hold. But it hasn’t suspended the climate crisis or the urgency of demanding decisive government intervention to confront it. That urgency has propelled Fridays for Future to rapidly transition its regular campaigning to online platforms.

Kendall Mar is an organizer with Fridays for Future – Toronto. Speaking to People’s Voice, she said the group is going ahead with its planned climate action on April 3. “It will be an online rally that will try to replicate the events we’ve had at Queen’s Park. So, we will still have speakers, music and chants.”

Mar notes that, while it can be harder to keep people engaged at an online event (“they have distractions and can logout”), the format also allows for different types of collective action. “We’ve sometimes asked people at physical rallies to take out their phones and send mass tweets or other messages. But this doesn’t always work well at a large rally because cell service becomes pretty poor, so you don’t actually get that big “blast” that you expect. We think this kind of action could be more effective in an online rally.”

Fewer people are expected to participate in the April 3 action than in previous ones – Mar notes that the September action in Canada was a week after those in Europe, so there was a ripple effect – but the online format may allow for different groups of people to become active in different ways. People who have difficulty getting to a physical rally, for example, may find it easier to participate in an online event. It may also be more attractive to new activists. “For many people, Fridays for Future is their first time at a rally or protest, and it can be really intimidating,” says Mar. She notes that youth, who tend to be the most engaged group on climate issues, don’t often know what to expect at a demonstration and are often intimidated. Providing different points of entry to collective action is a way to build the movement.

And that’s the other important aspect of Fridays for Future’s approach to the challenge of activism with social distancing – using it as a way to expand outreach and organization, so that the campaign will be even stronger after the pandemic. In Mar’s words, the goal is “to bridge the two, the physical and the online.”

With that goal in mind, Fridays for Future has organized online “artbuilds” in which participants learn how to make banners and signs using paint or silkscreen. They are also preparing several workshops to deepen public awareness of the issues; these include labour and a just transition for workers, Indigenous sovereignty and resistance, and what a “Green New Deal” looks like.

An online focus also allows for more concrete cooperation and networking between groups in different areas. The Toronto organization is reaching out to other Fridays for Future groups, especially smaller ones throughout Ontario, with a view to creating organizational hubs that can deepen coordination and strengthen local activity.

When the coronavirus pandemic passes – and it will – the labour and progressive movements will be called upon to fight hard against a “corporate recovery” that puts profits before people’s needs and the environment. Through creativity, commitment and hard work, the movement for climate justice appears ready to hit the ground running.

For information on the April 3 and ongoing climate actions, visit@FridaysforFutureTO or @FridaysforFutureCA on Facebook

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Toronto tenants organize “Keep Your Rent” campaign during pandemic

Ivan Byard

Workers, especially low-income tenants, are being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite social distancing, they’re organizing to put their rights and needs ahead of landlords’ profits.

Parkdale Organize, a membership-based group of working class people who organize to build neighbourhood power in Toronto’s Parkdale area, has called for tenants to “Keep Your Rent on April 1.” The campaign comes on the heels of the Ontario Superior Court March 19 decision to place a hold on the enforcement of residential evictions, and the subsequent decision of the Toronto the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) to suspend hearings.

Despite these suspensions, landlords have continued to put unnecessary pressure on tenants, many of whom are struggling with layoffs and other economic pressures as public health officials urge people to stay home. Housing activists and tenant organizers are working to build and strengthen the community with every public health precaution.

“Keep Your Rent” is not asking anybody to withhold rent on their own. Tenants are reaching out to each other while maintaining physical distance. Phone trees, cloud file sharing, Facebook groups, banners from balconies, propaganda posters and online petitions are all part of the communication campaign. For many, withholding rent on April 1 will not be a choice. With Employment Insurance covering only 55 per cent of previous earnings, and around half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque, nearly half of all renters in Toronto already spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Hundreds of thousands of workers have filed for Employment Insurance across Canada, as many sectors are seeing layoffs.

An online petition started March 19, calling for all rent and mortgage payments in Canada to be cancelled for the duration of the COVID-19 public health crisis, gathered more than 625,000 signatures in five days and is still growing. In Toronto, the Federation of Metro Tenants Associations (FMTA) has called on the Ontario government to waive all residential rent payments on April 1, on the basis that housing is a human right. Tenants are teaching each other and learning as collectives how to organize amid the need to respect physical distancing.

With the ongoing housing crisis now hit with a long-term public health crisis, the existing and emerging networks of community organizations will be essential, not just on April 1, but for the duration of the state of emergency and beyond. In Toronto, as elsewhere, decades of budget cuts, austerity policies and selloffs of social housing have added urgency to the ongoing fight to expand public housing, roll back and control rents, and ensure housing for all.

For more information and for resources that can be used in other communities, visit KeepYourRent.com

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Class Dangers in Public Emergencies

Editorial

On March 23, Justin Trudeau held a meeting with all premiers to discuss whether or not to implement the federal Emergencies Act. As this issue of People’s Voice goes to press, he is stating that he will hold off for the time being.

Without question, the coronavirus pandemic is an emergency that warrants urgent and extraordinary action by governments. But it is unclear what powers the federal is reaching for when it looks to the Emergencies Act, or what impact those powers could have on the working class. After all, every provincial and territorial government in the country has already declared some type of emergency, so the main challenge right now seems to be ensuring consistency and improving coordination between those jurisdictions.

The Emergencies Act was introduced in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, which had become severely tarnished following its use in October 1970. At that time, the government of Pierre Trudeau used the emergency powers to create a virtual police state – not just in Quebec, but across the country – in which 3000 searches were carried out and 500 people arrested and detained without charges or access to legal counsel. The widespread militarization of society and sweeping suspension of civil and democratic rights was described as “unprecedented,” and had the (desired) effect of putting a chill on support for Quebec sovereignty, as well as on radical political organizing throughout Canada.

The current legislation differs from the War Measures Act in that it requires Parliament to review a Cabinet decision to declare an emergency and makes temporary laws declared under the Act to be subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It all sounds very transparent, safe, and reasonable. So, what could go wrong?

The Emergencies Act empowers the federal government to prohibit travel, forcefully evacuate or remove people, requisition property and penalize people who disobey emergency measures. The Act allows for summary convictions with a fine of $500 and 6 months in jail, or convictions on indictment with fines of $5000 and 5 years in jail.

A big part of the current crisis is the deep global economic recession that the virus has triggered. As in the 2008 financial crisis, the federal government is already kowtowing to corporate interests, particularly in the oil and gas sector. The Trudeau government is highly vulnerable to pressure from the right-wing premiers in Alberta and Saskatchewan and has already indicated its commitment to prioritizing Canada’s “petro-economy” at all costs. Ottawa will undoubtedly, commit huge resources to propping up the oil industry and removing all barriers to its post-pandemic expansion.

Perhaps the main barrier is opposition to pipelines and tar sands development, from Indigenous people and their allies right across the country. There is no question that politicians and oil industry executives have pondered this reality and addressed it in their plans for a “corporate recovery.” And it is not at all unthinkable that the federal government would be prepared to use emergency powers of requisition, removal and prosecution to ensure such a recovery. Trudeau and company have already shown their willingness to sacrifice “reconciliation” and “sunny climate action” on the altar of corporate profit. If they’re prepared to send the RCMP to dismantle an anti-pipeline blockade after only a couple of weeks, what is their limit now?

When asked how far he was prepared to go in October 1970, Pierre Trudeau replied, “Just watch me.” People watched, and they suffered. Hopefully, the labour and progressive movements have learned a thing or two since then, and they’ll organize now to defend the working class and oppressed people against the same kind of tyranny.

This is no time to watch and wait.

******

IMF abandons Venezuelans to pandemic

Nino Pagliccia

On March 15, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro filed a formal request to the IMF for $5 billion of emergency funding to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. He wrote, “Only under the spirit of solidarity, brotherhood, and social discipline, we will be able to overcome the situation that comes our way, and we will know how to protect the life and wellbeing of our peoples."

Predictably, but shockingly, the IMF rejected the loan request, a decision made all the more disgraceful by the fact that its Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) fund was set up precisely to respond to emergencies like the current pandemic. The Washington-based IMF made a politicized decision that is totally contrary to its purported intentions and to Venezuela’s legitimate request.

In its unprincipled excuse for the rejection, the Fund said it was “not in a position to consider this request," because of Juan Guaido’s self-appointment as Venezuelan president. "IMF engagement with member countries,” it said, “is predicated on official government recognition by the international community, as reflected in the IMF's membership. There is no clarity on recognition at this time.”

The IMF has a membership of 189 countries. Venezuela has been a member since 1946 despite its intentions to withdraw in 2007. Only about 50 countries are reported to recognize Guaidó, and the majority of IMF countries recognize elected president Maduro. This leaves no doubt that the Fund decision is a response to political pressure from dominant powers like the US, Canada and several European Union countries.

Iran recently made a similar request for the same amount. It is very unlikely that the IMF will grant a loan to Iran as the Fund is seen as a “soft power tool” of the US.

The two countries’ requests for IMF special funding are particularly crucial at this time, as both are under severe US unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) that prevent them from purchasing medication and supplies necessary to confront the pandemic. Following the recent drop in oil prices to below $25 a barrel, both countries can only expect the situation to get worse.

Venezuela’s heavy reliance on loans would be unnecessary if the government had access to the financial resources it owns but which have been blocked. Through its oil blockade the US has obstructed purchases of Venezuelan oil; it has also seized Venezuela's CITGO subsidiary, worth $8 billion. This is a huge blow for Venezuela, which receives around 90% of government revenue from the oil industry. The US government has also frozen $5.5 billion of Venezuelan funds in international accounts in at least 50 banks and financial institutions.

The US is seeking advantage in this crisis for its unrelenting goal of regime change. This makes the IMF abandonment of Venezuelans to the pandemic all the more shameful.

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The struggle for French language rights in Canada is a progressive one

LJC du Québec

On the occasion of the International Day of the Francophonie, celebrated on March 20 since 1988, the Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Québec salutes all those who struggle to keep this “language of France with American accents” alive in Canada. We wish to highlight the progressive fight of francophone minorities in the rest of Canada to ensure their linguistic and cultural rights are guaranteed.

Today in Canada we are in the midst of a wave of Francophobia. In the fall of 2018, the Ford government in Ontario announced, as a part of its austerity measures, the cancellation of l’Université de l’Ontario français. If this university ever sees the light of day in 2021, it is because last year Franco-Ontarians mobilised in the hundreds of thousands to defend their right to an education. In New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in Canada, the party holding the balance of power is the People’s Alliance, which was elected on a platform attacking the rights of francophone Acadians. Ottawa, the capital of Canada, has only been officially bilingual since the winter of 2018, a change that was won and is enforced through continued struggle and resistance by francophones in the city.

For the francophones in the rest of Canada, despite living in an officially bilingual country, it is a daily fight to preserve their language. In 1971, 27.4% of francophones outside of Quebec had adopted English as their daily language. By 2011 this number had risen to 39.8%, and this trend continues today. In St-Boniface, once the vibrant heart of Franco-Manitoba, today only 30% of the population declare themselves as Francophone.

In other words, the struggle for the rights of French-speaking national minorities is not a fad but an imperative for all those who strive to defend democratic and social rights. Although laws that suppressed the French language for many years have been abandoned (for example, Ontario’s Regulation 17 forbade teaching French beyond grade 2, and was in effect from 1912 to 1927) the fact remains that the assimilation of francophones is again the order of the day for the most reactionary sectors of the monopolist class.

As Communists, we refuse to reduce the celebration of the International Day of the Francophonie to the descendants of the children of ‘New France.’ The diversity of francophones in Canada continues to grow, and the contribution of immigrants from West Africa, Maghreb and elsewhere is increasingly vital to the survival of francophone communities across the country. To think that different francophone cultures are threatened by immigration is an irrational aberration. It is like aiming for the animal and hitting its shadow to think that workers who settle in Canada – after fleeing misery, war and environmental destruction – are at all responsible for this situation. Rather, responsibility lies with the monopoly class in Canada – francophone and anglophone – for whom cultural and linguistic rights mean nothing unless they can be profitable.

We also want to make it very clear that defending the rights of francophones in Canada as in the rest of the world does not mean defending the Organisation internationale de la francophonie (OIF). The OIF is a neocolonialist organization that seeks only to integrate African and Asian countries into sphere of French imperialism and that of other countries like Canada, Belgium and Switzerland.

It is no secret that the OIF has forgotten its (stated) mandate of promoting French language and culture. In recent years countries like Qatar, which has neither a cultural nor linguistic link with the Francophonie, have become members of the organization; meanwhile OIF President Louise Mushikiwabo represents Rwanda, a country that recently joined the Commonwealth and opted for English as the official language.

In the context of Canada, defending the French language is not synonymous with imperialism. On the contrary, unlike what even some people on the left might think, it is a fundamentally progressive struggle since it targets the domination of the English-speaking Canadian nation and underlines the multi-national character of the country. Celebrating the Francophonie should not, however, give rise to a surge of francophone chauvinism; rather, it should highlight the struggles for linguistic, political and cultural rights that francophones across the country are deprived of.

These struggles should not be opposed to those of Indigenous peoples and nations. In both cases, these struggles target the national oppression that millions of people in Canada, who do not belong to the dominant nation, are constantly fighting.

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East coast Indigenous nation asserts its right to harvest wood

Norm Knight

The second-largest Indigenous nation in New Brunswick is suing the provincial government for depriving it of a treaty right to harvest timber.

The Wolastoqey Nation, which occupies the watershed of the Wolastoq (Saint John) River in western New Brunswick, claims that Peace and Friendship treaties signed between the British Crown and Indigenous peoples in the Maritimes in the 18th century allow the Indigenous peoples to harvest wood for sale in order to earn "a moderate livelihoo.”

However, in the fall of 2019, four Wolastoqey community members were charged with illegally harvesting and possessing firewood from Crown land. This follows an incident in 2012, in which two members faced similar charges but ultimately had the charges stayed by the prosecution.

Tim Paul, one of six Wolastoqey Band Chiefs, says that "the Province continues to blatantly ignore our rights and our members continue to be harassed by the Province. The Province cannot continue to deny us our rights.”

The present lawsuit, filed by the Wolastoqey on January 18, asks the court for a declaration that they have a treaty right to cut and sell Crown wood "to the extent of obtaining a moderate livelihood." It also seeks monetary damages for the Province's past failure to honour that treaty right.

In a March 12 press release, the Wolastoqey cite the landmark case of Indigenous fisher Donald Marshall, which went to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999. Marshall, charged in Nova Scotia with illegally fishing eel, relied on the 1760-61 Peace and Friendship Treaties for defence. The Court acquitted him, saying, "the 1760 treaty does affirm the right of the Mi’kmaq people to continue to provide for their own sustenance by taking the products of their hunting, fishing and other gathering activities, and trading for what in 1760 was termed 'necessaries'."

This was, incidentally, the same Donald Marshall who had been imprisoned for eleven years on a wrongful murder charge before being famously exonerated in 1983.

A Wolastoqey Nation statement on Crown lands reads in part:

"The Wolastoqiyik have occupied the lands and waters of what is now known as New Brunswick since time immemorial. The Peace and Friendship treaties the Wolastoqey are signatories to did not involve the surrender of land, waters or resources. However, over the past centuries, Wolastoqey lands, waters, and resources have been increasingly appropriated by third parties, exploited, contaminated, depleted, and regulated to the point where the ability to exercise Wolastoqey Aboriginal and Treaty rights is in serious jeopardy. The ability of the Wolastoqey to feed families and earn a livelihood from harvesting the natural resources on Wolastoqey territory is seriously diminished, and it has become increasingly hard for the Wolastoqey to practice cultural and spiritual traditions and transmit these to the youth."

******

From smallpox to Covid-19 – epidemics and Indigenous peoples

Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life

(2013)

Author: James Daschuk

Publisher: University of Regina Press

Review by Kimball Cariou

What economic system extends its reach across entire continents, wiping out the lives of its own workforce in order to extract resources and goods which can be sold for huge profits back in the home of the dominant military power? That description describes today's global capitalism, but as University of Saskatchewan scholar James Daschuk writes in Clearing the Plains, it also fits the early colonial era of what became Canada.

Human history has frequently been shaped by unexpected forces, beyond the immediate control of those affected. Of course, some challenges are quite predictable – the environmental impact of large-scale emissions of hydrocarbons was described by scientists for decades before the need to act on their warnings became widely understood.

Then we have natural disasters on a larger or smaller scale – floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, droughts. All of these can have a huge impact, usually for a limited time or on a more localized geographic scale.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 CE spewed a cloud of super-heated gases, molten rock, pulverized pumice and hot ash, releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings and obliterating several cities. Devastating for the residents of Pompeii, but without altering the overall arc of Roman history.

Epidemics have often been a different matter. The Black Plague which killed an estimated one-third of the peoples of Europe was an important factor in changing the prevailing feudal system, helping to open the doors for a shift towards capitalism. The Plague even resulted in a big jump in wages, as employers struggled to expand their workforces in its aftermath.

Wikipedia (admittedly not always a reliable source) lists some 200 or more plagues and epidemics throughout recorded history, some with deadly and lasting consequences for particular societies. As the world struggles with the current Covid-19 outbreak, some fear it could match the scale of deaths seen during the "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918-19.

But probably the single most devastating series of epidemics in history began with the arrival of European colonizers into the western hemisphere, starting in the late 1400s. The powerful and advanced civilizations of modern-day Central America and the Andes suffered enormous losses, initially at the hands of brutal invaders armed with superior weapons, then in far larger numbers as “Old World” diseases spread like wildfire. Medical science of that era knew little about germs and viruses, but disease quickly became the main threat to the Indigenous peoples of the hemisphere.

This was also the case in the area of North America now known as western Canada. In his groundbreaking work Clearing the Plains, scholar James Daschuk pieces together a vast range of scientific and historical research to provide a clear picture of this story. For the purposes of this review, Daschuk sheds valuable light on the ways in which measles, tuberculosis and other diseases – but smallpox in particular – wiped out huge numbers of Indigenous peoples on the western plains and forests, even eliminating entire societies of people who had no immunological resistance against this deadly wave of plagues.

It's true that genocidal criminal acts were committed during the seizure of Indigenous lands, cases where smallpox-infected blankets were distributed to starving and desperate people in the full understanding that this was a death sentence. We should never underestimate the depths to which invaders will sink in their drive to steal lands and resources.

But most of the casualties caused by smallpox were the result of much more prosaic activities, especially the expansion of the fur trade. In search of highly desired beaver pelts used to make fur hats for buyers in England and continental Europe, fur traders penetrated deep into the west during the three centuries after the earliest settlements in modern-day Quebec. As beaver populations were over-trapped, the voyageurs relied on river routes to find new communities to bring into the trade, offering a wide range of consumer goods in exchange for beaver and other furs.

Inevitably, these goods carried the diseases to which Europeans had gained some degree of immunity over thousands of years, but which were deadly to their trading partners. Daschuk recounts many of the descriptions written by traders, as entire communities suffered death rates anywhere from one-quarter to ninety percent or more. In many cases, small groups of survivors included those least able to rebuild their communities and who were compelled to seek entry into others. Dramatically reduced in numbers, decimated peoples such as the Kutenai or Snake were forced to relocate into the mountains from their traditional plains territories, or to forge new alliances with former rivals.

The result was the destruction of the largest part of the population in today’s prairie provinces, further weakened by the “fur trade wars” between European-based rival companies which broke out in the late 1700s. After that deadly era, the buffalo herds which had been the main source of food and raw materials for the plains societies were also wiped out by the invaders. By the post-Confederation years, Indigenous peoples saw no serious alternative to negotiating the “numbered treaties” with the new Canadian state, aiming to gain some annual income, education, and training in agriculture, so that they could avoid starvation. That period is the subject of later chapters in Daschuk’s book, and the subject for another review.

Today, still holding vivid historical memories of those experiences, many Indigenous nations in geographically isolated corners of the west coast are blocking any outsiders from entering their lands. Since poverty and poor health make the impact of disease much worse, they hope to avoid the outbreak of Covid-19, at least temporarily. Let’s hope that this time they succeed.

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The political and cultural legacy of the ‘Grand Orange Lodge of British America’

Brian W. Major

Many progressive folks living in Canada consider the historical legacy of Protestant-based community organizations to be a positive one. As examples of this progressive legacy, they often point to Tommy Douglas, the first social-democratic premier of Saskatchewan and Joey Smallwood, the first premier of Newfoundland and Labrador who spoke positively of Mao Zedong and the birth of the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1949.

Both men were also prominent members of the Grand Orange Lodge of British America (sometimes called the Orange Order), whose membership also included John A. Macdonald, John Diefenbaker and other prominent Canadian business leaders. It is important, particularly for progressive folks in Canada, to closely assess the history of the Orange Lodge.

The Orange tradition has its origins in the Loyalist (pro-Protestant and pro-British) movement in the UK. They are followers of William of Orange, and they use July 12 as an annual commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. This battle was, and still is, seen as emblematic of Protestant ascendancy and power. Soon afterwards, “Orangemen” marches were held to mark this victory against Catholics and Catholicism. Marches deliberately intimidate and provoke Catholic communities by parading through their neighbourhoods. These demonstrations have inspired later reactionary organizations such as Pegida, which attempts to march close to mosques, and the Ku Klux Klan, whose marches try to intimidate Black communities. In all these gatherings, we see privileged people trying to maintain their power.

Orange Lodges have existed in Canada since the War of 1812. From its inception, the Lodge explicitly opposed immigration to Canada of Catholic or racialized people. Notably, Lodge membership was predominantly made up of industrial workers. Despite this, many business deals were made at the Lodge, and many Orangemen were granted a level of class mobility in a way that would ordinarily be denied to them. Many Protestant workers joined because of the benevolent work that they felt they needed: in Newfoundland, for example, the Order founded the Fisherman’s Protective Union (FPU) in 1903. This point helps to understand the appeal of the Orange Lodge to the so-called “white working class.”

The Order had a long relationship with the military, including control over the volunteer militia and the exclusive use of “legitimate violence” in Toronto during the mid to late 1800s. Lodge members brutally suppressed the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837, as well as the Métis people during the Red River Resistance of 1869-70 and the North-West Rebellion of 1885. At the Order’s height in 1942, 16 out of 23 members of Toronto City Council were Orange Lodge members. As immigration from non-Anglo-Saxon countries grew in the 1920s and 1930s, there was a parallel rise in racism, xenophobia and anti-Catholic sentiment. Many members felt that the “British way of life” was threatened – a view that still finds reflection in several contemporary debates. In New Brunswick, Orange marches led to anti-Catholic riots. As fears were stoked, there was a membership increase in both the Orange Orderand the Ku Klux Klan; the two groups had a great deal of mutual membership and a similar world-view, and in some cases they actually marched together.

With the advent of the welfare state after the Second World War, Lodge membership in Canada declined. People who joined due to a desire to obtain social benefits realized that their membership was not necessary, and Canadian society was becoming less sectarian.

Why should progressives be concerned with an organization that is currently very small? An examination of its legacy is crucial to those currently fighting against racism and bigotry. Much of Canada’s founding mythology needs to be explored, and the notion that this is a democratic and peaceful society with a proud, progressive legacy needs to be unpacked. Many of the people who are identified as “founders” of this country belonged to an organization based on White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ascendancy and privilege. Such a narrowly-defined identity considers itself to be deeply challenged by non-WASP immigration, and the Orange Order was explicitly against Muslim immigrants and others from non-Protestant Christian religious or cultural backgrounds.

Building a welcoming, inclusive and democratic society means critically exploring the legacy of the dominant culture (including its religious element) and social and political heritage. Only then can true solidarity begin.

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END END END




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