Trudeau
Government's Throne Speech A Federal Takeover of Provincial Authorities to Better Serve U.S. Imperialist Narrow Private Interests Behind the plethora of words, the
Trudeau government's Throne Speech, much touted as setting a new
direction for Canada, in fact took one more step in the direction of
dismantling hitherto known constitutional power-sharing arrangements in
favour of narrow private interests. This is not a surprise since
restructuring the state is at the heart of the neo-liberal anti-social
offensive. The measures proposed, through sleight of
hand, reveal what the narrow private interests directing the
hidden hand of the state call "new." Despite the pretense of providing
social programs such as health care, child care, housing and refuges
for the homeless, abused women and migrant labour, with some sort of
broader access, measures are being put in place to wield power in areas
of provincial jurisdiction so as to open them up, without impediments
of any kind, to the most powerful global market forces.
The Throne Speech
uses a pretense of the highest of ideals to step into the arena of
direct involvement in delivery of social programs of various types to
obscure that the door is being opened to restructuring of the
power-sharing arrangements of the Canadian state to open space for the
most powerful oligarchs globally to move in. It underscores once again
that the anti-social offensive is not a matter of bad policy or bad
politicians. It is a matter of restructuring the state according to the
interests of the most powerful imperialist oligarchs. The fight in
their ranks that we see raging in the U.S. over who captures the
presidency is playing out here in Canada too. In a society whose
economy runs on the basis of the state paying the rich, the winners are
the imperialist oligarchs who make sure they come out on top, on the
receiving end, through the restructuring of the state according to
their interests. Decades of neo-liberal measures
have not succeeded in extricating the rich from the crisis that is the
fellow traveller of their system, a crisis which has been exacerbated
by the COVID-19 pandemic. What is laid out in the Throne Speech,
obfuscated by all the words and hidden in the clothing of spending on
social programs, is that these measures ensure that, even in the midst
of a global crisis and downturn of the economy worldwide, the financial
oligarchs will realize huge returns by financing all the spending on a
private basis. These are not social investments that will open the path
to a new direction for the economy. The crisis in
which Canada is mired, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is the
result of 35 years of neo-liberal free trade and nearly 30 years of
implementing the declaration by the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) that all countries must have a free
market economy, a multiparty electoral system and human rights. The
OECD touts itself as "an international organization that works to build
better policies for better lives" and its racist Anglo-American
imperialist values are still said to be superior to anyone else's. The
same private interests are now demanding a new phase of restructuring
the state to meet their striving to dominate world markets, sources of
raw materials, cheap labour and spheres of interest which is getting
ever-fiercer on the world scale. In the name of high ideals, Canada's
economy is integrated into the U.S. imperialist war economy and the
contradictions raging in the United States are also being played out in
Canada. As
far-fetched as this framework may seem due to the plethora of words
uttered in the Throne Speech, the fact is that neo-liberalism -- with
its anti-social attacks on social programs, privatization, public
borrowing from private moneylenders, pay-the-rich schemes and endless
war -- has mired Canada, the U.S., and other countries which comprise
the imperialist system of states in recurring crises of which the
latest is the worst in decades. The global oligarchs who control the
imperialist economy and governments are preoccupied with how to rescue
the situation for themselves and keep working people from gaining
control over their lives and political affairs. Disinformation of the
sort contained in the Throne Speech, that seeks to put a human face on
neo-liberalism, is for purposes of making sure people do not discuss
how to provide a new pro-social direction and aim for the economy.
With the extreme concentration of wealth in fewer hands and
the enormous amount of funds needed for major projects, the rich
oligarchs and their political representatives have long since fully
realized that private investments alone cannot save the oligopolies
from the crisis. The cartels and coalitions that the oligarchies form
to politicize private interests have been demanding that the door be
thrown wide open to channelling collected funds from taxes and
borrowing through pay-the-rich schemes to expand their wealth. The
competition for control over these funds is vicious. The Throne Speech
is one document which shows the state arrangements the oligarchs are
putting in place to facilitate their control of the major
public-private projects. Providing some spending power to many in the
population who have lost their means of subsistence is all channelled
in the direction of serving the narrow private aims of the oligarchs.
It has nothing to do with providing the people with the social programs
they require, let alone nation-building. Why does
Canada not have a public banking system that puts the control of
issuing new currency in the hands of a public authority and not in
those of the private banking oligarchs? Why should a modern economy
have to borrow from private moneylenders when it has the capacity to
borrow from itself and invest in itself with collateral being the
increased production from public enterprise?
Public control over the banking system is required because it is being
used to channel funds to rescue private interests from the effects of
the crisis while the vast majority of the people are left on their own
with some meagre programs which are inadequate to maintain a decent
living and working standard. Canada must have
public banking, stop borrowing from private moneylenders and, in
addition, put a moratorium on servicing the existing public debt to
private interests. The degree of parasitism of the
financial oligarchy shows that the working class is the only social
force capable of mobilizing the human factor/social consciousness to
harness the tremendous capacity of modern mass production to meet the
challenges of the times so that things like the pandemic, the recurring
economic crises and the damage the pursuit of private profit has caused
to Mother Earth do not overwhelm humankind. Only the working class can
reorganize the state arrangements and put in place governments whose
aim is meeting their social responsibilities to the people and the
natural and social environment. The squawking of
the premiers and leaders of the cartel parties in the Parliament in
response to the Throne Speech can only be understood within the context
of the massive power grab the narrow private interests are undertaking
at this time. The moves by the federal authorities to take over the
jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces are part of this. Finally,
the program put forward by the Throne Speech is in line with the
demands of the narrow private interests backing a Biden bid for the
U.S. presidency. The TML Weekly Supplement
addresses the issues related to the banking sector of the economy and
future issues will discuss the narrow private interests competing for
the presidency in the U.S. election in November.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 36 - September 26, 2020
Article Link:
Trudeau
Government's Throne Speech: A Federal Takeover of Provincial Authorities to Better Serve U.S. Imperialist Narrow Private Interests
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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