All Out to Oppose Bill C-5!
No to Justifying 21st Century Racism, Theft,
Plunder, Exploitation and Oppression in
the Name of Nation-Building
Rally on Parliament Hill against Bill C-5, June 17, 2025
Mark Carney’s “stronger economy in partnership with Indigenous Peoples” and Doug Ford’s “ending hat in hand” are both rooted in a despicable 19th century colonial outlook according to which the dispossessed Indigenous Peoples owe the great ones who govern the Anglo-Canadian state their lives and should be thankful for its munificence. It is a profoundly racist outlook which denies that the Indigenous Peoples have inalienable rights which no amount of federal and provincial machinations can extinguish.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) condemns the racist statement and outlook of Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his claim that he treats First Nations “like gold… But there’s going to be a point that you can’t just keep coming hat in hand all the time to the government.”
CPC(M-L) also condemns the Carney government’s railroading through Parliament of Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, which it claims will build a strong economy in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. Even as the Carney government lamely attempts to justify the law on the grounds that Carney allegedly received a mandate from Canadians to fast-track whatever projects his ministers declare are “nation-building,” demands for the withdrawal of this Bill are resounding across the country.
Bill C-5 gives the executive the power to pre-approve major projects including highways, railways, ports, airports, oil pipelines, critical minerals projects, mines, nuclear facilities, and electricity transmission systems, foregoing environmental assessments and trampling the rights of Indigenous Peoples to decide what takes place on their territories.
If there were any justice in this country, Doug Ford would be instantly removed from office for his racist statements and outlook, and the Carney government would be deservedly chastened.
CPC(M-L) is confident the Indigenous Peoples of Ontario and all of Canada will be joined by Canadians, Quebeckers and working people across the country to give Ford and Carney the fitting replies they deserve. The laws which are being enacted and railroaded under the guise that governments have been given mandates to do so, echo 19th century arrangements designed to deprive the Indigenous Peoples of their right to self-determination and all Canadians of the right to have a say over all matters which concern their lives.
The suggestion is illegitimate that elections that are run on the most self-serving basis confer mandates. Furthermore, passing off backroom private deals as public policy as Mark Carney does every day is deceitful, dishonest, crooked, duplicitous, double-dealing.
The deceit goes to the very heart of Canada’s institutions which claim to serve the people when in fact they serve narrow supranational private interests. At issue today is the meaning of the word consultation which is interpreted by self-serving racist governments to mean whatever trick they can play to get away with 21st century racism, theft, plunder, exploitation and oppression.
Talk about full and free participation of Indigenous Peoples in matters of concern to them is deception because the very foundation of the relation between the Canadian state and the Indigenous Peoples is based on subjugation. The Constitution enshrines the refusal to recognize the nation-to-nation basis of agreements the Indigenous Peoples entered into with the colonizers. After everything is said and done, the “Crown” decides, and that is supposed to be that.
Canada’s positions, espoused by Mark Carney, reek of 19th century colonialism and “white man’s burden” which are a major cause of the constitutional crisis in Canada. They are also at the root of the backward economic, social, cultural and political position in which the Indigenous Peoples in this country are kept by governments at both the federal and provincial levels and in Quebec.
In the absence of the recognition of all those who have lived on the territories occupied by the country called Canada since time immemorial as peoples, no amount of machinations to declare they have Indigenous consent will fly. Full public discussion is called for to establish what consent means in the 21st century. Condescending statements or “deals” and machinations over which the Indigenous Peoples exercise no control, nor Canadians for that matter, will not sort out the problem that governments do not have consent.
The bottom line is this: rights belong to the holder by virtue of their being. The hereditary rights of the Indigenous Peoples are theirs in perpetuity. They cannot be given, taken away or forfeited in any way. To suggest that business deals can supplant those rights is ridiculous.
The values Mark Carney espouses are also imbued with the same racist condescending 19th century outlook reflected in Doug Ford’s statements. It denies that Canada and the provinces are duty-bound to pay reparations to the Indigenous Peoples because they were slaughtered and herded onto reservations on what was at that time considered non-usable land, treated as non-persons who were fair game, made “wards of the state” which could steal their children and put them into residential schools for purposes of “taking the Indian out of them” and destroy their ways of life. Until there is restitution for these crimes in a manner that makes them whole again, as per their own judgement, nothing will change.
Both federal and provincial governments are largely delinquent when it comes to fulfilling their fiduciary and moral responsibilities to the Indigenous Peoples. To this day, in certain cases even rents are not paid for occupied lands and these lands are expropriated and handed over to developers whenever governments and the courts at their disposal see fit. The peoples are deprived of the housing and potable water they require for their living, as well as systems of education, health care and justice over which they exercise control, based on their own outlook and way of life.
Free consent is key. If it is not free, then blanket laws which deprive them of consent in each and every case, are tantamount to passing a law which declares that a woman can be violated under special circumstances, in the name of security, prosperity and peace, or that she will be looked after by a sugar daddy. Those who today enjoy positions of privilege and power created at the expense of the conquest of Indigenous territories in the first place, seem to think the Indigenous Peoples and Canadians were born yesterday when they pass laws at their expense.
This is not so, Mr. Carney. You and your ministers who repeat narratives “as if” they are true, should stop this nonsense and show some respect as a starter, not only for the Indigenous Peoples whose land rights you have sold without even asking, but for all Canadians who you keep repeating gave you a mandate to fast-track legislation which goes way beyond the false bill of goods you sold on the campaign trail.
Stop saying that Canadians gave you a “mandate” to declare all kinds of projects “special” on which your ministry can take decisions behind the backs of Canadians. Foregoing environmental safeguards is not “nation-building.” Acting without free consent of the Indigenous Peoples, local communities and Canadians as a whole is not nation-building. Declaring these projects “nation-building” while refusing to discuss what that even means is unacceptable. How are these projects nation-building, Mr. Carney? Stop repeating nonsense and tell us what nation-building means today, at a time you support the genocide in Gaza and aggression against Iran which is a sovereign UN member state. How does catering to the U.S. war economy and industry establish a “new relationship” with the United States?
The working people of Canada and Quebec and the Indigenous Peoples reject with contempt the claim that governments have a “mandate” to act with impunity to serve narrow private interests. We call on Canadians and Quebeckers to repudiate their racist, colonial, anti-people agenda and stand up for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the rights of all.
Press conference on Parliament Hill against Bill C-5, June 17, 2025
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