The Time Is for Vigilance and to Keep Speaking in Our Own Name
– Pierre Chénier –
The federal election has produced a Liberal minority government in which the Liberals did not win a single seat in Alberta and Saskatchewan and the Bloc Québécois won 32 of the 78 Quebec seats. It was a stunning rebuke of Liberal rule during the last four years but despite this, on election night, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau acted as if his government had just received a blanket endorsement.
No sooner the results became known, the monopoly-controlled media and pundits started raising a din that Canada is “more divided and fractured” than ever. It is divided and fractured, they say, between the West and the East, between Alberta and Quebec, between pro-pipeline and anti-pipeline forces, between those standing for national unity and those opposing national unity. They found an individual in Alberta to start calling for the separation of Alberta and Saskatchewan from Canada. According to the narrative they have started, to avert the separated entity being landlocked, northern BC could be incited to join. If Canada can be divided, why not the provinces as well, they said.
The narrative ascribes to the working people of Alberta and Saskatchewan an absurd position according to which they are not concerned with making sure the economy provides for them and their families in a sustained way. On the contrary, the suggestion is that they are fanatically determined to maintain a one-dimensional economy based on resource exploitation which throws their lives into chaos at every upset of the “global markets.” Presumably, being angry at Quebec will resolve the difficult conditions they face.
Mainly Albertans and Quebeckers are made the target of attack along with a barrage of disinformation which targets all the people. The aim is to impute all kinds of explanations for the voting results so that people cannot think for themselves.
The Workers’ Centre of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on the people of Quebec and Canada to condemn the false and irresponsible statements which are being made, by speaking about their own concerns. It is more necessary than ever to oppose the narratives of the monopoly-controlled media and rulers which seek to divide the people pro or con this or that ideological belief. The aim is to give the cartel parties, especially the Liberals and the Conservatives, free rein to act with impunity against the rights, the well-being and the future of the people, both at home and abroad. Attempts to pit people against one another are to deprive them of an outlook of their own which helps them to provide solutions to the problems they are dealing with. These problems demand a new direction for the economy and concrete measures to humanize the social and natural environment and make Canada a zone for peace. Workers across Canada must make a statement that the interests of the working class are one.
The actual splits that exist are those within the ranks of the financial oligarchs themselves. They are hopelessly divided between contending narrow private interests and are attempting to line people up behind this or that faction, while incapable as a class of providing any solution to the problems the people and their society face. Any attempt to ascribe to the people of Quebec or Alberta what their vote means on a self-serving basis must be fought. To portray Quebeckers and Albertans as racists or rednecks will not do.
Meanwhile, the Bloc has made it clear it is going to act as a block in Ottawa against any attempt to infringe upon Quebec’s prerogatives. It has a tendency to equate the interests of Quebec with what the Legault government is up to. It is up to the Quebec people to define what their interests are. The anachronistic constitutional arrangements which not only define what the federal power will or will not permit for Quebec apply to the provinces as well. The people need a modern Canada which upholds the rights of all, is not integrated into the U.S. economy, homeland security and war machine. Albertans, Quebeckers and the people of the country from coast to coast to coast must continue to make their claims on society for a change in the direction of the economy and to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programs, for a healthy environment and against war. The dignity of labour must prevail. The Quebec people can be counted on to be in the forefront of opposing both Quebec-bashing as well as Alberta-bashing and fighting for the rights of all.
This is their history and to say otherwise is to defame them in a manner which harms the interests of all. So too across the country Canadians reject self-serving interpretations of what they stand for. This is what the rulers are exploiting to turn one section of the working class against another. It must not pass!
Pierre Chenier is the Secretary of the Workers’ Centre of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).
This article was published in:
Renewal Update No. 42, October 23, 2019
Article Link:
The Time Is for Vigilance and to Keep Speaking in Our Own Name – Pierre Chénier
