PEOPLE'S VOICE - Issue of FEBRUARY 1-14, 2021

The following articles are from the February 1-14, 2021 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper.

1. Communists condemn US coup attempt, warn of far-right and fascist organizing
2. Communists in the parliamentary arena – an indispensable element of class struggle
3. Tough times, struggles ahead for British Columbians in 2021
4. Alberta labour fights back as Kenney attacks workers’ health and safety
5. Canadian Network on Cuba launches campaign for emergency medical supplies
6. Seafarers keep global economy moving during COVID-19, but face widespread abuse
7. Quebec communists: “Lockdown or not, we must continue to organize”
8. Ontario communists demand a halt to evictions, support for encampments and housing for all
9. Reverse Trump’s sanctions, end the blockade and retract Cuba’s terrorist designation
10. Stop Irving Oil’s “pandemic profiteering”
    

Communists condemn US coup attempt, warn of far-right and fascist organizing

In response to the Trump-inspired riot at the US Capitol on January 6, the Communist Party of Canada issued a statement condemning the attempted coup and warning of the dangers of ongoing organizing by far-right, white supremacist and fascist groups in the United States and Canada.

The full text of the statement follows:

The Communist Party condemns the attempted coup d’état by white supremacist and fascist movements urged on by US President Donald Trump on January 6 and warns that Trump’s imminent departure from the White House does not mark the end of the fascist danger in the US.

Trump is the head of a movement that secured the votes and has the support of almost half of white adults in the US, and is backed by police across the country, as well as important sections of big business. He is not a lone ranger, but the most visible leader of a well-organized and well-financed movement with ties to similar far-right and fascist movements around the globe.

Threatened by the US’ declining influence globally, by the deepening global economic crisis and the sharpening contradictions of capitalism, and by the ascendancy of China as a global economic powerhouse, the most reactionary, most chauvinist, most imperial and most violent sections of capital in the US have given their political consent and financial support to the MAGA movement headed by Trump, which is a coalition of the US’ far-right populist, white supremacist and fascist movements.

Their goal is to roll back the clock to the days when US imperialism was on the ascendancy in its domination of the world, and the US was awash with the domestic plenty of imperialist exploitation and wars abroad.

President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats differ with the Republicans on a number of important domestic issues, but they have no differences when it comes to the goal of advancing the interests of US imperialism, the US military-industrial complex and the super-profits of the large national and transnational corporations.

For decades, the US has pursued a foreign policy based on war, invasion, coups d’état, torture and mass murder. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have pursued an aggressive, imperialist foreign policy for the past 75 years. Now, faced with the most serious political and economic crisis since 1929, fascism and reaction have come home to roost in the MAGA movement.

The election of Joe Biden as president, and the Democrats’ slim control of both houses of Congress, will not solve the systemic problems of racism, exploitation, violence, war and reaction that permeate US politics and wide sections of society. 

Only the most fundamental reforms that limit corporate power and the power of the police and the military, that expand labour, social, civil, democratic and equality rights, that create jobs and raise wages and living standards, that address climate change and climate justice, that pursue a foreign policy of peace, disarmament and collective security, can cut the ground from underneath these reactionary, far-right, racist and fascist movements. 

Clearly, with both the Democratic and Republican parties representing the interests of the biggest corporations in the world, these parties cannot deliver these reforms. While Trump pretended to represent workers and the unemployed, in fact he was their worst enemy. While the Democrats pretended to be a party of the working people, they broke all the rules to prevent Bernie Sanders from becoming their presidential candidate – not once, but twice.  

As is the case in every country, working people in the US need their own political party, that will fight for their interests and needs, including for socialism and working class political power.

Canada shares a 5,000 km border with the US, and is economically tied to the US through USMCA, with 75 percent of our trade going to the US. The Canadian economy is shot through with US investments.

US domination of the Canadian economy, and English-language mass media and culture, have already negatively impacted Canada’s foreign policy and sharply limit the ability of the peoples of this country to adopt progressive social and economic policies. The coup attempt this week, and the growth of the white supremacist and fascist movement in the US, are a growing threat to democracy and equality rights in Canada, and to peace and collective security in the world.

Progressive forces in Canada and around the world must act to stop the growth of fascism around the globe before it overwhelms the nations and peoples where it is organizing. Fascist and white supremacist organizations must be banned as criminal organizations, and individuals like Steve Bannon who are working to unite far-right and fascist movements globally must face criminal prosecution.

Fascism is endemic to capitalism. It is the most violent form of capitalism. As capitalism lurches into deep crisis, it is the option that the most reactionary, most racist, chauvinist and violent sections of capital will choose.

For workers, the choice is increasingly between socialism and barbarism, as evidenced in the US this week. Capitalism is the disease. Socialism is the cure.

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CPC centenary:

Communists in the parliamentary arena – an indispensable element of class struggle

Dave McKee

“We Bolsheviks participated in the most counterrevolutionary parliaments, and experience has shown that this participation was not only useful but indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, after the first bourgeois revolution in Russia (1905), so as to pave the way for the second bourgeois revolution (February 1917) and then for the socialist revolution (October 1917).”

Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder

From its very beginnings a century ago, one of the distinguishing features of the Communist Party of Canada has been its understanding of the parliamentary arena as a key element of the class struggle. Weaving a line between the careerism and opportunism that characterizes social democrats, and the outright rejection of electoral struggles by left sectarians, the communist approach has been to combine parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tactics in an ongoing effort to unite and build the working class movement.

Electoral campaigns do not need to result in winning a seat in order to be successful. There are myriad examples of electoral movements whose victory has been the organization and mobilization of the working class and the masses around a radical, progressive program that is intimately connected to the (decisive) struggle in the streets and workplaces.

That said, there have been many occasions in which communists have been elected in Canada and have been able to use that platform to further advance the class struggle.

Municipal

Municipal politics have been a particularly strong focus for the Communist Party, reflecting the closeness of local politics to the working class. It is an area of work that continues to be a priority in the present day. There are far too many examples of communists elected to municipal office to list in one article, but there are some that stand out:

The very first person elected in North America under the red banner of the Communist Party was William Kolisnyk, in 1926 in Winnipeg. Just five years after the party’s founding, Kolisnyk won election to Winnipeg’s city council and remained in office for four terms until 1930. He pressed for public transit, improvements to unemployment relief and workers’ rights. Notably, he is credited with helping the city’s municipal employees to unionize, including by advocating on their behalf as a member of council.

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Alberta town of Blairmore elected a communist majority to its school board and council, including the mayor. Collectively, they were colloquially referred to as the “Red Miners Slate.” They were veterans of a bitter 1932 strike between the communist-led Mine Workers Union of Canada and West Canadian Collieries, which used 100 strikebreakers, under a 200-gun RCMP escort, to defeat the 350 workers. But, a year later they became the first communist council and school board in Canada. They retained control for a decade, during which time they instituted police and tax reform, restored relief payments to unemployed workers and expanded the local public health service. Perhaps their most well-known reform was to change the name of Blairmore’s main street to Tim Buck Boulevard, a decision that was reversed by the next council.

Through five decades following World War 2, communists were a leading force in Winnipeg’s municipal politics, particularly through the Labour Election Committee (LEC). The LEC elected many progressive candidates, including communists such as Andrew Bileski and Joe Zuken. Long-time Communist Party member and feminist organizer Mary Kardash had a spectacular political career in Winnipeg, winning election to the school board in 1960 and being re-elected until 1970, and then again from 1977 to 1986. A People’s Voice article from October 2011 paid tribute to her: “As a school trustee, Mary was a tireless fighter for a high-quality education for all children, especially those from low-income families. She was on the cutting edge of struggles for school breakfast programs, better childcare, and many other reforms. Her efforts focused particularly on working with Indigenous groups to tackle the poverty faced by thousands of Indigenous children in Winnipeg. The St. Cross Child Care Centre of Winnipeg was renamed the Mary Kardash Child Care Centre in her honour in 1995.”

Communists in Vancouver worked with labour and democratic movements to build up the Committee (later Coalition) of Progressive Electors, through which a number of communist school trustees and councillors were elected, including well-known councillor Harry Rankin. Another was longtime housing and tenant advocate Bruce Yorke. In 1968, Yorke helped organize the Vancouver Tenants Council, which used rent strikes and other militant actions against landlords, as well as lobby efforts, to win reforms including the right for tenants to vote in municipal elections. Yorke was elected to Vancouver council in 1980 and re-elected an impressive four more times. He was never voted out of office but retired in 1991 for health reasons.

Toronto has had many communists elected over the years, especially at the school board level where trustees like Edna Ryerson, Ruth Weir and Elizabeth Rowley worked to defend and strengthen public education. One of the most important contributions was in 2002, during the Conservative provincial government of premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. Harris had introduced sweeping restructuring of Ontario included radical changes to school board governance and funding, removing their ability to raise funds and removing over $1 billion from the education system. In 2002, the provincial government instructed the board to prepare a balanced budget, but the inadequate funding made that impossible. Veteran communist trustee Elizabeth Hill had been fighting the Conservative government since its election in 1995 and was described in the press as “the unofficial leader of the left on the school board.” Hill and others in the progressive bloc wanted to defy the province’s orders but they were one vote short of a majority. Opportunity came in the form of a byelection, which was won by another communist, Stan Nemiroff. His campaign was critical – both the right and the left knew that the balance on the board was in question – and it attracted a large mobilization of labour and progressive activists from across the city. With Nemiroff’s victory, the left had a majority on the board and voted against the balanced budget directive. Despite public support for their action, they were put under provincial supervision. Ironically, the government-appointed supervisor was also unable to balance the budget.

Provincial

Communist electoral success at the provincial and federal levels has been more limited. In no small part, this is the result of state harassment and repression – the Communist Party of Canada has been illegal for approximately one-third of its history. Nonetheless, there have been notable breakthroughs.

Arguably, the first Communist Party member to be elected to provincial government was Phil Christophers, in Alberta in July 1921. Christophers, who was a miner from Blairmore, was at the founding convention of the Workers Party of Canada (a legal public entity of the Communist Party, which was an illegal organization at the time of its founding in May 1921) but ran in the election with the Dominion Labor Party (DLP). This organization was affiliated with the Canadian Labor Party (CLP), a reformist party which the Communist Party briefly supported as part of a united front against capital. At the time of his election, Christophers was the Alberta provincial spokesperson for the Workers’ Party. He was re-elected in the 1926 election.

James Litterick is widely credited as being the first person elected on a Communist Party ticket to a state or provincial legislature anywhere in North America. Litterick joined the Communist Party of Canada in Vancouver and was one of the founders and leaders of Vancouver Unemployed Workers' Association at the beginning of the Depression. He held a number of positions in the young party, including district secretary in British Columbia, and he assumed some of the General Secretary responsibilities when Tim Buck was arrested in 1931 and imprisoned until 1934. Litterick became Manitoba secretary in 1934 and was elected to the provincial legislature in 1936 on the Communist Party ticket. In office, he fought to shift the tax burden from working people to corporations, pressed for increased unemployment relief payments and for job creation through infrastructure and public works spending, and introduced a motion (which was defeated) to create public health insurance in Manitoba.

In 1940, the Communist Party of Canada was declared illegal by the Mackenzie King government, and Litterick was expelled from the Manitoba legislature. He went into hiding, was the subject of a RCMP hunt and was eventually imprisoned. Soon after leaving prison in 1943, he went missing and was never found.

One of the best known elected communists in Canada is Manitoba’s William (Bill) Kardash, who was also the partner of Mary Kardash. Bill joined the Communist Party in Saskatchewan during the Great Depression and became an organizer for the left-wing Farmers' Unity League. He joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, the Canadian component of the International Brigades who fought to defend republican Spain against fascism. In 1941, Bill was elected to the Manitoba legislature as a Workers Party candidate (the Communist Party was banned) and then re-elected in 1945 for the Labor-Progressive Party (the Communist Party’s legal political organization from 1943 to 1959). Enormously popular among Winnipeg’s working class, Kardash swept to victory again in 1949 and 1953. He was finally defeated in the 1958 election, largely due to the elimination of proportional representation in Manitoba.

For nearly two decades in the legislature, Bill Kardash waged a determined and relentless fight for the interests of the working class in Winnipeg and internationally. When he died in 1997, NDP MLA (and later Manitoba Premier) Gary Doer stated, "Truly, it can be said that Mary and Bill were political and social powers in the north end of Winnipeg, people that fought tirelessly for working people and their families. Together, whether it was on the school boards through Mary, or Bill in this Legislature, they fought on behalf of poor people every hour of the day."

Ontario had two communists elected to its provincial government, who served during the same period of time and from neighbouring ridings in Toronto. A.A. MacLeod joined the Communist Party in Nova Scotia, while working on the election campaign of veteran union leader and communist J.B. MacLachlan. Soon afterwards, he helped found the Canadian League Against War and Fascism in 1934. He had a long record as a peace activist and helped organize the Canadian Peace Congress after WW2. MacLeod was elected to provincial parliament in 1943, after being endorsed by a long list of trade unions representing a range of sectors, ranging from manufacturing to building trades to public employees. MacLeod was re-elected twice, in 1945 and 1948, but defeated in 1951.

Joining MacLeod at Queen’s Park was J.B. Salsberg, a garment worker turned union organizer who was very popular in Toronto’s working class Jewish community. He was elected to municipal council in 1938, and five years later he won a landslide victory in the 1943 provincial election. Salsberg was re-elected three times and finally defeated in 1955.

Since the Communist Party was illegal at the time of the 1943 election, MacLeod and Salsberg ran as “Labour” candidates, although it was well understood that they were communists. Within days of their election victory, the Labor-Progressive Party was formed, and they agreed to represent it in the Ontario legislature. Both men were highly respected – Tory Premier Leslie Frost once said of them, “Those two had more brains between them than the rest of the opposition put together." Among their lasting accomplishments was the 1944 Racial Discrimination Act, which Salsberg introduced in response to racist and anti-Semitic prohibitions at public pools.

Federal

Dorise Nielsen was the first member of the Communist Party to be elected to federal parliament. In the 1940 general election, she was one of two candidates from the United Progressive Movement (UPM) to win a seat in Ottawa. The UPM was a popular front organization that united communists, social democrats and other progressives. Nielsen, who represented the Saskatchewan riding of North Battleford, was the only woman elected to that parliament. From her seat in the House of Commons, and by maintaining contact with Communist Party leaders in Montreal who had not been arrested, she became a key spokesperson for the Communist Party at a time when it was banned.

In the 1945 federal election, Nielsen ran for the Labor-Progressive Party but was defeated after a nasty campaign that was characterized by anti-communism and red-baiting.

In 2017, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and Regina Leader-Post published stories of 150 Saskatchewan people who helped shape Canadian history. They wrote that Dorise Nielsen “was a crusader for children’s welfare, civil liberties and the fight against poverty — especially in depression-ravaged west — at a time when the government was focused on war funding which far exceeded spending on social causes.”

Soon after Nielsen’s breakthrough, Fred Rose became the second communist to win a seat in the House of Commons, representing Montreal’s Cartier riding. In getting elected for the Labor-Progressive Party, he beat CCF national secretary and future NDP leader David Lewis. A friend and comrade of Norman Bethune, Rose was a well-known anti-fascist who campaigned for workers’ rights and against anti-Semitism. In the middle of WW2, in a riding that was almost 60 percent working class Jewish voters, his campaign struck a chord. Two years later (and armed with an endorsement from American musical legend Paul Robeson) Rose was re-elected with a 30 percent increase in his 1943 vote. As a Member of Parliament, Rose came through with his promises, proposing the first federal medicare legislation and the first anti-hate legislation.

Not even a year into his term, Rose was caught up in the rapidly spreading Cold War. Accused of spying for the Soviet Union, the media immediately proclaimed him a traitor. After a controversial trial he was convicted of conspiring to turn over information about an explosive to the USSR (information that the Canadian government wanted to give) and sentenced to a prison term one day longer than the length required for his expulsion from the House of Commons. He was released from prison after 4 and a half years and went to Poland; the Canadian government revoked his citizenship in 1957 and he was never able to return to Canada.

These are just a few of the many stories of communists who were elected to different levels of government across Canada. There are thousands more narratives of communists who have campaigned in elections but not won a seat. Some of their experiences have been positive and uplifting, others heartbreaking and tragic, and many have contained humourous delights.

But all of them have been heroic. Whether they were a Party leader or a trade union veteran or a poor and unemployed labourer, regardless of the level of government for which they campaigned and irrespective of the turns their political lives may have taken in the years after, each of these people undertook a revolutionary task that was, to paraphrase Lenin, vital to the Communist Party, to the working class fight for meaningful reforms and to the revolutionary advance toward socialism.

They were and continue to be an indispensable element of the class struggle in Canada.

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Tough times, struggles ahead for British Columbians in 2021

Kimball Cariou

Most British Columbians were glad to say goodbye to 2020, a year of deep economic crisis and worsening pandemic impacts. But the coming year will see more difficulties for the working class of BC, and sharp challenges for the NDP government which recently won a big majority.

For much of 2020, BC was widely envied for its low numbers of COVID cases and deaths. But that changed quickly last fall. By January, more than 60,000 cases had been recorded, along with over 360 deaths. The desperate efforts by geographically isolated First Nations to keep out the virus are now being overwhelmed, and there is a big spike in outbreaks within the school system. The province's attempts to limit deadly outbreaks in seniors' and long-term care facilities, by limiting employees to just one workplace, fell short. As in other jurisdictions, vaccinations are proceeding, but still too slowly to reduce overall numbers.

A new campaign by the BC Federation of Labour, "Working Sick Isn't Working", argues that despite public health recommendations, workers who get sick often still go to work because they can't afford to lose pay and might even get fired for staying home.

Aimed at both the Horgan NDP and the federal Liberals, the campaign calls for every worker – full-time, part-time, temporary or casual – to be covered by a plan including COVID-19 sick leave of at least 10 days during the pandemic; a permanent paid sick leave guarantee; and support for new and struggling businesses that have lost income because of the pandemic, to cover up to 75 percent of sick leave costs.

Meanwhile, the province is seeing a tidal wave of bankruptcies and business closures. Minister of Finance Selina Robinson says BC's economy may not bounce back fully until early 2023, after a 6.2 percent decline in GDP last year. The province expects a 2020 deficit of $13.6 billion, including $2 billion on extra financial supports during the pandemic.

Retail sales have returned to pre-pandemic levels and housing sales have rebounded, but some key sectors – including transportation, accommodation and food services, information and culture – are still in bad shape. A stunning 400,000 jobs were lost in March and April 2020, hitting young people and women the hardest. About 360,000 jobs were regained by November, but these were largely part-time or temporary. BC's unemployment rate is projected to average 9.3 percent in 2021 and currently sits at 14.1 percent for people aged 15-24. Thousands of low-income tenants face uncertain futures, with no guarantee of being able to pay the rent and buy groceries.

The NDP minority government, elected in 2017 and backed by the Greens, implemented some measures to tackle poverty and insecurity. But as the First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition reported last month, by the end of 2018, 159,570 children and youth were still living in poor households, down slightly from 2017 (163,730), and BC’s child poverty rate of 18.5 percent was slightly higher than the pan-Canadian rate of 18.2 percent. BC has a long way to go to tackle this massive problem.

But the government sparked widespread anger in December by slashing its $300 COVID-19 benefits for disability and income assistance recipients to $150. Horgan and Robinson promised to boost the rates in their upcoming budget which has been delayed to April 20.

The demands raised by First Call go further, including to index the BC Child Opportunity Benefit to the annual inflation rate; to prioritize childcare investments in the 2021 budget and beyond; to tie rent control to the unit, so that landlords have no incentive to evict current tenants; to ensure that all workers in BC are covered by the hourly minimum wage and have a legislated right to paid sick leave; and to raise income and disability assistance rates.

As budget planning grinds forward, there still seems to be cash in the treasury to help resource extraction and export corporations. Construction of the Site C dam in northern BC is going full speed ahead, for example. The dam will provide energy for the liquid natural gas industry, which itself faces huge uncertainties due to wildly fluctuating global energy prices.

A new report on the status of Site C is now being considered by the Horgan cabinet. The report by former deputy finance minister Peter Milburn examines construction delays, rising costs and risks due to geotechnical issues. The former Liberal government claimed Site C would cost $6.6 billion, and the NDP backed the project after coming to office. The cost estimates topped $10.7 billion by last year, and the independent BC Utilities Commission puts that figure at more than $12 billion. Like the Muskrat Falls fiasco in Labrador, Site C is turning into a bottomless money pit. But Premier Horgan seems reluctant to disappoint the energy monopolies or the building trades which campaigned for his party by cancelling the dam.

As 2021 begins, the Communist Party's BC Committee is gearing up for a campaign to raise income and disability assistance rates to at least $2,000 per month and a 30 percent boost in the minimum wage, up to $20 per hour. The campaign will include leaflets, posters and a strong social media component, including online videos and forums.

Kimball Cariou is leader of the Communist Party of BC

For information, contact the Party, <info@cpcbc.ca> or 604-255-2041, or visit our website, http://cpcbc.ca/.

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Alberta labour fights back as Kenney attacks workers’ health and safety

Corinne Benson

From what I have unfortunately had to witness personally, it is hard to imagine making Alberta’s workers’ compensation laws worse.

I have been to the funerals of two Chilean Canadians, who escaped being dumped into the sea by Pinochet only to die from preventable diseases – silicosis and mesothelioma – that they contracted in their workplaces in Canada. In one of these cases, I personally witnessed the day-by-day effect which the illness had on the worker and his family. I heard how they barely could feed themselves while they were on welfare. I heard how the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) would phone him, knowing he was going to die, to ask if he was willing to work part-time. I heard of his children mopping up the blood which he vomited as a result of the silicosis. Finally, the court gave them a settlement, saying that the WCB had not given any consideration of how their treatment of him affected his mental health, but every battle along the way was agonizing.

This is how bad it already was. Now Jason Kenney is making it worse, by gutting portions of the Workers’ Compensation Act and completely replacing the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Bill 47, the Ensuring Safety and Cutting Red Tape Act, is a 152-page omnibus bill that was passed in December. The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) warns that the bill “hollows out basically every major component of a good workplace health and safety system and also restricts access for injured workers to recover and start working again.”

Among the changes, Bill 47 reduces appeal options for injured workers and shortens the timeline for workers to make appeals; removes nearly $275 million from injured workers by reducing the cost of living adjustment imposing a cap on insurable earnings; eliminates mandatory joint health and safety committees from worksites with multiple employers, jeopardizing workers at oil and gas and construction worksites; strips workplace health and safety programs of mandatory requirements; and eliminates employers’ obligations to maintain health and dental benefits for workers recovering from injury, to reinstate injured workers ready to return to work and to accommodate disabled workers.

The amendments to the Workers’ Compensation Act also include ending presumptive coverage for psychological injuries for most workers, which will remove $230 million from workers who experience trauma at work; closing the Fair Practices Office, the only place for most injured workers (especially non-unionized workers) to receive support for navigating the compensation system; and instructs the WCB to change its funding policies to prioritize employers’ costs over the financial needs of injured workers.

One of the most concerning changes will limit a worker's right to refuse unsafe work. The AFL notes that “no workers will be involved in investigating unsafe work anymore and workers who refuse unsafe work can be sent home without pay for refusing.” The COVID crisis clearly exposes the implications of this – in trying to support their families and perhaps unaware of the full implications of not having a mask available, workers already feel pressured to work when conditions are unhealthy or unsafe. This law makes it even more difficult for workers to act for their own protection.

While many of these changes will come into effect in April, the imposed financial loss to workers was effective January 1.

Kenney's rationale for this Bill 47 is to reduce red tape and bring balance back. Workers have always faced plenty of red tape while fighting for justice – this law makes their red tape even longer.

Kenney and the United Conservatives are launching unceasing attacks on everyone. The people are kept fighting on so many fronts that it feels like being caught in a back alley by several attackers. The Alberta Federation of Labour has launched a Stand Up to Kenney campaign, to build resistance through education and mobilization. We must support the AFL in this campaign, including by rolling back Bill 47 and winning a much better Workers’ Compensation Act.

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Canadian Network on Cuba launches campaign for emergency medical supplies

PV Staff

There is a bitter irony in the fact that Cuba, a country which sent emergency medical brigades around the world to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, is forced by the US blockade to confront shortages of medical supplies in its own borders. But this is the reality imposed by imperialism.

Longtime Cuba solidarity activist Keith Ellis is coordinator for the Medical Supplies Fundraising Campaign launched by the Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC). He says that in the current situation, “Cuban hospitals, in different parts of the country, are struggling to acquire some very urgently needed items, mainly due to the US illegal blockade.” The three-month campaign launched on January 8 and will raise $50,000 to fill and ship a container with the critical supplies that Cuba needs. “The CNC has obtained a list of some of these items which we are attempting to source from suppliers of medical equipment in the Toronto area.”

The CNC notes that the launch date intentionally coincides with the day in 1959 that the rebel army, led by Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos, victoriously arrived in Havana. “Fidel Castro’s forward-looking policies led to Cuba’s distinguished medical accomplishments and international humanitarian aid around the world. Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. In appalling contrast, the increased tightening by the United States of its illegal, immoral blockade against Cuba has made it extremely difficult for Cubans to obtain urgently needed medical supplies while fighting the coronavirus pandemic.”

Last year, the US blockade caused nearly $5.6 billion in economic losses for Cuba, $1.2 billion more than in 2019. The tourist sector lost $1.9 billion, manufacturing over $600 million and the bio-pharmacological sector more than $160 million.

US-based political writer W.T. Whitney has said that the fallout from the blockade is particularly harmful for the healthcare sector. “Dozens of US companies, on being asked, refused to sell medical equipment and drugs to Cuban importers. When purchased through a third-country agent, they are more expensive. And supplies and medications manufactured in third countries may not be readily available… Cuba’s fight against COVID-19 took one hit when blockade regulations prevented the unloading in Cuba of a Chinese shipment of donated anti-pandemic supplies, and another one when Swiss manufacturers refused to sell ventilators to Cuba.”

There is hope in Cuba and around the world that the new US president will uncoil the tightened blockade and take steps to normalize relations. This is far from guaranteed, however, so solidarity movements are ramping up their anti-blockade campaigns in addition to their material aid efforts.

The Canadian Network on Cuba includes organizations like the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, several chapters of the Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association, the Communist Party and Young Communist League. The network has a strong record of sending material support to Cuba. All funds received are passed on to Cuba as the CNC covers all additional costs like transfer, banking and postage.

Readers may get more information or contribute to the campaign by emailing CNC co-chair and treasurer Elizabeth Hill at elizzhill@gmail.com.

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Seafarers keep global economy moving during COVID-19, but face widespread abuse

Alex C

The transportation of goods by sea has always been vital to the global economy. Raw materials are first transported to factories, then the finished products are directed to various markets. It is estimated that 90 percent of the world's goods are transported at some point on a ship, in a global shipping industry that is estimated to be $3 trillion. In Canada, and throughout the world, shipping has always required a large pool of skilled workers. Unfortunately, marine workers continue to be victims of abuse by their employers, with some companies abandoning ships with crews on board. This was the case with the MV Ethan, where two sailors lived from 2016 to 2019 as prisoners on their ship that was tied to the port of Quebec City, without being paid.

The world has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic – as ecommerce takes the wind out of the sails and makes fat cows of giants like Amazon the lives of millions of seafaring workers are being affected. Under normal circumstances, these workers are given a fixed-term contract that can range from a few months to more than a year – although theoretically, since 2006 this period has been limited to 11 months. They are then repatriated home when the vessel calls. Now, under health measures implemented around the world, seafarers are seen as potential carriers of COVID-19. Of 1.7 million merchant marine sailors world-wide, 800,000 have been ordered to stay on their ships – a virtual ban on going ashore – and the remainder are forced to stay at the dock. None are able to return home.

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) has documented the situation extensively. In itsApril 2020 message to G20 leaders, the ITF wrote:

“In addition to the many travel restrictions, pluschallenges related to immigration and healthscreening protocols affecting seafarers and marinepersonnel, a pressing obstacle to crew changes –which are critical for safe and efficient maritimetransportation activities to continue – is the currentsuspension of flights from many of the world’sairports.

“For humanitarian reasons – and the need to complywith international safety and employment regulations– crew changes cannot be postponed indefinitely…

“Tens of thousands of seafarers, whose tours of dutyhave come to an end, are already waiting to be repatriated…

“It is also a great concern for the industry that therestrictions in place have resulted in thousands ofseafarers being at sea for several months already andthis, combined with demanding tasks, both physicaland mental, increases exponentially the risk ofmarine accidents and disasters happening, which is adaunting scenario for an already fragile and stretchedglobal economy.”

Onboard working conditions are getting worse every day. Since the beginning of the pandemic, overtime controls are no longer in effect and ship inspections are often done by videoconference and are therefore very cursory. Jean-Philippe Chateil, General Secretary of the French CGT trade union's Federation of Merchant Navy Officers, says that any worker who dares to oppose this situation is “dead” and their employer "will put him or her on the [blocklist]." Chateil notes that states "have chosen their priority: the fluidity of trade, even if it means re-establishing slavery in the merchant navy."

The pandemic has also affected seafarers in Canada. The Seafarers' International Union of Canada(SIU) has issued several statements regarding COVID-19 and union president James Given is committed to defending seafarers’ rights, including conditions during shore leave in ports with low risk of contagion. The SIU continues to put pressure on shipping companies to put in place satisfactory protocols and measures to protect crews. Given offers a reminder of the value of work done by Canadian seafarers: "Without you, our country would collapse, businesses would cease to exist, and trade would be paralyzed. You managed to keep shipping and trade moving in troubled areas and you continued to be among the highest class of seafarers in the world.”

Union Vice-President Patrice Caron says that for many ship owners around the world, maritime workers are of no value – only the cargo matters. Caron decries the absurd allegation that seafarers could be carriers of contagion: "We all know that for most international seafarers, voyages last more than fourteen days, which means that quarantine is served once they arrive in port. This frivolous and equally useless fear of some countries has been decried by trade unions.” He suggests that a possible tactic of struggle for seafarers would be to stop all transport to forbidding countries. Caron has proposed that such a measure be seriously debated at the International Labour Office in Geneva and the International Maritime Organization in London.

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Quebec communists: “Lockdown or not, we must continue to organize”

The Communist Party of Quebec (PCQ) is concerned about the alarming numbers of new cases of COVID-19 infection. With more than 2,500 cases daily for the past few days, there is a real danger of overloading our health care system to the point where inhumane choices will have to be made, especially since all specialists agree that any increase in the number of infections will have delayed repercussions on the number of hospitalizations. We can expect the worst. This is why we understand the decision of public health authorities to proceed with a new lockdown.

However, these numbers are far from inevitable. They are the result of decades of deliberate underfunding and privatization of the public health system in an effort to commodify it.

A new lockdown is nothing more or less than an admission of failure, a flagrant example of the collapse of our public health system. It is no coincidence that here, as everywhere else in the world, it is where budget cuts to healthcare have been deepest that the pandemic is spreading the fastest. In Italy, which was the epicenter of the pandemic last spring, 10 years of underfunding and privatization resulted in a 37 billion euro deficit and the loss of 150,000 hospital beds. In Britain, now in its third lockdown, successive austerity measures since the 1980s have left the health care system a shortfall of more than 10 billion pounds and the loss of 160,000 beds.

Quebec is not to be outdone. Between the zero deficit – which reduced health funding by $2 billion, cut 10 percent of its workforce and closed seven hospitals in the Montreal area alone – and attacks which included P3 development and competition between the public and private systems (through the Chaouilli decision, Charest’s "virage ambulatoire" and the "Barrette reform"), it is unsurprising, but distressing, to see that our health care system cannot adequately respond to a pandemic such as the one we are experiencing.

Neither Quebec nor the rest of Canada can pretend to be taken by surprise since, as early as 2006, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) had produced a 600-page report documenting the various possible scenarios of an influenza pandemic, which has everything to do with the reality we are living through. Unfortunately, neither the provincial health agencies nor the PHAC put their money where their mouth is, with the result we now see.

This second lockdown would undoubtedly have been avoidable if the health system had been prepared to face a pandemic (which is not illusory: countries such as Cuba, China and Vietnam have successfully contained COVID-19) and if the release from the lockdown last June had been planned according to public health interests and not those of François Legault's companies or political capital. This is what Legault is trying to conceal, without much opposition from the opposition parties.

To be clear, we dissociate ourselves from and condemn “anti-maskers,” who support outrageous theories and call for irresponsible actions under the pretext that COVID-19 is nothing more than a conspiracy on the part of a global cabal. However, we also denounce the media portrayal of this pandemic, in which François Legault is presented as a good father doing his best and in which any questioning of his measures is equated with conspiracy theories that have attracted undeserved media attention.

This situation leaves no room for those who question certain aspects of this second lockdown, especially the guarantee of fundamental democratic rights like the rights to association and freedom of expression. These rights are guaranteed both by the Constitution and by the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government is responsible for guaranteeing them, even in times of pandemic. Many people are in danger of losing their homes and are seeing their incomes decline, while cases of domestic violence are likely to increase during the lockdown.While this trend will continue well beyond the lockdown, the role of associations, unions, political parties and other organizations is of the utmost importance.

Last March, a strict lockdown was necessary due to the lack of protocols. However, it is inconceivable that in the subsequent 10 months, health authorities have been unable to implement protocols allowing democratic institutions (those in power as well as those in the opposition) to meet under adequate conditions. It is equally inconceivable that a curfew has been imposed for the first time since the October Crisis. This is clear mimicry of France, where Macron imposed a curfew not so much to contain the pandemic, but to prevent demonstrations by all those who would attack his reactionary policies.

Either PHAC underestimated the duration and magnitude of this pandemic a year ago, or they don't care about basic democratic rights. Whatever the reason, it deserves to be denounced, all the more so since there are many examples of demonstrations, rallies, public meetings, and political and union conferences which have safely enabled democratic debate during the pandemic.

Faced with coronavirus, we are not all in the same boat. According to an IMF report, living and working conditions influence the risk of contracting the virus. From 10 percent for the wealthy and the ruling class, the risk rises to 50 percent for those who cannot work from home, lack protective equipment or live in more densely populated areas.

It is precisely in this context that the role of labor unions, tenants' associations, political parties and others is most important. It is also in this context that the right to gather and demonstrate is most important, especially considering that the pandemic also serves as a justification for the ruling class to increase its stranglehold on the economic life of Quebec.

We must ensure that, despite the lockdown, no one will be left behind. We must fight to ensure that even closed businesses continue to pay workers’ wages. We must mobilize against any form of layoff, even temporary. In terms of housing, we know that many find it difficult to pay their rent or mortgage in these times of uncertainty and unemployment, which is why we demand a suspension of rent and mortgage payments until the end of the lockdown and a freeze on interest rates. We also demand a halt to all evictions, not only until the end of the lockdown, but until the end of the winter period (the month of May).

We further demand the suspension of credit card payments and banking charges, as well as a freeze on interest rates.

We have no reason to doubt the forthcoming health measures. However, we need guarantees that include a long-term vision based on massive reinvestment in public services and the defense of fundamental democratic rights and social measures in order to ensure that no one is left behind during this second lockdown. Legault, despite his good-natured appearance, gives us none of these guarantees. We have no illusions: his long-term plan is to make sure that capitalists emerge from the crisis first.

Pandemic or not, we must not lower our guard. While we are confined, the ruling class will do everything it can to prepare its strategy. Lockdown or not, we must continue to organize by all possible means, both online and in the street.

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Ontario communists demand a halt to evictions, support for encampments and housing for all

PV Ontario Bureau

Among the series of crises that the coronavirus pandemic has caused and exposed in Ontario, one of the most dramatic is in housing. Homeless people have been exposed to the virus in overcrowded shelters and, as a result, encampments have grown exponentially. Across the province, municipalities have already bulldozed these encampments or are threatening to do so.

Ontario’s unemployment rate has doubled since the pandemic began. After CERB finished and the emergency freeze on evictions was lifted in August, thousands of tenants were left unable to pay rent and have been evicted or are in the process of being evicted. The tenants involved are disproportionately low-income and racialized people.

The Ford government further weakened tenants’ rights when it passed Bill 184, the perversely named Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act, which heavily favours landlords in the eviction process. At Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) hearings, only 3 percent of tenants have representation, while 80 percent of landlords do. At the end of 2020, the LTB began an online blitz of hearings, with the goal of evicting at least 100 families each day.

Many tenants are being evicted in absentia. This may be because they are ill or don’t understand the process or don’t have the electronic means to attend an online hearing. Or perhaps they have been caught up in the LTB’s Kafkaesque process which kicks people out of hearing rooms at random.

The federal government has acknowledged that housing is a human right, but governments at all levels continue to fail in their responsibility to provide adequate permanent social housing.  Instead, they have pursued market-based solutions to increase the housing stock – typically, these policies only incentivize developers to set aside “affordable” housing at 80 percent of average market rent, a moving target that is not pinned to income and which remains unaffordable for most working families.

The fightback against evictions and support for encampments has steadily grown since the summer. It is a struggle that has engaged sections of the trade union movement, with a number of labour councils in Ontario passing resolutions calling for government action on housing, halts to evictions and supports for encampments.

The Ontario Committee of the Communist Party is launching a new housing campaign “to support those who struggle against a brutal capitalist system that throws people and families into the street during a pandemic.”

The campaign is organized around several key demands, aimed at various levels of government. These include repealing Bill 184, extending the ban on evictions and foreclosures and placing all units, including vacant ones, under rent control to eliminate the two-tier system. The party is also calling for a ban on “renovictions,” a system of rent-rollbacks so that tenants pay only 20 percent of their household income on rent, and a reversal to the government’s policy on vacancy decontrol which incentivizes landlords to kick out tenants and hike up rent prices.

Ontario Communist Party leader Drew Garvie told People’s Voice that “our campaign will press for an immediate, comprehensive plan to fund and build permanent rent-geared-to-income social housing, where rent is based on 20 percent of household income, to meet the needs of underhoused and homeless populations of Ontario.”

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Reverse Trump’s sanctions, end the blockade and retract Cuba’s terrorist designation

Central Executive Committee

Communist Party of Canada

The Communist Party of Canada condemns the Trump administration’s baseless designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and calls on the Prime Minister and Parliament to reject them and to demand the Biden administration repeal the designation along with Trump’s new sanctions against Cuba.

As everyone knows, Trump’s accusations against Cuba are as accurate and truthful as his claims that he won the November election. His efforts to smear the Cuban government and inflict new economic injury on the Cuban people are transparent. This drive-by attack is intended to consolidate support among far-right Cuban exiles in Miami for his policies and his failed coup attempt. In the dying days of Trump’s administration, even prominent members of his own party are worried that he might start a war or try to use the nuclear codes.

The whole world knows that the US is the terrorist state, sponsoring hundreds of attempts to overthrow the Cuban government, assassinate its leaders and poison its people using chemical and biological weapons, over the past 60 years.  

The whole world knows that the government and people of Cuba have consistently sought to normalize diplomatic and trade relationships with the US, as they have with Canada and many other countries. The Obama administration took modest first steps towards normalization of US-Cuban relations in December 2014, which the Trump administration immediately reversed on taking office.

While Trump has used the past 4 years to terrorize the world, with threats to “wipe out” the Korean Peninsula and other states, leaders and governments he doesn’t like, the Cuban government has offered – and sent – teams of doctors, nurses, medical equipment and drugs to dozens of countries around the world. This includes Canada, where Indigenous leaders in Manitoba invited Cuban doctors to help them deal with the COVID pandemic on remote Northern reserves. To Canada’s shame, the federal government refused to issue visas to the Cuban medical team who were ready and waiting for the visas to travel.

The PM’s father, Pierre Trudeau, carved out a two-track foreign policy for Canada which ensured bilateral relations between Canada and socialist Cuba, that benefitted both countries and was very different from the pathological policy pursued by successive US administrations and underscored by the illegal and immoral blockade.

Canada’s relationship with Cuba remained friendly until the current Liberal administration, led by Justin Trudeau, began to bend to US demands for a Canadian foreign policy more in line with Washington’s ‘regime-change’ agenda.

The magnitude of that faulty and self-serving decision has now been exposed to the whole world.

The new US administration must reverse Trump’s terrorist designation and sanctions against Cuba, and the Canadian government must insist that they do it. Further, Canada must insist the new US administration finally end its blockade and normalize relations with Cuba.

The Communist Party of Canada stands with the government and the people of Cuba in their decades-long struggle to determine their own future and to build socialism, independent of US threats of war, regime change and economic strangulation. We stand with the nations and peoples of the world fighting for their right to sovereignty and self-determination and to follow an anti-capitalist and socialist path of development. These are rights guaranteed under the UN Charter, which neither Trump nor Biden can unilaterally violate, nor Canada ignore and still claim to be part of the law-abiding international community of states.

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Stop Irving Oil’s “pandemic profiteering”

Editorial

The richest family in New Brunswick just doesn’t feel quite rich enough. And it is prepared to hold the province’s most vulnerable people hostage as it pressures the government to guarantee higher “pandemic profits.”

The Irving Oil corporation, privately owned and controlled by the Irving family, operates the largest oil refinery in Canada. In early January, the company asked the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board (NBEUB) to approve a 10 percent increase in its wholesale margins for motor fuels and furnace oil. Irving is vertically integrated and operates an extensive retail and distribution network for its refined oil; this ensures that profit is compounded and retained. The proposed increase would cost consumers an additional $60 million.

Irving claims the increase is necessary to offset reduced demand for gas – particularly jet fuel – during the pandemic. Since Irving is a privately held corporation, its financial reports are not publicly available and the impact of COVID on its operations cannot be verified. However, according to Bloomberg, the personal fortune of family head Arthur Irving (one of the ten richest individuals in Canada) has more than doubled to $7.6 billion since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in March 2020.

The corporation has a long history of using “company town” pressure tactics in an effort to control New Brunswick politics. In this instance, it has threatened to cut off its supply of heating oil to the province if the NBEUB does not approve the price increase.

New Brunswick banned corporate donations to political parties in 2018, but members of the Irving family immediately used personal donations to match the company’s former contributions to the provincial Conservatives and Liberals and increase them by about 50 percent. Just one day after Irving filed its request for a price increase, Natural Resources Minister Mike Holland sent a letter to the NBEUB, urging the board to quickly approve the application.

The Common Front for Social Justice New Brunswick (FCJSNB) is mobilizing opposition to the increase. It warns that “home heating is a necessity in New Brunswick, especially in the winter. This extreme price hike would have a dire impact on low-income workers, people on fixed incomes and those living on social assistance, especially in the wake of the economic impacts of COVID-19 and the Higgs government’s austerity policies.”

The FCJSNB notes that people on social assistance in New Brunswick live “well below the poverty line, as do many citizens on fixed income, and many low-wage workers.” Single parents and couples on social assistance have received no increases in the past ten years, and single recipients have received just a 3 percent increase over that period. “The richest family in the province threatening citizens and the government with cutting off an essential resource if their demands to extract more profit are not met is nothing short of an attempt at extortion.”

The organization is calling on the provincial government to reject any increase in prices and to enact policies to control the price of home heating and to secure an adequate supply of heating oil, with serious penalties for extortionary practices. It is also calling for a wealth tax, immediate increase in social assistance and fixed incomes to above the poverty line, and programs to promote affordable sustainable and community-based home heating solutions.

The fight against price gouging in the heating oil industry is connected to the broader struggle for economic, social and environmental stewardship of the energy industry. This publication has long championed policies for such stewardship, including during the last federal election, with an understanding that they require comprehensive and decisive government intervention in the economy. In particular, this means that energy resources and industries must be placed under public ownership and control. We could start with Irving.

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