(The following article is from the December 1-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

From the presentation to the Sao Paulo Meeting by Kimball Cariou, Central Executive Committee member of the Communist Party of Canada

This year, we meet in the western hemisphere, the scene of wide-ranging class and social struggles for the anti-imperialist transformation of Latin America. These struggles are once again raising the banner of socialism, the next step forward in the history of humanity.

     Just as important, we meet just after the financial and economic crisis broke fully into the open. It is no exaggeration to warn that this calamity deepens the grave dangers posed to humanity by climate change, mass hunger, and imperialist wars.

     ...The impact of this capitalist offensive continues to spread. For example, Canada's manufacturing and secondary industry base has been badly hollowed out. Over the past five years, some 400,000 jobs in Canada's manufacturing sector - about one-fifth of the total - have been wiped out or moved to lower-wage countries. This trend has devastated dozens of cities and towns based on forestry, pulp and paper, auto production, and other key industries. While overall unemployment rates remained until now lower than during the 1980s and '90s - partly due to manipulation of statistics - these job losses have impoverished many working class families. Ever larger numbers of workers are compelled to accept low-wage, part-time, temporary employment to survive, and to go deeper into debt to pay their bills. The average Canadian family is now burdened with $1.25 in debts for each $1 of assets they own. In every major city, thousands are homeless, and millions of people live in abysmal housing conditions. The situation of Aboriginal peoples is particularly desperate, with unemployment and poverty rates three or four times the Canadian average. The gap between rich and poor has widened steadily during the neoliberal era, as the wealthiest ten percent of the population appropriate virtually all the increased wealth produced by the working class.

     Since the latest financial upheavals, Canadian stock markets have lost almost 40% of their face value, threatening the pension plans of millions of working people with the possibility of a major meltdown. Exports to the United States, our number one trading partner, are drying up as that country sinks deeper into recession. Layoffs and plant shutdowns are becoming more frequent.

     Even the major banks and bourgeois economists agree that the signs point to a lengthy and severe recession in Canada. The federal and most provincial governments admit that the days of budget surpluses are over. They intend to minimize deficits by new cuts to social spending, further worsening the plight of working people. These right-wing politicians also plan to preserve and extend their tax cuts to the wealth and the corporations, and to continue the rapid increase in military spending which began several years ago.

     ....Until now, the people's fightback has been fragmented and sporadic, largely because social democracy and other reformist currents predominate in the leadership of the labour movement. These forces still seek accommodation between capital and labour, granting concessions to employers and governments with the fruitless goal of "social peace." Their unwillingness to mobilize mass resistance has left the working class on the defensive, and the Communists and other left forces in Canada have not been strong enough to prevent this retreat.

     Fortunately, there is growing recognition within the labour and people's movements about the deadly impact of the Conservative agenda during a period of capitalist economic downturn. Even the social democratic leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress, the country's largest labour federation, has explicitly condemned the failings of global capitalism. The CLC has begun demanding stronger controls and regulation of the financial sector, and policies to stimulate the economy and defend the interests of working people.

     There are indications that Canadian workers are increasingly willing to consider more radical ideas. Delegates to the CLC convention last spring unanimously called for nationalization of the oil and gas industry, a position supported by half of the Canadian population, according to recent surveys. During the federal election, the Communist candidates met with a favourable response whenever we had the opportunity to attack the crisis of capitalism and to call for public ownership and other fundamental economic measures...

     The challenge for our party, as for the communist movement and all progressive and peace-loving forces in our world today is to help mobilize the working class and its allies for pro-people policies. It no accident that such policies are condemned as "socialism" by the wealthy and powerful whose neoliberal strategies have inflicted so much damage. We must increase our efforts to combat anti-communism and to defend socialism as the only viable alternative to capitalism and imperialism.

     At the same time, we must continue to forge alliances against imperialist aggression, and to defend national sovereignty and the interests of the working people. As always, this requires cooperation with political and social forces with whom we differ, without yielding our revolutionary world view. We must remain firm on our principles, while building unity, no matter how temporary, around the key issues of our time....