Canada

We publish below a joint statement by the US, Canadian and Mexican sections of the Revolutionary Communist International, explaining the need for internationalism and workers’ unity in response to the Trump administration's recent tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

The burgeoning U.S.-Canada trade war has become the central question in Canadian politics. Whichever way this situation plays out, the relationship between the two countries is irreparably changed. This will have far reaching consequences for the economy, politics and the class struggle.

The fifteenth edition of the Marxist Winter School took place in the midst of a storm. A record snowstorm rocked Montreal on the weekend of February 14 to 16 delaying the arrival of many of the 600 or so participants. But this storm was nothing compared to the chaos currently gripping global capitalism. It was to help us navigate through these tumultuous events that we held this School under the theme of “The Pillars of Communism”.

The newly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada over the past several weeks. While initially written off as a joke by Canadian officials, the thrust behind Trump’s threats has dire implications for Canadian capitalism.

After ruling Canada for nine years, Trudeau’s government has collapsed. In order to explain these events, we are publishing two articles written by Joel Bergman.

85,000 students went on strike last week against Israel’s ongoing slaughter in Gaza. This was the largest student strike over international solidarity that Canada has ever seen.

This is a massive step in the right direction for the Palestine movement in Quebec and Canada. At least 26 student associations representing 50,000 students will be on strike for Palestine on Nov. 21-22!

The first annual Vancouver School of Communism was a smashing success! With ninety communists in attendance from Vancouver, Victoria, Abbotsford, Surrey and Calgary, Communism is back on the west coast! We also had over a dozen American comrades come from Seattle, Bellingham and even as far away as New York to participate. 

This school year, RCP activists have launched a campaign for a student strike for Palestine. We have hit the ground on multiple campuses around the country and are happy to report that thousands of students are already supporting this campaign.

In an electric atmosphere, nearly 400 communists gathered in Montreal from across Canada and Québec and officially founded the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)! Our goal: to be the generation to overthrow capitalism in our lifetime, and lay the foundations for building a society free of exploitation, violence and oppression. 

Here, we publish two eyewitness reports from our comrades who were involved in the encampments in Alberta when the police violently broke them up. Videos of police brutality from these campuses went viral on social media over the weekend, fueling outrage at the violation of the right to protest. These occupations are the first demonstrations in Alberta to be broken up physically by the police in a very long time.

It is not often that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the communists agree on something. But the deep crisis of capitalism that we are facing today is an existential threat that cannot be ignored by the most serious strategists of capital. Therefore, the latter are increasingly reaching the same conclusion as Marxists despite coming from the opposite side: that revolution is around the corner.

Revolutionary times call for revolutionary solutions. Capitalism is driving society off a cliff. With mass poverty, environmental destruction, war, and genocide—this system has to go. That is why the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency is founding the Revolutionary Communist Party!