As the recent dramatic shift in Canadian politics has fully validated, the crisis within capitalist system is creating political conditions that are ever more volatile, hostile and fluid. The deepening economic crisis is opening larger divisions within contending capital forces for shrinking credit pools, which are translating into bourgeois political crises and sharp polarizing fights. Prime Minster Stephan Harper remains committed to his ideological Reform Party oil monopoly support base in Alberta. He will do this at the expense of Canadian workers, Alberta included.
What has started as a sharpening political squabble within the major Canadian political parties is quickly turning into a popular expression of anger within the working class. As uneven, confused and disjointed this sentiment, it is none the less a reflection of the widening economic gap between productive forces on the one hand and finance capital on the other. It reflects the massive global impoverishment of billions of workers under the now fully discredited and failed neo-liberal policies of free market capitalism. Alberta is not immune to these changes.
Canadian ‘economic experts’ like to say that, while Canada’s ‘fiscal fundamentals are sound’; we are not ‘immune’ to the global economic crisis affecting other nations. What they are really saying to the power cabal of Canadian finance, military and energy capital is that the Harper-Reform Party economic policies are sound and will serve your interests, but you must remain vigilant against the growing general anger within the global working class. They warn that Canada is not immune from a rapidly growing working class consciousness now sweeping other parts of the world and developed capitalist economies which is quickly manifesting into demands for state control of the economy. This will not do if you are a finance capitalist.
Cut and Run Harper
I recall the speech that Harper made to the Canadian troops in Afghanistan in 2006 where he said that, ‘Canadians don’t cut and run’. The intimidation of Governor General Micheall Jean by Harper and his band of thugs as they rolled up to her residence in their black limos was nothing more than a mafia Don asserting his turf power. It was a televised right-wing Coup d’état complete with commentary from a host of Harper apologists.
The bullying of Jean into parliamentary prorogue, is an indictment of Harper’s cowardly nature to avoid standing before the Canadian people with his Flaherty ‘on-the-backs-of-the-people’ budget statement. Harper is quick to tell the sons and daughters of Canadian workers not to cut and run, but faced with the anger of Canadian workers Harper is content to hide behind the skirt of the Governor General.
What seems to be shaping up as an attempt by the Harper-Reform Party cosa nostra to fabricate a national unity and constitutional crisis to gain a political majority at all costs, plays well to the underdeveloped Flanagan intellectual ‘giants’ at the University of Calgary and his gated community brain trust. Running from parliament is being packaged as an ‘astute’ move from a tactical genius to gain political advantage and form a majority government. It suggests that Harper is in control and has ‘planned’ the outcome all along. This is farther from the truth and is nothing more than a fearful and cowardly act of political avoidance.
However fearful and cowardly this act is, Harper still retains power and with it all the state instruments for execution of his political and economic agenda. This reminds me of a lyric from the Bob Marley song “The Heathen” from the album Exodus that went, “tis he who fight and run away, live to fight another day”. While Marley was calling on ‘Jah People’ to continue in struggle Harper runs away to fight another election. The only way to stop Harper is to ensure that he cannot fight another day. This must come at the hands of the Canadian people in a crushing and humiliating defeat.
Those that argue the coalition is just same old ‘big business’ agenda need to reconsider that at this historical moment the defeat of Harper is the foremost important struggle. No other progressive struggles will take shape and develop so rapidly under the political revenge that Harper will unleash if he is permitted to govern, or worse govern with a majority. His smug arrogance will be short lived if all progressive and labour forces are marshalled for his defeat, even if the alliance that needs to be formed is not as ‘pure’ as the hyper-left bemoaning from afar crowd would deem.
Opening up the Fight for State Control, Defeating Hyper-Left Rhetoric
What is being placed before the Canadian people is a choice between the proto-fascistic chauvinistic policies of Harper-Reform Party doctrine of finance, oil and military capital or an opening to advance a labour led program of Canadian state industrial development. Even in the context of the manufactured Harper parliamentary crisis, where the full weight of the hardened right-wing political machine is being brought to bear against coalition forces, the possibility for state led and planned Canadian industrial development is well within reach of Canadian workers.
There will be many hyper-left detractors who will howl at such a thought and engage in left sectarian attacks on the coalition. The hyper-left will enter into coalition bashing along with the Harper propaganda machine. This is already to beginning to surface within the Socialist Project where Socialist Voice co-editor, John Riddell, cranks up the sectarian left rhetoric to acrimoniously complain of the ‘fatal weaknesses’ of a Liberal-NDP coalition. Riddell’s vitriolic idiom offers nothing for workers who see an opportunity to bring some immediate relief to their plight of job loss and wage and pension erosions. One wonders who Riddell is speaking to.
They insist that the only way for ‘real’ change and to achieve “specific and immediate gains is to stick to the path of independence from big business and its parties, and rely on the potential of popular movements."[1] This sentiment concludes that within a Liberal led coalition government the levers of power will remain in the hands of big business, providing “massive” handouts to corporate interests.
What is prescription offered for ‘independent’ action? Riddell advocates the following:
“And here is the fatal weakness of the coalition government scheme. Locked inside a Liberal-dominated coalition, the NDP would be unable to campaign against capitalist attacks. Accepting responsibility for the anti-labour measures of such a government could rapidly discredit the NDP and end its ability to continue as the bearer of popular hopes for social change.”
This Riddell argues is the path for ‘independent’ action – a continuation of the same failed social democratic strategy of subordinating labour programs of economic development to the vain hope of NDP electoral victory. The fear in Riddell’s statement is evident – a mass political struggle for a coalition will expose the vacant and parasitical petty bourgeois policies of the ‘labour intelligentsia’. They are offering nothing for labour except more pronouncements of the same Ian Angus eco-socialist world revolution clap trap.
Supporting this opinion, John Riddell asserts that, “A Liberal ‘stimulus’ package is most likely [WO emphasis] to combine massive handouts to big business with attacks on workers' wages and pensions.” Riddell speculates as if he is an authority of the inner discussions occurring within the coalition. Riddell hectors the labour movement from the safety of his university office dispensing advice but little in the way of relief for workers.
However, detractors of a left-centre coalition are now forced to acknowledge that such a bourgeois political alliance opens new opportunities for labour and working class struggles. With correctly crafted demands and programs, these openings can mean moving to the struggle to discussing fully democratic state intervention in the Canadian economy on the behalf of working people. In the context of Riddell’s previous statements, he hides his sectarianism with the following centrist evasion:
“On such a course, and in present conditions, it is by no means excluded that we could prepare the ground for a Venezuelan-type outcome: a sweeping shift in power relationships in favour of working people, the poor and the oppressed, and their organizations.”
Economic Crisis and Political Deceit, Alberta is not all Right
The rapid shift in the political landscape due to the collapsing market economy on the deliberate de-industrialization policies of the Harper administration exposes the weaknesses within the hyper-left which offers lots of advice ‘on the weaknesses’ of the coalition but does not advance demands that will bring relief for workers suffering from the economic crisis.
Maturation of an advanced labour led struggle for state planned economic development can be no less as rapid and striking. The catastrophic failure of neo-liberal economic policies superimposed on a neo-conservative agenda of military aggression are all converging on top of the structural weakness of capitalism – social production and private accumulation.
The developments in Alberta are no less dramatic. On December 4 2008 pro-coalition rallies were held across Canada. They have grabbed the imagination of Canadians like no other have in recent memory. The Harper-Reform Party press is working overtime to counter a rapidly evolving movement attempting to diffuse its underlying democratic sentiment and evolving labour content into a discussion of national unity. Alberta is not buying this line.
The Edmonton Journal reported December 6 2008 that 500 people attended a pro Harper rally on the Alberta Legislature grounds. The pro-coalition rally in Edmonton on December 4th attracted similar numbers. In the best tradition of the US network Fox, the right-wing talk shows are awash in the Harper chauvinism of Quebec bashing that has tattooed Alberta as a bastion simpleminded Reform politics of the Manning Institute. This is not a true reflection of Alberta workers and is an attempt to make Alberta workers complicit in the cowardly Harper-Reform Party cut and run scorched earth politics.
Alberta Labour can make an Historic Contribution
Alberta labour is positioned to make an historic contribution in the fight for the interests of the working people of Canada. What the AFL can contribute in this situation should not be underestimated. The power that Alberta labour commands at this political juncture can be used to express partisanship for all Canadian workers.
Alberta labour is in a position to counter the Harper-Reform tactics of chauvanism. This begins with a firm and unequivocal rejection of the Harper-Reform Party anti-Quebec sentiment. Our sisters and brothers in eastern Canada need to hear that Alberta workers are on the side of working families of Ontario and Quebec, that we stand in solidarity with them as they struggle with job loss and the collapse of manufacturing and forestry.
With the help of his Big Oil lieutenant Ed Stelmach, Harper is attempting to split Alberta organized labour from the larger house of labour. Stelmach is peddling the line that Alberta workers and the Petroleum Club have the same interests and that the tar sands are at stake. This fabrication must be firmly exposed and rejected.
The political crisis opens up new opportunities for labour to exercise its power in new ways. For Alberta workers this means to demand restarting cancelled oil sands projects. All of the attention of the media is being focussed on manufacturing and forestry jobs, as though expansion in Alberta was continuing This deliberate attempt, by the Harper-Stelmach accord, to hide and evade and prevent a discussion by the Canadian people over development, ownership and control of the oil sands, as a means to get out of the economic crisis requires exposure. It requires the leadership of the AFL to tell the truth about job loss in the energy sector and how to turn our industry in a new direction.
As workers we reject the suggestion that it is an either us or them situation. That is the line of the right to prevent workers everywhere in the country to express their solidarity. The workers of Alberta support our sisters and brother in Ontario and Quebec. Alberta has the material base to expand the economy of all regions in Canada.
The Harper-Stelmach policies of shipping raw bitumen south and along with it Canadian jobs have been exposed by the AFL as negative for jobs and employment in Alberta and Canada. Much of the construction projects that should be underway in Alberta are now being built in the US. This impacts the whole Canadian economy and worsens the loss of manufacturing jobs in Ontario and Quebec.
The AFL’s “Black Gold, Clear Vision” document can serve as the basis for explaining this question. It is an important document that must be placed in front of the Canadian people.
Many oil sands projects are being unnecessarily delayed, scaled back or cancelled. This must be exposed. Petro-Canada’s announcement of halting Fort Hills must be reversed. The AFL must demand that this project be restarted as part of the economic stimulus package that will be tabled by the coalition government. It must include demands for an all-Canadian project where pumps, motors, fabricating piping, pipe and equipment modules and electrical and instrumentation along with engineering are completed in Canada first.
Distribution pipelines for the products coming from such a facility must be sent east for refining and sale to other markets. This will inject billions into the Canadian economy and protect Alberta energy sector jobs which are currently on the chopping block. Thousands of Alberta workers are losing their jobs now and this fact should not go unreported and discussed in the context of the current political crisis.
This would also set the stage for a demand to re-nationalise Petro-Canada. David Coles, President of the CEP, is advancing the question of nationalization. If Petro-Canada was in the hands of the people, as it once was, it could be used as a significant buffer against the sole market resource sell-out policies of the Harper administration.
It is incumbent on Alberta labour to break publicly with the Harper-Stelmach policies of resource sell-out and advance a concrete program by Alberta labour in the interests of all Canadian workers. The AFL must step forward on behalf of all workers in Alberta and Canada and state that organized labour in this province does not support such polices and that sell-out our resources to the US is not in the interests of Canadian workers.
It is for these reasons and within this framework that Alberta labour has a key role to play in the present historic discussion about the political and economic future of the nation.
[1] John Riddell, “Coalition Government? Let's Not Give Away The Store”, Socialist Project , The Bullet, E-Bulletin No. 162 December 1, 2008,
What has started as a sharpening political squabble within the major Canadian political parties is quickly turning into a popular expression of anger within the working class. As uneven, confused and disjointed this sentiment, it is none the less a reflection of the widening economic gap between productive forces on the one hand and finance capital on the other. It reflects the massive global impoverishment of billions of workers under the now fully discredited and failed neo-liberal policies of free market capitalism. Alberta is not immune to these changes.
Canadian ‘economic experts’ like to say that, while Canada’s ‘fiscal fundamentals are sound’; we are not ‘immune’ to the global economic crisis affecting other nations. What they are really saying to the power cabal of Canadian finance, military and energy capital is that the Harper-Reform Party economic policies are sound and will serve your interests, but you must remain vigilant against the growing general anger within the global working class. They warn that Canada is not immune from a rapidly growing working class consciousness now sweeping other parts of the world and developed capitalist economies which is quickly manifesting into demands for state control of the economy. This will not do if you are a finance capitalist.
Cut and Run Harper
I recall the speech that Harper made to the Canadian troops in Afghanistan in 2006 where he said that, ‘Canadians don’t cut and run’. The intimidation of Governor General Micheall Jean by Harper and his band of thugs as they rolled up to her residence in their black limos was nothing more than a mafia Don asserting his turf power. It was a televised right-wing Coup d’état complete with commentary from a host of Harper apologists.
The bullying of Jean into parliamentary prorogue, is an indictment of Harper’s cowardly nature to avoid standing before the Canadian people with his Flaherty ‘on-the-backs-of-the-people’ budget statement. Harper is quick to tell the sons and daughters of Canadian workers not to cut and run, but faced with the anger of Canadian workers Harper is content to hide behind the skirt of the Governor General.
What seems to be shaping up as an attempt by the Harper-Reform Party cosa nostra to fabricate a national unity and constitutional crisis to gain a political majority at all costs, plays well to the underdeveloped Flanagan intellectual ‘giants’ at the University of Calgary and his gated community brain trust. Running from parliament is being packaged as an ‘astute’ move from a tactical genius to gain political advantage and form a majority government. It suggests that Harper is in control and has ‘planned’ the outcome all along. This is farther from the truth and is nothing more than a fearful and cowardly act of political avoidance.
However fearful and cowardly this act is, Harper still retains power and with it all the state instruments for execution of his political and economic agenda. This reminds me of a lyric from the Bob Marley song “The Heathen” from the album Exodus that went, “tis he who fight and run away, live to fight another day”. While Marley was calling on ‘Jah People’ to continue in struggle Harper runs away to fight another election. The only way to stop Harper is to ensure that he cannot fight another day. This must come at the hands of the Canadian people in a crushing and humiliating defeat.
Those that argue the coalition is just same old ‘big business’ agenda need to reconsider that at this historical moment the defeat of Harper is the foremost important struggle. No other progressive struggles will take shape and develop so rapidly under the political revenge that Harper will unleash if he is permitted to govern, or worse govern with a majority. His smug arrogance will be short lived if all progressive and labour forces are marshalled for his defeat, even if the alliance that needs to be formed is not as ‘pure’ as the hyper-left bemoaning from afar crowd would deem.
Opening up the Fight for State Control, Defeating Hyper-Left Rhetoric
What is being placed before the Canadian people is a choice between the proto-fascistic chauvinistic policies of Harper-Reform Party doctrine of finance, oil and military capital or an opening to advance a labour led program of Canadian state industrial development. Even in the context of the manufactured Harper parliamentary crisis, where the full weight of the hardened right-wing political machine is being brought to bear against coalition forces, the possibility for state led and planned Canadian industrial development is well within reach of Canadian workers.
There will be many hyper-left detractors who will howl at such a thought and engage in left sectarian attacks on the coalition. The hyper-left will enter into coalition bashing along with the Harper propaganda machine. This is already to beginning to surface within the Socialist Project where Socialist Voice co-editor, John Riddell, cranks up the sectarian left rhetoric to acrimoniously complain of the ‘fatal weaknesses’ of a Liberal-NDP coalition. Riddell’s vitriolic idiom offers nothing for workers who see an opportunity to bring some immediate relief to their plight of job loss and wage and pension erosions. One wonders who Riddell is speaking to.
They insist that the only way for ‘real’ change and to achieve “specific and immediate gains is to stick to the path of independence from big business and its parties, and rely on the potential of popular movements."[1] This sentiment concludes that within a Liberal led coalition government the levers of power will remain in the hands of big business, providing “massive” handouts to corporate interests.
What is prescription offered for ‘independent’ action? Riddell advocates the following:
“And here is the fatal weakness of the coalition government scheme. Locked inside a Liberal-dominated coalition, the NDP would be unable to campaign against capitalist attacks. Accepting responsibility for the anti-labour measures of such a government could rapidly discredit the NDP and end its ability to continue as the bearer of popular hopes for social change.”
This Riddell argues is the path for ‘independent’ action – a continuation of the same failed social democratic strategy of subordinating labour programs of economic development to the vain hope of NDP electoral victory. The fear in Riddell’s statement is evident – a mass political struggle for a coalition will expose the vacant and parasitical petty bourgeois policies of the ‘labour intelligentsia’. They are offering nothing for labour except more pronouncements of the same Ian Angus eco-socialist world revolution clap trap.
Supporting this opinion, John Riddell asserts that, “A Liberal ‘stimulus’ package is most likely [WO emphasis] to combine massive handouts to big business with attacks on workers' wages and pensions.” Riddell speculates as if he is an authority of the inner discussions occurring within the coalition. Riddell hectors the labour movement from the safety of his university office dispensing advice but little in the way of relief for workers.
However, detractors of a left-centre coalition are now forced to acknowledge that such a bourgeois political alliance opens new opportunities for labour and working class struggles. With correctly crafted demands and programs, these openings can mean moving to the struggle to discussing fully democratic state intervention in the Canadian economy on the behalf of working people. In the context of Riddell’s previous statements, he hides his sectarianism with the following centrist evasion:
“On such a course, and in present conditions, it is by no means excluded that we could prepare the ground for a Venezuelan-type outcome: a sweeping shift in power relationships in favour of working people, the poor and the oppressed, and their organizations.”
Economic Crisis and Political Deceit, Alberta is not all Right
The rapid shift in the political landscape due to the collapsing market economy on the deliberate de-industrialization policies of the Harper administration exposes the weaknesses within the hyper-left which offers lots of advice ‘on the weaknesses’ of the coalition but does not advance demands that will bring relief for workers suffering from the economic crisis.
Maturation of an advanced labour led struggle for state planned economic development can be no less as rapid and striking. The catastrophic failure of neo-liberal economic policies superimposed on a neo-conservative agenda of military aggression are all converging on top of the structural weakness of capitalism – social production and private accumulation.
The developments in Alberta are no less dramatic. On December 4 2008 pro-coalition rallies were held across Canada. They have grabbed the imagination of Canadians like no other have in recent memory. The Harper-Reform Party press is working overtime to counter a rapidly evolving movement attempting to diffuse its underlying democratic sentiment and evolving labour content into a discussion of national unity. Alberta is not buying this line.
The Edmonton Journal reported December 6 2008 that 500 people attended a pro Harper rally on the Alberta Legislature grounds. The pro-coalition rally in Edmonton on December 4th attracted similar numbers. In the best tradition of the US network Fox, the right-wing talk shows are awash in the Harper chauvinism of Quebec bashing that has tattooed Alberta as a bastion simpleminded Reform politics of the Manning Institute. This is not a true reflection of Alberta workers and is an attempt to make Alberta workers complicit in the cowardly Harper-Reform Party cut and run scorched earth politics.
Alberta Labour can make an Historic Contribution
Alberta labour is positioned to make an historic contribution in the fight for the interests of the working people of Canada. What the AFL can contribute in this situation should not be underestimated. The power that Alberta labour commands at this political juncture can be used to express partisanship for all Canadian workers.
Alberta labour is in a position to counter the Harper-Reform tactics of chauvanism. This begins with a firm and unequivocal rejection of the Harper-Reform Party anti-Quebec sentiment. Our sisters and brothers in eastern Canada need to hear that Alberta workers are on the side of working families of Ontario and Quebec, that we stand in solidarity with them as they struggle with job loss and the collapse of manufacturing and forestry.
With the help of his Big Oil lieutenant Ed Stelmach, Harper is attempting to split Alberta organized labour from the larger house of labour. Stelmach is peddling the line that Alberta workers and the Petroleum Club have the same interests and that the tar sands are at stake. This fabrication must be firmly exposed and rejected.
The political crisis opens up new opportunities for labour to exercise its power in new ways. For Alberta workers this means to demand restarting cancelled oil sands projects. All of the attention of the media is being focussed on manufacturing and forestry jobs, as though expansion in Alberta was continuing This deliberate attempt, by the Harper-Stelmach accord, to hide and evade and prevent a discussion by the Canadian people over development, ownership and control of the oil sands, as a means to get out of the economic crisis requires exposure. It requires the leadership of the AFL to tell the truth about job loss in the energy sector and how to turn our industry in a new direction.
As workers we reject the suggestion that it is an either us or them situation. That is the line of the right to prevent workers everywhere in the country to express their solidarity. The workers of Alberta support our sisters and brother in Ontario and Quebec. Alberta has the material base to expand the economy of all regions in Canada.
The Harper-Stelmach policies of shipping raw bitumen south and along with it Canadian jobs have been exposed by the AFL as negative for jobs and employment in Alberta and Canada. Much of the construction projects that should be underway in Alberta are now being built in the US. This impacts the whole Canadian economy and worsens the loss of manufacturing jobs in Ontario and Quebec.
The AFL’s “Black Gold, Clear Vision” document can serve as the basis for explaining this question. It is an important document that must be placed in front of the Canadian people.
Many oil sands projects are being unnecessarily delayed, scaled back or cancelled. This must be exposed. Petro-Canada’s announcement of halting Fort Hills must be reversed. The AFL must demand that this project be restarted as part of the economic stimulus package that will be tabled by the coalition government. It must include demands for an all-Canadian project where pumps, motors, fabricating piping, pipe and equipment modules and electrical and instrumentation along with engineering are completed in Canada first.
Distribution pipelines for the products coming from such a facility must be sent east for refining and sale to other markets. This will inject billions into the Canadian economy and protect Alberta energy sector jobs which are currently on the chopping block. Thousands of Alberta workers are losing their jobs now and this fact should not go unreported and discussed in the context of the current political crisis.
This would also set the stage for a demand to re-nationalise Petro-Canada. David Coles, President of the CEP, is advancing the question of nationalization. If Petro-Canada was in the hands of the people, as it once was, it could be used as a significant buffer against the sole market resource sell-out policies of the Harper administration.
It is incumbent on Alberta labour to break publicly with the Harper-Stelmach policies of resource sell-out and advance a concrete program by Alberta labour in the interests of all Canadian workers. The AFL must step forward on behalf of all workers in Alberta and Canada and state that organized labour in this province does not support such polices and that sell-out our resources to the US is not in the interests of Canadian workers.
It is for these reasons and within this framework that Alberta labour has a key role to play in the present historic discussion about the political and economic future of the nation.
[1] John Riddell, “Coalition Government? Let's Not Give Away The Store”, Socialist Project , The Bullet, E-Bulletin No. 162 December 1, 2008,
1 comment:
Excellent article and analysis. I live in British Columbia and consider myself a revolutionary socialist. I just read Riddell's piece before reading yours and I agree entirely with your assessment of the current situation.
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