Developing the Home Market - Part I: Introduction

The need to discuss energy from the stand point of a worker is critical to understanding the role that energy plays within the overall development of Canada. Canada cannot develop without energy. It is also essential that unity is developed within the Canadian labour movement. The hardships that are affecting manufacturing workers are cause for concern within the energy sector. To expect that Canada can move forward without energy is naïve. To expect that Canada can develop without an integrated and highly developed manufacturing sector is just as absurd. The division of Canadian workers from coast to coast to coast creates illusions within labour.

Canadian economic development cannot occur for the benefit of all Canadian workers until the natural resources are placed in the hands of the people. Canada can never move forward when Canadian capital is allowed to sacrifice the national interests in favour of quick profits in the US market or other global markets.

What is in the best interests of Canadian workers is in the best interests of the nation as a whole. The shift from capitalist domination over the economy is a struggle that will of necessity have to be played out in sharper forms of struggle. Workers will have to defend their interests first and dispense with phoney business theories that have nothing to do with the welfare of Canadian workers and more to do with their profits.

As part of that contribution I will be presenting a discussion on energy as the material basis to move Canada forward. I will discuss the development of the Canadian market as the fundamental starting point to regain control of the nation and struggle to place it in the hands of the people.

The need to nationalize basic industry and resource extraction is a critical element in moving the nation from capitalist forms of economic relations where people’s needs are subordinated to profit and to place it on a firm footing of socialist modes of production.

This discussion is an on going discussion that will look at government and regulatory statistics and develop a comprehensive national development program around a home market. The basis of the home market is to shift production from profit motives and to socialize labour to an even greater extent then capitalism can accomplish.

The fundamental starting point is control of Canadian resources, development of an expanding goods producing economy based on large scale industry (eco-socialists beware) and the need to shift trade from US markets into developing nations that are in desperate need of Canadian technology and resources. As well it will discuss increases in social wages as the only way to provide for rapidly increasing standards of living.

The title of this series will be called – “Developing the Home Market”. It will be interwoven with “Let ‘em Eat Root Vegetables” and will discuss labour as the sole source of national wealth. We will begin the discussion with a review of Stelmach’s Provincial Energy Strategy document that was issued December 11 2008.