Thursday, April 29, 2021

 

May Day 2021

Only the Working Class Can Help the Working Class

Focus on Socialism (FOS)

Don Currie, Editor

April 27th 2021


May Day 2021 finds millions of Canadian workers struggling to earn a living in the midst of a global pandemic and economic chaos. Public trust in government and state agencies is falling. Federal and Provincial governments are engaged in blame game politics unable to successfully organise a country-wide mass vaccination campaign.

To provide for families, wage earners are compelled to labour in unsafe conditions in many cases without paid sick leave  and many still unvaccinated. Front line public health care workers, public school teachers, child and senior care workers are working to exhaustion. Mass transit workers, assembly line workers in manufacturing, meatpacking and food processing, Amazon and other retail chain workers, many without union protection, are particularly exposed. All work places are now unsafe.

 The spectre of unemployment is ever present. Statscan labour force numbers record a chronic 8 to 10% (1 to 2 million) unemployed 15 to 65 age demographic and a constant double-digit rate of over 600 thousand youth age 15 to 24. The lack of career opportunities for the latter, durable jobs and socially useful work, dwindles and youth are advised not to expect anything better in the future. They are advised to put off their hopes and equip themselves with a variety of high-tech skills to “remain competitive” in a revolving door capitalist economy. Long term employment is now the preserve of a minority of wealth and privilege.

Youth, forced out of education before attaining skills to survive, are compelled to hold several temporary minimum wage jobs and live communally or with parents to afford rent and food. Young working women and girls, among the lowest paid, are particularly vulnerable to victimization. University students and their families are burdened with staggering student loans and dwindling summer job opportunities to fund the next semester.

Immigrant workers confront discrimination on the job and seasonal farm labour is often forced to live in squalid conditions fearful of complaining to hostile government agencies. Racialized minorities are channeled to the lowest paid and most onerous work. The incidence of criminal violence against Indigenous, First Nations, Black, South Asian, Muslim and Chinese citizens, men, women and youth, is evidence of the growth of fascist racist thuggery encouraged by a constant mass media and on-line hate campaign.

With dedication and self-sacrifice and placing their families needs above their own health, millions of workers in spite of all obstacles, continue to do their jobs.

They do so as the purchasing power of average wages declines as cost-of-living index rises.

Two income families are the norm. The recent federal budget child care plan claims child care costs will be reduced to $10/day in five years. There is no guarantee the plan will be approved. If a federal election takes place this year it may never see the light of day. The plan is already endangered by federal provincial wrangling. What is needed is a universal and free child care plan implemented now.

EI and CERB   programs are erratic with complex wait time and qualification requirements. Government administrators treat applicants as a problem rather than rightful recipients their taxes have paid for to cover family needs in an economic situation they did not create. Right wing politicians and their media cons keep up a constant barrage of 19th century rhetoric reminiscent of R.B. Bennet and the Dirty Thirties when he infamously said; “I wasn’t elected to subsidize idleness”. Such baleful voices today continue to condemn worker support programs while lauding the obscene excesses of the idle rich. 

The Canada Emergency Wage subsidy program (CEW) goes to employers with weak oversite as to whether or not it prevents layoffs. 

US Federal Treasury quantitative easing financialization policies are being adopted in Canada as the Bank of Canada stimulates a flagging stock market with a reported $4 billion/week liquidity injection, fueling the threat of inflation. The results are wild speculative housing bubbles in all major Canadian cities, driving up rents while the Canada Mortgage and Housing Program lies idle, prevented from solving the growing demand for affordable housing.

The concentration and centralization of capital in the hands of a few mega investors having at their disposal investment funds rivaling the GDP of Canada means that vital pipelines, railways and hydro-electric grids are irreversibly established north south to serve US demand for Canadian resources. The result is the gradual de-industrialization of Canada.  

Corporate-owned communication and telecom information networks is reduced to a few mega providers who control the volume and content of a vast cosmopolitan stream of dis-information and do so without public oversight and with power to deny user access. User information gathered is a monopoly controlled saleable commodity. The CTRC is reduced to an arena of struggle between media giants that excludes competition and burdens Canadians with the highest television, internet and cell phone rates in the world.

Capitalist electoral politics and tedious federal-provincial electoral blame-games played masterfully by LIBCON politicians with a buy in from the NDP, the Bloc and the Greens is the stuff and substance of vacuous CBC, CTV and Global celebrity analysts who self-servingly define what they do as the ultimate of freedom of the press and freedom of speech. The struggle to end private ownership and control of communications and media is at the forefront of the struggle for democracy today.

Corporate control of media has given rise to a progressive, anti-imperialist labour and peace internet social alternative that is growing. It is becoming a stronger voice for nuclear disarmament, for upholding the founding principles of the UN, for Canadian withdrawal from NATO and NORAD. It is becoming a stronger voice against US-Canadian government provocations and sanctions against China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, the DPRK and other US so-called “adversaries”, at last count numbering more than 40.

The rise of an alternative to monopoly-controlled information has alarmed CSIS and CSE who supply MP’s and Parliamentary committees with a constant supply of dire warnings that alternative information is a “threat to our way or life” and should be shut down before it indoctrinates Canadians with the virus of sedition.

Powerful finance capitalist elites, possessing massive capital resources, fund political parties to control governments. Such interests hold controlling interests in corporate mass media platforms to promote the line that monopoly capitalism cares about the lives of wage earners and their families. Capitalist funded think tanks and its academic mercenaries are paid well to cynically appropriate popular people’s slogans and re-mold the message to the service of exploiters. Such interests are masters at playing two-party politics and federal provincial relations as the limit of democratic practice today.

While millions of workers are compelled to work in low paid unskilled occupations others earn wages in more complex and evolving workplaces of skilled labour, science and technology. The Canadian labour force of about 18 million is roughly divided 60% service workers to 40% industrial, manufacturing, transportation and utilities. All are impacted by new technologies.

All passive and simplistic attitudes about the evolving work places of today are harmful to the cause of the working class. Such matters deserve the deepest study by anyone purporting to be consistently proletarian and programs that make workers beneficiaries and not victims of new productive forces.

Likewise, a classless analysis of the social problems that arise from the transition to a carbon neutral economy is dominant among many who believe themselves to be environmentally progressive and has led them to dismissive and simplistic states of mind about the consequences for workers compelled to sell their labour power in the discovery, extraction, processing, storage and delivery of fossil fuel energy. That is not the view of the workers and their unions.

On this May Day, 2021, here and now, all workers, regardless of where they work, organised or unorganised, are forced to sell their labour power wherever there is a demand for it. Their cause is indivisible, all for one and one for all.

Monopoly and its liberal-reformist agencies such as the World Economic Forum align class collaborationist labour lieutenants occupying high office at the ITUC, ILO, AFL-CIO, CLC and their “friends of labour” acolytes who issue statements, slogans and learned tomes advising workers to limit their demands to making the profit system “fair and just.” Such voices assert that capitalism can be managed, profiteers can be persuaded to share a bit more with workers so long as workers agree to abandon organizing economic struggles and abandon class struggle science-based revolutionary struggle with the goal of the overthrowing capitalism and relacing it with socialism.  

Class social antagonisms are reaching a point in Canada where the ruling class is finding it more difficult to rule in the old way and more working people are learning from their own experience that there is no future by continuing to accept things as they are.

A new type of government is needed, a government of peace, people’s economic development and people’s democracy that places labour at the top of the country’s agenda.

Worker’s unity for worker’s needs serves all those who are oppressed.

Safe and free vaccines for everyone

Full employment at living wages without inflation

We Shall Have Peace If We Fight For It!

 

 

 

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Global Warming, Canadian Energy and the Working Class

Note - For this commentary we rely on:

·        The projected combined energy needs of Canadian industry, residential, commercial and transportation use as published by the Government of Canada website Energy Regulator to 2050. 

·        For C02 emissions we rely on the IEA Data.

·        For pipeline routes we rely on Enbridge Crude Oil Map 2020 and other authentic sources as Noted.

Global warming is a scientifically proven universally accepted threat to humanity.  The urgency of reducing its effects on humanity and the planet is accepted as a necessary task by all rational people.

The task is confronted in real existing economic and political conditions of our time.  The task unfolds in the midst of capitalism at the final monopoly stage of its development and the class struggles that arise from that reality.

Nor does the task begin with an ideal end result.  The task is undertaken in political and technical conditions that are in motion and far from ideal or simplistically resolved.  There is no straight line from where the working class is to where we need to be.

Canada is a developed state-monopoly capitalist country deeply integrated with the largest global economy - the USA.  Canada is the sixth largest producer of energy accounting for 4% of total global production.  Energy production accounts for 10% of GDP and 23% of total Canadian goods exports in 2019.  Oil and gas exports totaled $122 billion of which 96% or $121 billion, were to the U.S.A.  It is legitimate and necessary for workers to be constantly discussing issues related to energy.  

Workers do not simplify or contract out our class interests to others.  Adjusting slogans and programs and demands aligned with existing productive forces impacted by accelerating applications of science and technology is of vital interest to wage earners regardless of which sector of the economy we sell our labour power.  We are one class and no sector is dispensable.

The effect of global warming does not fall equally on all social classes.  It is the urban and rural labouring masses, wage earners, First Nations and Indigenous people and the poor that are its first victims.

Is the Class Struggle Over?

The overarching social divide of the present era is widely promoted in the corporate mass media to be between those who oppose global warming and all others.  Such messaging originates with capitalist governments, their think tanks and “enlightened” capitalists and billionaires who have a “plan” to oppose global warming.  The objectives have been set by 195 nations that have signed the Paris Agreement.

Authoritative special interest groups such as the Sierra Club, Suzuki Foundation, Green Peace, Council of Canadians and university faculties advocate for solutions that converge on demands that monopoly capital, producers of all carbon emissions, reform itself.  Such advocacy rarely takes into account the effects of such reforms on workers, or that workers have anything relevant to say, or role in determining the solutions.

For such interests - there is no class struggle, only the moral imperative of saving the planet.  A billionaire or a worker are equally responsible.  “We are all in this together”.

Such a classless standpoint provides moral cover for those evading confrontation with US-NATO imperialism’s preparations for nuclear war.  The possibility of nuclear war is the immediate threat to planetary and human life.  Evading such truth is impermissible for anyone claiming to be concerned about the survival of the planet.

Global warming has become a profit-making opportunity, making billions for “green capital” investors.  Carbon emissions are traded on the stock market as any other marketable commodity.

Big oil monopolies and their think tanks use blackmail, demanding public treasuries pay it a price to reduce carbon emissions.  Jason Kenney, Alberta leader of the UCP, is demanding $30 billion of federal funds as the price for reducing carbon emissions.

Above class theories of global warming are used by finance capital, promoted by its governments, think tanks and mass media, to divert the working class away from the struggle for its own immediate vital interests into a cheerleader for this or that “green endeavour”.  It obfuscates the working class from viewing itself as the decisive class power in determining the future economic development of the country.

The active struggle to assure the future energy needs of the country, and that it serves the people and not monopoly profit, is a class issue central to the struggle for the sovereignty of Canada and its future independent economic development.  Without energy self sufficiency there can be no socialism.

The profit system is the impediment to a more rapid transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources.  The obstacle to non-fossil fuel energy economies of scale is state monopoly capitalism and its fundamental law of maximum profit.

Science and technology already available can be used to mitigate carbon emissions and accelerate the transition.  However, it is appropriated by monopoly and placed at the service of elites of wealth and privilege, squandered on the militarization of the economy, and to perpetuate the system of private property, wage slavery and mindless mass consumerism.

Under such actual social and class conditions the suggestion that workers and their families should be compliant victims of the transition to a carbon free economy, should accept the destruction of their livelihood, is support for their exploiters.

The Present Needs of the Canadian People for Energy

The energy resources systems that exist now and that 38 million Canadians rely on are indispensable to the needs of the country to the end of century.  To say otherwise is to approve and abet a rapid de-industrialization of Canada.

The opportunist evasion of such reality is conveniently subsumed in the slogan of a “green energy economy” which its advocates can’t define and are powerless to enact and which is left to the market to define.  The Federal Government reacting to the changes in capitalist market realities have outlined their policy called “A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy” that reflects this reality of “left to the market” green energy transition.

The federal plan has five main elements:

·        Home Retrofits and Energy Management Tax Credits - much of the standards for this type initiative have been defined by LEED;

·        Zero-Emission Transportation – “Work with partners in the year ahead on supply-side policy options…”.  Currently GM and FCL are in talks with the Federal Government on incentives and loan guarantees to retool plants for Electric Vehicles.  Ford was given $600 million to make EV’s in Oakville after threatening to close the plant in June 2020;

·        Carbon Taxation – This is a continuation of taxing carbon and transferring the taxes collected.  This will transfer the costs onto workers who are forced to drive long distances in commuting to work;

·        Business Loan Guarantees - Private Public Partnerships through Canadian Infrastructure Bank Loans for Green Infrastructure Development. One of these projects is the Pirate Harbour Wind Farm at Port Hawkesbury Paper in Nova Scotia;

·        Plant 2 Billion Trees and Carbon Sequestration – The total investment over 10 years is to be $3.7B and will partner with provinces, territories, First Nations, private landowners and other conservation groups.

The federal plan is an admission of the seriousness of the problem but woefully inadequate to solve it since it is dependent on a corporate buy-in which means it must be profitable to its bottom line.

Development of the green energy economy is dependent on monopoly that subordinates all science to the law of maximum profit.  This is the case in the development of Electric Vehicles (EV) in Canada which is part of the federal plan of affecting supply side production of vehicles.  December 2019 GM closed its Oshawa Plant throwing thousands of auto workers out of work. 

One year later Unifor President Diaz hailed the return of GM to Oshawa and its $1B investment in the Oshawa Plant.  Ford received $600M in federal support for the development and manufacture of EVs while GM and Fiat are still in talks with the federal government.

However as much as the green energy plan is championed as a great victory for the move to a carbon neutral economy,  GM CEO Mary Barra said that the move back to Oshawa was necessary;

“We have been operating our full-size pickup plants around the clock to meet exceptionally robust demand for the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra in the United States and Canada. The fact is we simply can’t build enough. And because we expect demand to remain strong, we must increase our capacity.”

In other words, we will continue to produce carbon emitting vehicles so long as there is demand while at the same time take anything that is offered to produce EV’s when we consider it more profitable.

Supply and Demand Side Economics

The cheerleaders for the closure of the “tar sands” fail to make the connection, or refuse to acknowledge that demand side economics are part of the equation.

Unifor’s demand that federal government continue with the “Industrial Technological Benefits Program through the Joint Strike Fighter Capability Project and expand the program to additional military purchases” to help the struggling Canadian aerospace industries along with other programs to develop and build carbon emitting planes is further indication that some industries get a pass by the green economy crowd while other workers in the “tar sands” are required to give up their jobs to save the planet.    

What unemployed worker wouldn’t accept a green job if it were available?

A green economy works for some workers fortunate enough to win the lottery on which plant, technology or industry is selected as the most profitable for green investment. 

For other workers, a vague promise for jobs at some future point in time in the meantime are vilified as “tar sands workers” and abandoned to populist rhetoric of the “I Love Alberta Oil & Gas” yellow-vest lobby, right-wing Calgary think tanks and the barren politics of the UCP. 

The promise of green jobs is proclaimed without regard for the consequences on the living conditions of those directly affected right now.  

Consider a few contentious examples,

In about five weeks from now US Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer may block access to Alberta light crude through Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac.  The light crude flows to “Chemical Valley” in Sarnia Ontario and is processed into a variety of refined petroleum products, (RPP’s - e.g., jet fuels, propane and used in basic and synthetic chemicals).  If the Michigan governor carries through with her threat, 45% of the petroleum refined in Ontario and Quebec will stop.


The issue has become a major diplomatic crisis between Canada and the USA.

Applying the logic of the primacy of the existential threat of global warming, the actions of the US Governor should be applauded as a victory, since it will remove 50 megatons of carbon emissions created by Chemical Valley in Sarnia. The loss of 3000 Sarnia refinery jobs and a crisis for the Ontario economy is therefore “regrettable” collateral damage, the price that must be paid to save the planet.

The editor of People’s Voice, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada tweeted that the problem would not be upon us if the Liberal Government and Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan had several years ago opted for a planned “green transition.”  FOS tweeted a response which simply asked what is to be done now?  The PV editor blocked FOS and left the discussion.  The Communist Party is aligned with all of the opponents of pipeline construction of any kind in any direction at any time. It listed such pipelines in its 2015 electoral program.



“No to the Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, Keystone XL, Line 9 and Energy East pipelines, and to oil and gas exploration and shipping on the west coast.”

Now presumably Line 5 can also be added to the CPC list.

A Line 5 blockade by Governor Whitmer will result in thousands of Ontario jobs being threatened with layoffs or possibly permanent terminations as the oil and chemical monopolies use a disruption as an excuse to rationalize.  Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley has indicated that 3000 jobs in several refineries are directly affected.


What has been the response of the suppliers of the oil?

Imperial CEO Brad Corson, indicated that Imperial feels the probability of the blockade but in the event of any disruptions contingency plans to feed their refinery assets will include delivery through the St. Lawrence Seaway, other pipelines and rail.

Mark Little, Suncor CEO, also believes the probability of the shutdown is low.  However, he indicated that if it were to occur additional costs associated with other transportation means to its refineries in Sarnia will be recovered from strong local fuel markets.  In other words, there will be a cost increase passed on to consumers.

Rail VS Pipelines

Advocacy of pipelines versus rail as a safer method of transporting oil and gas is rejected by ardent environmentalists and simply evaded by the CPC.  Railway workers dying in derailments, incidence of near disasters in Saskatchewan and the possibility of more Lac Megantics is therefore regrettable collateral damage.  According to the slogans of environmentalism oil “should remain in the ground” – and apparently also the workers. Case closed.

Likewise, solidarity with rail unions demanding Transport Canada enforce safety regulations regarding train crews’ right to refuse unsafe working conditions, demands that the CPR and CNR operating oil tanks in violation of code standards for the transporting of hazardous materials can be set aside or considered of low importance compared to the existential threat of global warming.  If there were no oil it wouldn’t have to be transported.  Case closed.

For emphasis we restate what we said at the outset of this commentary;

“An ideal end result cannot be used as an evasion of the hard realities of the class struggle right now”.

Shut Down the “Tar Sands”

Consider the Communist Party of Canada’s 2015 electoral energy program demand to shut down the Alberta “tar sands” in five years.  Why just Alberta since oil is also produced in BC and SK? Alberta “Tar sands” has a more sinister ring to it.  

Communist Party Leader Liz Rowley restated the Party’s position on shutting down the “tar sands” during the CPC International Women’s Day online celebration where she said,

“…a People’s Recovery will…nationalize energy, close the tar sands and build renewable energy guaranteeing the jobs of workers displaced in the transition…”

The correct term is bituminous sands.  The production of oil from bituminous sand is of two types, open pit mining and in situ using high pressure steam to release the oil from the sand.

Canada has one of the largest deposits in the world in Athabasca, followed by Venezuela, Russia and the USA. The CPC does not address the issue of carbon emissions from similar mining and processing operations in Venezuela, Russia and the USA, only Canada.

Why not call for the shut down of all oil producing countries’ oil industries, why not Venezuela, who in terms of size and population is very similar to Canada. The Communist Party does not address that issue.

If global warming is the greatest existential threat confronting humanity such rationale would lead the Communist Party to conclude that the US blockade of Venezuela leading to the collapse of its energy sector resulting in the mass impoverishment of its working class should be supported.

On June 16th 2016 in the aftermath of the fires in Fort McMurray AB, the leader of the Communist Party of Canada at its 38th Convention, after attributing the fires to climate change arsonists, demanded governments retrain “tar sands workers” and provide equivalent jobs. The CPC leader concluded by calling for the immediate shut down of the “tar sands” the main source of jobs in the community.

Fort McMurray is a city of 67,000 in the municipality of Wood Buffalo.  The city has schools, a college with university accredited programs, a hospital, large recreational and cultural facilities that serve many surrounding communities.  Not only does the oil sands mines and upgrading facilities support Fort McMurray but they also support other Alberta communities such as Ft. Saskatchewan, Edmonton, Hardisty to name a few.  Where would all these people go if the “tar sands” are immediately shuttered?

The CPC for many long years routinely uses such hyperbole and leaps of logic in its publications and statements to arbitrarily decide which carbon emitting sectors of the economy can be sacrificed and which retained.

Before proceeding further, we believe it is important that words that besmirch the dignity of labour such as “tar sands workers” should not be used by communists or any other groups claiming to speak for the working class.  Such pejorative language is not used to describe visible minorities gender or sexual orientation and is not acceptable to describe workers in a similar manner.

We are unionized and non-unionized skilled trades, office workers, professionally certified technicians, technologists, engineers, scientists, healthcare professionals, hi-tech workers, clean energy and environmental professionals, first nations, and LGBTQ2S+.  Women and men from Alberta, from all over Canada and the world engaged in the discovery, extraction, processing and delivery of petroleum products to domestic and foreign markets.  That is not dissimilar to what most Canadians employed in other value-added industries also do.

We are workers forced to sell our labour power in the extraction, processing, transportation and refining of bitumen and natural gas to energy, transportation and refining monopolies.  These monopolies appropriate the products we produce containing surplus value resulting from our unpaid labour time.   This appropriated unpaid labour time is marketed by these monopolies to the Canadian, US and other foreign markets and that enrich the preferred investor-owners enormously.

We are employed by monopolies as are auto workers, auto parts workers, transportation workers, defence productions workers, plastic manufacturing workers, workers producing good food and junk food, Amazon workers, Postal workers, communication workers.  We apply no derogatory or pejorative terms to our brothers and sisters engaged in wage labour.  Nor do we accept any derogation of our work such as “tar sands workers” engaged in producing “dirty oil” to destroy the planet.  We are workers as all others forced to sell our labour where there is a market for it in order to live and survive.

Carbon emissions and where it comes from

Carbon emissions occur everywhere in Canada.  Canada’s total carbon emissions as a percentage of global emissions is 2%.  Not a small per capita number and partially explained by the fact that Canadas is the second largest land mass in the world and has very long and cold winters.  Alberta bitumen mining and processing is the highest single emitter compared to other sectors of the economy accounting for     60 Mt of GHGs per year, representing 8.5% of Canada's total emissions and about 0.13% of global GHG emissions.   Other sectors are shown from Stats Can below.

Determining the cause of emissions cannot be simplistically confined to the supply side of the energy industry.  The other reality is the demand side.  Carbon emissions from Canada would of course be largely eliminated if there was no demand for fossil fuels.

In 2018, the oil and gas sector accounted for 193 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2 eq) (26% of total emissions), followed closely by the transportation sector, which emitted 186 Mt CO2 eq (25%).  Why haven’t the environmentalists and the CPC called for the total ban on the demand side use of all fossil fuels everywhere in Canada, and put a five-year timeline on it?  Ipso facto no more carbon emissions from Canada. Case closed.


The CPC seems incapable of analyzing the demand side requirements of fossil fuel energy use even though its leadership lives in the industrial heartland of the country which is the greatest consumer of fossil fuel energy in the country and without which most of its manufacturing industry would die in a few months.


Real Energy Needs of Canadians Right Now?

Thirty-eight million Canadians each day rely upon a continuous supply of energy from the existing historically evolved integrated Canadian energy system comprising fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear electrical, natural gas, solar, wind and biomass.  Thermal coal generation is now largely phased out and the major Canadian contributor to carbon emissions comes from mining and export of coal used in steelmaking that is mined and shipped to foreign markets from Elkford BC.

According to Energy Regulator Canada this total supply in 2020 was 14,000 petajoules.

Western Canadian oil, conventional and bituminous, is the primary energy source for the entire transportation system of Canada, accounting for 3200 petajoules of fossil fuel energy or about 22% of total combined energy use in the country.

Let us consider the effects on the Canadian people and the working class if the 2016 CPC demand to shut down the “tar sands” in five years that now, in 2021 would be upon us. Consider what removal of 22% of Canada’s energy supply would actually mean.

The 3200 petajoules of fossil fuels removed starting in 2016 would by now have had to be totally replaced by other sources of energy, otherwise the entire transportation system would have collapsed.  Such a transition would require that all fossil fueled transportation including rail and air as well as heavy equipment and agricultural machines would have to be converted to zero-emission.  

What would that alternative energy supply be?  The entire transportation system would have to be converted to electrical or hydrogen.  The most optimistic forecasts predict that happening at the end of the 21st century.  Moreover, as it happens, it is a gradual problem-solving process and not a precipitous leap as the CPC proposed.  Five years?  No problem!  Case closed.

If reducing green house gas emissions was as easy a proposition as the Communist Party has suggested we are sure that other scientists would have concluded the same calculations.  Such “back of the napkin” economics as clever as they may seem for a captive membership would be laughed out of any real scientific and engineering discussions as nonsense.

Taking the present supply of fossil fuel amounting to 3200 petajoules out of the integrated energy mix would have an enormous impact on other sectors reliant on electrical and natural gas.  Electrical and natural gas supplies would have had to increase in five years by 22% otherwise industrial, residential, and commercial use would be in an unmanageable crisis.  Some environmentalists are also opposed to the expansion of natural gas and others also against any nuclear generation and some even for decommissioning of hydro dams.  The CPC does not comment on such demands that if implemented would return Canada to where it was in the 17th century.

The non-fossil fuel sources of energy that would make up a 22% short fall in total energy supply in five years, to now 2021, could only be the result of ramping up solar, wind and biomass.  There are advances being made in these carbon neutral sources but the horizon for its mass application was not remotely possible in the time line from 2016 to 2021.  Delegates at the 38th Convention of the CPC were persuaded to vote for such a timeline anyway.

At present, wind, solar and biomass use in Canada accounts for about 100 petajoules of the 1500 petajoules of residential energy, 500 petajoules of the 6000 petajoules used by industry and a negligible amount that barely registers as a component part of present commercial use.

The jobs of millions of Canadians employed in the industrial and manufacturing sectors of the economy rely on about 7200 petajoules of combined refined petroleum products (RPP’s), electrical and natural gas energy.

The CPC leadership gave scant study to such matters.

The CPC’s demand five years ago to shut down the “tar sands” by 2021 in the light of such aforementioned realities should by now have caused the CPC to critically reassess its energy program statements and cease reacting with contempt and scorn to those who point out such contradictions.  

Such ill considered classless nonsense by the CPC leadership is driven by a greater consideration, to be popular with the emotional and radicalized environmental “left” that gives scant attention to the realities of the Canadian economy.  

In failing to consider a working-class response to the complexities of the energy needs of Canada we leave a clear field to the apologists of Big Oil and their think tanks and abandon energy sector workers to the populist rhetoric of the reactionary right.

The History of Pipelines

The CPC seems to have forgotten about the struggles it led for an all-Canadian natural gas pipeline in the mid-1950’s.  Some of us still alive, participated and are not inclined to recant or explain anything preferring to let history speak.  

The Canadian public intervened in the great natural gas pipeline debate that rocked the country and Parliament and in 1954-55 and after a bitter struggle compelled the natural gas profiteers to retreat ensuring that Trans Canada Line One, was built on an all-Canadian route.  Cosmopolitan financiers who didn’t give a damn about Canada, wanted the line to go south of Superior and market Alberta gas to the USA for a fast buck.  That struggle was won and for over 60 years Canadian communities from Alberta to Quebec have enjoyed an assured supply of natural gas from Line One.

The CPC’s no pipelines of any kind, anywhere at anytime prevents it from even discussing a proposal for an all-Canadian route for Alberta crude to reach Canadian refineries and assure energy self sufficiency for eastern Canada and the employment of millions of Ontario and Quebec industrial, manufacturing and service workers.

The CPC by its quest for popularity has set aside its own history on the struggle for Canadian independent economic development and energy self sufficiency relinquishing the ground to the likes of Dianne Francis and the National Post.

Similarly, there is silence from the CPC on refining capacity in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan or BC.  The CPC has no position on expanding Canadian refineries and the fact that without increasing such capacity Canada will be totally dependent on US and off shore supplies for refined petroleum products.

At the same time the CPC leadership claims to uphold Canadian sovereignty and economic independence. Presumably with the caveat that so long as Canadian economic independence can be achieved without contributing to global warming.

What Is to Be Done?

What is to be done now, about the stubborn realities of Canadian energy needs and use as the transition to alternative sources of energy evolves?  Those who consider global warming as the primary existential threat to humanity refuse to discuss it.

Such is the measure used by a classless thinking to decide what is moral, what is ethical, what is liberating, what is progressive, what is futuristic, what is scientific, what is revolutionary and what is counter-revolutionary.

Ardent environmentalists believe it is possible, by an act of will, to leap from the present dependency on fossil fuels to a new “green economy” that it cannot clearly define and is powerless to build.

Should anyone be so impertinent as to point out such basic realities the response is to sulk, express outrage, anger, despair, lash out, or lapse into elegant discourse in learned halls or into absurd 21st century Owenist attempts to live off-grid primitive life-styles.

When slogans do not align with facts the answer to the problem according to the CPC and all passionate environmentalists is to demand that facts be adjusted to satisfy the slogan.  The possibility that a higher-level discussion is upon us, that new slogans are needed that reflect more accurately new problems, that strategy and tactics must include solving dire problems faced by working class families today would involve a self-critical approach.  Such a novel idea is an uncomfortable challenge to notions of leadership infallibility.    

Global warming is NOT the greatest existential threat to human survival

Consistent activists for peace and socialism and human survival are guided by the truth that the greatest immediate threat to humanity and all life on the planet is the threat of imperialist instigated nuclear war. It is not global warming.  A nuclear war will decide definitively the issue of global warming since there will be no life to overcome it and the world would be plunged into a global nuclear winter – thus solving global warming.  The struggle against global warming is inseparable from winning the struggle for nuclear disarmament and the latter leads the former.

That is the starting point for a Marxist discourse with environmentalism if there is to be any hope of uniting with it in a serious struggle for human survival.

Science is a category of human creativity existing at all stages of class society and historical materialist development, neither intrinsically good nor bad but a ground of class struggle for its service to progressive development and to the needs of the people and their vital interests.

Marx, Engels and Lenin and all of their consistent adherents accepted and studied science so that it served the cause of the working class and its struggle for a new society socialism.  They were exacting in its study, measured and precise in the language they used in polemics, statements and programs.  They were temperate and sober and realistic as to what was necessary always assuming full responsibility for the consequences of what they advised and quick to revise any outmoded proposals and demands.

That is the measure today for anyone who believes that monopoly capitalism is the final rung of capitalism beyond which there is only socialism.

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

US-NATO-EU Choose Threat of Nuclear War as First Option of China-Russia Policy

Peace - The only path to economic security for Canada

Prime Minister Trudeau at his first meeting with US President Biden aligned Canada with top NATO, EU and G7 planners to contain and disrupt the economic cooperation between the Russian Federation (RF) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).  Russia is one of many countries that align with China as a more reliable guarantor of peaceful economic development than the USA or the EU.

Why is the Trudeau Government with the support of all of the opposition parties so willing to side with the US NATO alliance at the expense of the social and economic needs of Canadian wage earners? The NATO alliance has nothing to offer other than cost sharing in arms expenditures, wars, occupations and sanctions.  On close study maintaining the vast global military reach of the USA is the main contributing factor in its decline as a global economic power. States most heavily invested and reliant on the US military power and war production, such as Canada, are declining with it.

Canada’s “defence” budget for 2020-21 is an estimated $23.4 billion or 1.31% of GDP. This is a 25% increase since the 2016. Projected increase to 2031 is 70% or $40 billion.  This amounts to a $76B increase over 10 years from the 2017 budget of $18B (See Page 43 of the National Defence report Strong Secure Engaged).

To fund the NATO war business treasuries, member states are compelled to transfer hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the largest US and EU corporate suppliers of advanced nuclear weapons systems.  Canada’s “defence” budget for 2020-21 is an estimated $23.4 billion or 1.31% of GDP. This is a 25% increase since the 2016 budget or $70B increase since 2016.  The multi-billion JFS F35 (Joint Strike Fighter) program with Canada’s participation stretching back to 1996, is on going.  Billion-dollar upgrades of naval assets offensive capability both surface and undersea is well advanced.

The US military industrial complex absorbs the brightest and best, appropriates the discoveries of science and technology from NATO allies and in the process distorts the non-military sectors of the economy by inflationary competition for raw materials, science and technology and wage labour.

Canada, via NATO and NORAD is being drawn deeper into the maw of this expanding war business.  The sheer weight of US military expenditures is the primary cause of the brain drain from Canada to the USA and compels tens of millions of North American workers to sell their labour power to arms manufacturers.

Unifor, the largest private sector union in Canada, with 313,000 members and 11,000 employed in the aerospace industry, issued a report that included appealing to the Federal Government to assure that Pratt and Whitney JFS F35 contracts come to Canada to employ aerospace workers.  The union confronts layoffs of highly skilled workers as De Havilland suspends production of the Dash 8 civilian aircraft and seeks to expand jobs in defence production.

The union report called upon the federal government to:

“Reinforce the commitment to the Industrial Technological Benefits Program through the Joint Strike Fighter Capability Project and expand the program to additional military purchases when a Canadian made option is not available.

“Recognize the capabilities of Canadian aerospace companies in filling orders for government, military and emergency response aircraft by including a preference for Canadian content and made in Canada solutions”.

China and Russia’s trade policies provide an alternative to war expenditures as the principal driver of economic development.  That is why many developing states opt for the no-strings-attached trade and development opportunities with China.

China in the near future will surpass the US in overall economic development.  China attracted $163 billion direct investment in 2020 and the US $134 billion according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.    World Bank and OECD figures for 2019 listed US GDP at $21.4 trillion and China GDP at $14.3 trillion.  China growth rates continue at 2-6%/yr. even during the pandemic.  Predictions are it will overtake the USA in GDP in a decade.  China’s growth threatens US dollar dominance in international trade and investment.  The US dollar as the global reserve currency wanes as its economy falters, and more countries are opting to hold a basket of top global currencies including China’s yuan which the IMF and World Bank list as among the top global reserve currencies.

The rise of China-Russia economic and political cooperation has divided the strategic planners of NATO, the US and the EU as to what to do.  NATO seeks by all means to rally public support around a war consensus.  The speech of Jens Stoltenberg NATO general secretary at the February Munich Security Conference defined China and Russia as alliance “adversaries” and emphasized the obligation of member states to uphold Article Five of the NATO Charter.  Article Five obliges all NATO states to join in joint military action if one member state is attacked.

The NATO general secretary made this astounding claim:

“For over 70 years, NATO has secured peace in the Euro-Atlantic area.”

One need only read the scrubbed version of US NATO wars of intervention to expose how utterly false the NATO secretary’s claims are.  The violation of the UN Charter, sovereignty of nations, appropriation of wealth and resources, civilian lives lost, massive civil infrastructure destruction, civil war, banditry, misery, famine and disease that followed each NATO incursion is nowhere to be found.  Here is NATO’s list and self-serving descriptions of its aggressions.

Membership in NATO comes with consequences for the people of Canada.  Canada’s membership in NATO effectively contracts out the decision of war and peace from the elected Parliament of Canada to NATO headquarters in Brussels.  Abject all-party support in the House of Commons for subordinating Canadian foreign policy to the US-NATO alliance, commits Canada to participate in future US-NATO wars and in the event of an all-out nuclear war its assured extinction.

Out of a list of 20 missions only one, the US-NATO war on Serbia was European.  Canadian government participation assigned ground forces and the Canadian Airforce, which dropped 20% of NATO ordinance which included depleted uranium bombs, on civilian targets in Belgrade and Kosovo.

Most NATO engagements are in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.  Canada’s longest NATO war, Afghanistan, from 2001 to 2014 resulted in 132 dead, innumerable wounded and suffering PTSD, burdening the health care system. The ISAF operation left hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians dead and wounded and a country in ruins with none of the internal problems resolved to this day.

NATO trades on the specious argument that there are ideologies and existential threats worse than global annihilation.  Such a view of humanity is the perverse domain of anti-communist fanaticism and the insane.  It is not ground to be shared by any Government claiming to be for peace.

Everyday the reckless far right is given mass media platforms to promote war on Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and Syria.  Such neurotic voices applaud sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua and promote a new cold war with Russian and China.

The US-NATO attempt to militarily coerce Russia and China, both nuclear powers, cannot be separated from the US-NATO doctrine of the first strike use of nuclear weapons.  The doctrine requires a never-ending futile effort of US military planners to achieve US nuclear weapons superiority.  The attempt to achieve nuclear weapons superiority goes together with the lunacy theory of survivability in the event of a major nuclear war.

The Bulletin of the American Atomic Scientists on February 6, 2021 issued another scathing denunciation of the futility of the production of new versions of nuclear weapons.

The Bulletin writes that the US government authorized the development of a rocket the length of a bowling alley to carry a nuclear weapons 6000 miles (9656 km) with a warhead 20 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and that could kill hundreds of thousands at one shot.  The US Air Force is planning to order 600.

The US-NATO doctrine of first strike use of nuclear weapons removes any duality in warfare.  Today the production of conventional military weaponry in the age of cybertechnology is designed to be supportive of the primary offensive capability of nuclear weapons systems.  All US-NATO air, outer space, ground, surface and undersea systems are designed to be inter-interoperable with nuclear weapons warfare.  There is no separation between conventional and nuclear weapons.  Nuclear weapons systems have evolved from ultimate use to operational use.  Future major conflict is assured to be nuclear.

The practical application of the first strike use of nuclear weapons accounts for forward positioning of NATO nuclear offensive capability on the territory of European allies and on the borders of Russia.  Nuclear weapons and its means of delivery are deployed on US vessels operating in close proximity to China.  Under NATO nuclear-weapons-sharing, the United States has provided nuclear weapons for Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey to deploy and store.

Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) is a component part of the first strike US-NATO nuclear doctrine. BMD was unleashed when the USA withdrew from the Anti-ballistic missile treaty (ABM) in 2002 which effectively re-kindled the nuclear arms race.

The predictable Russia and China response to US-NATO nuclear strategies is spun by the media circus as evidence of being “adversarial”.

It is a fatal mistake for US-NATO compliant governments such as Canada, to participate in or allow ground based and outer space nuclear weapons delivery systems on its sovereign territory.  Such reckless pandering to US-NATO military plans assure the citizens of such countries to certain annihilation in the event of a major nuclear war.

US-NATO nuclear strategy imperils the survival of every European and Asian country within range of its nuclear forward positioned nuclear weapons systems.  A sober assessment of Russian nuclear defense doctrine should be obligatory reading.

The US NATO war planners by all means seek to convince the working class that a world without capitalism is not an option.

The labouring masses of Europe, North America, South America and Asia and Australia confront a stark choice, to align with the imperialist forces of war or align with all of the forces of peace and nuclear disarmament.  That is the only real option.

Friday, February 19, 2021

New Possibilities for Labour Unity

Sixty years have passed since the Canadian Labour Congress and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) gave its support to the founding of the New Party formalized at its Convention August 3rd 1961.

The New Democratic Party will hold its virtual convention on April 9-11, 2021.  The virtual Canadian Labour Congress Convention will take place two months later, June 16-18, 2021.

What will be accomplished by delegates at virtual conventions, reliant on new information technologies, is impossible to predict.  That is a heavy responsibility for convention organizers.  Socially aware Canadians will be watching closely.  A well organised fully open pre-convention discussion reaching out to the rank and file is what is needed right now.

Much is at stake for millions of Canadians impacted by the dual calamity of economic depression and pandemic.  They didn’t create such calamities and refuse to be its victims.  Millions of Canadians are looking for alternatives and a way forward to full employment and health.  Wage earners have the right to expect that the NDP and the CLC will move into political action in their interest.  That can happen if the convention delegates insist “this is the time”. 

Everything must be done to enable delegates to do their work.  Nothing must be allowed to impede the adoption of decisions and campaigns supporting the demands of workers, the unemployed, the youth, farmers, small business and all oppressed and racialized Canadians confronting the ruinous affects of economic depression and a pandemic.

NDP-CLC conventions more often than not have been top-down managed events geared to preparations for the next federal election.  The cynical game of photo-op politics will reduce not increase voter support.  Such outworn and discredited convention maneuvering will perpetuate the cynicism of working-class voters fed up with Lib-Cons and who will see no difference in the NDP.

To ignore such realities is willful blindness and electoral opportunism of the worst kind.  

The NDP is the largest social reformist electoral expression of voter rejection of the policies of the parties of big business, the Liberals and Conservatives.  The 3.3-million-member CLC is the voice of organized workers.  Unorganized low paid marginalized workers, especially the youth, look to it with some hope.  Capitalism is not working for them.

The NDP-CLC convention can limit their vision to becoming better managers of the capitalist system or begin to talk about the urgent need to replace it.  The depression and COVID-19 pandemic fully expose the failure of the capitalist system to answer the needs of Canadian wage, salary earners and self-employed, women, youth and children.  Such calamities are viewed by big investor classes as a business opportunity who cynically profiteer out of illness and the impoverishment of millions.

The NDP-CLC leaderships are called upon to go beyond exposure and denunciation of “unfairness” and catch up to the militant extra-Parliamentary struggles already in action and challenging corporate power.

The overarching consideration for any major gathering of reform and labour must be to demand and enunciate a new Canadian foreign policy of peace and nuclear disarmament.  The survival of humanity is at stake.

The threat of a major US-NATO instigated war is once again upon us.  Everyday the reckless and revenge seeking far right is given mass media platforms to promote war on Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and Syria.  Such neurotic voices applaud sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and applaud Sinophobia.

WW1 and WW2 and all of the major wars since, provide historical evidence that major war is not a single event but a series of events allowed to mature develop into global conflicts.  In the age of nuclear weapons such a calamity would end civilization as we know it.  

The specious argument that there are ideologies and existential threats worse than global annihilation is the preserve of fanaticism and the insane.  It is implausible and reckless to denounce Lib-Con social economic policies at home and support Lib-Con US-NATO war policies abroad.

Sixty years ago, analyzing the significance of the formation of the New Party (NDP), Tim Buck Communist Party leader said this:

“There are sharp differences concerning the aims that the founding convention should set for the New Party, and the differences are expressed already in two distinct and opposing trends.

“The trend which is dominant at present is that headed by the right-wing aiming to make the projected party “new” in name only.  They want to compete with the Liberal and Conservative parties for the popular vote without having to take a stand for repudiation of the basic theory that is supported by both of those parties – expressed in Canadian membership in NORAD and NATO, in permitting U.S. nuclear warheads in Canada, in the over-all policy of “Canada-U.S. integration”; in short, the subordination of Canada’s national interests to those of the United States as part of that country’s preparation for nuclear war.

“The opposing trend expresses, in varying ways and degrees recognition of the necessity for the New Party to rally All Canadians who desire far-reaching social reform, expansion of employment by freeing the Canadian economy from its subordination to U.S. interests, disengagement from the insane drive to war, withdrawal from NORAD and NATO, the banning of nuclear weapons, world disarmament and. In general, policies which correspond with peaceful co-existence.” Quoted from the May June 1961 issue of Marxist Review, Vol. XVIII (179)

Tim Buck had it right in 1961 and the same message is valid in 2021.


Tuesday, February 16, 2021

CSIS Takes the Political Stage

CSIS Director’s speech is grounds for convening SECU

A speech by CSIS Director David Vigneault reported by Canadian press Tuesday, February 9, 2021 would suggest that he is willfully ill-informed about China Canadian relations.

The speech was delivered to the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) a Waterloo based think tank that receives major funding from the Government of Canada. CIGI and CSIS are presently engaged in a collaboration on cybersecurity issues.

The CSIS director and CIGI imply that China, having progressed to the status of the second largest economic scientific and technological power in the world, is technologically deficient and actually needs Canadian cyber-technologies. It apparently hasn’t occurred to CSIS-CIGI analysts that it might be the other way around. 

The CSIS Director said, the technologies China needs are largely developed, “within academia in small start-ups, which are attractive targets because they have modest security protections and are more likely to pursue collaborations that can, and sadly are, exploited by other countries” meaning China.

Either the CSIS Director doesn’t know or doesn’t want Canadians to know, that Canada and China signed a bi-lateral treaty on science and technology on January 16, 2007 which was ratified on July 17th 2008 and is still in force.  

CSIS Vs. PCO

The CSIS Director offered no proof that China has engaged in any joint research with Canadian institutions that falls outside the framework of the treaty. Such proof would be reason for the Privy Council Office (PCO) to consider a breach of the treaty. The CSIS Director’s speech should cause the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) and Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) to be convened to ask for proof of CSIS assertions.

The CSIS director is making public speeches that impinge on the functioning of Canadian Government treaties. Is that what CSIS is mandated to do? Canadians understand that to be the function of the elected Minister of Foreign Affairs. Apparently the CSIS Director doesn’t know that.

Is it not fair to ask PM Trudeau and FM Minister Garneau, who is running Canadian foreign affairs, CSIS or the Government of Canada? That is a question the NDP foreign affairs critic, the Greens and the Bloc should also be asking.

A SIRC-SECU  inquiry might also help to explain why Canada no longer produces its own vaccines and spends hundreds of millions on foreign supplies including purchasing supplies of PPE equipment from China. Such a hearing might put to rest the CSIS accusation that the PRC seeks or needs Canada’s research in pharmaceuticals and health.

The UN and WHO have provided ample evidence of the high level of PRC’s cooperation and compliance in the global effort to contain and eradicate the Corona virus.

The proprietary assets, patents, technical expertise, and research that CSIS asserts China seeks to acquire by stealth is being routinely exchanged by all reputable science and technical agencies and much of it is available on line. That is how science progresses as a joint international collaboration among scientists from all nations. That truth comes as a surprise to the CSIS director who seems to believe that science is exclusively a western phenomenon.

The CSIS Director is fond of warning Canadians about “foreign state actors” interfering in Canadian politics. The Director’s speech came hours after newly elected US President Joe Biden’s February 4th speech published on the US Canadian embassy website.

“As I said in my inaugural address, we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s.  American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy.”

Stage Managed

Right on cue the CSIS Director delivered his April 9th speech to the CIGI.

CSIS and the CIGI seem to consider China’s presence in global affairs as not only sinister but illegitimate and Canada’s without blemish and legitimate.

Canada is a member of the UN and its agencies, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, OECD. So is China.

Canada is a signatory to the aforementioned organizations which have mandates that can be read by anyone interested. So is China.

Both countries have functionaries working in these organizations whose bios and curricula vitae can be read on line.

Consider the position occupied by the People’s Republic of China and its 1.4 billion citizens in today’s world.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a state member of the World Bank having joined in 1945. It is now the second largest global economy. Its engagement with the World Bank can be read here.

The PRC is a permanent member of the IMF and participates in the work of all of its agencies which can be read here.

The PRC is a non-member participant with an agreed working relationship with the OECD which can be read here.

The PRC is a member of the WTO having joined in 2001 and its engagement at the WTO can be read here.

The PRC is a founding member of the UN and permanent member of the Security Council. The PRC participates in all its agencies and programs which can be read here.

The PRC has diplomatic relations with 178 countries.

Canada officially recognized China on 13 October 1970 and suspended diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. In the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 Canada supported the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the successor state of the Republic of China.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Canada-China recognition, then Foreign Minister Phillipe Champagne said:

“The bedrock of our relations—in the beginning and as it is now—remains the people of Canada and China. Together, we share long-standing connections that took root well before the establishment of diplomatic relations. These connections and the extraordinary contributions of Canadians of Chinese origin to Canada will outlive political cycles and continue to bring diversity and depth to our relationship for decades to come.”

The CSIS federal budget for 2021 will come in around $650 million.

It would be better spent on the Canadian health care system and its overworked health care workers.