In the mid April federal by-elections the Liberals swept the three contested ridings securing a majority government. This was made possible with two conservative members of parliament crossing the floor in the previous months. For Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberals both of these events demonstrate that Canadian society is unifying around the Liberal agenda in the midst of trade tensions with the United States and general crisis. Indeed the conservative MPs that crossed the floor cited support to the Liberal policy in contrast to Pierre Poilievre’s confused conservative party. Just as much is evidenced also by the fact that the Liberal’s were able to gain a narrow electoral victory in Terrebonne riding which has been held by the Bloc Quebecois for a decade. But beyond the current state of capitalist parliamentary politics, beyond the rhetoric and circus, where is history trending and what does it mean for the working class?Elections alone spell little but the flavour of the capitalist boot that’s going to be stomping us, but as the bourgeoisie flounder in a crisis of their own making, the first steps they take in this direction will be inflicting the costs onto the proletariat as they struggle to find some order in the current global showdown.

General politics in Canada have been defined by the past year by the American tariffs. Immediately after starting his second term Trump decided it was time to throw American weight around to rivals and allies alike in the hope of securing better terms for American trade and as a crude form of diplomatic pressure to achieve political concessions. It has also shown that tariffs disproportionately act as a tax on American consumers, which inevitably means that American workers are paying to plug a deficit built on defense spending and propping up a dying system. While the United States is the only nation in a position to apply such pressure given its dollar supremacy, international political status, and military might, the policy has not gone completely as planned. It has tarnished America’s reputation in the western alliance, and has resulted in hardship for the working class the world over as they are forced to pay for the trade glut. After securing a new trade deal heavily in American favour with the EU Trump again threatened new tariffs on Europe in a row about annexing Greenland. More and more the United States’ traditional allies are viewing it as an unreliable power which is putting them in between a rock and a hard place economically and politically and are seeing America’s great rival China as a more stable entity. While this does not mean that a war between the great powers is not on the table, it does mean that this current period is the calm before the storm where the bourgeoisie get their bearings and start to rapidly mobilise the class for war.

It was in this context that Carney captured international attention at the Davos forum, where hespoke of a rupture with American hegemony in light of Trump's policies. He urged middle powers to work together via practical diplomacy to steer the course of great power rivalry. But the use of the word rupture seems to be more rhetoric than reality. Just as arctic sea ice can break apart and follow the same current, Carney's “rupture” is more so the necessity for Canada to find wiggle room in the crisis as it flows within the western alliance towards the tendency of generalized imperialist war. Carney’s trade deal with China which lifted the ban on Chinese electric vehicles is an expression of that search for alternatives and breathing space and an attempt to sure up about future prospects and decouple from the increasingly uncompetitive American auto-industry while not forming a complete break. Carney knows that an actual decoupling with the American economy would be costly and risky. Producing the necessary pipeline infrastructure to mass transport Albertan oil to the sea is no simple feat technically or politically. Nevertheless, this kitchen sink approach to plug a political and economic problem comes with a change in diplomatic tone which has thrown a wrench into the traditional ‘western bloc’. In this sense, Canada personifies the new era of bourgeois competition, in that beyond Cold War blocs, capitalists are scrambling to find alliances in the short and medium term to weather the storm from the big dogs, politically and economically. All the same, the crisis motivating this showdown lies at the heart of capital, so even if leaders like Carney want to cling onto a liberal order, they will do so not opposing the general trend towards war as leftists would hope.

Ultimately what we are witnessing is not a crisis between nations diplomatically but a general crisis of profitability driving a tendency towards generalized war. In February this year Carney announced “Canada’s first Defence Industrial Strategy". This plan aims to meet a 5% GDP spending on defence by 2035 committing hundreds of billions to future defence spending. Commitments to new armaments is just one part. The fundamental strategy is the increasing militarization of the Canadian economy. Inside the policy is the commitment to dual-use manufacturing and the propping up of domestic military production over foreign suppliers. The budget for new infrastructure is not set aside for merely new Arctic bases, although that exists, but massive government spending in strategic infrastructure. Since the Trudeau government, Canada has been attempting to sell itself to Europe as a key military partner not simply on the basis of the troops or equipment it can deploy but economically. Canada’s sell to Europe has been that it is an advanced technological nation with natural abundance with oceans around it should the European continent become a future battlefield. This conception goes hand in hand with Carney’s militarization of infrastructure, and a trend towards autarky in the preparation to war. This means cuts and disciplining the working class, and it means confronting the profitability crisis by preparing to destroy the constant capital of other economies through war in order to kickstart a new accumulation cycle. Carney’s maneuvering shows a bee-line, and not a detour, from that general tendency.

But this turn towards Europe is not exactly the “rupture” Carney’s rhetoric suggests. While Carney may boast of pragmatic diplomacy of middle powers America still sits in the leadership of the western alliance despite the fraying edges and the twists and turns. Rather than being a war of all against all, the bourgeoisie still gather around imperialist blocs to guarantee their survival. Much of Carney’s budget is connected to NORAD commitments with the United States. Canada’s attempt to project power into the Arctic front still exists in tandem with the United States be it military exercises or the development of an icebreaker fleet. There are plans to have a permanent CSIS presence in the Arctic as part of the American lead Five-Eyes coalition to counteract Chinese intelligence. While Carney did not heed Trump's call for military support to open the straits of Hormuz he did not hesitate to state that it is Iran which is responsible for the instability in the region aligning diplomatically with American policy. A crippled Iran is advantageous to the US-NATO bourgeoisie, and Russia, China, and Iran clearly realise that this conflict signifies a shot across the bow to their interests as well, to which the working class on both sides is being mobilized to soak up the costs at home and to die at the front.

As we have said for years, calls for national unity are nothing but calls for our class to tighten our belts as the world heads towards generalized war. Real wages have continued to decline in the face of the “cost of living crisis”. Last year, food banks had to reduce their services despite an increase in visitors, because of reducing funds. Savings by working households have continued to fall in a climate in which just five years ago in Prince Edward Island 70% of households had less than one month's income saved. Much of these facts are mirrored by the working class internationally, including American workers who are likewise being asked to pay for the crisis. This means that there is no noble crusade that Carney is taking on in steering the ship away from capitalist crisis. The renewed militarization at home, the consolidation of existing alliances, and the attempts to decouple from the US resemble the same back and forth of the low countries prior to WWII, which all the same got drafted into that global conflict to come. Attempts at neutrality really only forestall the class massacre to come to come, or as was the case in the Spanish Civil War, directly foreshadow the coming bloodbath.

In the face of this cost of living crisis so concerning to the parliamentarians, draconian anti-strike legislation has been whipped out against workers fighting for wage increases such as at Canada Post. Last year Quebec’s National Assembly passed bill 89 which allows the government to declare a strike illegal if it hampers the “public good”. Capital and its parliamentary bodies have clearly demonstrated what it perceives as the public good, profits. For capital mired in such a crisis of profitability there can be no negotiations with labour. Workers must accept their deteriorating conditions for the sake of national unity as international economic and military competition intensifies. Despite capital's attempt to impose class peace, the struggle of the working class continues. In Nova Scotia long term care workers are on strike for higher wages and are facing government intransigence. In Toronto the workers at the Toronto Zoo are in a period of strike action again after the 2024 strike. In Montreal on April 16th strikers blocked a street in an action. But so long as strikes remain isolated they will fight from a point of weakness. What is needed is a class wide response to the crisis of capitalism against the calls for national unity which workers have no interest in. Only banded together as an international class can we challenge the deterioration of our conditions and hamper the slaughter capital is preparing.

Notes:

Image: World Economic Forum (CC BY 4.0), commons.wikimedia.org