Ukraine: Ceasefire… or capitulation?

Last August, I published a critique of left responses in Canada to Russia’s assault on Ukraine: Canadian Left Responses to War in Ukraine – a Provisional Balance Sheet. I noted that progressive opinion in support of Ukraine’s defense of its territorial sovereignty and national self-determination tended to be stronger in Quebec than in English Canada. However, a notable exception was a broad pacifist collective, Échec à la Guerre. It “claims to oppose all imperialisms,” I wrote, “but has not rallied to defend Ukraine.”

Since then, Échec à la Guerre has, if anything, stepped up its campaign against solidarity with Ukraine. Articles by its leading spokespersons have been published in daily newspapers and often replicated on social media, including on-line solidarity websites. A recent “open letter” it published, to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, was also published on websites that have sought to rally support for Ukraine, among them the international solidarity site Alternatives, and the site Presse-toi à gauche (PTàG), which is sympathetic to Québec solidaire.

However, PTàG also published in the same issue a critical and much-needed response to the article, by Camille Popinot, addressed to many key issues that have been raised among the Western left as a result of the war. Notable is its appeal to the left-wing affiliates of Échec à la Guerre to disavow its position. Here is my translation of the article. – Richard Fidler.

Ceasefire or capitulation -

Views of the Ukrainian and Russian lefts

By CAMILLE POPINOT

The Quebec “center-left and pro-independence” newspaper Le Devoir has just published an open letter signed by five pacifists, who call for a “ceasefire and immediate negotiations” in Ukraine.

The letter itself would not be worth our attention had the authors not said they were signing “on behalf of” the Échec à la Guerre Collective.

In fact, the Collective brings together left-wing political parties (Québec Solidaire, Communist Party), numerous unions (CSN, FTQ, nurses, teachers, etc.), community groups and civil-rights defenders (FRAPRU, League of Rights and Freedoms, AQOCI, MEPACQ etc.) and religious organizations.[1] In short, it includes a good number of activists in Quebec who define themselves as left-wing, trade unionists, socialists, feminists, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, post-colonialists, alter-globalists and even internationalists – and who see themselves associated, at least indirectly, with the content of this pacifist appeal.

Ceasefire or capitulation?

The letter in question is a poor caricature of the propaganda conveyed by Vladimir Putin: the war was provoked by the United States, the West, NATO, which “are conducting a real proxy war in Ukraine.” Russia, for its part, did everything it could to negotiate and avoid conflict but it had to defend its “great power” interests. And finally -- as “the war in Ukraine did not go according to the West’s plans,” as the economic sanctions have failed, as the “situation is developing to Russia’s advantage,” -- we must avoid its spiraling into a nuclear war. It is in the interest of the Ukrainians and of humanity to impose a “ceasefire” as quickly as possible. Of course the text does not tell us how, or what the implications might be, but it must be done and be “mutually acceptable” to the security interests of Ukraine and Russia. And there you have it, you just had to think about it and write it down.

Beyond a narrative worthy of George Orwell’s Newspeak -- where those who were thought to be the attacked become the aggressors, the victims the culprits, the victories the defeats, the imperialists the colonized etc. -- the primary goal of the letter is to end Canadian military support for Ukraine. It is indeed certain that if Ukraine no longer receives any support, then it will have no choice but to negotiate a ceasefire. And the sooner we stop supporting it, the sooner the ceasefire desired by the authors of the letter will be imposed. But will it be “mutually acceptable?”

And in fact, the only problem with the execution of this master plan is that the Ukrainians – and fortunately many other people – now think it is no longer a question of a ceasefire but of an all-out capitulation. And, regardless, notwithstanding the incantations of Quebec pacifists, the Ukrainians refuse to capitulate.

Should we listen to the Ukrainians or ignore them and defend the pacifism of Échec à la Guerre?

But the authors of the letter couldn’t care less about what Ukrainians think and want. It is indeed astonishing to see with what ease, shamefully, five pacifists (who certainly claim to be post-colonialists), well sheltered from the bombs, can claim to express themselves for and in the interest of the Ukrainians, without even taking the trouble to cite just one.

As if the Ukrainians could not speak, as if their demands were unknown, as if their opinion was in any case irrelevant in view of the global concerns of the five Quebec pacifists. Ukrainians are de facto infantilized, treated like children who have reacted impulsively, who must be calmed down and to whom it is necessary to explain, and if needed impose, what is good for them.

It’s true that they don’t listen much, not even to the learned advice of our five pacifists or Western and Russian capitalists. Instead of fleeing by taxi and calmly allowing themselves to be colonized, as Vladimir Putin but also all NATO members expected, they chose to resist and continue to resist despite everything, seeming to forget that confronting them is a nuclear power.

In short, if for the authors of the letter the opinion of the Ukrainians does not count, the Ukrainians on the other hand would do well to listen to them. This is an already well-documented concept and practice of “international solidarity.”

But why does the Ukrainian left refuse to capitulate?

But let’s imagine that, unlike the five pacifist missionaries, the associative members of the Collective consider it important to listen and take into account what the Ukrainians are demanding, like any internationalist worthy of the name. They can then easily obtain information in French thanks to the valuable work carried out by a group of several left-wing publishing houses (including Quebec ones) and the work of the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine (ENSU/RESU).

Left-wing political parties, unions and Quebec community groups can then see in these thousands of documents that in many aspects, Ukrainian society is not very different from Quebec society; and that, like Quebec, it is a deeply divided society. There are fascists, racists, war profiteering capitalists, villainous and concealed multimillionaires, corrupt politicians, homophobic religious people, antisemites, Islamophobes, etc. And, as in Quebec, in the absence of a truly internationalist left, it is this trend that is on the rise.

But there are also many left-wing activists, anti-capitalists, feminists and anarchists who, in all conscience, have chosen to defend the right to independence, not only with weapons in their hands but also under the command of a bourgeois and patriarchal government, the only militarily viable solution according to them to avoid being colonized and disappearing. There are trade unionists who campaign against the scandalous reform of the Labor Code while providing continued support to the soldiers in the trenches. There are internationalist activists who, despite the state of emergency, take the time to send messages of solidarity to the Palestinians, to the French or British strikers. There are anti-capitalists who campaign against the neo-liberal reforms of Zelensky, the IMF and the World Bank, for the nationalization of the arms industry, the expropriation of the oligarchs. And there are activists who, at the risk of their lives, document the reality in the occupied territories, the theft of children, the pillaging of Mariupol and its region, rapid Russification, etc.

Still, in these precious documents, the members of the Collective will also be able to see that Ukrainians are also fighting for peace, a ceasefire and disarmament. The difference, however, is that they do not accept the conditions proposed by our five pacifists or Vladimir Putin. They keep repeating it: if Russia withdraws, there will be no more war. On the other hand, if Ukraine gives in, there is no more Ukraine.

Who will disarm and who will be disarmed?

In fact, when we confronted by the army of a leader who repeats to anyone who will listen that you do not exist and who has already shown the Chechens, the Syrians or the Georgians very clearly the conditions of lasting peace and disarmament according to him, we surely recall more clearly certain lessons from history: “the whole question is to know who will disarm and who will be disarmed.”

Consequently, today, what the members of the Collective will not find in these multiple documents from trade unionists, socialists, feminists, anti-capitalists, Ukrainian internationalists are calls to put an end to military support for the Ukrainian army, to oppose Ukraine’s entry into NATO or the European Union. These activists of the Ukrainian left say over and over: it is not with a light heart that they make these political choices; it’s a question of priorities, of survival.

What if the Russian left also wanted Putin’s military defeat?

Our five pacifists could also, still with a perspective of international solidarity, turn to Russian internationalist activists. It is true that it is much more difficult to get in touch with them but, thanks to the work of ENSU activists, we have in particular the declarations of the Russian Socialist Movement. And here is an extract from a recent press release, in the hope that the members of the Échec à la Guerre Collective will be encouraged to read it in its entirety:

Putin’s regime can no longer exit the state of war, as the only way to maintain its system is to escalate the international situation and intensify political repression within Russia.

That is why any negotiations with Putin now would bring, at best, a brief respite, not a genuine peace.

A victory for Russia would be evidence of the West’s weakness and openness to redrawing its spheres of influence, above all in the post-Soviet space. Moldova and the Baltic States could be the next victims of aggression. A defeat for the regime, on the other hand, would be tantamount to its collapse.

Only the Ukrainian people have the right to decide when and under what conditions to make peace. As long as Ukrainians show a will to resist and the Putin regime remains unchanged in its expansionist goals, any coercion of Ukraine into negotiations is a step towards an imperialist “deal” at the expense of Ukrainian independence.

That imperialist “peace deal” would mean a return to the practice of the “great powers” partitioning the rest of the world, that is, to the conditions that gave birth to the First and Second World Wars.

The main obstacle to peace is certainly not Zelensky’s “unwillingness to compromise,” nor is it Biden’s or Scholz’s “hawkishness”: it is Putin’s unwillingness to even discuss deoccupying the Ukrainian territories seized after February 24, 2022. And it is the aggressor, not the victim, who must be forced to negotiate.

It is obvious that this position, like that of the Ukrainian left summarized here, reflects only part and probably only a very small part of the opinions of the Russian or Ukrainian left. But these are the positions that we relay, that we have chosen to support, by citing our sources. Let the five Quebec pacifists do the same and tell us in whose name they speak and call for an “immediate ceasefire” in Ukraine.

While waiting for their sources, we share the opinion of the Russian Socialist Movement that, in the current context, what ultimately counts is the choice of the Ukrainian people and that “it is the aggressor, not the victim, who must be forced to negotiate.” The complete opposite of what the five Quebec pacifists have chosen to defend “on behalf of” a significant collective of Quebec workers.

We then hope that the associative members of the Échec à la Guerre Collective will make it known that they firmly condemn this despicable position which goes against the right to self-determination and all the basic principles of international working-class and feminist solidarity, of internationalism.

---

[1] The members of the collective are listed here: https://echecalaguerre.org/le-collectif/membres/. – RF

People’s Summit Against War and Militarism to be held in Montréal

UPDATE: The People's Summit, announced below, has been postponed to November 19-21, 2010. A notice issued in early March by the sponsoring collective, Échec à la guerre, said the decision to postpone the summit was based on the fact that the public and parapublic unions in Quebec are planning to hold a major demonstration in Montréal on March 20 in support of their demands in contract negotiations with the Quebec government. This, they explain, "would have deprived us of significant participation by many union activists as well as others torn between their participation in the Summit and their support for the Common Front" of the union centrales. The new dates for the Summit were chosen in consultation with various participating organizations. The organizers invite us "to take advantage of this new delay to spark more extensive preparatory discussions in all of your networks."

The Montréal-based antiwar collective Échec à la guerre (which translates roughly as “Stop war”) is organizing a People’s Summit Against War and Militarism to be held March 19-21 in that city. Featuring workshops and panels as well as a plenary session that will issue a Joint Declaration, the People’s Summit promises to be an important step in creating an understanding of the underlying issues that alone can sustain and build an ongoing movement against war and imperialism in this country.

This is not the first major initiative of this type by Échec à la guerre — which, in the months leading up to the Iraq war, organized massive demonstrations in Quebec including the march in Montréal of nearly a quarter million people, the largest antiwar demonstration in Canadian history. In February 2008 the collective held Public hearings for the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan, and in October 2008 it sponsored publication of an Open Letter to federal election candidates under the heading “Sur le retrait des troupes canadiennes de l'Afghanistan, la démocratie c'est pour quand ? (When will we have a democratic decision on the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan?).

The call-out for the People’s Summit explains:

The purpose of the Summit is to strengthen the movement against war and militarism in Québec by deepening its reflection, clarifying its demands and consolidating its unity in action. It is urgent to do so. As the war of occupation in Afghanistan runs into more and more resistance and is now spilling over into Pakistan, the voices in favour of extending Canada’s military intervention in the region are already starting to be heard.

In this context, the period of preparations for the Summit and the Summit itself will offer a space and tools for further deconstructing the warmongers’ rhetoric and arguments. Canada’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan, a pamphlet in 18 talking points put out by Collectif Échec à la guerre, is still very pertinent. But although opposed to the war in Afghanistan, many Quebecers may feel at a loss when faced with some of the arguments put forward in militarist propaganda, such as:

· “It’s a UN mission”;

· “We have to honour our NATO commitments”;

· “Immediate withdrawal would be irresponsible.”

Countering such arguments requires a more thorough examination of important topics on which people often don’t have much information: the UN, NATO and issues of war and peace in our times. A shared understanding of these major issues becomes a necessity for the citizen-based anti-war movement if it wants to help transform the majority opinion against the war into a force capable of obtaining the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and questioning the alignment of Canada’s foreign policy on that of the U.S. empire.

And the call-out adds:

It goes without saying that these objectives are in no way specific to the Québec context, and the Collectif Échec à la guerre will work in close collaboration with the Canadian Peace Alliance and its member groups to hold similar summits in other cities across Canada.

As part of the preparation for the People’s Summit, the collective has published three downloadable pamphlets discussing the major topics to be addressed at the Summit. The first two were issued in June 2009. One, entitled (in translation) “NATO: Defensive Alliance or Instrument of War?”, outlines the alliance’s origins in the Cold War and its evolution since 1991 as a keystone in imperialist foreign policy. The other, the title of which could be translated as “Are They Making War on Behalf of Women?”, exposes the faux-feminist rationale frequently peddled in defense of the Canadian and NATO war on Afghanistan. It makes effective use of quotations from Ms. Malalai Joya, the Afghan antiwar MP who recently toured North America.

Canada's corporate-military linkages

Last month, the collective published a third pamphlet, La militarisation de la politique étrangère du Canada: qui dicte l’agenda? (MPEC – “The Militarization of Canada’s Foreign Policy: Who Dictates the Agenda?”) A fourth pamphlet, yet to be published, will analyze the role of the UN Security Council and international law.

MPEC makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Canadian foreign policy since the Second World War. It describes Canada’s central role as a close partner of the United States in the founding of NATO in 1949 and how the alliance provided the framework for Canada’s intervention in the Korean civil war in the early 1950s, the occupation of Germany, and this country’s production, sale and research and development of weapons throughout the Cold War. Since the Cold War, it explains, NATO has expanded its role as an instrument for Washington to secure its global hegemony amidst increasing inter-capitalist rivalry for resources and markets.

The pamphlet outlines the corresponding militarist shift in Canada’s foreign policy in the post-Cold War period, tracing its evolution through the build-up of the Canadian military as a “true combat force” participating in the 1991 Gulf War, the naval blockade of Iraq between 1990 and 2003, the army’s intervention in Somalia in 1992-93, the air force participation in the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, and of course most recently in the now almost decade-long intervention in Afghanistan. It analyzes this shift in the context of the increasing trade and investment linkages with Washington through “free trade” and investment blocs and the related repressive measures in the post-9/11 period as expressed in the Anti-Terrorism Act (modeled on the U.S. Patriot Act), the security certificate detentions, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and of course the massive increases in military expenditures.

Finally, MPEC documents the leading role of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) in promoting the deepening alignment of Canadian foreign and military policy with that of the United States. The CCCE includes the country’s major business executives, including the heads of the banks, oil companies and military producers — among them such leading stalwarts of “Québec Inc.” as Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, Power Corporation and CAE. It is now headed by John Manley, the former deputy prime minister. In short, Canada’s ruling class. MPEC notes: “A comparison of the CCCE’s positions since 2001 with the Canadian government’s foreign policy and defence statements reveals a troubling fact: they often contain the same ideas, the same arguments, sometimes even word for word....”

Peacekeeping?

There are some weaknesses in the pamphlet, in my view. In its discussion of Canadian policy in the Cold War, it unduly emphasizes Ottawa’s “differences” with Washington, citing such examples as the refusal to deploy nuclear arms on Canadian soil, the maintaining of economic (and diplomatic) links with Cuba, and the welcome accorded to U.S. draft resisters and deserters during the Vietnam war. A further examination would reveal that these examples had their limitations; they were exceptions, not the rule, and often served as cover for more nefarious practices.

Canada partnered with the U.S. in the North American Air Defence Alliance and allowed the U.S. to establish air bases on Canadian territory. It even built two nuclear missile bases of its own north of Toronto and Montréal-Ottawa, but then declined to equip the Bomarc missiles with nuclear arms — a decision Lester “Peace Prize” Pearson campaigned against as leader of the Liberal Party.

Although it did not send troops to Vietnam, Canada covered for U.S. aggression through its membership in the International Control Commission, while (as MPEC acknowledges) selling hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons annually to the U.S. throughout the war. The influx of young educated Americans fleeing the war helped temporarily to reverse the Canadian “brain drain” to the U.S. during a period when this country was rapidly expanding its post-secondary education facilities.

More seriously, MPEC fails to note how Canadian participation in “peacekeeping” forces under UN auspices, which it lauds as an example of Canada’s “mediation role”, was actually part and parcel of its alignment with the U.S. and other imperialist powers, often in opposition to the national liberation struggles that the pamphlet correctly cites as an important feature of the post-WWII world. In fact, Pearson’s role in establishing UN peacekeeping (for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) was part of an attempt on Washington’s behalf to extricate its NATO allies Britain and France, along with Israel, from the consequences in the Arab world of their attack on Egypt in the wake of its nationalization of the Suez Canal. The more recent “peacekeeping” operations in Somalia, the Balkans and, yes, Afghanistan (which the UN has ex post facto endorsed) are likewise motivated by pro-imperialist considerations, now in the post-Cold War context of a less fettered scope for imperialist aggression in the dependent nations.

This omission is especially regrettable in light of Canada’s ongoing “peacekeeping” effort in Haiti, the second largest recipient (after Afghanistan) of Ottawa’s “foreign aid”. In 2004 the Canadian military participated in the overthrow and kidnapping of the country’s elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and since then the RCMP have been heavily involved in training police and security forces in Haiti. Canada’s response to the recent earthquake was primarily military, sending up to 2,000 soldiers to Haiti to patrol the streets of Port au Prince while Haitians frantically searched the ruins for loved ones and neighbours. Ottawa now has as many troops in Haiti as it does in Afghanistan! Yet Haiti is not even mentioned in this pamphlet.

However, these are the kind of questions that can be discussed at the forthcoming People’s Summit. The MPEC pamphlet concludes with a call for a public debate and redefinition of Canada’s foreign policy, and in particular for “the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan”. The Summit is an important initiative by Échec à la guerre that deserves the support of all antiwar activists, and not only in Quebec.

-- Richard Fidler, January 29, 2010

Federal NDP meets in Montréal – another missed opportunity?

The federal convention of the New Democratic Party, the Official Opposition in Canada’s parliament, opens on Friday, April 12, in Montréal.

Although a majority of the party’s MPs (now 57 out of a total of 101) represent Quebec constituencies, its leader Thomas Mulcair is from Quebec, and the convention is meeting in Quebec’s metropolis, the draft Agenda indicates that little time has been set aside for debating the party’s approach to Quebec. The 122-page book of resolutions proposed by constituency associations, affiliated trade unions and party leadership bodies contains very little addressed to the national question.

This is unfortunate, as there is much the party members need to discuss — ranging from a new look at its existing position on the Quebec national question (the “Sherbrooke Declaration”) to Mulcair’s stated support for building a Quebec “provincial” NDP that would compete electorally with the pro-independence Quebec solidaire.

The Sherbrooke Declaration is now published as an appendix to the NDP program.

The party’s small Socialist Caucus, which exists mainly in the Toronto region, has sponsored noon-hour public meetings at the convention on the Friday and Saturday. The first, on “Quebec and the NDP” and “Why Quebec Students are in the Streets Again,” features speakers André Frappier, a co-leader of Québec solidaire, and Adam Szymanski, a Quebec student active in the recent student strike. The second meeting, on Canada’s military intervention in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, features Raymond Legault, a leader of the antiwar coalition “Échec à la guerre,” and Caucus chairperson Barry Weisleder.

The Caucus has produced an issue of its occasional magazine Turn Left for distribution to the convention delegates. It is also available for download at http://www.ndpsocialists.ca/. The magazine includes two articles by yours truly, one in English, the other in French, which I wrote at the request of the Caucus. Both are addressed to the NDP’s position on the Quebec national question, and in particular the federal party’s recent bill to reform the controversial Clarity Act. I am not responsible for the content of other articles in Turn Left.

Only one draft resolution submitted to this convention addresses the NDP bill; Malpeque constituency (in Prince Edward Island) challenges the “50% plus 1” test for determining the validity and legitimacy of a Quebec referendum vote for sovereignty. Other resolutions urge greater party support for English-French bilingualism in federal institutions like the Supreme Court and the CRTC, the federal broadcast control agency, and some terminological changes to reflect binational differences, such as changing “national director” in the party statutes to “federal secretary.” One, submitted by “Young New Democrats of Quebec,” advocates replacing the party’s support for “multiculturalism” with “inter-culturalism,” but without explaining the differences between the two, which are correctly viewed as significant in Quebec.[1]

The original draft of my English article had to be shortened, with my agreement, for Turn Left, owing to space limitations. It is published in full below. The French article, also published below, is an adaptation for a Québécois audience of my blog piece “The NDP Revisits the Clarity Act,” and was translated by Pierre Beaudet.

As regular readers of this blog are aware, I am a harsh critic of the NDP’s record on Quebec, and of the Sherbrooke Declaration. The first article, below, sidesteps some of these aspects and attempts to emphasize for NDP members the overriding need for the party to hold a serious discussion at all levels, but particularly in English Canada, on how the Quebec question fits within the development of a strategy for progressive change in what is currently the Canadian state.

-- Richard Fidler

* * *

The ‘Quebec question’: Despite progress, the NDP still has far to go

The NDP’s bill C-470, which would replace the Clarity Act and acknowledge the democratic legitimacy of a simple majority vote for sovereignty in a Quebec referendum, aroused a storm of opposition. Not just from the other federalist parties (which was to be expected), but also from the major media in English Canada.

Typical was an editorial in the Toronto Star, the only daily newspaper that endorsed the NDP in the 2011 federal election, protesting that the NDP bill “lowers the bar to [Quebec] secession.” The Star editors doubted whether the NDP, as “a party that aspires to govern the federation is prepared to defend it.”

More ominous was a Harris-Decima-Canadian Press poll in early February that found majority support for the bill only in Quebec, while in English Canada close to three out of four respondents were opposed. And a CP poll of provincial NDP leaders found that only one, New Brunswick’s Dominic Cardy, was willing to express support for it. The others, including the premiers of Nova Scotia and Manitoba, refused to comment.

Yet Bill C-470 simply applies the reasoning in the NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration, adopted overwhelmingly by the federal party in 2006 as its current position on the “Quebec question.” The Declaration recognizes “Quebec’s right to self-determination,” which, it says, “implies the right of the people of Quebec to decide freely its own political and constitutional future.” If Quebec were to hold a vote on sovereignty “the NDP would recognize a majority decision (50% + 1)….” The Declaration was widely credited as a factor in the “orange wave” that elected NDP candidates in 59 of Quebec’s 75 electoral districts in 2011, hoisting the party to Official Opposition status in the House of Commons.

What does the reaction to Bill C-470 tell us about the challenge facing the NDP and its attempts to reconcile Quebec’s desire for change in its status as a nation with the party’s longstanding support of Canada’s federal system?

A tortured history

The Sherbrooke Declaration’s principled recognition of Quebec’s right to national self-determination — notwithstanding some ambiguities and contradictions, discussed below — represented an important step forward for the NDP, which since its founding in 1961 has struggled to understand Québécois dissatisfaction with Canada’s federal regime. The party’s firm commitment to working within the existing constitutional framework of the Canadian state has often collided with the pro-sovereignty views held by the trade unions and most progressives in Quebec.

In the early 1960s, the majority of NDP supporters in Quebec split to form an independent party, the Parti socialiste du Québec (PSQ), which called for adoption of a sovereign Quebec constitution and the negotiation of a new “confederal” accord with English Canada. The PSQ was soon eclipsed, however, by the formation of the Parti québécois, which expressed a similar objective of sovereignty followed by some form of constitutional association with English Canada.

Caught short by the rise of the independence movement, the federal NDP tended to tail the approach to constitutional reform taken by Pierre Trudeau and the federal Liberals as well as the Conservatives. It was an active participant in the unilateral 1982 patriation of the Constitution, which now included a Charter of Rights that would be used by the Supreme Court of Canada to void major provisions of Quebec legislation protecting French-language rights. Successive Quebec governments — sovereigntist and federalist alike — have never accepted the legitimacy of that Constitution. The federal NDP campaigned for the No side in both of Quebec’s referendums on sovereignty, in 1980 and 1995. And in 2000 the party’s parliamentary caucus — defying opposition by the NDP Federal Council and the Canadian Labour Congress — voted for the governing Liberals’ Clarity Bill, which makes Quebec sovereignty following a successful “yes” vote contingent on acceptance by the federal Parliament of both the question asked and the response given by the voters.

These actions effectively foreclosed any possibility of building significant support for the party in Quebec. Unable to build an enduring base of support in the province, the NDP for decades lacked credibility in both Quebec and the Rest of Canada as a potential federal government.

By the turn of the century, it was evident that no one on the federalist side could credibly promise renewed federalism. However, a Social Democratic Forum on Canada’s Future, sponsored by the party in the late 1990s, came up with a host of proposals for a change in the relationship between English Canada and Quebec, many of them later incorporated in the Sherbrooke Declaration. The adoption of the Declaration signalled a new readiness to rethink the party’s relationship to Quebec. And in 2011, this openness was sufficient to convince many Quebec voters, now looking for potential allies in English Canada in resisting a Harper majority government, to turn to the NDP.

The Sherbrooke Declaration

Despite its new recognition of Quebec’s right to national self-determination, the Sherbrooke Declaration does not reject a federal role in determining the legitimacy of a Quebec vote for sovereignty, nor does Bill C-470. The bill simply attempts to structure that role, in effect fettering the power of the federal Parliament to reject the popular verdict. It would accept a narrow Yes victory — and suggests some acceptable wording of the question — while proposing a similar procedure for a possible Quebec referendum question on reforming the Constitution short of secession.

The virulent opposition to Bill C-470 by the Harper government and the Liberals, however, demonstrates the complete unwillingness of Canada’s traditional governing parties and their corporate backers to contemplate any fundamental change in Quebec’s constitutional status. Typical was the reaction of Liberal leadership aspirant Justin Trudeau. “To bring forward that motion is the height of both hypocrisy and political gamesmanship of the worst kind. If I needed another reason to cross out the idea of co-operation with the NDP, that’s an obvious one.”

Both Tories and Liberals had hoped that the amending formula in Trudeau Senior’s 1982 Constitution — which makes any major constitutional change contingent on adoption by Parliament and seven of the ten provinces with at least 50% of Canada’s population — would rule out any possibility for Quebec’s legal secession from the federation. They are outraged that the NDP, with its modest proposal to accept a democratic majority vote, has now challenged this federalist consensus. We can be sure that they will hound the party on this issue in the months and years to come.

The Sherbrooke Declaration indirectly acknowledges the impossibility of constitutional reform to accommodate Quebec concerns. Instead, it recommends a limited practice of “asymmetrical federalism” that would “consolidate [conjuguer] the Canadian federal state with the reality of Quebec’s national character” by allowing Quebec to opt out with compensation from federal programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. And its over-arching concept of “cooperative federalism,” an old NDP standby, involves not a reallocation of powers but a never-ending process of policy and program negotiation between Quebec and Ottawa and (in most cases) the other provinces and territories, negotiations in which Quebec may and often does find itself alone arrayed against the other ten or more governments. It is cast as a strategy for winning Quebec acceptance of a federal union even before any constitutional guarantees of its national character have been achieved. Fundamentally, this comes down to little more than the status quo.

Clearly, the ball is in the court of the Québécois to initiate and lead the movement for change in Quebec’s constitutional status, whether in or out of the federation. But is the NDP prepared not only to listen to this national movement and learn from it, but to work to create understanding and solidarity with the national struggle of the Québécois among its members and supporters in English Canada? Such solidarity is an essential ingredient in building a pan-Canadian movement that can not only defeat the Harper government but reverse the neoliberal offensive. This requires a much greater effort by the party in English Canada to address Québécois concerns — a major challenge, as English Canadian hostility to even the modest democratic content of the NDP’s Bill C-470 illustrates.

The Sherbrooke Declaration was adopted at a time when the pro-sovereignty movement was at an ebb, largely as a result of popular frustration in Quebec at the lack of success in previous attempts at constitutional reform as well as disillusionment with the neoliberal “zero deficit” record of Parti québécois governments. This may have given some credibility to the Declaration’s argument that Quebec’s aspirations could be satisfied without a change in its constitutional status. However, popular disaffection with the Harper government in Quebec offers the prospect of renewed support for sovereignty. On September 4, 2012, Quebec voters elected a PQ government, 40% of them casting their ballots for the PQ and other pro-sovereignty parties.

Impact of the ‘Maple Spring’

The defeat of Québec’s Liberal government was in part the result of the “Printemps érable,” the Maple Spring of 2012, which began with a massive strike by college and university students that eventually drew tens of thousands of other citizens into the streets in solidarity with the students and opposition to government repression. The students’ call for fundamentally rethinking the role of education in Quebec society and questioning the whole logic of neoliberal commodification of social services won the sympathy of many Québécois. The scope of this mass democratic struggle, and the profound social issues it has raised, have inspired many to think about how “another Quebec,” a society of social justice and equality, can be built as an alternative to the neoliberal regression of today. Their debates can inspire equivalent thinking and responses among other victims of the capitalist offensive across Canada.

Quebec sovereigntists are now attempting to refound the movement for independence in a series of meetings throughout the province under the aegis of the Estates General, a broad coalition of parties and other organizations. A pamphlet to introduce the debates, entitled (in English translation) “What Future: A Province, or a Country?,” lists no fewer than 92 “obstacles” to Quebec’s development under the federal regime, as perceived by its authors. Many point to what are undeniably fundamental problems with the Canadian federation.

The Sherbrooke Declaration noted that Québécois efforts to “build a social and political project based on solidarity” have been increasingly “centered around the Quebec state.” The Estates General pamphlet explains why. Not only has Canada’s constitution never recognized Quebec’s national character, it was historically founded on denial of that nationality in the wake of the British Conquest, the suppression of the 1837 Patriotes’ revolt, and the later denial of French-language rights in the other provinces. Most recently, constitutional changes and court judgments have imposed further obstacles to achieving national recognition under Canada’s federal regime. However, there is new hope for change in Quebec. As the Estates General document puts it:

“Today, in all parts of Quebec a movement is rising that resists cynicism and disenchantment, rejects the dictates of neoliberalism in the name of democracy, and seeks to reappropriate citizens’ action and implement collective solutions. In this forward march toward the common good, these forces are rediscovering the importance of the state in realizing this objective. However, the state to which the hopes and aspirations of a large majority of Québécois turn, the State of Quebec, is a truncated, padlocked and cordoned off state because it is confined to mere “regional” and “provincial” actions within the Canadian regime….

“Close to half of our budget is outside our control, and the Canadian government habitually invests it in areas that differ in priority from ours, contrary to our needs and our values. At a time when the future of the planet increasingly hangs in the balance internationally, we cannot collectively have a say, as our national state is constitutionally subordinate to the Canadian straitjacket.”

Québec solidaire: A new, progressive vision for Quebec

An important progressive component of this Quebec national movement is Québec solidaire, a left-wing party founded in 2006 following a decade-long process of coalescing left-wing organizations, including the remnants of the old Quebec NDP, with activists from Quebec’s social movements, including the women’s movement and many trade unions. Québec solidaire presents its program for fundamental social change in the conceptual framework of an independent Quebec that would act in solidarity with progressive movements in Canada and around the world. QS has about 14,000 members, slightly more than the federal NDP’s membership in Quebec.

NDP members and supporters outside Quebec can sympathize with the democratic and progressive thrust of this movement, even if many find it difficult to accept its sovereigntist conclusions. They have every reason to see themselves as partners in this process, and not its opponents. In fact, a powerful movement for social and political change in Quebec can only bolster all progressive forces in Canada.

But it will be a struggle. Many anti-Quebec misconceptions and prejudices have to be confronted and overcome. The NDP will face unrelenting opposition in its efforts by a hostile media, especially in English Canada.

However, there really is no alternative if the party is to build on its May 2011 breakthrough. And there is ample evidence that the needed reorientation of NDP thinking on Quebec, initiated by the Sherbrooke Declaration, can in coming years help to cement strong ties of solidarity between progressives in both nations — a precondition to turning politics in Canada toward the left.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Le dilemme du NPD

En 2006, le NPD avait surpris l’opinion en adoptant la « déclaration de Sherbrooke ». Cette déclaration, bien qu’elle dépasse le discours habituel du NPD, contient d’importantes ambiguïtés et contradictions qui en fin de compte nient l’engagement formel du parti à défendre le droit à l’autodétermination du peuple québécois.

Pas de réforme constitutionnelle

À un premier niveau, la déclaration n’aborde pas la question du statut constitutionnel, ni du point de vue d’une réforme, ni du point de vue de l’indépendance. Cette question pourtant centrale est évitée par le NPD qui préfère une approche bureaucratique et administrative. Le fédéralisme préconisé par le NPD n’implique aucune redistribution des pouvoirs et débouche sur un processus sans fin de négociation entre le Québec et Ottawa, et même avec les autres provinces et territoires. On demande au Québec d’accepter le cadre fédéral, avant même des négociations constitutionnelles qui pourraient éventuellement redéfinir la confédération et offrir au Québec des garanties sur son statut de nation. Cette approche, c’est ce que le NPD qualifie de fédéralisme « coopératif ».

La loi de la « clarté »

Il est encore plus remarquable que la Déclaration de Sherbrooke ne mentionne pas la loi dite de la « clarté », votée au Parlement en 2000 à l’initiative du gouvernement Chrétien. Il faut se souvenir que les députés du NPD (il y avait deux exceptions) ont voté en faveur de cette loi qui brime le droit du Québec à l’autodétermination. La direction parlementaire du NPD est allée dans ce sens en dépit de l’opposition au projet de loi exprimée par le Conseil fédéral du NPD ainsi que le Congrès du travail du Canada et plusieurs militants ordinaires du parti. En vertu de cette loi, un vote pour un « oui » serait soumis au bon vouloir du parlement fédéral et des autres provinces.

En janvier dernier néanmoins le NPD a proposé une nouvelle loi (C-470), qui obligerait le gouvernement fédéral à négocier avec le Québec dans l’éventualité où la majorité des Québécoises et Québécois votait pour la souveraineté dans le cadre d’un référendum. En faisant cela, le NPD a voulu évité d’être coincé par un projet de loi du Bloc Québécois (C-457), qui voulait tout simplement demander l’abolition de la Loi sur la « clarté ». Le projet de loi C-470 représente un certain progrès pour le NPD puisqu’il prend, au moins partiellement, ses distances par rapport à la Loi sur la « clarté ». Ceci dit, le projet de loi C-470 ne déborde pas le cadre conceptuel de cette loi.

Les « conditions » du NPD

Pour justifier son projet de loi, le NPD s’identifie aux principes énoncés par la Cour Suprême du Canada dans le Renvoi relatif à la sécession du Québec. Selon le NPD, la loi sur la « clarté » ne respecte pas ces principes de ce jugement selon lequel, dans l’éventualité d’un vote majoritaire pour la souveraineté, « toutes les parties » seraient dans l’obligation de « venir à la table des négociations ». Cette négociation, toujours selon le NPD), serait soumise au respect de certaines conditions :

• Le gouvernement fédéral doit déterminer si, à son avis, la question référendaire « énonce clairement la modification constitutionnelle envisagée ». Le libellé de cette question pourrait être par exemple : « Le Québec devrait-il devenir un pays souverain ? ». Ou encore : « Le Québec devrait-il se séparer du Canada et devenir un pays souverain » ? Si le gouvernement fédéral juge que la question n’est pas claire, il en saisit la Cour d’appel du Québec qui doit alors se prononcer sur la clarté de la question dans un délai de 60 jours. Si cette Cour déclare la question inadéquate, le référendum québécois serait illégitime. En d’autres mots, le NPD propose que le gouvernement fédéral (ou la Cour d’appel du Québec dont les juges sont nommés par Ottawa) ait le pouvoir de décider si l’éventuel référendum sur le statut constitutionnel du Québec sera légitime ou non.
• Dans la même optique, Ottawa aurait le droit de déterminer cette légitimité, non seulement en fonction d’une question qu’il jugerait « claire », mais aussi en évaluant l’ensemble du processus et de la procédure du référendum (l’exercice du vote, le dépouillement du scrutin, la transmission des résultats et les limites des dépenses, etc.)
• Une fois que ces conditions seraient respectées et qu’une « majorité des votes validement exprimées est en faveur de la modification proposée », le NPD voudrait que « toutes les parties formant la Confédération » (c’est-à-dire non seulement le gouvernement fédéral et le gouvernement québécois mais aussi les gouvernements de toutes les provinces et territoires) s’assoient et négocient la sécession ou le changement constitutionnel demandé par le Québec.

Où est le droit à l’autodétermination ?

Comme on le sait, la loi sur la « clarté » ne spécifie pas le pourcentage du vote qui constituerait une « majorité claire ». En réalité, les partis fédéralistes comme le PLC et le PC ont déjà dit qu’il faudrait plus de 50 % des voix pour que la sécession soit légitime. Pour le NPD, la position est plus nuancée. Dans la déclaration de Sherbrooke, le NPD affirme qu’il « reconnaîtrait une décision majoritaire (50% + 1) des Québécoises et Québécois » tout en ajoutant qu’« il appartiendrait au gouvernement fédéral de déterminer son propre processus ». L’objectif du projet de loi C-470 est de forcer le gouvernement fédéral à engager des négociations impliquant « toutes les parties formant la Confédération ». On évite ainsi la discussion sur le partage des pouvoirs et sur le fait que dans la constitution actuelle, c’est Ottawa qui dispose des pouvoirs réellement importants, tels le système financier et bancaire, le commerce, les affaires extérieures, les tribunaux et instances judiciaires supérieures, les forces armées et la police fédérale.

Une certaine ouverture

On doit cependant admettre que le projet de loi du NDP manifeste une certaine ouverture. Dans la clause 9 de C-470 par exemple, Ottawa et les provinces seraient obligées de négocier toute proposition constitutionnelle ratifiée par les électeurs québécois concernant l’intégration du Québec dans l’ordre constitutionnel canadien (soit la constitution de 1982 (qui n’a jamais été endossé par les gouvernements québécois), la délimitation du pouvoir fédéral de dépenser au Québec, les transferts fiscaux permanent et les normes y afférents, ainsi que le retrait du gouvernement du Québec, avec pleine compensation, de tout programme en cas d’intervention du gouvernement fédéral dans un domaine de compétence législative provinciale exclusive. Ces clauses pourraient renforcer la position du Québec face aux gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux. En substance, cette approche pourrait rejoindre la « gouvernance souverainiste » préconisée par le leadership du PQ en substitution au projet original.[2] Par rapport à un éventuel référendum, le NPD suggère qu’Ottawa et Québec négocient préalablement la question, un peu comme l’ont fait récemment les gouvernements anglais et écossais.

Entre l’arbre et l’écorce

Entre les lignes, il appert que le NPD cherche à dialoguer avec les éléments plus conservateurs du PQ et de la mouvance nationaliste québécoise. Il voudrait également se mettre de l’avant comme force politique capable de réconcilier le Canada et le Québec. Ce faisant, le NPD pourrait également apaiser les tensions qui subsistent au sein de sa députation québécoise (58 députés du NPD), qui semble-t-il ne partagent pas la même idée sur la question nationale québécoise.

Cependant, l’approche du NPD a été la cible d’une montagne de critiques au Canada anglais. Non seulement de la part des autres partis fédéralistes (ce qui était prévisible), mais également de la part des médias qui en général ont été très violents dans leur dénonciation de C-470. Le Globe & Mail, le Ottawa Citizen, et même le Toronto Star (le seul quotidien qui avait appuyé le NPD lors de l’élection de 2011) ont tous dénoncé un projet qui pourrait « faciliter la sécession du Québec ». Un parti qui aspire à gouverner la fédération, ont-ils dit, doit être prêt à « défendre le Canada ». Ces réactions n’augurent rien de bon pour Thomas Mulcair qui espérait attirer les appuis tant des nationalistes québécois que des anglophones fédéralistes modérés.

Au Québec, la réaction à C-470 a été plutôt tranquille. Les médias québécois ont surtout mentionné le fait qu’au Canada, il semble avoir un refus unanime des aspirations québécoises dans leur ensemble. Une exception cependant a été l’analyse de la correspondante du Devoir à Ottawa, Manon Cornellier. Selon Mme Cornellier, le projet du NPD pourrait réconcilier le caucus québécois avec le reste du pays où une majorité substantielle d’électeurs continue d’appuyer l’idée d’une loi qui pourrait contrôler une tentative de sécession. En substance selon elle, C-470 limite la marge de manœuvre et l’arbitraire d’Ottawa. Indirectement, il confirme l’appui du NDD au droit à l’autodétermination, à la reconnaissance d’une victoire possible du oui au référendum et au fédéralisme asymétrique.

Avenir incertain

Avec une telle manœuvre, le NPD espère satisfaire ses électeurs québécois. Le Bloc Québécois serait ainsi privé de plusieurs de ses appuis (les « nationalistes mous ») et ainsi, le NPD pourrait protéger ses 58 sièges. En tout cas cela reste à voir.

Car en réalité, aucun des deux projets, tant celui du NPD que celui du Bloc, ne seront adoptés ni même présentés au vote de la Chambre. De manière plus importante, le débat autour de C-470 a démontré l’ampleur du « non-débat » sur cette question au Canada anglais. Un jour ou l’autre, le NPD sera confronté à ce dilemme. Ou bien il est apte à proposer une nouvelle vision du Canada qui impliquerait sans ambages ni ambiguïté le respect des droits du peuple québécois à l’autodétermination. Ou bien il s’engage à défendre le statu quo quoi qu’il advienne. Seuls de grands bouleversements politiques et sociaux pourraient modifier la donne.[3]

Or justement, le mouvement Idle No More représente potentiellement une ouverture. Ce mouvement militant reflète l’opinion d’une partie croissante des Premières Nations qui estiment que l’architecture légale et constitutionnelle que lui a imposée l’État colonial canadien n’est plus tolérable. Il reste à voir si cette évolution pourrait forcer un réel débat au sein de la gauche au Canada anglais, qui était et reste ambiguë par rapport aux enjeux fondamentaux soulevés par les peuples qui réclament leurs droits.

-- Richard Fidler

---

[1] “Multiculturalism,” in federal legislation and the Constitution, places all ethnic cultures in Canada’s population, including French and English as well as those of other immigrant and settler populations, on an equal footing, ignoring the distinct national cultures of the First Nations, the Québécois and the Acadians. “Inter-culturalism,” a Quebec concept, emphasizes integration, not separation. It was defined by the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation as “a policy or model that advocates harmonious relations between cultures based on intensive exchanges centred on an integration process that does not seek to eliminate differences.”

[2] Le nouveau ministre des relations internationales du Québec, Jean-François Lisée, a déjà proposé un « plan B » étapiste dans son livre Sortie de Secours: Comment échapper au déclin du Québec (Boréal, 2000). L’idée est d’organiser plusieurs référendums sur des besoins essentiels qui, s’ils étaient acceptés, imposerait un renouvellement du fédéralisme.

[3] Le NPD peut-il se rapprocher de l’aile progressiste du mouvement souverainiste, notamment de Québec Solidaire ? Pour cela, il faudrait rejeter la proposition de Mulcair de bâtir une aile provinciale du NPD au Québec (remise à plus tard lors du dernier congrès du NPD pour des raisons principalement pragmatiques). Le membership officiellement réclamé du NPD au Québec est de 13 000 membres, un peu moins que le membership de QS et de loin inférieur à l’objectif recherché par M. Mulcair (20 000) lors de sa campagne pour le leadership du NPD.

People’s Summit in Quebec issues call for antiwar actions

The People’s Summit Against War and Militarism, which met in Montréal November 19-21, was attended by 225 persons from a wide range of organizations. It issued a Joint Declaration endorsed by more than 70 organizations including trade unions, women’s and student organizations, civil liberties groups, and other social movements and grassroots community organizations in Quebec. The declaration is also supported by seven peace groups in English Canada, including the Canadian Peace Alliance. See the list of signatories.

The People’s Summit was called by the Montréal antiwar collective Échec à la Guerre (Stop War), which organized the massive antiwar demonstrations of almost a quarter million in the streets of Montréal in 2003, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In addition to opposing Canada’s war of occupation in Afghanistan, the collective campaigns against Canada’s military spending and military recruitment in educational institutions, and in support of war resisters in the military.

The People’s Summit opened with an address by keynote speaker Jean Bricmont, author of the book Humanitarian Imperialism, and was followed by a day of workshops and panels on the issues and campaigns facing the antiwar movement in the coming period. The participants agreed to publicize and obtain signatures for their Declaration, to continue actions in opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and to campaign for the holding of a wide-ranging public debate on Canadian foreign policy and the role of the Canadian army.

For background on the People’s Summit and the work of Échec à la Guerre, see “People’s Summit Against War and Militarism to be held in Montréal.” Following is the text of the Joint Declaration, which I translated from the French for Socialist Voice.

-- Richard Fidler

For an End to the Logic of War and Domination!

As Quebec organizations devoted to the defense and expansion of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, here and throughout the world,

As citizens of Quebec yearning for peace and justice and anxious to develop international relations of co-operation founded on equality and solidarity,

1. WE ARE OUTRAGED BY:

• Canada’s descent into an increasing spiral of war and curtailment of democracy;
• Canada’s participation since October 2001 in a war of occupation in Afghanistan, sowing death and destruction under the pretext of a fight for democracy, security and women’s rights in that country, and which is now spreading into Pakistan;
• the Canadian parliament’s vote extending that intervention at least until July 2011, in violation of the will of the majority of the population;
• the ceaseless increase in the public funds allocated to this logic of war (in Canada alone, $58 million dollars per day in 2009-2010) to the detriment of social spending and genuine development assistance;
• Canada’s complicity with torture, both of Afghans captured in combat and of some Canadian citizens imprisoned abroad;
• the militarization of Canadian society, which entails increasing violence, especially against women;
• the fear-mongering about a terrorist threat that is exaggerated in order to justify the war and the many measures of surveillance and repression eroding our rights and freedoms;
• the pervasive public relations activities of the Canadian army in major sports, social and family events, and their recruitment campaigns in educational institutions, even the elementary schools;
• the increasingly serious social and environmental effects of the wars and military training exercises; and
• the growing militarization of the Arctic hand in hand with environmentally harmful economic projects and denial of the rights of the Indigenous peoples.

2. WE DENOUNCE THE “HAWKS” HERE IN CANADA

• successive Canadian governments, both Liberal and Conservative, that have led us into this dynamic and justified the war with groundless arguments;
• the major business interests, headed by the Business Council on National Issues, who see only opportunities for profits, especially for the military industry;
• the political parties that implement war policies or oppose them only half-heartedly; and
• the major media, which soft-peddle the opposition of a majority of the population to the war and do not report its tragic consequences for civilian populations.

3. WE CATEGORICALLY REJECT the false discourse of the “war against terrorism” and Canada’s direct or indirect military involvement alongside the United States in the context of a policy designed to extend their hegemony to the planet as a whole, characterized by

• the many wars initiated and conducted in violation of international law, including international humanitarian law: Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Lebanon (2006), Gaza (2009); and others that are apprehended against Iran and North Korea, even with threats of nuclear strikes;
• the hijacking of the UN Security Council, which does not condemn these illegal assaults or the war crimes they entail or the blatant projects of foreign control implemented by the aggressors in violation of international law;
• NATO’s provocative expansion to the East and its dual transformation — as the armed wing of US hegemony intervening throughout the world, and as a proxy for the UN — thereby profoundly discrediting the UN in the eyes of world public opinion;
• the threats and destabilization plans in regard to some countries that refuse to submit to the “New World Order” imposed by the United States; and
• a renewed arms race, including the development of new nuclear weapons and the increased militarization of space.

4. WE CALL ON THE PEOPLE OF QUEBEC TO MOBILIZE to help reverse this destructive world dynamic, by demanding

of the Government of Canada:

• the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan;
• a large reduction in military spending and the holding of a wide-ranging public debate on Canadian foreign policy, the role of the army, the military industry, and the arms trade;
• an end to Canada’s military partnership with the United States, including Canada’s withdrawal from NATO; and
• an end to its discourse instrumentalizing women’s rights and promoting the “responsibility to protect” in order to justify the war, and a firm condemnation of any intervention that is inconsistent with international law;

and of the international community:

• the democratic renewal of the UN, and in particular full respect for its Charter, a stronger role for the General Assembly and a far-reaching reform of the Security Council, including abolition of the right of veto; and
• the application of Resolution 1325 of the UN Security Council concerning the involvement of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace processes.

November 21, 2010

Canadian Left Responses to War in Ukraine – a Provisional Balance Sheet

By Richard Fidler

February 24, 2022 marked the opening of a new phase in the developing reconfiguration of global capitalist and popular forces. Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine, the prompt mobilization of resistance by Ukrainians, and the quick shift toward public support for NATO in much of Europe, confronted the international Left and progressive forces with some major challenges. The Left in Canada was no exception.

“This conflict will change everything,” wrote Quebec socialist Pierre Beaudet in a memo to the solidarity organization Alternatives that he directed, just days before Beaudet’s sudden death March 8. “As in any important debate, there are theories, strategic issues, choices to make in our practice.”

Beaudet pointed to some key features of the new situation:

1. Russia’s determination to prevail, its denial of “the very reality of Ukraine as the sovereign state and territory of a people with the right of self-determination,” risked a long war in which “resistance to the aggression is the only outcome on offer.”

2. Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin’s approach “borrowed from the tradition of the USSR under Stalin in imposing a centralizing and repressive state along with attempts to carve out a place in the global arena.”

3. The post-Soviet expansion of NATO, and Washington’s failures in its intervention in the Middle East and Central Asia, prompting Putin’s belief that this was now the time to strike a major blow in Ukraine, where Russia had already annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported pro-Russian separatists in the east.

“Now that Russia has attacked, there is no turning back. Either Putin wins his bet by the subjugation of Ukraine, which would allow him to ‘entrust’ to a new government the job of ‘re-establishing order.’ Or the situation will drag on into an endless conflict – unless Russia decides to wage war in the cities even if it means destroying them, with their people, as was done in Syria.”

The result will be “an immense realignment of priorities and strategies.

“NATO, its relevance diminished in recent years, will return in force. The member states will be required to increase substantially their military spending and become directly involved in the strategy of counter-attacking and weakening Russia….”

4. The Canadian government will follow the U.S. line, as always. Military spending will surge, financed by severe cutbacks in other expenditures. Fossil fuel export projects – perhaps “the LNG project designed to bring Alberta’s gas through Quebec” – will be relaunched as part of the “war effort.”

5. “We act in solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance that aims to re-establish an inclusive and peaceful sovereignty without abuses of national minorities. Our solidarity can be exercised in the area of humanitarian assistance” which “must not be reduced to meet Ukraine’s needs.”

6. Russia’s invasion was a “blatant violation of the UN Charter and international law. The United States and their NATO allies, including Canada, have plunged us as well increasingly into this war by a flurry of sanctions and outrageous statements.” A peace process must include the United Nations, and not be left to the major protagonists like the European Union and NATO.

The analysis was prescient. With hindsight, we can think of some elements that can now be added. However, Beaudet’s argument had the virtue of centering our response on the need to support Ukraine’s defense of its territorial sovereignty and self-determination.

In the 18 months since Beaudet’s memo, his organization Alternatives has worked to promote solidarity with the Ukraine resistance while opposing Russian aggression and NATO expansion. It has also joined the international campaign for the release of Boris Kagarlitsky and other Russian antiwar prisoners. Its approach contrasts with that of the pacifist organization Échec à la guerre, which claims to oppose all imperialisms – especially U.S. “military domination” -- but has not rallied to defend Ukraine.

In what follows, I will outline and critically comment on some of the other responses to the war by the Canadian and Quebec left.

The parliamentary Left

When it comes to membership in NATO and its alliance with U.S. imperialism -- the bedrock of Canada’s foreign policy -- the labour-based New Democratic Party tends to march in lockstep with whatever government holds office in Ottawa. The Ukraine war is no exception. While supporting provision of weapons needed by Ukraine – as it should – the NDP has also agreed with moves to reinforce Canada’s military spending and NATO involvement as well as sanctions designed to harm the economic needs of the Russian people.

In a statement issued on the one-year anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion, the NDP reaffirmed its support of “the Ukrainians who are defending their country and … those who have been forced to flee.” But it called for strengthening the sanctions regime, and failed to raise the need to cancel Ukraine’s public debt as it seeks to rebuild.

The other party of Canada’s parliamentary Left, the pro-Quebec sovereignty party Québec solidaire, defends Ukraine of course. However, it has limited its support to a motion in Quebec’s National Assembly, on the eve of Russia’s aggression,[1] and a resolution adopted by its National Council on May 28, 2022. The resolution condemned Russia, reaffirmed Ukraine’s right to self-determination while calling for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the aggression, and urged rapid reception of Ukrainian refugees.

The QS council resolution emphasized that “this conflict must not be used as a justification to allow the exploitation of Quebec’s oil and gas resources, or to increase exports of fossil fuels from Canada on the pretext of replacing Russian oil and gas.”

Finally, it called on its members, and citizens, to “support peace demonstrations opposing the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army….”

However, QS has not itself initiated any such demonstrations although its program[2] declares that the party “will participate in building international mobilizations against military interventions (of imperialist powers) aimed at ensuring control over peoples and their wealth and attacking their sovereignty.” The party also calls for Canada’s immediate withdrawal from NATO and NORAD.[3]

Extraparliamentary Left

Québec solidaire identifies itself as “a party of the streets as well as the ballot-boxes,” and it is the extraparliamentary wing of the party that has taken the lead in defense of Ukraine. The popular website Presse-toi à gauche (PTàG) includes among its editors and writers the most prominent left-wing activists within QS. Since the war began each weekly edition has included a selection of articles on the war, the vast majority sympathetic to Ukraine.

Another left website based in Quebec, Pivot, has likewise supported Ukraine, although not as diligently as PTàG. In April it published a powerful rejoinder to a few accounts in mainstream media and left-leaning publications in Quebec that attributed the war to provocation of Russia by NATO and/or Ukraine.

In the rest of Canada, unfortunately, the major left publications and organizations have tended to ignore the Ukraine resistance or dismiss it as a “proxy” for what they portray as a NATO war against Russia.[4] People’s Voice, the Communist party monthly newspaper, not surprisingly supports Russia. “NATO, the US, EU and Canada have left Russia with few options,” said the CP in a statement issued in October 2022 that echoed some of the Kremlin’s narratives.

A prolific blogger on the war is Yves Engler, who has a well-earned reputation as the most prominent critic of Canadian foreign policy from an anti-imperialist standpoint. The author of many books and articles, Engler is associated with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, an NGO that sponsors online seminars and petitions critical of Canadian corporate and government intervention abroad. Engler and the CFPI have campaigned against the provision of Canadian arms to Ukraine, and joined the international chorus advocating a “negotiated peace” in Ukraine that is not predicated on Russian withdrawal.[5]

Engler’s articles have been republished by some on-line “progressive” websites such as rabble.ca, which otherwise have little to say about the war.

A widely-read online website The Maple publishes well-researched critiques of Canadian foreign policy but has said little about the Russian war on Ukraine. Its managing editor Alex Cosh published an article in another left publication Briarpatch that repeated much of the Kremlin narrative justifying its aggression.[6] However, The Maple also organized an on-line debate between Ukrainian socialist Taras Bilous and Quebec blogger Dimitri Lascaris on the issue “Should Leftists Support Sending Weapons to Ukraine?”[7] Lascaris, who once ran for leader of the Canadian Green party, is notorious for his support of Russia as a force for peace. A readers’ poll conducted by The Maple following the debate found a substantial majority supporting Bilous in his defense of the Ukraine resistance.

A rare debate on the war: Canadian Dimension

Canadian Dimension, a Winnipeg-based monthly magazine (founded in 1963, on-line only since 2019), is undoubtedly the most prominent publication on the English-Canadian left. Its extensive coverage of the war[8] has been slanted heavily against Ukraine’s resistance, some of it authored by writers like Yves Engler and Dimitri Lascaris, as well as U.S. sources like CodePink. However, CD also published five articles this year by Russian antiwar critic Boris Kagarlitsky, and recently published a strong editorial statement protesting Kagarlitsky’s arrest and urging its readers to support the international solidarity campaign for his release.

When Canadian Dimension introduced an article by Kagarlitsky with the headline “Clear-eyed veteran Russian leftist dissident offers a courageous and politically indispensable take on the Russia-Ukraine war,” Toronto socialist Sam Gindin and Montreal-based professor David Mandel wrote an angry “reply to Kagarlitsky” deriding his analysis as “shallow” and “simple-minded.” Their article was largely a defense of Putin based on a selective discourse analysis purporting to show that “there is no hint here, or indeed anywhere in Putin’s speeches or writing, of a denial of the right of the Ukrainian state or people to exist” – deliberately overlooking the ample well-documented evidence to the contrary.[9] As for Gindin and Mandel, they argued that Ukraine could not possibly strive for sovereignty given its reliance on US support. It was just a “proxy” for US imperialism in its attempt to weaken Russia.

In a subsequent article, Mandel repeated many of the now-familiar (and false) Kremlin talking points in its narrative of defensive war. Canadian Dimension has now published a devastating rebuttal, refuting many of Mandel’s “myths” one by one.

The Gindin-Mandel piece was a clear illustration of how viewing the war as a defensive reaction by Russia to U.S. aggression tends to translate into support of Russia and justification of its action. Both authors had been developing this position on an internal discussion list of the Toronto-based Socialist Project over the past 18 months. In Gindin’s case, it seemed to reflect the disorienting impact of the war’s outbreak on a thesis he had long defended with the late Leo Panitch, articulated at length in their magnum opus The Making of Global Capitalism.[10] As I have summarized it:

“The book’s central thesis is that the United States has dominated the planet since World War II, integrating other powers (and countries) by way of subordination to its ‘informal empire.’ This portrayal is distinguished from the conditions of inter-imperialist rivalry that Lenin had characterized as a central element of prewar capitalism…. This new world superpower has integrated ‘all the other major capitalist powers into an effective system of coordination under its aegis’.”[11]

Clearly, this portrayal of a harmonized (if competitive) global capitalism was a long shot from the brutal imperial savagery of capitalist Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. Gindin seems unable to explain this contradiction, and has fallen back on a more classic, but still unipolar, image of a U.S. empire determined to discipline, even militarily defeat a recalcitrant subaltern in its global order.

(If, as some argue, the war is fundamentally an inter-imperialist conflict, revolutionary socialists would support neither side, although they might still defend Ukraine state sovereignty.)

Gindin is by far the pre-eminent member of Socialist Project’s steering committee. Following his lead, the SP has refrained from campaigning in defense of the Ukrainian resistance. Instead, the few articles on the war published in its on-line Bullet have promoted pacifist themes and opposition to providing Ukraine with defensive weapons. The Bullet has also published two articles by David Mandel that attempt to “explain” and excuse the Russian invasion. Both articles proclaim that Ukrainian resistance is futile and should immediately cease.

It should also be noted that Socialist Project, unlike many groups and individuals representing a diversity of political perspectives, has not even endorsed the international campaign of protest against the arrest of Boris Kagarlitsky.[12]

Ex-Trotskyists rejecting Ukraine solidarity

Among the other political casualties of the war are some of the small groups with roots in various wings of the international Trotskyist movement. The Toronto-based International Socialists published a statement on February 24, 2022 denouncing “Russian expansionism” and calling for Russian withdrawal from Ukraine… and Canadian withdrawal from Eastern Europe, referring to its role in NATO “training fascists within the Ukrainian military.” Ukraine, it said, “is once again paying the price as a state stuck in between two major imperialist rivals,” Russia and NATO. The IS newspaper Socialist Worker has published several articles along the same lines since the invasion, all of them produced by their co-thinkers in Britain.

Spring, the on-line publication of a group that broke with the IS a few years ago, has reposted many articles on the war by Yves Engler, and two or three of its own. David Bush denounces the Russian aggression but insists “the main enemy is at home.” This means opposing “troop deployments and arms shipments” to Ukraine. James Clark, once a leader in the Canadian movement against U.S. aggression in the Middle East and Afghanistan, wrote a four-part series of articles on the antiwar movement of ten years ago, but made no attempt to link its lessons to the war on Ukraine.

Fightback (in Quebec, La Riposte, a recognized collective within Québec solidaire) is the Canadian member of the British-based International Marxist Tendency. At the outset of the war, its publications featured a lengthy statement by the IMT dismissing the Ukrainian resistance:

“All the talk of Ukrainian sovereignty is contradicted by the fact that the country has been under growing domination from the US since the victory of the 2014 Euromaidan movement. All the key levers of economic and political power are in the hands of a corrupt oligarchy and its government, which, in turn, is the puppet of US imperialism and a pawn in its hands…. In fact, the current war is to a large extent a US-Russia conflict, being played out in the territory of Ukraine.”

Subsequent articles on the war have replicated this approach.

Finally, it is worth noting the fate of a tiny current that originated in some 2004 expulsions from the U.S. Socialist Workers Party because they had questioned the SWP’s support of the Pentagon overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. John Riddell and Roger Annis, joined by Ian Angus, founded an on-line journal Socialist Voice and invited some other Marxists (including myself) to participate in its production. An on-line archive of the issues and pamphlets published before its demise in 2011 may be accessed here.

As it explains, Socialist Voice ceased publication because its key editors had become heavily committed to other enterprises. John Riddell had resumed publication of his massive volumes on the proceedings of the Communist International in Lenin’s day.[13] Ian Angus was publishing his website Climate & Capitalism and writing books on Ecosocialism.

As for Roger Annis, he travelled to Ukraine with two other Canadians – Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman – in 2014, at the invitation of Boris Kagarlitsky, and emerged as a supporter of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine. He has since transformed his blog A Socialist in Canada into a shameless propaganda mouthpiece for Putin’s regime and its aggression, occupation and annexations in Ukraine. Independently of Annis, Desai and Freeman (he is a former Trotskyist, in Britain) have created their own website and authored a Manifesto that praises today’s China as “the indispensable nation in humankind’s struggle for socialism, offering aid and inspiration as a worthy example of a country pursuing socialism in accordance with its national conditions.” Among the initial signatories of the Manifesto is John Riddell.

The group praises China – and Russia – as paragons of “multipolarity,” the alternative they promote to U.S. unipolar hegemony. What this means for Ukraine is described by Radhika Desai in her recent book: “[T]his war takes the form of a US-led NATO war against Russia over Ukraine. In this war, Ukraine is the terrain, and a pawn—one that can be and is being sacrificed with the apparent cooperation of its West-oriented leadership.”

Conclusion

As in other countries, Canadian left responses to Russia’s war have tended to divide along two conflicting fault lines. Crudely put, there are those who see the war as a Russian imperialist assault on Ukraine and seek to mobilize solidarity with Ukraine’s popular resistance, including its right to acquire the weapons it needs for its defense. In contrast, there are those who reduce the war to a conflict between NATO and Russia, the Ukrainians being simply pawns of the Pentagon and its European allies. The first group call for immediate Russian withdrawal from Ukraine as the only path to a peaceful solution. The second claim that Russia has some legitimate interest in occupying all or part of Ukraine, and invent narratives to justify its aggression and deny Ukraine’s right of national self-determination. These differences cannot be reconciled. It is a fundamental rift.

Thanks to Art Young for his assistance in reviewing a draft of this article. – RF

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[1] “L’Assemblée nationale adopte une motion unanime de soutien à l’Ukraine,” February 23, 2022. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2022-02-23/l-assemblee-nationale-adopte-une-motion-unanime-de-soutien-a-l-ukraine.php.

[2] Programme de Québec solidaire. See, in particular, para. 9.2.1.

[3] North American Air Defense Agreement (NORAD).

[4] For a critical analysis of this convoluted reasoning, see “The war in Ukraine: four reductions we must avoid.”

[5] A typical article: “Cutting through Canada’s war propaganda.”

[6] See also “Yes, The Ukraine War Could Have Been Prevented,” by Alex Cosh, arguing that the war is a “NATO proxy war.”

[7] “Should Leftists Support Sending Weapons to Ukraine?”

[8] See the section “Crisis in Ukraine” on the CD website.

[9] See, for example, Putin’s speech on February 23, 2023 justifying his decision to invade Ukraine.

[10] The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso, 2013).

[11] Richard Fidler, “Remembering Leo Panitch.” See the text following the subhead “Global capitalism.”

[12] As one of the very few SP members on its discussion list to dispute Gindin and Mandel, I was barred by the steering committee from posting any comment on “the Ukraine-Russia war” (sic) for two months earlier this year.

[13] Pathfinder Press and Haymarket.

Afghan resistance is ‘terrorist’ under Canadian law, Khawaja trial judge rules

In the first major prosecution under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, Mohammad Momin Khawaja, a 29-year-old Ottawa-area software developer arrested almost five years ago, was convicted October 29 on five charges of participating in a “terrorist group” and helping to build an explosive device “likely to cause serious bodily harm or death to persons or serious damage to property”.
However, the prosecution was unsuccessful on its two major charges, which alleged that Khawaja had been part of a plot to commit deadly bombings in London, England — for which five individuals, all Muslims like Khawaja, were sentenced to life imprisonment in England in April 2007.
The verdict was not surprising. A lengthy non-jury trial that began in June produced no evidence to link Khawaja directly to the alleged London bomb plot, although there was extensive police evidence that Khawaja knew at least some of the London group. On the other hand Khawaja, through his lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, admitted building an explosive device, a remote detonator that he termed a “hi-fi digimonster”, at their behest.
A striking aspect of the verdict, however, although it was given little attention in the media coverage, was the rationale given by Justice Douglas Rutherford for rejecting Khawaja’s defence. That defence was that Khawaja thought the detonator was for use in fighting the NATO occupation of Afghanistan — for example in triggering the improvised explosive devices commonly used by the Afghan resistance. This activity, the defence argued, fell outside the definition of “terrorist activity” in the legislation, which excepts “an act or omission that is committed during an armed conflict. . . in accordance with customary international law or conventional international law applicable to the conflict.”
Judge endorses Canada’s war in Afghanistan
The Ontario Superior Court judge acknowledged “an abundance of evidence that Momin Khawaja’s central objective was to play a role in the fighting in Afghanistan….” But in ruling that any such role would be “terrorist activity”, he explicitly underwrote the excuse given by successive Liberal and Conservative governments for Canada’s Afghan war.
The judge adopted the justification given for the initial imperialist attack on Afghanistan: “In response to the attack on the twin towers in New York on 9/11, the U.S.A. and the U.K. sent troops and equipment into Afghanistan with the objective of capturing Bin Laden, destroying al Qa’eda and removing the Taliban regime.” (paragraph 114 of the judgment) Then, citing a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions subsequently endorsing the assault on Afghanistan and authorizing continued occupation and fighting by the NATO-led International Assistance Security Force [ISAF], the judge declared that he took “judicial notice as well, that Canada, along with other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, has contributed personnel and resources to the ISAF and that to date some 100 of Canada’s armed forces personnel have been killed in fighting with insurgent forces opposing the initial American and British and subsequent United Nations intervention in support of a reconstructed and democratic Afghanistan.” (paragraph 124)
(By “judicial notice”, the Judge was referring to the legal doctrine that courts, without hearing evidence on the matter, are entitled, as the Judge says, to “resort to certain notorious facts . . . which I think are beyond dispute among reasonable people.”)
And he concluded:

“. . . it seems to me beyond debate that, subject to the applicability of the exclusionary ‘armed conflict’ clause, those who support and participate in the insurgent armed hostilities against the civilian population, the government, and government and coalition forces attempting to reconstruct and maintain peace, order and security in Afghanistan, are, by definition, engaging in terrorist activity. Seen through the lens of a court of Canada, a Member State of the United Nations, I do not think it can be viewed otherwise. News reports of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan are characterized daily in the news as ‘terrorist’ and not surprisingly since, subject to the armed conflict clause, they meet the definition of terrorist activity in the Criminal Code. It seems self-evident that the armed insurgency in Afghanistan is

- intended in whole or in part to intimidate the population or that segment of it that supports the legitimate government and those assisting it in its reconstruction and establishing of peace and order with regard to their security, and intended to compel the population, the government, NATO, the United Nations and all those agencies supporting the reconstruction and democratization efforts to refrain and desist, and
- that consequential death and destruction is caused and reported throughout the world on a daily basis.” (paragraph 125)

Largely on that basis, the judge held that the “armed conflict” exception in the Anti-Terrorism Act had no application to the case. He quoted his ruling in a motion on the defence argument during the trial:

“The exception shields those who do acts while engaged in an armed conflict that would otherwise fit the definition of terrorist activity from prosecution as terrorists as long as the acts are within the internationally recognized principles governing warfare. Momin Khawaja was not so engaged.”

In other words, Canadian troops could not be convicted of “terrorist activity” while fighting in Afghanistan. But Afghan insurgents fighting in self-defence and to expel occupying armies — or those assisting the insurgents — could be so charged and convicted.
Pattern of anti-Muslim repression
The defence adduced no evidence on the nature of the war in Afghanistan, nor did it attempt to rebut the ideological rationale of the UN Security Council, dominated by the major imperialist powers. The defence strategy did not seek to expose Canada’s Afghan intervention and its effect on young Muslims like Khawaja who, outraged by this war of conquest, sympathize with the armed resistance in Afghanistan.
Momin Khawaja is due to be sentenced on November 18. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act, he faces possible life imprisonment for committing an offence “for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group”. The Act is draconian legislation rushed through Parliament in 2001 in the wake of the September 9 attacks on the twin towers and Pentagon.
The Act, which amended the Criminal Code, is a virtual license for courts to override long-standing principles of due process in the application of criminal law. For example, in the only other trial to date under the Act, an under-age youth was convicted recently in Brampton, Ontario, of being an “eager acolyte” to and participating in a “terrorist group” — the “terrorist group” in question being comprised, as the judge found, of other co-accused who were not before him and have not yet been tried. In effect, the co-accused have already been convicted in absentia of “terrorism”. The group in question, originally 17 but now reduced to 11 as a result of acquittals and dropping of charges, is comprised mainly of young Muslims, many under-age, who were arrested in a “sting” entrapment operation. (See The Toronto ‘Anti-Terror’ Arrests: An Attack on Muslims and Antiwar Opinion.)
Meanwhile, Canada still has five Muslim men who have been jailed— or, after years of incarceration, subjected to heavily monitored house arrest in the forced custody of family members — all without being charged with any specific offence, simply on the basis of being certified by two government Ministers that they were somehow engaging in terrorism, subversion or espionage. As non-citizens albeit permanent residents, they have been jailed under Canada’s immigration legislation. One is still being held in Kingston, Ontario, at Canada’s “Guantanamo North”. They can be held indefinitely without charge or trial once a judge determines, on the basis of a secret hearing without the presence of the accused or his counsel, that they are somehow a threat to national security. (See the Report of the People’s Commission on Security Measures: http://peoplescommission.org/files/commpop_fullreport.pdf).
All of the “security certificate” victims are under threat of expulsion from Canada to repressive regimes in North Africa or Asia, with probable torture and possible death as a result of being labelled terrorists by the Canadian government. Their potential fate has been underscored by the horrendous case of Maher Arar, the Canadian tortured for more than a year in Syria on the basis of Canadian police reports falsely linking him with “terrorists”, and, more recently, the case of three Muslim Canadians — Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin — whom retired Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci has confirmed were tortured in Syria and Egypt, again, on the basis of Canadian police reports falsely linking them with terrorist activities.
Political overtones
The judge’s reasoning in the Khawaja case is a fresh reminder of the close connection between Canada’s “war on terrorism” and its war in Afghanistan. The political overtones were evident throughout the trial. Summing up the case for the Crown, the prosecutor told the court that “It was his [Khawaja’s] intention to bring death and destruction to the West.” This was the theme repeated over and over in the lurid media coverage. It is, of course, an underlying theme in the constant propaganda against Muslims in the media.
This was an important trial for the government, as it was the only case so far in which the Canadian police had managed to come up with substantial evidence of a plot by some Muslims to engage in violent acts that could somehow fit within the definition of “terrorism” in Canadian law. (The lack of such evidence is clearly the reason why none of the security certificate victims has been accused of any specific crime.) Yet even in Khawaja’s trial, it was impossible to ignore the political context. It was dramatically illustrated when prosecution witness Zeba Khan, Khawaja’s ex-fiancée, testifying by video link from her home in Dubai, explained that his references to “jihad” in his numerous emails to her, which the police had seized as evidence, had nothing to do with terrorism.
“Jihad and terrorism are different things,” she told the court. “You will not meet a young Muslim man in the world who is not angry about something. Anyone who watches the news, if he wasn’t mad then (a) there’s something wrong with him or (b) he’s ignorant.” Not surprisingly, the prosecution limited its examination-in-chief of this witness to less than 10 minutes! In her July 2004 statement to police, Khan had said fighting troops in Muslim lands “is not an act of terrorism”. As reported by the Ottawa Citizen, she and Khawaja had “shared a belief in jihad — struggle — that fell far short of terrorism”.
Further evidence of what motivated Mohammad Khawaja was revealed in an Ottawa Citizen profile last June that began:

“Four days after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a gang of white males in Orléans (an Ottawa suburb) pulled a 15-year-old Muslim boy off his bicycle and beat him unconscious. … Buried in the Citizen story of the boy’s beating was a quote by a 22-year-old man named Mohammad Khawaja.
“‘I didn’t think something like that would happen in Orléans,’ he told a Citizen reporter during a random interview at the Orléans mosque. ‘It’s shocking.’”

On a pre-trial motion, Khawaja’s lawyer Lawrence Greenspon got Justice Rutherford to strike down on constitutional grounds the Anti-Terrorism Act’s requirement that a “terrorist act” be one committed “for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause”. The decision raised eyebrows in the legal defence community as it seemed to widen the potential for terrorism charges to be laid in connection with activities that had no such motivation, such as a strike by workers on wage issues. Greenspon defended his motion, however:
“It gave the right for police to investigate people on the basis of their religious, ideological or political beliefs, which we knew would be Muslim males aged 22 to 45,” he told the Ottawa Citizen.

“We’ve been down that road before in the name of security,” he adds. “Let’s target a particular group of people and put them in a camp — the Italians, the Japanese Canadians — or the FLQ and its sympathizers in the jails of Montreal. What we have now is a definition of terrorism that is a lot closer to the definitions in other western countries”.

Ominous precedent?
In any event, the judge held in his verdict that “there is an abundance of evidence that what was being done by Khawaja . . . and his associates was clearly motivated ‘in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause.’ Whether that is an essential ingredient of these offences or not, it has been abundantly proven.” No doubt this finding will play some role in the probable appeal.
The Khawaja verdict makes clear that the “terrorist” label can be slapped on any armed resistance to Canadian and NATO troops in Afghanistan or elsewhere. It ominously echoes the reasoning of the Bush Administration in another case involving a young Canadian Muslim — Omar Khadr, the Canadian child soldier who has been imprisoned and tortured by the U.S. military in Guantánamo since 2001, and is now charged with killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan during a U.S. attack on his family’s residence that killed his father. There is now eyewitness evidence that Khadr did not shoot the soldier in question. And there is a mounting movement in Canada demanding the return to this country of this last remaining citizen of a Western power being held in Guantánamo.
However, even if Khadr is returned to Canada what is his likely fate? He may not be prosecuted for murder. But following the judge’s reasoning in Khawaja’s case, is it excluded that Khadr, as a non-military “enemy combatant” in Afghanistan, could be considered a “terrorist” in Canadian law and subject to the extreme penalties in the Anti-Terrorism Act?

Addendum - August 3, 2013

 As this report indicates, a major issue in the trial concerned the legality of the war in Afghanistan under international law. As I report, the judge held it was legal, “citing a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions subsequently endorsing the assault on Afghanistan and authorizing continued occupation and fighting by the NATO-led International Assistance Security Force (ISAF)….” These resolutions are cited at paragraphs 113-125 of the trial judgment, which rely heavily on a memorandum issued by the UN as a “General Backgrounder.”

The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s verdict. At paragraph 173 of their judgment the three-judge panel endorsed the judge’s view of “the basic nature of the conflict in Afghanistan.” The “skeletal and obvious facts” cited by the judge, the panel wrote, are “notorious and beyond dispute among reasonable persons. They are recited in numerous United Nations Security Council Resolutions, some of which were referenced both by the Crown and the appellant’s own counsel at trial, the factual accuracy of which is not challenged on appeal.”

The appeal court allowed the Crown’s cross‑appeal and substituted a sentence of life imprisonment on the conviction for building a detonator to cause a deadly explosion, and substituted a total of 24 years of consecutive sentences for the remaining counts, to be served concurrently with the life sentence, and set parole eligibility at 10 years instead of 5.

Khawaja’s further appeal of both his conviction and sentence to the Supreme Court of Canada was dismissed. Speaking for the Court, the Chief Justice stated, in part: “I agree with the courts below that judicial notice could be taken of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the counter-insurgency acts in that country which, subject to the armed conflict exception, meet the definition of terrorist activity. These facts were beyond contestation, and thus meet the test for judicial notice.” (paragraph 99)

However, the Quebec antiwar organization Échec à la guerre, which has long campaigned for immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan, deconstructs the UN resolutions cited approvingly by the judges, explains the context in which they were adopted, and questions why anyone seeking to uphold international law would rely on them as proof of the war’s legality. The following is an English translation of its argument, which is included in an excellent document addressing 18 questions in relation to the war. These excerpts are taken from the full text of the document, published in the book Afghanistan and Canada: Is there an alternative to war?, edited by Lucia Kowaluk and Steven Staples and published by Black Rose Books, Montréal:

 

QUESTION: Was the Afghanistan war authorized by the United Nations?

There is no UN Security Council resolution authorizing the United States, whether alone or in coalition with other countries, to attack Afghanistan. Between 11 September and 7 October 2001, when the bombardment of Afghanistan began, the UN Security Council adopted only two resolutions concerning the 9/11 attacks. Resolution 1368 of September 12 “unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks ... and regards such acts, like any act of international terrorism, as a threat to international peace and security.” The preamble to this resolution recognizes “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with the Charter.” Though, as we have seen, the terms of the Charter do not apply to the Afghan war, this language in the preamble of the resolution allowed the United States to claim legitimacy for its actions. Then, on 28 September 2001, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1373, which sets forth certain anti-terrorism measures that all states must apply. Neither Resolution 1368 nor Resolution 1373 even mentions the word “Afghanistan.”

In the aftermath of September 11, the United States capitalized on an outpouring of international sympathy to acquire carte blanche for war under the rules of international law. The Security Council, whose official mandate is to prevent war, allowed the United States and its “coalition” to prepare and declare one. The Security Council, of course, is no neutral body. Of its fifteen members, the five permanent ones (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) have veto power, impairing the Council’s capacity to prevent a war being conducted by any of the five. The ten remaining Council members are chosen from the UN member countries for rotating two-year terms. In practice, these ten rotating members are pressured by the United States to vote in its favour. Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council has been dominated by the American agenda, even though Russian and Chinese interests have occasionally obstructed it.

In this context, it took more than five weeks after the bombardment of Afghanistan commenced before the Security Council took a position on the war conducted by the United States and its “coalition.” Yet Resolution 1378 (14 November 2001) does not even mention it. Instead, it condemns the Taliban and supports “the efforts of the Afghan people to replace the Taliban regime”! Likewise, Resolution 1383 (6 December 2001) simply ratifies the Bonn Agreement signed the day before, providing for temporary arrangements among the “coalition” countries, the representatives of their Afghan allies (in the country and in exile), and the UN Secretary-General’s special representative. In addition, with Resolution 1386 (20 December 2001) the Security Council authorized, “as envisaged in Annex I to the Bonn Agreement, the establishment for 6 months of an International Security Assistance Force” (ISAF ). The previous day, the United Kingdom had officially offered to take command of ISAF, and Canada assumed this role later.

And if this is not bad enough, not only has the US Operation Enduring Freedom continued to this day, but after nineteen resolutions the Security Council has yet to set any guidelines whatsoever for the military invasion of Afghan territory or to call its authors to account. Meanwhile, the Council repeats ad infinitum its deep attachment to Afghan sovereignty. Two years after the invasion, the words “enduring freedom” finally appeared in Resolution 1510 (13 October 2003). While authorizing the expansion of the ISAF mandate outside of Kabul and its environs, this resolution calls on ISAF “to continue to work in close consultation with the Afghan Transitional Authority and its successors and the Special Representative of the Secretary General as well as with the Operation Enduring Freedom.” This clause appears in each subsequent 12-month renewal of ISAF authorization, effectively giving carte blanche to the US military intervention in Afghanistan.

 

QUESTION: The UN Security Council has ratified the Afghanistan war — doesn’t that make it legitimate?

The question of after-the-fact legitimacy is more difficult to resolve since it is quite true that the UN Security Council never officially disapproved or denounced the war in Afghanistan (or the war in Iraq, for that matter); quite the contrary. Nevertheless, we believe that the war is neither legitimate nor legal under international law, the only appropriate system of  law for deciding such matters.

The UN Charter clearly states that the primary role of the United Nations is to prevent war, and to propose other means of resolving conflicts between nations. Even if one accepts the idea that the United States was trying to prevent new terrorist attacks by attacking Afghanistan, the Security Council violated its mandate by failing to consider possible non-military solutions once the bombardment began.

This failure by the Security Council is unfortunately not an isolated case. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the United Nations has been undergoing a severe crisis since the end of the Cold War. The absence of a second superpower to act as a counterweight to the US has created a new situation at the UN — and especially on the Security Council, which is often reduced to ratifying the US empire’s wars, in violation of the UN charter. This happened with:

•         the UN Security Council resolution of the fall of 1990 giving advance authorization to the Gulf War;

•         the resolutions renewing the genocidal sanctions on Iraq for twelve straight years;
•         the resolutions ratifying the fait accompli consisting of the illegal March 2003 “coalition” invasion of Iraq — a June 2004 resolution even welcomed the end of the Iraq occupation!

On several occasions since the end of the Cold War, the UN’S fundamental mission has been derailed. It has become an instrument for approval of the US empire’s wars of expansion. In fact, former US Permanent Representative to the UN John Bolton allowed as much:

There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States, when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along ... When the United States leads, the United Nations will follow. When it suits our interest to do so, we will do so. When it does not suit our interests we will not.

 Just as it is possible for governments to pass laws violating their own country’s constitution or bill of rights — laws whose legality and legitimacy can then be challenged with reference to these fundamental legal instruments — the Security Council, under pressure from the United States, is increasingly passing resolutions that violate the spirit and the letter of the UN Charter. In these cases it is our duty to defend international law and denounce such resolutions, not to accept that they grant legitimacy to illegal acts.