Fighting Climate Change – Beyond Canada’s Carbon Tax

Free Transit Ottawa (FTO) organized a public meeting on March 18 on the theme “Fighting Climate Change: Beyond the Carbon Tax.”

The event was cosponsored by a range of local climate-justice movements: Ecology Ottawa, Horizon Ottawa, Justice for Workers, Fridays for Future and CAWI (City for All Women Initiative).

Speakers on the introductory panel were Emma Bider of Climate Justice Ottawa, Angella MacEwan of CUPE and the Green Economy Network, and myself representing Free Transit Ottawa.

The following text is based on my remarks. – Richard Fidler

* * *

Climate change is the most visible, most threatening expression of a larger, planetary ecological crisis, the result of a fossil-fueled economic system with its pursuit of endless growth which ensures that the exploitation of natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) exceeds the carrying capacity of nature.

Our approach must be commensurate with the structural challenge that crisis poses to the way society is organized if we are to halt and reverse the ecological catastrophe toward which we are now hurtling – and which is fueled by our dependency on fossil fuels.

Globally, we are still fighting even to win recognition of the need to end fossil fuel dependency. The major achievement of the recent COP 28 conference – the 28^th annual meeting of the UN conference parties since the Kyoto conference in the mid-1990s – was, for the first time, a consensus agreement that we must “transition away” from fossil fuels if we are to attain the international goal of “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050.

Is this happening? The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in a recent study,[1] reports that half of the oil consumed by humans has been burned in the past 27 years; half of the gas in the past 21 years; and half of the coal in the past 37 years. As a result, half of the world’s 1.77 trillion tonnes of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have been released in the past 30 years. Fourteen per cent have been emitted since the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015.

To date, renewable energies like wind, solar or thermal, have not made much of a dent in energy consumption or per capita fossil fuel use. Renewables have “only served to increase overall energy consumption.” In 2022 fossil fuels still accounted for 82.9 per cent of total world energy consumption.

But emissions from carbon production and use are destroying the global climate. So we have to find and develop renewable and substitute sources of energy. And, equally if not more important, find ways to eliminate much inefficient and socially undesirable consumption of energy. And adapt our societies to be less reliant on the market forces that drive production and consumption under our fossil-fueled capitalism, with their attendant growing social inequality and deterioration of public services.

Where is Canada in all this?

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer. More than half of its production is exported. Canada gets 90.8 per cent of its primary energy production from fossil fuels (54 per cent from oil, 31 per cent from natural gas, six per cent from coal). The remainder comes from hydro, nuclear and renewables sources.

The federal government’s Emissions Reduction Plan, the latest iteration of its Pan-Canadian Framework on Green Growth and Climate Change, promises to reduce emissions by 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2030 – and to net zero by 2050.

The Plan includes a forthcoming cap on oil and gas emissions; a green buildings strategy; and the creation of clean renewable electricity grids. But it also features promotion of electric vehicles (mainly cars) and extensive funding of new (and so far undiscovered or unproven) technology such as carbon capture and storage or direct air capture, allegedly to “offset” continued extraction of oil and gas.

And then there are the new pipelines and liquified natural gas (LNG) plants, built to export Canada’s increasing fossil-fuel extraction for many years to come. [Consumption of exported gas is not included in Canada’s emissions statistics.] The government-owned TMX pipeline project has cost some $35 billion to date. The LNG plant in Prince Rupert, fed by the controversial Northern Gateway gas pipeline, has cost $40 billion to build. Four more LNG plants are in the works.

Much of the federal Plan is left to the provinces and private business to implement, with dubious results. In Ontario, Ford ended a slew of renewable energy projects and is increasing the province’s reliance on natural gas. Alberta’s Smith has sharply curtailed renewable energy projects. British Columbia’s NDP government is pursuing LNG expansion and overseeing a dramatic ramp-up in natural gas fracking. In Newfoundland and Labrador, oil and gas now account for about 25% of the province’s gross domestic product, and the province aims to double oil production.

Still central to the federal Plan is the carbon tax or its counterpart in B.C. and Quebec, cap-and-trade. “Putting a price on pollution,” says the Plan, “is widely recognized as the most efficient means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Producers and consumers alike are subject to periodic graduated carbon price payments in the hope that, through market forces, increased costs will promote more climate-friendly expenditures.

However, we need to be clear. Regulating emissions is an alternative to planning and quantifying the needed cutbacks in fossil fuel extraction and development. As many critics have noted, carbon pricing doesn’t even regulate emissions, it just puts a price on them based on an arbitrary calculation, the “social cost of carbon,” that tends to ignore the “externalities” — the cumulative emissions, feedback loops, and (in the case of carbon trading credits) the disproportionate impacts of climate change on countries in the Global South. For business, carbon pricing is just a cost of doing business. And it will always be limited to ensure that Canadian businesses are not disadvantaged by competitors’ prices and to avoid economic disruption that would motivate greater market intervention.

For consumers, however, carbon pricing tends to download moral and financial responsibility on households that burn fossil fuels for heating or transportation. The feds have tried to offset public resentment over the tax through rebates for 80% of consumers. And, more recently, public opposition has forced them to exempt Maritimers from the tax on home heating oil, and to remove the tax from farm fuels. Yet the government still insists that carbon pricing will reduce Canada’s carbon emissions by up to one-third by 2030.

Clearly, the overall objective of Canada’s official climate plan is to retain fossil fuels as Canada’s primary energy source for as long as possible, using market-based “offsets” and carbon trading to achieve “net zero.” Not surprisingly, many Canadians are resentful at moves to make them help pay for these anti-ecological and antisocial policies and programs.

What’s the alternative?

In his recent book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, [2] Seth Klein argues convincingly that we need a radically different approach. He contrasts Canada’s listless response to today’s climate crisis with the massive mobilization the country experienced in WWII. That included adoption of an emergency mindset, mandatory measures, a reconfiguration of industrial production (e.g. jeeps and tanks, not cars) and above all no reliance on market forces; real planning, nationalizations (about 50 Crown corporations), and spending what it took to win.

A comparable mobilization is needed now, Klein urges. It would start with a national needs inventory as the basis for coordinating mass production of the equipment needed to realize our new GHG reduction targets. New factories would be built, as needed, to produce solar panels, wind turbines, electric heat pumps and electric busses at a mass scale. (The technology already exists.) A clear wind-down pathway would be adopted for all fossil fuel extraction in Canada, guided by a robust just transition plan for existing fossil fuel workers and communities that currently rely on these industries.

Along with a ban on new fossil fuel infrastructure, we need to develop a massive green public infrastructure plan, involving all levels of government. Billions of dollars would be invested in renewable energy, building retrofits, high-speed rail and expansion and electrification of cross-country railways, mass public transit, along with electric vehicle charging stations and methane capture from farms and landfills.

And because even under the best-case scenario a certain amount of global warming is already locked-in, Klein reminds us, we also now need to undertake major investments in climate adaptation and resilience infrastructure, with a focus on ensuring that vulnerable communities are better protected from climate disasters and related events (forest fires, extreme heat events, flooding, etc.). We also need to significantly invest in forest management that will lessen wildfire risks to rural and Indigenous communities, while providing thousands of sustainable jobs in resource-based communities. We need a large-scale program to repair and enhance Canada’s natural climate sequestration systems — helping nature suck carbon from the atmosphere. That includes an extensive reforestation program, and of course the preservation of existing old-growth forests.

Klein then adds an important point. As advocates of a Green New Deal have emphasized, he says, “we need more than just direct climate infrastructure investments — we also need large-scale investments in social infrastructure and the caring economy.”

“That means investments from all levels of government in zero-carbon public and non-profit housing — a bold commitment to build hundreds of thousands of new units of non-market housing. And it means federal and provincial funding for universal, public, accessible, quality child care and home care for seniors and people with disabilities. These are public services that are already virtually carbon-free and would represent a major enhancement to household affordability.”[3]

Finally, we need to set in law and regulation clear dates by which certain things must happen. “Clear targets … — embedded in law and well publicized — will send a much stronger signal to the market than any form of carbon pricing. They communicate to businesses and consumers that they must reorient their plans accordingly. If effectively enforced, these targets will push manufactures, builders, installers and extraction companies to make investment plans that align with these dates.”

That said, I would note a few things Klein overlooks. His national perspective must be supplemented by an international dimension. This means solidarity with climate-justice struggles in the global South – the peoples who are primary victims of global warming – in opposition to unequal trade relations, super-exploitation of their labour, and the pillage of their natural resources by transnational capital, and for relief from illegitimate debts. It means collaboration with countries like China in developing global trade in alternative energy resources and technologies.

Indigenous people are prime targets of attempts to coerce or coopt them into “partnering” with corporations and governments in the capitalist exploitation of their lands and resources. Solidarity with their struggles for self-determination and autonomy is essential.

The transition is itself a source of supplementary emissions that must be offset if the carbon budget is not to explode. Yet we need to reduce global energy consumption, that is, reduce productive and/or transport activities. This means challenging the capitalist growth imperative.

Does this mean de-growth? Some production or services should not degrow but be suppressed, ASAP: coal facilities and mines, oil extraction, weapons production, the advertising industry, plastics, pesticides, etc. But others should grow – such as renewable energies, organic agriculture, and essential services (education, health and culture).

Overall, this points to the “system change” that our movements have counterposed to climate change. Strategy, programs oriented to satisfying social, community needs, not subordinate to profit motive. And that, if I may say so, is a huge difference from the analogy Klein makes with the World War II mobilization. Then, ruling elites united in leading the national war effort. That unity was in their class interest.

Today, we have no such cross-class unanimity. Instead, we face what some critics call a “regime of obstruction” based on a matrix of corporate and financial control of our political and economic processes, the news and other cultural media – its power centers a combination of Calgary-based petroleum interests and Toronto-based finance and banking.[4] It’s a structural problem. To resolve it, we need to build alliances, coalitions of workers, farmers, indigenous communities, racialized minorities, students, youth and poor against the entrenched fossil oligarchy. And link decarbonization with opposition to capitalist austerity.

A key challenge – Restructuring transportation

If we break down Canada’s GHG emissions by sector, more than half are in fossil fuel resource extraction (25%) and transportation (28%).[5] How might the alternative strategy outlined here work in transportation, a service that along with housing and healthcare is integrally important to the day-to-day experiences of the people in our local communities?

Topping Seth Klein’s list of measures to get our transportation sector to carbon-zero is (and I quote) “expanding public transit, including a plan to make public transit not only more accessible and convenient, but also dramatically more affordable (minimally, that means free public transit for lower-income people, but could well involve making transit a ‘free’ publicly paid service, just like health care).”[6]

That is what we in Free Transit Ottawa propose: making public transit accessible to all, at no user charge, just like public schools, most health care, fire services, bike paths and sidewalks. A radically improved public transit system, which would be a major step toward fighting poverty and social exclusion, would also be the biggest single measure we could take to combat climate change.

What about trucks and cars? Rail expansion could reduce much highway trucking, and urban trucking can be electrified. As for cars, the private vehicles that have shaped the design and culture of our cities for more than a century – contributing to urban sprawl, loss of greenspace, wetlands and agricultural land, higher costs and waste of time for daily commuters, etc. – it is necessary not only to put bans on the manufacture, sale and advertising of new fossil fuel-burning cars, but to replace them through expansion of electrified urban public transportation and inter-city rail.

That was the point made by the workers at GM’s auto plant in Oshawa, which the company closed in late 2019 after more than 100 years of operations. Green Jobs Oshawa, the campaign led by Unifor Local 222’s political action committee, called on the federal government to take over the plant as a publicly owned enterprise and convert it to electric vehicle manufacturing, with a focus on the production of vehicles for government truck fleets such as those of Canada Post – following through on the postal workers’ union proposal for making the post office a hub for electrification and local community banking and home services.[7]

Far from replacing cars, however, Ottawa and some provinces are simply planning to electrify them. They have already arranged to invest some $50 billion on the construction of three giant factories – two in Ontario, one in Quebec – to manufacture batteries for EVs. Critics question the need for such giant subsidies to the foreign companies in question when they might well invest in battery production without the subsidies. We might ask, as well: what if such sums had been spent on expanding and electrifying urban public transit? And what about the environmental cost of extracting the minerals needed to produce these batteries? Can we really hope to reduce carbon emissions through massive development of mining, among the most energy-consuming and polluting industries?

Finally, we must bear in mind that the campaign for free and improved public transit will face serious opposition from property developers who own large tracts of land on the edges of cities, the oil and auto industries, other business sectors that favour low taxes and limited government, and the politicians who represent them.

To achieve free and accessible public transit, we will have to build a movement powerful enough to overcome this opposition. That movement will be centred on those who are transit dependent as well as environmental activists, but must also include a wide range of working and professional people, including those in Ottawa who currently work for the public transit utility, OC Transpo.[8] To build it, we will need to engage in educational activities as well as struggles for immediate reforms that lower the cost of public transport and/or increase its accessibility – joining existing struggles and initiating new struggles.

Ultimately, we need a different kind of government with the political will to lead, coordinate and consolidate the transition, a government based on the support of the victims of climate change, not its perpetrators.

 

---

[1] David Hughes, Getting to Net-Zero in Canada: Scale of the problem, government projections and daunting challenges (CCPA, February 2024).

[2] Seth Klein, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (Toronto: 2020).

[3] Ibid., pp. 183-184.

[4] Shannon Daub, Gwendolyn Blue, Lise Rajewicz, and Zoë Yunker, “Episodes in the New Climate Denialism,” in William K. Carroll, Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy (AU Press, 2021), p. 226.

[5] Followed by industry (14%), electricity (11%), agriculture (9%), residential buildings (6%) and non-residential buildings (4%).

[6] A Good War, p. 187.

[7] Delivering Community Power, https://www.deliveringcommunitypower.ca/.

[8] The OC Transpo union, affiliated with the Amalgamated Transit Workers, has publicly supported the work of Free Transit Ottawa. The national union is sympathetic as well. “ATU Canada advocates for fares to be affordable for all, and advocates for progress toward creating a fare-free transit.” https://www.atucanada.ca/blog/free-public-transit-canada.

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

Mounting solidarity with the people of Palestine in face of Israel’s assault

As I write, Israel has resumed its genocidal military assault on Gaza following a brief pause in the fighting. The scope of the Zionist state’s devastating onslaught on the Palestinian people is described by Gilbert Achcar in this post: https://gilbert-achcar.net/zionist-genocidal-war.

Tens of thousands demonstrated in support of Palestine before Canada’s parliament in Ottawa on November 25.

Another demonstration will be held December 2 in Ottawa, called by the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Among the participants in the November 25 protest were two busloads of delegates attending a weekend congress of Québec solidaire in nearby Gatineau. The next day, the congress of the left party voted to adopt an emergency resolution proposed by the party’s parliamentary wing and its Global justice and international solidarity commission. Here is the text, in translation:

That the 16th convention of Québec solidaire:

1. is outraged by the Israeli intervention in the Gaza Strip and the violence against the Palestinian population in the West Bank, and denounces the State of Israel's disregard for international law in its military intervention, including the bombing of civilians and its blockade of the Gaza Strip;

2. condemns the Hamas attacks on civilians launched on 7 October;

3. calls for an end to the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime, the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, respect for international law and the right of the Israeli and Palestinian people to live in peace and security;

4. calls on the Canadian Government to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza;

5. reiterates its support for the non-violent actions of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign and calls on the Government of Quebec to cancel the opening of its trade office in Tel Aviv;

6. Finally, denounces the rise in hateful acts targeting Quebec's Jewish and Muslim communities and commits to actively working to bring these communities closer together.

Québec solidaire delegates at the November 25 demonstration on Parliament Hill, Ottawa

Further reading: A statement by Solidarity, the U.S. revolutionary socialist organization, on how anti-imperialist politics are inseparable from solidarity with all struggles for self-determination of oppressed and occupied nations, including today in Palestine and Ukraine: https://againstthecurrent.org/atc227/consistent-anti-imperialism/.

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

---

[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.

How Ontario tenants fought for legal security of tenure, and won

By Richard Fidler

Nothing illustrates the post-pandemic austerity more clearly than the sharp inflation in housing costs as reflected in the escalating rates of mortgage interest[1] and residential rents.

Most immediate are the rent increases. Average rents across Canada have risen by 20 percent since the onset of the pandemic, and by even more in major cities.[2]

Not surprisingly, Ricardo Tranjan’s book on what he terms “The Tenant Class,” published in May, has attracted wide interest and sympathy from housing activists and advocates.[3] A senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Tranjan takes aim at the conventional approach, which treats the “housing crisis” as a temporary problem requiring a technical solution: build more housing to bring supply into balance with demand and thereby limit prices through competition. Critics on the left, he notes, emphasize the need to remove housing as much as possible from market forces through promoting and building social and community housing, regulating the remaining market provision, and organizing tenants to ensure quality and access.

How can this be done? Tranjan sees tenants as the vehicle for change. His concern is with agency, and tenants alone in his view have the interest and capacity to force the debate onto the political agenda. And he describes some major tenant struggles in Canada. “Organizers may find these stories helpful,” he says, “when calling other tenants to join the historical struggle against the landlord class, which includes many inspiring victories.” The stories he cites include a struggle by 19^th century settlers in Prince Edward Island against absentee British landlords for the right to buy their land as freehold tenure; Nova Scotia struggles for social housing construction; Montréal battles for tenants control of social housing; and struggles in Vancouver for the right to collective bargaining by tenants.

A separate chapter on tenant organizing today features rent strikes and political action initiatives in Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver as well as community organizing aimed at strengthening tenant input in battles for adequate housing.

Important omission

It is a useful, if rather disparate, inventory. But I – as a tenant activist in the late 1960s – was surprised to find only a fleeting (and inaccurate) mention of the major struggle in which we won legal security of tenure in Ontario. Here is what Tranjan says, in toto:

“Ontario had revised its residential tenancy act in 1968, drawing on a law reform commission that reviewed the matter in detail. In particular, the Ontario commission argued that tenants should have the right to collective bargaining as the asymmetric power relations between tenants and landlords would prevent fair outcomes in grievance cases and other negotiations….” (page 79)

In fact, until 1970 Ontario had no legislation specifically addressed to residential tenancies; these were subsumed under a general Landlord and Tenant Act that covered all tenancies, commercial and residential, the latter being based on feudal estates law that failed to address residential tenants’ needs for protection against exorbitant rent increases and restrictions against children, or for the right to individual and collective negotiation and adjudication of evictions and other conflicts with landlords. Tenant agitation in the 1960s prompted a law reform study, published in December 1968, that urged adoption of special legislation governing residential tenancies. Among its recommendations, it called for abolition of security deposits and distraint; an end to arbitrary or unreasonable refusal by landlords to allow tenants to assign, sublet or quit their leaseholds; imposing a legal duty of landlords to deliver and maintain premises in a good state of repair and fit for habitation; giving tenants a statutory right to apply to a court for enforcement of the landlord’s repair obligations, etc.

The Law Reform Commission report urged municipalities to establish Tenant Advisory Bureaus for provision of information, conciliation and rent review, using rent review officers to obtain “fair and just settlements of disputes concerning the payment or increasing of rent… and of disputes over evictions” – and, if this proved insufficient, “the introduction of a more stringent and compulsory system” of rent control. Although the report mentioned the issue of collective bargaining rights for tenants, it did not recommend that this be provided in law.

Ontario Tenants’ Association formed

While the Commission’s report, which was based on extensive consultation and hearings, was being publicly debated, a call for formation of an Ontario-wide tenants’ association was issued by the Association for Tenants’ Action in Kingston. ATAK had recently elected a member, Joan Kuyek, to Kingston’s City Council. I was among the delegates who met in response to the call in Kingston June 28-29, 1969 to found the Ontario Tenants’ Association. We represented tenants’ associations in Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Brampton, Hamilton and Peterborough.

We heard stirring presentations by tenant activists – including Frances Goldin from the Metropolitan Council on Housing in New York City, who pointed out that Canadians were paying a far higher percentage of rent to income than their neighbors in the United States, while possessing a much smaller stock of housing. Included in her advice to the new OTA: “Use demonstrations to break through the morass of the bureaucratic mind.”

The conference adopted some preliminary objectives, which were followed by a more complete definition of policy at the OTA’s October 1969 convention. They are worth quoting:

1. Membership in the Association shall be restricted to tenants and tenants’ associations.

2. The OTA will work for legal recognition of collective bargaining for tenants.

3. The OTA shall remain independent of any political party.

4. One immediate goal of the Association shall be to achieve the reform of the Landlord and Tenant Act, and to support the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission as a first step.

5. The OTA will work for tenant control of the management of the buildings in which they live.

6. The OTA will work towards the creation of a new Rent Regulation Act….”

The OTA’s detailed suggestions for the proposed Act emphasized that “The tenant is to have security of tenure, with eviction only for illegal non-payment of rent, undue damage, or criminal activities. Eviction is to be only by court order….” And they were preceded by the statement that “Rent regulation is a temporary solution to a long-standing problem that can only really be solved by more public and co-operative housing.”

OTA Chair Joan Kuyek and Alderman John Sewell at panel on Tenant Control, Toronto.

On October 8, 1969, about 500 OTA members and supporters demonstrated at the Ontario legislature in Queen’s Park, Toronto, to protest the provincial government’s failure to enact tenant protection legislation. According to the news release I issued on behalf of the OTA,

“Their demands were moderate, but the tenants were angry. At Queen’s Park they heard speeches by NDP deputy leader Jim Renwick and Liberal opposition leader Robert Nixon. But they booed lustily when Trade and Development Minister Stanley Randall, representing the cabinet [of Tory Premier John Robarts], took the microphone. Randall was constantly heckled as he plowed through a 15-minute prepared speech that made no attempt to meet the tenants’ demands.”

At a conference on the following day, close to 100 delegates met to debate and adopt the OTA’s principles and policies. Again, some excerpts are worth quoting. We began with the Statement of Principles:

“Two classes of people are interested in housing - those who live in it, and those who live off it. The latter comprise developers, real estate speculators, lending institutions, landlords’ lobbies, and the governments which are all too ready to heed their wishes. It is these institutions which are responsible for the housing crisis, and they alone who benefit from it.

“The Ontario Tenants Association seeks to represent a growing part of the first group — that is, those who rent the homes they occupy. OTA bases all its policies and actions upon the following premises, that:

1. Everyone has a right to a decent home at a price that he or she can afford.

2. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure that this housing is provided.

3. Because tenants, through their rent, pay for the financing, operations and maintenance of their homes, they should be entitled to bargain collectively over the terms of their rents and over the quantity and quality of services provided.”

In addition to detailed proposals for enactment of a new rent regulation act, we adopted resolutions on public housing that reflected input from affiliated Ontario Housing Corporation (OHC) tenant associations.[4] One called on the Ontario government to “increase the public stock of housing so that the average rent of all housing not exceed 20% of a household’s net income.” Another demanded that OHC “establish the principle of tenants’ control of the management of their buildings” and that public housing tenants be guaranteed access to the OHC’s files on them with the right to challenge misinformation before “a Review Board comprised equally of civil servants and tenants.”

Still another resolution addressed the need for collective bargaining rights:

“BE IT RESOLVED that the principles of collective bargaining be established by law as a method of resolving disputes between landlords and tenants, and that the Provincial Government be asked to introduce legislation to compel landlords by law to recognize any association, organization or union that represents 50% or more of the tenants in the leased premises under dispute, as the sole spokesman and bargaining agent for all the tenants in the leased premises under dispute.”

“And further, that the parties be compelled by law to bargain in good faith,

“And further, if the tenants choose to enhance their bargaining position by withholding rent, they, like unions, shall not individually or collectively be subject to the law of conspiracy.”

Law reform

Throughout 1969, tenants’ associations throughout southern and eastern Ontario organized and joined with the OTA in marching and lobbying for these objectives. And in December 1969 the Ontario government finally tabled its Bill 234 adding a Part IV to the Landlord and Tenant Act to govern residential tenancies. At the legislative committee hearing on the Bill, we were unsuccessful in winning agreement on our major criticisms as outlined in a five-page brief submitted by OTA chair Joan Kuyek along with representatives of the Metro Toronto Tenants Association. Nevertheless, as the OTA Newsletter reported, “the Bill does represent a recognition of the rights of Ontario tenants and it does take a step toward granting us some measure of security of tenure.”

The Newsletter outlined the major changes in the Act:

1. The right of distress has been abolished. Landlords can no longer seize tenants’ property to cover arrears in rent….

2. Security deposits have been abolished on all leases signed or renewed after January 1 [1970]. On leases signed before that date, you will get six percent interest on the deposit [an amendment to the Bill obtained by the OTA]….

3. Tenants cannot be evicted for exercising their human rights, legal rights, or reporting their landlord violations under any government statutes.

4. For the first time, landlords are put on the same footing as any other business by requiring that they live up to their side of the bargain before they can legally demand rent.”…

5. The landlord’s right of entry is severely limited…

Most importantly, procedures for termination of tenancies were “spelled out in detail, in sections 97-108. They are long, so you should look at the Act for answers to specific questions.”

In the Summer 1970 issue of the OTA Newsletter (now a print tabloid, myself listed as editor), we pointed to major defects still in the revised Act. Singled out was the failure to address “the critical problem of rent increases.” Only two cities (Burlington and Windsor) had set up Leasehold Advisory Bureaus, an option under the Act. Furthermore, there were still no guarantees that a lease, once expired, could be renewed.

In the following years, these and some other problems were addressed in law and regulations. In 1975 the Act was amended to convert leases into indeterminate contracts; a landlord now needed a court order to evict a tenant. Also in 1975, residential premises rent review was established in Ontario, and rent controls were tightened under successive Liberal and NDP governments in the 1980s and 1990s.

Most reforms governing landlord and tenant duties established in Part IV of the Landlord and Tenant Act remain in force in today’s legislation. When I worked at Toronto’s Parkdale Community Legal Services in the early 1980s as a student lawyer representing tenants, I was often reminded of how critically important these reforms were to enforcing the rights and interests of low-income tenants.

Since then, however, there have been major setbacks.

Governments throttle key reforms

In 1997, the Conservative government of Mike Harris enacted a new Tenant Protection Act (TPA) which removed the dispute resolution process under the previous law, including evictions and rent increases, from the Ontario court system and assigned jurisdiction to a newly created quasi-judicial body, the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal, staffed by politically appointed adjudicators. The TPA also eliminated rent control on vacant units between tenants, increasing the financial incentive for landlords to evict tenants through what is known as vacancy decontrol. Among the results is a massive increase in “no fault” eviction cases, such as evictions for extensive renovations, a frequent pretext claimed by landlords.

Later Liberal governments retained vacancy decontrol while replacing the TPA by separate laws governing residential tenancies and rent review.

The Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), the body responsible for adjudicating landlord and tenant disputes under the new Residential Tenancies Act, is now overwhelmed by the volume of eviction cases landlords file against tenants. In 2021-2022, 88% of all applications received by the LTB were filed by landlords against tenants.[5]

Although in 2017 rent control was expanded to all units, including those built after 1991 (previously exempt), one of the first acts of the newly-elected Conservative government of Doug Ford was to exempt all rental units created or occupied after November 15, 2018 from rent control. Rent increases on existing tenancies are limited by decree: 2.5% annually at present. But landlords may apply to the Board for “above guideline increases,” as many do.

A provisional conclusion 

These retreats from the reforms initiated in 1969-70 underscore the fragility of any progressive reforms – especially those restraining private property rights – achieved under capitalist governments. Nevertheless, the reforms themselves, as outlined here, were major gains for the working class in Ontario.

The Ontario Tenants Association played an important role in publicizing tenant interests and actions and in providing political leadership to the movement for reform.

Tenant struggles, a constant reality under market-based housing conditions, need to find ways to go beyond the inevitable defensive struggles against the power and privileges of individual corporate and financial landlords – important as these are – and to seek political solutions at the level of government housing policy and programs.

---

[1] “Mortgage borrowers to see payments increase by 20-40% at renewal: Bank of Canada,” Canadian Mortgage Trends, May 19, 2023.

[2] Rentals.ca May 2023 Rent Report.

[3] Loretta Fisher, “The housing market and tenant organizing,” Spring Maganzine, May 12, 2023. Sahar Raza, “This is a class struggle, not housing crisis – and it’s time to pick a side,” CCPA Monitor, May-June 2023.

[4] The OHC, now the Housing Services Corporation, is the province’s public social-housing corporation for moderate and low-income households.

[5] “A More ‘Efficient’ Landlord And Tenant Board Will Mainly Hurt Renters,” The Maple, May 15, 2023.

Marko Bojcun (1951-2023): A life for socialism and Ukraine’s national rights

by Dick Nichols

When Ukrainian writer, teacher and activist Marko Bojcun died in England on March 11 after a long fight against cancer, an important link snapped in the chain of struggle for the Ukrainian people’s social and national emancipation.

Bojcun’s work is required reading for anyone who wants to understand Ukraine’s social, economic and political evolution — from the 1917 revolution against Tsarism’s “prison house of nations” right up until Russian president Vladimir Putin’s present offensive to reinsert Ukraine into “Russian space”.

Bojcun’s output revealed the breadth of his concerns: from his exhaustive The Workers’ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine (1897-2018) and Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine to East of the Wall, short stories partly based on the traumatic experiences of his parents’ generation, trapped between Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism.

His 1988 book The Chernobyl Disaster, co-authored by Viktor Haynes, remains a powerful antidote to the temptation, now rising with the climate emergency, to regard electricity co-generated with radioactivity as somehow safe.

For Ukrainian speakers, one of Bojcun’s most important contributions was to collect in one book the main writings of Leon Trotsky on “the Ukrainian question”.

Far-right hooligans made an unintended tribute to Trotsky’s ongoing relevance to the politics of his country of birth by wrecking the book’s 2013 Kyiv launch.

From Australia to Canada…

Bojcun’s life began on the outskirts of the Australian coal-and-steel city of Newcastle, where he was born into a Ukrainian immigrant family in 1951.

His father worked on the railways and in the steelworks, while his mother looked after their small farm and helped lead the cultural life of the city’s 200-strong Ukrainian community.

The couple had immigrated after Bojcun senior, who had served in the SS’s murderous Division Galicia, was finally cleared by the victorious Allies and then sent to a German internment camp for “displaced persons”. There he met his future wife.

The couple led a separate existence in such camps, in Italy and Australia, until they finally settled together in Newcastle in 1949.

After twenty years, the family migrated to Canada because, in Bojcun’s words in a 2017 interview on the web site Commons, “my parents hoped that their children would become better Ukrainians if they saw what it would be like in a larger community.”

That parental scheme flopped, because the young Marko and other Canadian-Ukrainians of his generation straight away became involved in the movement against the Vietnam War. According to Bojcun, “we moved from the Ukrainian nationalism that we were brought up with to radical socialism, and some of us moved to Trotskyism.”

Relations within the community became fraught: “When the Ukrainian left emerged in Canada, it led to a lot of friction and tension with the Banderites [followers of Stepan Bandera, leader of the dominant ultra-right faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)].

“I remember sitting in a church in 1973, and during the sermon, the priest accused me personally in front of the whole congregation: that there were communists among us, that the KGB’s black hand had interfered in the Ukrainian community.

“My father was fired from his job for my activities. He worked for the Voice of Ukraine, a Banderite newspaper in Canada […] The nationalists put pressure on all leftists because they were in charge, dominant in the organised Ukrainian community.”

The crime of Bojcun’s father was to refuse to spy on his son for the OUN.

…to Trotskyism and beyond

The inquisitorial priest was very wrong to see the hand of the KGB in Bojcun’s activity. Besides their opposition to the Vietnam War and support for Black rights and feminism, he and his contemporaries were throwing themselves into helping the dissident movements then emerging in the “Soviet bloc”.

He recalled: “We defended Soviet political prisoners, demanded rights for ethnic and cultural minorities; we followed the development of the dissident movement in Soviet Ukraine, the repressions of 1972.”

This was a reference to the arrest of writer Valentyn Moroz and the KGB-extracted recantation of Ivan Dzyuba, author of Internationalism or Russification?, the classic study in the Ukrainian case of the governing bureaucracy’s perversion of Lenin’s policy towards the non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union.

His group went on a hunger strike that forced Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau to raise the repression of the Ukrainian dissidents with his Soviet counterpart Alexei Kosygin.

The hunger strike of Ukrainian-Canadian students in 1972. On the left in the last row is Marco Bojcun.

Strongly influenced by Trotsky and his work The Revolution Betrayed, Bojcun became a member of the Canadian section of the Trotskyist Fourth International, led by Ernest Mandel.

However, contrary to Trotsky’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as a “deformed workers state”, Bojcun thought it was “a dictatorship in which the bureaucracy, although it did not have private property, held the economy and the coercive levers of the state in its hands.”

Moreover, the Soviet Union was dominated “not only by the ideology of Stalinism — a one-party dictatorship as the face of the dictatorship of the proletariat — but also by a Great-Russian chauvinist party that oppressed the non-Russian peoples of the USSR, who had no right to self-determination, except in soft folklore cultural forms. The constitutional right to self-determination was not recognised in practice.”

Bojcun left the Fourth International in 1982 because its Canadian section “took an ambivalent position on the [1979] Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I considered it a shameful step and demanded the immediate withdrawal of those troops.”

Abiding concerns

The abiding concern in Bojcun’s work is the often-fraught relation between the Ukrainian national movement in all its currents and the Ukrainian workers’ movement — especially in the concrete forms this took after the 1917 Bolshevik-led October Revolution.

In The Workers’ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine Bojcun revisits in detail the 1917‒18 period, when the tensions between the new Soviet power and the rebellions of the non-Russian peoples peaked.

In Ukraine, this basic conflict was exacerbated by the fact that the industrial working class was predominantly Russian while the peasant majority was predominantly Ukrainian, with a large Jewish minority in both classes.

Tensions reached breaking point under the onslaughts of the Austro-Hungarian and German armies and then of the counter-revolutionary White armies and Polish forces, backed by British, French and US imperialist expeditions.

In the Ukrainian case, the Central Rada (“council”), the government born of the February overthrow of the Tsarist monarchy, opposed Ukraine declaring independence, but only up until the October Revolution,

It then allowed the passage of counter-revolutionary Don Cossack military units to pass through Ukraine, in turn provoking a declaration of war by Bolshevik-led Soviet Russia.

These events set off a chain of conflicts between and within the Ukraine’s various socialist formations — the different currents of the majority Socialist Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, the Jewish Bund, the “Marxist-Zionist” Poale Zion, and the Bolsheviks themselves.

Indeed, Bolshevism in Ukraine was split three ways at its founding conference (in Taganrog in 1918). While agreeing that the power of the soviets should predominate in Ukraine as in Russia, the three tendencies disagreed on: the very existence of a Ukrainian right to self-determination (formally Bolshevik policy); Ukrainian independence; the need for a Ukrainian Communist Party separate from the Russian; and the Brest-Litovsk treaty, which in exchange for peace handed a vast amount of Ukraine to German imperialism.

Such differences were only partially settled through the victory of the Red Army in the Civil War, possible because of the peasant support won by the Bolshevik leadership eventually committing to the Ukrainians deciding their own future in relation to Russia.

However, by the end of the 1920s, after a renaissance in Ukrainian culture, the black night of Russian centralism descended once again on Ukraine, this time in “Soviet” guise. It culminated in the 1932‒33 famine that took millions of lives as a result of Stalin’s forced collectivisations.

How much of this horror was inevitable? How much did the imperative of defending the newborn revolution against its imperialist enemies conflict with respecting the national rights of the oppressed non-Russian nations?

Bojcun’s untimely death has ended any chance of his promised sequel to The Workers’ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine, which would have greatly helped us answer these vital questions.

In the meantime, any socialist who wants to get to grips with today’s Ukraine will give Bojcun’s work the closest possible attention.

Selected publications (incomplete list)

Bojcun, Jaromyr Marko: The Working Class and the National Question in Ukraine, 1880–1920, Graduate Program in Political Science, Toronto: York University, 1985. – XII, 516 S.

Haynes, Viktor / Bojcun, Marko: The Chernobyl Disaster, London: The Hogarth Press, 1988. – X, [I], 233 S., 8 Tafelseiten.

Bojcun, Marko: Ukraine and Europe. A Difficult Reunion, London: Kogan Page, 2001, (European Dossier Series). – V, 57 S.

Bojcun, Marko: Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine. Selected Essays, 1990‒2015, mit einem Vorwort von John-Paul Himka, Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2020, (Ukrainian Voices, hrsg. von Andreas Umland, Bd. 3). ‒ 290 S., ISBN 978-3-8382-1368-2, [€ 34,90].

Bojcun, Marko: The Workersʼ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine, 1897‒1918, Leiden u. Boston: Brill, 2021, (Historical Materialism Book Series, Bd. 229). ‒ [X], 413 S.

ISBN 978-90-04-22370-7.

Bojcun, Marko: The Workersʼ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine, 1897‒1918, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022, (Historical Materialism Book Series, Bd. 229). ‒ [X], 413 S.

ISBN 978-1-64259-765-3.

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1908-the-workers-movement-and-the-national-question-in-ukraine

Maistrenko, Ivan [Majstrenko, Iwan]: Borot’bism. A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution, 3. Ausg., hrsg. von Christopher Ford, mit einem Vorwort von Marko Bojcun, aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von George S. N. Luckyj unter Mitarbeit von Ivan L. Rudnytsky, Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2019, (Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, hrsg. von Andreas Umland, Bd. 61). ‒ 407 S.

Christopher Ford, “Introduction”, S. 19‒70.

Marko Bojcun, “Foreword”, S.15/6.

---

Dick Nichols is Green Left’s European correspondent. This article draws on sources on the Commons web site: “The obituary of Bojcun by Denis Pilash of Social Movement”, as well as Bojcun’s 2017 interview by Maksym Kazakov, a machine translation of which is available here.]