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.

Against the tide: André Frappier’s journey as a class-struggle militant

Introduction

I first met André Frappier in the late 1970s, when we were members of the Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue ouvrière révolutionnaire, a pan-Canadian Marxist cadre organization. When the league decided to hoist its banner in the 1980 federal election campaign, André — already well-known as a union militant — was chosen as our candidate in a downtown Montréal riding. (No, he was not elected!)

Along with many others, André and I parted company with the RWL/LOR soon afterward. For André, this was by no means the end of his political activism, quite the contrary, as this recent interview by Pierre Beaudet shows. It is published in the current issue of Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme, no. 25, winter 2021, under the title “À contre-courant : André Frappier, toujours présent,” also published as a separate text on the NCS webpage.

My translation, along with a few supplementary notes and this introduction.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

André Frappier became an activist in the 1970s, in the student movements. He was then hired at Canada Post, where for several decades he became one of the pillars of the combative Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). Later, André became an active member of Québec solidaire (QS) which he sees as a potential tool for our emancipation.

From the CEGEP, where you had your first activist experience, you went on to the Post Office...

I spent a good part of my time as a CEGEP student[1] in activism, especially in solidarity with Chile, then at the heart of the political debates. It was fascinating to watch an attempt to transition to socialism without revolution, which contradicted what we were learning from Marxism. Finally, the coup d’état in 1973 put an end to the experiment, reminding us that the capitalist class does not allow itself to be controlled so easily [1]. On May 1, 1974, several of us in the Québec-Chile student solidarity committee occupied the Chilean consulate. We were all arrested, and I spent a night in a cell. My political vision was to deepen after that, as internationalism is decisive in the fight for an egalitarian society.

I had not completed my college diploma when I was called to the Post Office for an interview in August 1975. Among the 1000 hired (out of 10,000 applicants), I was ranked 740th! As soon as I got to work, I took part in my first major strike, which lasted six weeks.

In the union, there was a great leader...

For two decades, the Syndicat des postiers du Canada (SPC) [2] in Montreal was Marcel Perreault. He had been president of the largest section in Quebec since 1968 (over 4,000 members) and the second largest in Canada after Toronto. He was a fiery leader who knew how to command respect among his members as well as in other unions. He was vice-president of the FTQ (Quebec Federation of Labour) and president of the Montreal Labour Council (CTM) for several years. In 1977, I attended my first “national” convention in Halifax, when Joe Davidson was president [3]. It was at this congress that an extraordinary trade unionist, Jean-Claude Parrot, became national president [4]. In 1978, a strike that was initially legal was declared illegal with Bill C-8. Parrot found himself on the front lines and was sentenced to three months in prison, after being cravenly abandoned by the president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Dennis McDermott.[2]

You had to follow the “line”...

In congresses, Perreault required the Quebec delegation to vote with one voice. However, at the 1980 convention, I dared to vote with two other comrades in favour of a resolution aimed at adjusting the union dues of part-time employees according to the hours worked. Perreault was opposed to it, but the proposal had the support of the rest of Canada. During the adjournment, National Director Clément Morel ordered our expulsion from the Quebec caucus. At that time, I had just been fired by management and was awaiting arbitration of my grievance. I was somewhat distraught. My friend Paul Heffernan from the Toronto local advised me to report this event to the convention. The next day, I went to the microphone and asked the national director of Quebec to explain why he had expelled three members of his delegation. I got a standing ovation from delegations from the rest of Canada who took a dim view of the rigid discipline to which we were subjected in the union.

In the end, I was able to gain some respect. A few years later, to my surprise, Clément Morel confided in me that he did not fully share Perreault’s feelings! In the meantime, my friend Paul Heffernan had become president of his local. In my opinion, one of the best Toronto has seen.

Perreault was opposed to everything that was progressive...

Despicably, he had fought the establishment of a women’s committee on which several women had worked for months [5]. Perreault had also opposed the proposals from the Western region concerning sexual harassment at the 1983 convention as well as the plans for day care and child care costs. The majority of delegates from Quebec, overwhelmingly made up of men, registered their dissent when these policies were adopted at the 1986 convention. That same year, when the votes were counted for the local union elections, the children of parents who supported my candidacy were expelled by the union marshals, made up exclusively of Perreault supporters.

He was even against the unification of unions at the Post Office...

He fiercely opposed the merger with the Union of Postal and Communications Employees (UPCE), which took place anyway, and helped sabotage the merger with the Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC). It was not until the vote ordered by the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) in February 1989, following the plan to overhaul the certification units by Canada Post, that this unification could take place. The 23,000-member CUPW won over the 21,000-member LCUC with a majority of just 901 votes.

The new union, which was not based on mutual agreement, gave rise to an open war in which Perreault took delight in provoking the former members of the LCUC. He rebuked them for their interventions and set up a union marshalling squad made up of about fifteen men dressed in black who stood at the front of the room. At one meeting he even called in the police. It took a long time to pick up the pieces, even after his election defeat in 1991. In fact, it required a new generation to take over on both the former CUPW and LCUC sides.

During all these battles, did you have a hard time?

At each union meeting, he was waiting for me around the corner. Perreault’s discourse was based on a narrow nationalism which hardened the Quebec members against the positions of the members in the rest of Canada. He used my support for Parrot and my links with several union activists in the rest of Canada to present me as a spy for the Canadians and a traitor in Quebec!

In March 1987, I attended an important meeting on a draft collective agreement. In the room, the seats around me were empty, no one dared be seen beside me. Perreault spoke of the “four-page rag”, referring to a tract published in my recent union election campaign. He tried to entertain the room with a dubious play on words: “Je ne vous demande quand même pas que vous le Frappier” [“I’m not even asking you to hit him!” Frappier is close to frapper, to hit.]

It got pretty wild?

During all these years, I helped to put together teams in local elections with a democratization program and I ran against him for the presidency. I wanted us to deepen our ties with the FTQ, to participate in political battles. We had to put forward the demands of women who had been sidelined for so long. To my surprise, in my first election in 1983, despite all the pressure and the smear campaign against me, I got almost a third of the votes. It encouraged me a lot. I naively believed that since I had made a show of strength Perreault would calm down a bit and that we could finally hope for a more serene climate in the union. The opposite happened, he took it as a danger to his survival. After this election, a few comrades and I were put on a blacklist, distributed by members of the executive during the assemblies to elect delegates to union bodies and to congresses. It was ten years before we could participate again.

Your resistance ended up getting some results...

Perreault continued to protect his power by taking advantage of a conservative ideology. He was a brake on trade-union unity, so necessary in this context of a government offensive. In 1981, more than 100,000 workers, including several thousand SPC members, protested in front of parliament against the economic policies of the federal government. The following year, when the Parti québécois (PQ) government wanted to cut Quebec civil service salaries by 20%, Jean-Claude Parrot offered financial assistance of five dollars per union member both in Canada and Quebec to organize the resistance. But Perreault was opposed, on the pretext that we were not allowed to play with the union dues. However, it was clear that the governments were organizing an offensive against the public services and that union unity was more urgent than ever.

Things came to a head in 1987...

During negotiations, the national leadership of the union understood that the government was going to pass a special law. The National Executive Council wanted to keep up the pressure while preventing the government from legislating. Rotating strikes were the appropriate way to achieve this. Perreault opposed this, adopting the false image of a radical trade unionist. He hoped anti-union legislation would allow him to blame the government and the national leadership while relieving himself of all responsibility. When the time came to vote he made a fiery speech against rotating strikes. No debate was allowed, and Perreault was going to proceed to a strike vote by show of hands, contrary to the rules of procedure. I walked to the front of the room and demanded microphones. The union marshals expelled me manu militari. I had, however, opened a crack; several members who ordinarily would not have dared to speak congratulated me. The media were present and reported the event. During this period, I thought about resigning my duties as a union delegate and quitting my activism, but I was too proud to do so!

But in the end, the tide turned...

It was at this point that Perreault lost his bid for re-election to Richard Forget. The arrival of the LCUC members in 1989 was the factor that hastened his downfall. His strategies were aimed not at strengthening the trade union movement, but dodging to make others bear the burden of possible compromises. The iron fist imposed on militants was now arousing growing discontent. His defeat made it possible to move on. It was high time!

Did Perreault’s departure open the door?

Faced with the growing rebellion against Perreault, the vice-president of the Montreal local, Richard Forget, won the union elections of 1991 by promising some democratization. I had worked hard and was disappointed that he did not call on me. He had actually backed the cheap blows against me, but we were in new times, hope was finally allowed, so I supported him without hesitation. In the first general meetings, Perreault and his supporters persisted in their attacks on the new executive and the president. I came to his defence, giving Perreault a good lesson in democracy. He was now unable to come to terms with the decision of the members, which he regarded as the basis of the union when he was in power. I was warmly applauded, it was a first for me, I almost felt like crying.

In the end, you manage to break down the wall...

In the subsequent election of the Montreal section in 1993, I was elected to the Forget team, in charge of union education. Gradually, our union began to function normally, apart from the opaque games of the former president. Yet I thought we were marking time, especially since Canada Post, managed by the Liberal party, wanted to “restructure” the postal service, which meant cutting jobs, reducing wages and increasing productivity. The threat of privatization loomed on the horizon.

Finally, you become president of the Montreal local of CUPW...

Richard Forget wasn’t a bad guy, but he had retained his old reflexes. Information circulated in dribbles to the executive except among those close to him. This had repercussions among the members and discontent grew in the general assemblies, especially on the side of the letter carriers who were still smarting and remained suspicious. Finally, the majority of the executive committee wanted to put together a new team. I was elected president in 1996 with the majority of our team. In anticipation of the 1997 negotiations, we felt that our 6,000 members really had to regain control of their union. Trade union unity and participatory democracy were at the heart of our platform. The Montreal section thus threw itself into mobilization. In the spring of 1998, more than 1,000 members from Montreal demonstrated at the Parliament in Ottawa. In the fall, 300 militants occupied the Canada Post headquarters in downtown Montréal. The following week, we occupied Place des Arts on the evening when the Post Office had invited its executives and contractors to a concert at its expense.

A few years later, you change course...

The six years in the presidency had worn me out. There had been some real political battles, but also factional battles, the two sometimes intertwined. I therefore decided to leave the presidency and to run for the post of national director in 2002. This post would offer a more political role, in particular through developing union strategies during negotiations. I was happy to take charge of organizing campaigns including that of the rural route mail couriers, which was a big step forward. This made it possible to get better terms for people who had been classed as independent contractors without the right to unionize. To get around this legal obstacle, we negotiated an agreement with Minister André Ouellet in the 2004 collective agreement. It was not a smooth process for our troops. Without saying so directly, some of our members resented our spending a lot of money from the available funds at our disposal on achieving the first collective agreement of the Organization of Rural Route Mail Couriers (ORRMC). I argued that this cheap labour in rural areas allowed Canada Post management to exert downward pressure on working conditions, which affected everyone. In the end, we managed to organize 6,000 new members, bolstering the union with new militant strength. This is how Nancy Beauchamp, who was one of these precariously employed people, was the first woman to be elected to the position of national director for the Montréal region. She is now an executive member of the FTQ.

Throughout, you got involved with activists from the “Rest of Canada”...

I had developed links for a long time with militants outside Quebec. My tenure as National Director now allowed me to work more closely with them. National Executive Council (NEC) meetings lasted a week and took place once every two months in Ottawa, but during negotiations it was often monthly. I really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot from it. Despite our differences, I learned to better understand the reality of activism outside Quebec. I also appreciated the fact that the Quebec reality was respected. I had the good fortune to work under the presidency of Deborah Bourque, a visionary woman very concerned about democracy. Her defeat at the hands of Denis Lemelin in 2008 was certainly the event that most disappointed and saddened me in this union.

At the CLC convention in Vancouver in 1999, I took the floor and made my speech entirely in French, which nobody had dared to do. There was an interpretation service, but the majority of delegates from the rest of Canada did not use it, with the exception of the CUPW delegation! At the end of my speech, I asked those who understood what I had said to raise their hands. That was revealing, and everyone got the point. But it will take a long time to change entrenched attitudes.

Anti-Quebec prejudices remained strong...

The CLC reflected the incomprehension that the Canadian labour movement had in relation to Quebec. It must be said that the major Canadian media practice Quebec bashing regularly and to their heart’s content, as in the Maclean’s magazine article that charged Quebec with being the most corrupt province in Canada. With the exception of CUPW, very few pan-Canadian unions, including the CLC itself, have taken a position that unambiguously expresses Quebec’s right to self-determination.

A few years later, in 2002, on the occasion of Jean-Claude Parrot’s departure from the CLC, I had the honour to present on the rostrum a tribute to his work on behalf of the Quebec delegation; this time everyone used the interpretation devices…

In 2004, you got involved in an election with the New Democratic Party (NDP)...

I thought there was some momentum with a leader who had also been present in Quebec. Jack Layton wanted to change things and to include Quebec while respecting its autonomy. He even told me that he didn’t mind having a pro-sovereignty candidate. So I took the plunge in Papineau riding, which had long been held by the Liberal party. My friend Pierre Laliberté did the same thing and ran in Gatineau. I had the support of my local, and also of Michel Taylor, president of the Montréal Regional FTQ Council, as well as of CUPW national president Deborah Bourque. At the nomination meeting several other trade union members were present, including my friends from the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN).

Navigating in a federalist party was not easy...

The NDP communications officer was always by my side, making sure that I avoided answering directly to the “question” of my pro-independence beliefs. This did not, however, prevent Stéphane Dion, in a letter published in The Globe and Mail, from criticizing Jack Layton for having accepted the candidacy of an evil “séparatisse” in Papineau. After the election (I received 8% of the vote), the NDP concluded that its pro-Quebec discourse had not produced the hoped-for results and that instead this position had caused it to suffer losses in Western Canada. With Pierre Laliberté, we agreed that this desired alliance with the NDP did not have much of a future.

In 2005, your re-election as National Director of CUPW did not go very well...

When I ran for the position of National Director, I knew I was putting myself in a risky position. At the local level, thousands of members vote by mail for those running for the executive, but a national director is to be elected at convention by the 70 delegates from Montreal. My opponents knew it and worked more effectively than I. It must be said that I had often put my head on the chopping block, defending what I thought was important for the union, such as the collective agreement which made it possible to integrate the rural route mail couriers. I lost narrowly, by three votes.

For you, CUPW has been and remains a progressive union...

CUPW is one of the few unions that has played an important role on the Canadian political scene. It has led battles and strike actions from one end to another of Canada “and Quebec” which have been at the centre of media news. This union was a forerunner in obtaining the right to strike at the federal level, in the fight for a reduction in working time without loss of pay, and in obtaining parental leave. The mobilizations and political credit that it was able to build on a pan-Canadian scale have made it an imposing union force, but also a political force in opposing the Canadian government and the private companies that have always sought to gain entry to this sector for their profit. The fact that the Canadian postal sector has not yet been totally privatized, as it has been in many countries, is an achievement on the part of the union. No wonder it has been in the cross-hairs of governments.

Did you come back to basics then?

At the time, my defeat really disheartened me. But I went back to being a letter carrier, a job that I really liked. At the same time, I worked with the Montreal section of CUPW, which put me in charge of a special project at the Youville branch where I worked. The idea was to test an improvement in the flyer delivery process for the next collective agreement.

I also got involved again with the Regional Council of the Montréal FTQ and I was elected for a second time to the executive. With Michel Ducharme, we wanted to bring unions closer to popular groups mobilized in the Coalition Main rouge [Red hand coalition], formed in the fall of 2009 following the announcement by the then Liberal government that it would make greater use of user fees on public services and implement budgetary austerity [6].

You came up against the so-called concertation approach that prevailed at the FTQ...

The then president of the FTQ, Michel Arsenault, was not sympathetic to the Coalition Main Rouge. Like many union leaders, he feared this kind of coalition where unions are on an equal footing with many smaller groups. But ultimately, I think these positions were motivated more by the FTQ’s preference for tripartite consultation and partnership. In fact, it is only some local unions and regional labour bodies like the Montréal Central Council of the CSN and the Montréal Regional Council of the FTQ that have joined.

The concertation orientation has limited struggles and even resulted in defeats. In 2012, during the historic social mobilization in response to the student upsurge, the unions simply gave it lip service and prevented this movement from moving to a higher level. During the negotiations with the government, the leaderships of the centrals at no time threatened the government with a mobilization of their forces in aid of the student movement. In fact, these leaderships exerted more pressure on the student spokespersons than they did on the government [7]. In the years that followed, the various governments have continued their policies of social disengagement in education and health, the tragic consequences of which can be seen today.

Life then took you elsewhere...

I retired in the late summer of 2010, but soon after was hired by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) to work on union organizing with a bunch of young and dynamic activists who were at ASSÉ (Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante), including a certain Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. In the meantime, my involvement with Québec solidaire grew. I was part of the QS National Coordinating Committee for six years from 2012 to 2018. We had many debates, particularly with regard to electoral alliances with the Parti québécois, which raised several questions concerning our democratic functioning. The members had spoken out against these alliances twice, at the congresses preceding the elections of 2012 and 2014. But the day after the elections, it was as if we were faced with a blank page. This long road ended at the 2017 congress where the idea of ​​an alliance with the PQ was defeated after a wide-ranging debate that lasted several months. Fortunately, everyone agrees now. The results of 2018 [when QS elected 10 members to the National Assembly] would not have been the same if we had fallen into the trap of Jean-François Lisée, head of the PQ.[3] Since then, we have not made much progress in terms of our way of implementing this independence project and our strategy with regard to the Canadian state.

This question has led you to new initiatives...

The clarification of QS’s positions on these issues has been at the heart of my engagement within this party. Along with others, including mainly my comrade and friend Andrea Levy, we have established a pan-Canadian progressive network that met virtually almost monthly for several years. The emergence of Québec solidaire as an independentist left party raised many questions among the Canadian left, to which answers and perspectives had to be provided. The Canadian people have no interest in defending their own establishment against the people of Quebec fighting for their emancipation. Conversely, the support of the Canadian working class is essential to the survival of this project. For lack of support, we saw the failures of the Greek and Catalan progressive parties in 2015 and 2017.

Did this liaison work continue later?

I took part in several conferences in Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto and Calgary and I reported to the leadership bodies of Québec solidaire. I also worked closely with Naomi Klein’s team for the creation of the Leap Manifesto, along with Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Roger Rashi, by trying among other things to adapt the text of the declaration to the reality of Quebec. For several years now, I have been writing a column in the journal Canadian Dimension which focuses mainly on politics in Quebec. At the same time, as QS’s (interim) co-spokesperson, I became more familiar with the struggles of the Indigenous nations. In the winter of 2013, I was in Ottawa during the Indigenous protests in support of the hunger strike of Theresa Spence, Chief of the Attawapiskat Nation, at the start of the Idle No More mobilizations. In the spring of that year, I met with the Algonquin population of Lac-Barrière accompanied by Geneviève Beaudet and André Richer, also of QS.[8]. In a delegation of 14 people, we heard the message of the Indigenous people and their very different vision of the territory. Michel Thusky, an elder in the community, explained to us that “the land does not belong to anyone, everyone can occupy it by respecting it and ensuring the sustainability of its resources. White governments see this same territory not as a precious ecosystem to be respected, but as an asset to be squandered.”

True to your convictions since the beginning of your activist life, international solidarity is always present...

In October 2014, I participated in Toronto, on behalf of QS, in an international meeting on public transport organized by Die Linke, the German left party. This gave me the opportunity to lay the groundwork that led to the invitation of Andreas Gunther, a representative of this party, to our congress in May 2015. In the meantime, Benoit Renaud worked to invite Cat Boyd of the Radical Independence Campaign in Scotland. This was the beginning of our openness to international guests at congresses. In October 2017, I represented QS within a delegation of the international left in Barcelona at the initiative of the independentist left party CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy). In return, we invited to the QS congress in December 2017 two elected CUP members, Anna Gabriel and Eulalia Reguant.

In November 2018, thanks to you, my friend Pierre Beaudet, I had the opportunity to participate in the thematic Social forum on the mining and extractivist economy in Johannesburg, where I represented Québec solidaire. Then, in the summer of 2019, I attended the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) convention in Atlanta on behalf of QS, because although I have not been a member of the National Coordinating Committee since the National Council in December 2018, I am part of the party’s commission on global justice issues. As a socialist, internationalism is not an “extra” activity or a luxury, but a necessity. It is not always easy, but we must continue.

We have no choice, we have to look to the future...

COVID-19 has intensified the challenges of securing basic living needs on a level not seen since the recession of 1929. The crisis is global, global warming has caused devastating fires in Australia and California while the last plateau of unspoiled Canadian Arctic ice has just collapsed. The future of society depends on us. Neoliberal political parties cannot represent a way out, they are at the origin of the crisis.

The challenges are high. The unions have had some victories, but they have not been able to address the source of the problems, constantly restarting the cycle of gains and setbacks, which eventually deepen. The broad left has succeeded in building a political party since 2006 with Québec solidaire, but the junction with social movements and unions has not really materialized.

If there are common traits in the various struggles of my militant life, I would say that democracy would be at the top of the list. This fight is taking on decisive importance today. We have seen how easy it can be for a government like that of François Legault of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) to lead by decree if we lack vigilance.

Horizontal democracy must become a fundamental value within Québec solidaire because it is, even more in this time of confinement, the essential basis for the mobilization and life of the party.

The lessons of the coup d’état in Chile have also guided my activist journey throughout my life. If neoliberal governments can be ousted, the capitalist institutions that support them will still be present. Another eloquent illustration was the economic crushing of the Syriza government by the troika [9] in Greece in 2015.

We cannot conceive of our struggles without the development of an internationalist strategy. The future of the planet in environmental, social and health terms depends on it. The Quebec for which we are campaigning and whose population will regain control of its destiny, will constitute a step forward and generate a new social dynamic which, we hope, will transcend our borders. But the Canadian establishment will not stand idly by. Building solidarity with the working class in the rest of Canada, in alliance with the Indigenous nations, remains an unavoidable challenge. This has been and still continues to be at the centre of my militant journey.

NOTES

[1] Popular Unity was an alliance that brought together a broad spectrum ranging from Communists to the Christian left and had the support of the unions. Elected in 1970, it proposed a program to fight inflation, revive the agrarian economy, nationalize the banks and the copper industry in which the United States and Canada had interests. Pinochet’s coup d’état was made possible by operations undertaken by the CIA in 1970. See: “Un dictateur mis en place par les États-Unis,” Le Devoir, December 11, 2006.

[2] The Syndicat des postiers du Canada changed its name after merging with the Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC) to become the Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses des postes (STTP). The name in English has remained unchanged: Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).

[3] See his autobiography: Joe Davidson and John Deverell, Joe Davidson (Toronto, James Lorimer & Company Publishers, 1978).

[4] See his autobiography, Jean-Claude Parrot, Ma vie de syndicaliste (Montréal, Boréal 2005). [In English, My Union, My Life (Fernwood, 2005).] Note, the terms national president or national leadership are used by the union.

[5] This is recounted in Julie White’s book, Mail and Female. Women and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (Toronto, Thompson Educational Publishing, 1990).

[6] See the Declaration of the Red Hand Coalition: <https://www.nonauxhausses.org/declaration/>.

[7] See on this subject the collective work, Le printemps des carrés rouges, by André Frappier, Richard Poulin and Bernard Rioux (Saint-Joseph-du-lac, M éditeur, 2012).

[8] At the time, QS did not have any activist representing the indigenous nations. [At the QS congress in November 2019, the delegates voted unanimously to establish a National Indigenous Commission (CAN in its French acronym) to give voice to the party’s First Nations and Inuit members. https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2019/11/with-little-debate-but-few-skirmishes.html]

[9] The troika appoints the experts representing the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

---

[1] The CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel, or general and vocational college) is a public post-secondary, pre-university college peculiar to the Quebec education system.

[2] See Jean-Claude Parrot, My Union, My Life (see text note 4), chapters six and seven.

[3] See “Québec solidaire: No to an electoral pact with the PQ, Yes to a united front against austerity, for energy transition and for independence,” https://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2017/05/quebec-solidaire-no-to-electoral-pact.html

Quebec, Canada and the Indigenous Peoples: Toward Plurinational Alliances around a Decolonial Outlook?

Introduction

The latest issue of the Quebec journal Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, published in September, revisits the Quebec national question in light of the mounting struggle against climate catastrophe, the growth of Indigenous resistance, and the crisis of Quebec’s national movement. A number of articles probe the potential for creation of the strategic class alliances and perspectives that are needed if we are to begin a fundamental social transformation that re-imagines not only the Quebec reality but its place in the creation of an ecosocialist society in the Canadian, North American and global context.

I publish below, in my translation, an article by NCS editor Pierre Beaudet introducing some of the key themes in this issue, followed by what I consider an outstanding contribution by Dalie Giroux that challenges the Quebec left to rethink national emancipation within a decolonial perspective that can help enlist Indigenous and international solidarity around a common project of rethinking the relationship between national and social emancipation.

‒ Richard Fidler

* * *

Our friends in Canada

By Pierre Beaudet

Until the 1960s, the left in Canada and in Quebec was mainly Canadian and Anglophone. During Premier Maurice Duplessis’s “Grande Noirceur” (the great darkness), the provincial government drew heavily on the reactionary right wing of the Catholic church, making life very difficult for Quebec progressives. Some trade unionists and artists chose exile instead. In this period, as well, the Canadian left, from the Communist party to the social-democracy (later the NDP) held fast to the idea of a strong federal state as the vehicle for implementing the social changes sought by the popular classes, such as medicare, social welfare, etc.

Quebec demands for national emancipation were relegated to the sidelines, regarded as an abhorrence to be fought by all means. The CP denounced the “separatist threat” in terms not notably dissimilar from those used by Ottawa’s political establishment; a courageous exception, sometimes, was the party’s intellectual leader and historian Stanley Ryerson who defended the right to self-determination of the Quebec people. After much debate, the NDP shut the door on its Quebec branch, which went on to form the Parti Socialiste du Québec and called for constitutional protection of that right. Later, the NDP campaigned alongside the parties of reaction for the No side in the 1980 and 1995 referendums. However, while this effectively eliminated the Canadian left from Quebec it opened room for the creation and development of a pro-independence Quebec left.¹ But the links between Canadian and Quebec progressives remained infrequent apart from the efforts of a few courageous trade unions that fought for social emancipation linked with national emancipation. Examples are the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Some decades later

This non-dialogue had many perverse effects. In Canada, the left failed to wage a resolute fight against the post-colonial state structures, not even when the Constitution was “patriated” by Pierre Trudeau in 1982 in the face of intense opposition from Quebec’s National Assembly and public opinion. After the 1995 referendum, the NDP members of Parliament (with few exceptions) voted for the so-called “Clarity bill” which limited even the likelihood of a negotiated agreement with Canada following a Quebec vote for independence. In the short period during which he led that party, Jack Layton tried to shift the party’s position, but after his death the party under Thomas Mulcair’s leadership returned to its hard-line federalist alignment. Quebec’s attraction to the NDP was short-lived.

The non-dialogue did not help the cause of the left in either Quebec or Canada, and efforts to achieve coordination on inter-provincial issues were difficult and uncertain. During the Summit of the Peoples of the Americas, in Quebec City in April 2001, in opposition to the proposal of a hemispheric free-trade area of the Americas (FTAA), groups such as the Council of Canadians tried to impose the same Canadian perspective “from coast to coast.” Canadian unions more attuned to Quebec concerns supported the position of almost all Quebec participants that the fight against the FTAA was not tied to “strengthening” the Canadian state. A progressive magazine published in Winnipeg, Canadian Dimension, upheld this point (as it still does), providing Canadian progressives with information and analyses concerning Quebec’s popular movements and struggles.²

Subsequently, attempts at dialogue outside the framework of the formal organizations were initiated by André Frappier of Québec solidaire, who met over several years with various left-oriented groups in Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax and Vancouver.³ The basic idea was to meet and discuss the national questions in the Canadian state, in an effort to combat the substantial indifference on these issues in both the Quebec and Canadian left. Some progress was made with a small part of the Canadian left, but it can hardly be said that the fundamental idea in the Quebec left of combining anticapitalist struggle with a challenge to “made in Canada” colonialism is widely understood or accepted among Canadian progressives.⁴

This timid reopening to dialogue has been encouraged by political developments among the Indigenous peoples. Their reawakening and leadership of some mass movements targets the very essence of the Canadian state, built upon a persisting colonial dispossession and thus challenging the legitimacy of the federal government. As the Dené intellectual activist Glen Coulthard has said, the Indigenous struggle will go nowhere if it does not become a wider anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and anticolonial struggle.⁵

In recent years some Indigenous leaders like Roméo Saganash have voiced publicly what many Indigenous think, that their anticolonial struggle will be strengthened if it finds ways to interface with the struggle for Quebec emancipation. And this requires that the Québécois openly acknowledge the right to self-determination of the Indigenous peoples.⁶

The Quebec challenge

The struggle for Quebec emancipation will be conducted in Quebec, of course. However, we must be conscious of the balance of forces that exists between this project and its opponents. Those elites are politically organized around the federal state and its subaltern relays in the provinces. They have their counterparts in the Quebec bourgeoisie and its political expressions in the Quebec Liberal party and the Coalition Avenir Québec, now the government. They are supported overwhelmingly by U.S. imperialism, which our first sovereigntist premier René Lévesque failed to see when he tried to convince the big shots in New York and Washington that the sovereigntist project would be completely harmless in the North American context and that Quebec would remain a subaltern ally like Canada. This dream that Quebec’s independence could be negotiated peacefully misled the people, including in the two referendums. It is not hard to see that for U.S. imperialism, access to Canada’s rich resources, and the interests of continental defense against the Russian and Chinese “threat” are priorities, which means that it is imperative for the rulers in both Washington and Ottawa to keep Canada as it is. Long ago Pierre Vallières and Charles Gagnon, to mention only them, understood this very well, which is why they emphasized the need for connecting with the forces of change in the Americas.

Break down the wall

How are we going to breach this wall of indifference in English Canada? As Andrea Levy and André Frappier argue,

“it is necessary to define a strategy of common organized struggle to retake power in the Canadian state. The struggle must be common because in Quebec alone we cannot manage to create an egalitarian and independent society without confronting the Canadian state, and because an ecologist perspective cannot be implemented solely within our borders. Quebec needs the support and collaboration of the workers and popular groups in English Canada, and these cannot develop an emancipatory perspective without adhering to a strategy of common anticapitalist struggle with the progressive forces of Quebec.”⁷

That was in fact the message that was conveyed in 2014 with the Peoples Social Forum that brought together in Ottawa several hundred activists and thinkers from Quebec, Canada and the First Nations. With Québec solidaire and the social movements, we need to continue these efforts, engaging in manifestations of mutual support and solidarity.

* * *

Indigenous peoples and Quebec: Rethinking decolonization

By Dalie Giroux

Dalie Giroux teaches in the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa. She has published, inter alia, many studies on the cultural and scientific relationships between the Indigenous peoples and state cultures within capitalist society.

My purpose here is to outline some thoughts that can assist in a reassessment of the question of Quebec independence in light of relations between Quebec and the Indigenous peoples. This entails in part undertaking a necessary albeit painful critique of the history of these relations since the election of the Parti québécois (PQ) in 1976. It also means proposing some principles that can guide us in a new development of Quebec anticolonialist thinking, which up to now has failed to question the British colonial regime from a truly inclusive standpoint, and without serious or sufficient consideration being given to the Indigenous presence on this continent for thousands of years.

Quebec’s colonial legacy, its obscure expression in law, its mentality, the form of its productive activity, was established in successive steps through the operation of a set of dispossession measures that we must inspect, understand, criticize and dismantle if we are to pursue a collective policy of fighting this dispossession. Approaching dispossession from a decolonial perspective based on the Quebec situation is not inspired by some patriotic necessity but rather expresses the need to confront a history that we did not choose but inherited, as we have inherited and cultivated the ethical tensions inscribed in our political life. This rethinking must address the following questions:

• How can we escape, all of us, in the here and now, from the complex structure of dispossession that is the legacy of French and British colonialisms?

• How are we to undermine and eliminate the measures of dispossession by accumulation that define that structure?

• How, especially, can we combine all the mutual expressions of struggles for emancipation – decolonial, antiracist, feminist, pro-immigration, ecologist – within a materialist horizon, without eliminating the singular features of the places, affects, temporalities, and narratives that constitute, traverse and animate our specific common habitat?

Masters in our own house?

Let us begin by backtracking a bit. Modern Quebec arose at the turn of the 1960s around the proposal to become “Maîtres chez nous,” masters in our own house, and to take control of the whole of the provincial territory the limits of which had been fixed in 1912 by federal legislation. Retroactively, it must be observed that this Quebec, master of itself, had been built on the basis of a colonial-type state. Quebec’s exit from the Canadian constitutional fold, as set out in the sovereignty project put forward by the Quebec nationalist forces, was not an accomplished movement of decolonization, that is, of rupture with the structure of dispossession inherited from French and British colonialism. It rather involved giving the Québécois the privilege of acquiring the status of colonizer they had lost with the British Conquest. As Zebedee Nungak writes:

“No one would question the ‘masters’ part of the slogan if Quebec’s borders were confined to the locations in which Champlain’s descendants lived and farmed the land in order to maintain and sustain their distinct French identity, their language and culture as they wished. The problem lies in the part that reads ‘in our own house,’ which has come to encompass Eeyou Estchee (the Cri territory) and the Inuit nunangat, including large swathes of territory where there is not an ounce of French history, language or culture. These lands should never have been incorporated in the French ‘house.’ But that is exactly what happened when Quebec rushed headlong toward carrying out its James Bay hydroelectric project.”⁸

In reality, a major portion of the territories over which Quebec governments have exercised their power to the explicit benefit of the Francophone majority have never been surrendered within the meaning of the British Canadian colonial regime. Access to the territory north of the 49^th parallel, and its occupation by the populations needed for colonization, exploitation and control over the groundwater, hydro-electric, forest, mineral, marine and tourist resources, have been defended both by the Canadian courts and successive Quebec governments as pertaining, in Canadian legal language, to “compelling and substantial governmental objectives.” Moreover, although the Canadian and Quebec governments have signed a series of treaties in the terms peculiar to modern treaties, the result has been the consolidation of the Crown’s sovereignty and the colonial enterprise of generalized extraction to the benefit of the owners of the means of production and the resulting rents. The jurisdictional and financial compensation negotiated between the Indigenous groups and the state, and the renunciation of the inherent right to the territory implied in almost all of the cases involving this type of treaty have constituted an irreparable loss of sovereignty for all of the Indigenous peoples and the consolidation of an extractive economy of dispossession.

The contradictions in the PQ project

The election of the Parti québécois in 1976 marked an important turning point in the march of the “Masters in our own house” and highlights the ambiguous political role of the Québécois within the British empire. An explicitly sovereigntist government was in place in Quebec City and held the reins of the provincial state. Today it is hard to imagine the power of that moment for the descendants of the “anciens Canadiens”: an illiterate, residual people with a bastardized language, had acceded to the institutional pinnacle of the state, through their own efforts and in opposition to the entire history of British Canada which had sought its tranquil submission and cultural assimilation. The people without a state proved to the English colonizer that it was worthy of a state and of power. It was a revenge and an exploit, promising a new world – a victory over themselves and over the adverse forces of history.

It was not long, however, before this enthusiasm came up against the Indigenous question. Rémi Savard, the anthropologist who studied this question for many years, himself a fervent independentist, asked himself whether the Indigenous policy of the first PQ government, headed by René Lévesque, could really challenge the colonial relationship between Quebec and the First Nations. Instead, he found that the Quebec of the PQ’s first term of office had positioned itself along the lines of British colonialism:

“In the spring of 1977 Bérubé, the minister, was proclaiming on Radio-Canada, without batting an eyelid, his government’s formal and definitive opposition to any recognition of the right of the Indigenous to self-determination, explaining that it was inconceivable since ‘we are the proprietors of the soil’.”⁹

Yves Bérubé was at the time minister of natural resources and lands and forests, and what he was defending against the sovereignty claims of the Indigenous peoples was also clear: the exploitation of natural resources is the foundation of Quebec’s strategy of mastery in its own house, through economic development in French and in our name. This mastery of resources was accompanied by a claim to “ownership of the soil” and referred to the public land held by the state. The unceded Indigenous territories of north-eastern Quebec were located, as it happens, almost entirely on these public lands, 90% of the territory of the Province of Quebec. The PQ minister’s statement was quite explicit about the nature of the mastery claimed by the Québécois through their “national” government: “we are the lords of the public lands, and no political claim over these lands is conceivable.” In the following year Gérald Godin, now the minister, repeated the PQ position, citing the right of conquest inherited from the British crown. Savard concluded that the sovereignty project was proclaiming explicitly the pursuit of the genocide anticipated by the Canadian government “and which has often targeted the Québécois people.”¹⁰

Some dissident approaches

While the sovereignty project has been unable to go beyond the colonial framework, there is no denying the transformative potential of Quebec’s struggle for national emancipation. This struggle, which to a large degree has ensured the passage from servitude to mastery, is one of the major political experiments of the 20^th century. Moreover, some Quebec intellectual and political actors have indeed seen the need to integrate a global overcoming of colonialism within the liberatory dynamic. For example, Pierre Vallières stated that the Indigenous peoples were more oppressed than the French Canadians of Quebec. That led him to nurture a certain distrust toward the promotion of nationalism as the ultimate goal of Quebec struggles and to uphold the claims of Indigenous sovereignty.¹¹ Charles Gagnon, too, thought it was necessary to integrate the anti-racism fight and the Indigenous struggles in his revolutionary project of anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggle:

“This does not mean, and cannot mean, making Quebec a new Mexico, politically ‘independent’ but economically exploited, pillaged, dispossessed. It does not mean creating one or more Black or American Indian capitalist states subject to imperialism. It does mean destroying imperialism and racism; it means building in North America a new society in which the different races and ethnic populations cohabit in harmony because each has endowed itself with the structures and institutions it considers favourable to its fulfilment.”¹²

Rémi Savard, the anthropologist, through his research and his attempts to develop solidarity between the Quebec and Indigenous peoples, thought the opposition of the Québécois to Indigenous claims was linked to the fact that they themselves were wronged by the Canadian constitutional regime. He criticized the colonial posture of the first independentist government in Quebec’s history which, he said, while comprising an undeniable economic motivation, was based on an opportunist legal conservatism. This posture profoundly shaped the relations between the Quebec state and the Indigenous peoples on the territory that we have inherited, through its refusal to respect the minimal requirements of peoples’ justice that the Indigenous peoples were developing on the international level.

The missed encounters

Overall, the independentist movement failed to take the hand proferred to it by the Indigenous peoples, and this was a factor, as we know today, in its political marginalization and the failure of its project. Savard reports that in 1978, two years before the referendum on Quebec sovereignty, Noel Starblanket, then chief of the National Indian Brotherhood (which became the Assembly of First Nations in 1982), wrote to René Lévesque:

“We have studied your project of sovereignty-association. This political platform suits us because it coincides with the demands of the Indians throughout Canada who want to exercise the greatest possible power over their natural resources and establish normal relations with their neighbours. We are starting from a position the opposite of yours: you are in Confederation and want to put a foot outside of it, while we who have never been a confederative club want to set foot in it. In practice, however, we agree completely. Extend us your hand. Let us, together, put an end to the federal government’s colonial power over us. But to the benefit of our respective collectivities. Not to put the Indians under the rule of some other white power, in this instance that of Quebec and the other Canadian provinces.”¹³

As to the sovereignty-association proposed by the Parti québécois, the chief stated, on behalf of his organization, that “this political platform suits us.” The subaltern position of the Francophones in the Canadian regime, as well as their existence as a collective entity, were acknowledged outright. Starblanket went on to propose an alliance between Quebec and the First Nations, against the colonial power of the federal government. This alliance, he said, was conditional on the equality of the parties: Quebec, in its approach to independence, was not to replace the federal government as a colonizer. It would have to work for the concurrent liberation of the First Peoples. In short, to break up the post-British Canadian regime in the interests of the peoples, Francophone and Indigenous, who were minorities within it.

Like Noel Starblanket, another leading Indigenous leader, Georges Erasmus, openly called for an alliance between the Indigenous peoples and Quebec to counter Ottawa’s approach to patriating the Constitution without recognizing the national minorities.

“We the Indigenous, have been pushed, along with Quebec, under the rug of the country that Trudeau and his sidekicks of the English provinces have just constituted. I call on the government and people of Quebec, and on René Lévesque in particular, to make known their reaction to this and to express their feeling about the rights of the Indigenous populations to self-determination. I challenge the people of Quebec – if in fact this people believes in self-determination – now is the time to support the Indigenous people. It is not the time for us to remain separated and to lead ourselves individually to defeat. We must act now. This is the moment of our reckoning. We, the Indigenous, need Quebec’s support in the coming hours. We need the support of the Quebec people. The country is in a state of national emergency and this demands that the Indigenous and Québécois unite their forces.”¹⁴

Given these quite dramatic statements at the time, Savard was adamant as to the conditions of any possible Francophone political existence in America:

“As to the project of Quebec self-determination itself, I think there is no chance it will come about in the short, medium or long term unless it begins to articulate the pan-Amerindian dynamic. [...] The worst disservice we can render to our descendants is to underestimate the political meaning of Indigenous aspirations and the continental reach of the present immense political awakening.”¹⁵

He lamented the fact that this invitation to an alliance had remained a dead letter, testimony to the sovereigntist élite’s very poor understanding of the continental colonial situation at the time.

“The imprecise desires of the Indigenous peoples for political autonomy may very well unleash furious reactions among many citizens against the threat of creating so many de facto holes in our national territory. That’s the Canadian side, somewhat buccaneering I would say, of our nationalism. It is also what prevents us, to the great relief of the federalists, from grasping the historical perch now being tendered to us, as explicitly as can be, by the Indigenous peoples of Canada as a whole.”¹⁶

Rethinking the terms of emancipation

The history of decolonization experiences offers many examples of national emancipation carried out by the state and capital that produce the results we have experienced in Quebec: the self-dispossession of the peoples through the exercise of the privileges of a national-state within the framework of a globalized economy, and the renewal of the oppressions suffered by other, subaltern populations, other minorities.

That said, the Quebec republican resistance, which has taken the colonial institutions as its emancipation model, has helped to constitute within the continental colonial space a place of distinct power, Quebec, the existence of which has undeniable ethical, political and epistemological value. If we start from that reality, that place, it is possible for us today to rethink emancipation in a more complete and more inclusive form. But this reconsideration must be radical, and not make any commitment as to the continental, colonial, historical and economic situation of Quebec.

To reinterpret the spirit of independence that gave rise to “Masters in Our Own House,” it is truly and urgently necessary to rethink the relations between the peoples inhabiting the territory of the province, the ways in which they mutually conceive the frontiers of this territory, and the way in which we draw from this our subsistance and the powers of dispossession that we support (and that support us). The emancipatory policy of the 21^st century, which will be conceived on the basis of Quebec’s situation, cannot elude this thinking, which necessarily challenges the life style of the majority and the legitimacy of the claim to mastery over the “national” territory, but has the merit that it invites us to escape the colonial political imagination and to begin to think about the alliance that remains to be formulated.

A second dimension that must be advanced if a decolonial tension is to be introduced in the Quebec emancipation current is that of the Indigenous presence in the territories placed under the jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec, 90% of which is classified as being property of the Quebec state – the Quebec equivalent of Crown lands.

The chain of solidarity that could begin to develop through a rethinking of independence within North America and the need for alliances that must inform it can only be developed or experienced not from the Quebec “majority” standpoint, but by and through a psycho-political and material process of dis-identification with the colonial state and the capitalist, extractive life of dispossession that this state imposes, supports, renews, generalizes and legitimates. Accordingly, we must in this context study the genealogy of the cognitive, material and political tools through which the populations involved in the colonization self-identified existentially with the structures of dispossession that were, for better or worse, the conditions of formation of the peoples of the New World. We have to revisit frankly our relations with the other peoples on this territory as well as the genesis and onto-juridical framework of our present relations.

The big challenge

This is a sizable challenge for a people whose existence is closely linked to the colonial undertaking, a motley people, intrinsically diasporic, without age-old tradition or inherent rights toward which to turn as the basis for its coherence and collective action, who do not and will not have the political aura of the European colonizer or the prestige of the white decolonizations of the 19^th century, or the ethical presence of the present decolonial and antiracist forces today. For a people dismissed and removed from power over the territory, a people whose initial segment is a product of a remaining, residual, demobilized, rebellious population lacking in social mobility and the possibility of representation, this seems to me to be also an opportunity to think otherwise and directly the questions of possession and dispossession, to go counter to colonization, to invent other ways of living, and to constitute ourselves as a hybrid, perhaps in a hitherto unseen form of upstream humility and downstream hospitality.

The political issue for Quebec in the 21^st century will not be to find the road to becoming masters in our own house – which would mean pursuing the European colonization of the Americas in our own name – but to think and act in terms of the real and urgent objective of abolishing, through a grand alliance, all relations of servitude that make up the French and British colonial forms of dispossession that we have inherited.

1 See Pierre Beaudet, “La gauche canadienne et le Québec. Les multiples dimensions d’un dialogue inachevé,” in Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme, No. 24, Autumn 2020.

2 Canadian Dimension, https://canadiandimension.com/ Among the regular contributors to CD are Andrea Levy and André Frappier, members of the NCS Collectif d’analyse politique.

3 Frappier also attended the 2016 Socialist Scholars conference in Calgary, where he participated as a resource person in several workshops. -- R.F.

4 See “Le défi de lutter ensemble,” by André Frappier and Andrea Levy, NCS No. 24.

5 Glen Coulthard, “Marx et la grande tortue,” NCS No. 21 (Winter 2019).

6 Which Québec solidaire has done, unlike the other parties including the Parti québécois.

7 “Le défi de lutter ensemble,” NCS No. 24.

8 Zebedee Nungak, Contre le colonialisme dopé aux stéroïdes. Le combat des Inuits du Québec pour leurs terres ancestrales (Montréal, Boréal, 2019 [2017]), p. 42.

9 Rémi Savard, Destins d’Amérique. Les autochtones et nous (Montréal: L’Hexagone, 1979), p. 109.

10 Ibid., p. 110.

11 Daniel Samson-Legault, Dissident. Pierre Vallières (1938-1998). Au-delà des Nègres blancs d’Amérique (Montréal: Québec Amérique, 2018), p. 391.

12 Charles Gagnon, Feu sur l’Amérique. Écrits politiques, Vol. 1 (1966-1972) (Montréal: Lux, 2006), p. 117

13 Savard, op. cit., p. 145. [My retranslation from the French. - R.F.]

14 Quoted (and translated from the English) in Jean Morisset, Sur la piste du Canada errant (Montréal: Boréal, 2018). [My retranslation from the French – R.F.]

15 Savard, op. cit., p. 110.

16 Ibid., p. 154`

History revisited: Canada’s feminists respond to Quebec’s national movement

(And a contribution to the debate rejected by Canadian Dimension)

By Richard Fidler

Thirty years ago, in June 1990, the Meech Lake Accord died, its package of constitutional reforms having been rejected by the legislatures in Manitoba and Newfoundland/Labrador. Its demise — and with it, recognition of Quebec as a “distinct society” — gave rise in the following five years to a new surge in the Quebec movement for independence that came very close to winning in the 1995 referendum, accompanied by a series of renewed attempts by the Canadian government to negotiate a constitutional deal that would defuse that movement and maintain the existing Canadian state.

The anniversary was marked this year by a number of articles in the Quebec media but went largely unnoticed in the rest of Canada (ROC). Unremarked as well, in both Quebec and the ROC, was the role the angry public debate in Canada over modest acknowledgement of Quebec as a “distinct society” (never mind, nation) drove a wedge between the feminist movements in both nations and marked a key turning point in the evolution of the Quebec women’s organizations toward increasingly nationalist orientations and, during the 1990s, open support for Quebec independence.

This story is told in a 2009 doctoral dissertation by Flavie Trudel, of the Université du Québec.[1] The rift became public in 1987 when the Meech Lake Accord was widely criticized at a general meeting of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), on the grounds, among others, that the “distinct society” clause would likely be used by the courts to undermine federal protection of women’s rights. In reaction, the Quebec Federation of Women (FFQ) left the meeting. Francophone women’s organizations had come to see Quebec, with its jurisdiction over language, culture and family law — and the progressive values upheld, for example, by Quebec juries’ multiple acquittals of abortion rights advocate Dr. Henry Morgenthaler — as a more favourable milieu for advancing women’s rights.

In a brief to the House of Commons committee studying the constitutional proposal, the FFQ stated that in its view “the progress achieved [in Quebec] in women’s status is not unrelated to its character as a distinct society.”

About a dozen Quebec women’s organizations, among them the FFQ, the CSN’s women’s committee, and a group led by Françoise David and union militant Madeleine Parent, began meeting in late 1987 to determine whether to remain in the NAC, where Francophones were a small minority.

In 1989, the FFQ decided not to renew its affiliation to the NAC, while continuing to attend its meetings as an observer. “NAC’s failure to understand or accept the position of Québec francophone women,” write NAC historians Jill Vickers et al,[2]

“marks the beginning of the end of NAC’s ability, through the affiliation of the FFQ, to provide a bridge, however fragile, between the French and English movements.… Many NAC activists would again be unable to comprehend or accept the view of the majority of francophone feminists from Québec that their liberation rested with the Québec state and with recognition of Québec as a ‘distinct society’.”

NAC was not the only women’s organization in Canada to be critical of the Meech Lake Accord. Others included the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), which argued that the Accord endangered women because it recognized aboriginal rights and Canada’s multiculturalism without mentioning women’s rights to equality. This position was typical of the many social movements in Canada that had become seduced by “Charter politics” in the wake of Parliament’s adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its offer of recourse to the courts to override legislated obstacles to their goals — a phenomenon brilliantly analyzed by the late Michael Mandel in The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada.[3] Mandel also points to the role of the Charter as a key ingredient in Pierre Trudeau’s strategy for enhancing federal institutions and standards in opposition to Quebec’s, itself confirmed by the illusory view that Quebec’s “distinct society” constituted a threat to women’s rights.

Flavie Trudel adds, however, that judging from the exchange of correspondence between the NAC and the FFQ, “it seems clear that the FFQ’s dissatisfaction was not addressed to the feminist action of NAC…. For example, a little later NAC was quick to come out in support of Chantal Daigle in the struggle against her former partner for her right to an abortion, and the NAC reacted with outrage to the massacre at the École Polytechnique on December 6, 1989.”[4]

Moreover, the FFQ withdrawal prompted some rethinking in NAC about its approach to Quebec issues. “Judy Rebick was elected president of NAC in 1990 on a promise to work to lessen the divisions between Québécoises and women in the rest of Canada. And Rebick committed as well to stepping up NAC’s interventions on the constitutional question.”[5] NAC soon evolved toward a “Three Nations constitutional position that recognized the legitimacy of decentralized power for Quebec and the First Nations.”[6]

Meanwhile, the FFQ continued to develop its thinking on the Quebec national question, becoming clearly pro-independence in 1990. This orientation would undergo no fundamental change through the following years. And when the Parti Québécois government turned to harsh fiscal austerity after the defeat of the referendum in 1995, the FFQ, now headed by Françoise David, focused on the fight against poverty, combined with the issue of violence against women. Its discourse was transformed, writes Trudel. “It moved to the left, close to Marxism, at the same time becoming more inclusive.”[7] At the outset of the 21^st century it became as well “altermondialiste,” that is, engaged in the global justice movement. Following the success of its “bread and roses” marches in the mid-1990s, the FFQ initiated the World March of Women in 2000.

After the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord

The FFQ was now the umbrella organization for 115 Quebec associations with about 100,000 members in all walks of life. In its brief to the Bélanger-Campeau commission on Quebec’s political and constitutional future, established in 1990 by the Quebec government following the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord, the FFQ stated:

“We believe that the possibility of achieving significant changes in the social and political fabric of Quebec will be proportional to the degree of autonomy Quebec obtains. And we believe that greater manoeuvrability for Quebec will promote the development of a feminist model of society, provided that women are closely associated with all phases in the development of this model. To define and implement a plan for society, we need a framework that we can be part of.

“With this in mind, and although we are fully aware that political autonomy is not the only condition for such changes, we think that women as a social group have an interest in choosing the greatest possible political autonomy for Quebec.[8] […]

“We feminists understand the importance of autonomy and identity, concepts that have always been at the heart of our struggle. We have refused to dissolve our identity as women into that of our fathers and husbands; and today we refuse to dissolve our Quebec identity into the Canadian identity. We know the price of autonomy, but also its value.

“Our feminism is expressed collectively; it is part of a specific cultural reality, that of Quebec, and it is not independent of the social and political context. For example, let us recall that the birth of neo-feminism in Quebec in the early 1970s was closely related to the goal of national liberation. Feminist groups situated the struggle of women within the struggle for national liberation, as was illustrated by the slogan ‘No women’s liberation without the liberation of Quebec. No Quebec liberation without the liberation of women.’ Then, as today, it was not feminism that was exclusive to Quebec women, but the context in which it was developing. […]

“Since it is the overall future of Quebec that interests us, we think that the changes in Quebec should not be limited to a fundamental modification of the relationship between Quebec and Canada, but should be situated within an overall plan for society. What we need to collectively redefine is not only our relationships with Canada but what this new country of Quebec will be. It is social relationships as a whole that must be re-envisaged.”[9]

And the FFQ went on to develop some of the key ideas it thought should be included in the constitution of an independent Quebec. It added:

“The new constitution should be elaborated by a constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage and composed equally of men and women.

“The proposed constitution should be submitted to the entire population for ratification. It will be the property of the citizens of Quebec, and should not be the subject of any negotiations with other countries, including Canada.”[10]

No surprise, then, that the FFQ opposed the Charlottetown Accord, the follow-up to Meech negotiated by the first ministers and put to a cross-Canada referendum for approval in 1992. FFQ leaders participated in a new coalition, the Regroupement des Québécoises pour le NON, and published a “pink pamphlet,” Non à l’entente de Charlottetown: Pour un avenir qui nous ressemble.

NAC, too, with the FFQ again a member, opposed the Accord. NAC leaders Judy Rebick and Shelagh Day issued a statement explaining that “The Quebec and aboriginal peoples have the right to decide democratically their own future without being crushed by a massive campaign orchestrated by the majority’s political elites.”[11] But this position was sharply attacked not only by the media but by some NAC affiliates who protested that the position taken by the organization’s leaders was not based on adequate consultation with the members.[12] In the October 1992 referendum, the Charlottetown Accord was defeated in both Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Leading up to the 1995 referendum on Quebec independence, the FFQ voted in a membership assembly to endorse the OUI following a consultation in which three different positions were advanced: for, against, and neither. But the FFQ’s efforts were not enough to tip the balance in the popular vote, in which the OUI was narrowly defeated — 50.55% against, 49.45% in favour.[13]

And where was the left in this history?

The feminists were not alone in their divisions over Meech and the Quebec national question. The Quebec NDP, which was experiencing a brief surge in support following the PQ’s endorsement of Mulroney’s Conservatives in the mid-1980s, opposed the Accord. But the federal NDP supported Meech, as it had the unilateral patriation of the Constitution in 1992 without Quebec consent. Quebec’s tiny Communist party, which had opted for Yes to sovereignty-association in the 1980 referendum, urged a No vote in 1995; the party has never supported Quebec independence, and in the early 21^st century most of its Quebec members split, first to adhere to the pro-sovereignty Québec solidaire, later to support the PQ.

Other Marxists? In a recent article on the demise of the Trotskyist tendency to which both he and I had adhered, John Riddell noted that our Quebec forces, which had historically favoured Quebec independence, split in 1980 and formed Gauche socialiste in 1983: “Gauche Socialiste went on to play a significant and constructive role in the creation of a new left party, Québec Solidaire.” During the 1980s and 1990s, John notes, “the broader socialist movement was in decline.” Yet, he says, “these were the very years in which the International Socialists (IS) emerged in Canada as a dynamic and influential far-left organization.” On this, I think he exaggerates. In any case, the IS record on the constitutional debates speaks otherwise.

In 2012, IS leader Abbie Bakan criticized the NAC for opposing the Charlottetown Accord: “The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) … tragically sided with the ‘no’ side. But this position encountered considerable challenge, most importantly from Quebec feminist allies, including the Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ).” Bakan misstates the FFQ position, as we have seen. She goes on: “At the time, the International Socialists, a member organization of NAC, wrote an Open Letter calling for a reversal of the ‘no’ position.”

In a 40-page pamphlet published in 1991-92, which is still the most complete statement of IS thinking on Canada’s national questions,[14] Bakan argues that “genuine self-determination for all the oppressed can only be won by smashing the Canadian state…,”[15] but apparently she and the IS are unable to see how Quebec independence might be strategically related to that goal.

For my part, in 1987 I drafted an article for the widely-read left magazine Canadian Dimension aimed at rebutting the very myths being propagated in Canada by some feminists and leftists concerning the Meech Lake Accord. It was rejected by the CD editorial collective, citing (in a letter by managing editor Jim Silver to Donald Swartz)[16] “our disagreement with the interpretation offered by the article.” CD’s refusal was protested at the time by a number of socialists in Canada and Quebec whose support I had solicited (although they did not necessarily agree with the article’s content) — among them Gil Levine, Lukin Robinson and Swartz.

In Quebec, Roch Denis translated the article and published it in the June-July 1988 issue of Tribune Ouvrière, the newspaper of the Groupe socialiste des travailleurs, with an introduction that stated, in part: “…while the author’s position is widely held within the left and among worker militants in Quebec, it is much more seldom heard in English Canada… where the dominant circles of the ‘left’ yield to no one in their defence of the Canadian state.”

Ironically, in a book published to mark the 50^th year of publication of Canadian Dimension,[17] a chapter by Peter Graefe on its coverage of Quebec states:

“In retrospect, the lack of Quebec voices on Meech Lake was unfortunate. A key claim of CD’s rejection of Meech Lake involved the spending power provisions, which were seen as preventing future universal social programs. Ultimately, the Quebec left rejected these same provisions on the opposite grounds: namely that they recognized and legitimized the use of the spending power and thus made it easier to use. In some ways, this debate was never joined in the pages of the journal….”

Here, then, for the first time in English, is my article as it was submitted to Canadian Dimension, with a few outdated references removed. My approach to the “distinct society” issue is somewhat different from the FFQ’s, although not inconsistent with it.

Meech Lake: Myth and Reality

By Richard Fidler

Almost no one on the left likes the Meech Lake accord. But the critics differ on what is wrong with it, and what it means for the political future of this country. There is parti­cular confusion over Quebec’s status, federal-provincial rela­tions, and the role of judicial review. Clarity on these matters will strengthen the opposition and reinforce the unity of the left in Quebec and English Canada.

Myth No. 1. Quebec has gained new powers.

The accord inserts a clause in the Constitution recognizing that Quebec is “a distinct society” within Canada. This was instrumental in getting [Quebec Premier] Bourassa’s signature on the accord, which is said to “bring Quebec into the Constitution.” And this in turn has helped many who are critical of other provisions in the accord, such as Ed Broadbent and the NDP federal caucus, to swallow their misgivings and endorse the accord.

But recognition of Quebec’s uniqueness is largely symbolic, as critics in Quebec have pointed out. The meaning of “distinct society” is unclear: its content will be defined by the unelected judiciary — ultimately the Supreme Court of Canada, in which Quebec judges are a minority. The judges will interpret it in light of the accord and the Constitution as a whole. What do these indicate?

The accord does not give Quebec protection in the crucial area of language rights, so essential to the definition of its distinct character. Provisions in the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Charter of Rights that were used to invalidate large parts of Law 101 remain in place. One might think that “distinct society” refers at minimum to Quebec’s French language and culture. But the clause is subject to a “duality principle” which, among other things, requires the Quebec legislature to “preserve” the English-speaking population in Quebec, whose presence is stated to be a “fundamental characteristic of Canada.” This is a clear invitation to the courts to cut down Quebec language laws that are deemed to interfere with Anglophone “rights.”

In addition, the accord for the first time gives constitutional authorization to the federal government to initiate spending programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction — a power Quebec long resisted.

Quebec still lacks a comprehensive veto on constitu­tional change. In 1981 the Supreme Court said Quebec’s veto was only a “convention,” not law, and that the Constitution could be patriated without Quebec consent. Under Meech Lake, the require­ment of provincial unanimity in amendments concerning federal institutions is extended, but the general amending formula (seven provinces with 50% of the population) remains.

Most important, the “principle of equality of all the provinces,” specifically mentioned in the resolution for adop­tion by the legislatures, decisively undermines any real recog­nition of Quebec as a “distinct society.” This is why Quebec has no unique veto power; as Senator Lowell Murray, Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations, explains, “Once the principle of provincial equality was enshrined in the Constitu­tion on Nov. 5, 1981, the only way to give Quebec a veto was to also give a veto to all the provinces.” Thus, from now on, all provinces must consent to any constitutional amendment affecting the powers, number and method of appointment of Senators. (This effectively precludes any possibility of abolishing the Senate.) Quebec gets a voice in appointments to the Supreme Court and the Senate — but so do all the other provinces.

In addition, all provinces are allowed to “opt out” of federal shared cost programs and constitutional amendments that transfer provincial powers to the federal government. A province opting out will qualify for federal compensation if it “carries on a program or initiative that is compatible with the national objectives” established by the federal government (not Parlia­ment).

Opting out with financial compensation was originally devised in the 1960s to enable Quebec to establish its own social programs — medicare, university funding, pensions, etc. — without conceding any special constitutional status to the province. In theory the procedure was available to any province, but only Quebec used it. Now it will be entrenched in the constitution for all provinces.

Under Meech Lake, “special status” is given to all provinces, and therefore to none. The rationale: to avoid at all costs conceding any meaningful national character to Quebec. In legal and constitutional terms, Quebec remains very much a “province like the others” — but subject to continuing constitu­tional restrictions on its power to legislate to protect its distinctive language and culture. This is the primary injustice in the accord.

Myth No. 2. Meech Lake weakens the central state.

Many English-Canadian critics of the accord complain that it weakens the federal jurisdiction, which they see as the primary source of progressive legislation. They worry that the first ministers, in signing the accord, have surrendered some portion of Canadian sovereignty.

Thus, Larry Brown of the National Union of Provincial Government Employees says (in a brief presented to the parliamentary committee studying the accord) that it “means a substan­tial transfer of power from the federal to the provincial governments.” The United Electrical Workers (UEW) speaks of the “balkanization” of Canada and warns about “a continuous dynamic of decentralization” under the accord. The Canadian Labor Congress echoes these views while conceding it does not speak for its Quebec affiliate, the Quebec Federation of Labor (QFL).

The unions worry about the enhanced provincial role under the accord. And they argue that the vague spending powers formula opens the way to gutting existing federal-provincial shared-cost social programs, and may foreclose meaningful stan­dards in future ones such as the proposed childcare program.

Conversely, however, the requirement that provincial programs be compatible with “the national objectives” could pressure provinces to participate in programs determined by Ottawa. This may be objectionable to Québécois who wish to establish their own priorities in terms of national (Quebec) needs. As the QFL put it, in a brief to the National Assembly, Quebec has established some relatively advanced social programs in recent years: “Why should we recognize the federal govern­ment’s power to dictate our next public spending priorities?” An opting out formula that recognized Quebec’s unique needs would obviate this problem.

Making compatibility with national objectives a condition for federal funding of social programs does not necessarily bar pioneering reforms by some provinces; in fact, many social reforms in Canada have been initiated by provinces, such as medicare in Saskatchewan under the CCF-NDP. Much will depend on how restrictively those “national objectives” are defined.

Other arguments marshalled in support of the “balkani­zation” thesis are similarly unconvincing. The provinces may submit lists of nominees for the Senate and Supreme Court, but the federal government makes the ultimate determination. A province may negotiate an immigration agreement with the federal government that is “appropriate to the needs and circumstances of that province,” but any such agreement must conform to national standards and objectives set by the federal Parliament.

Nor should the ideological consequences of the accord be ignored. The Globe and Mail editors argue that Quebec’s formal acceptance of patriation and the Charter of Rights, and the enhanced provincial role in determining the composition of federal institutions, will tend to “increase the legitimacy” of those institutions “in Quebec and in the regions.”

Ed Broadbent was probably right when he told Parlia^­ment: “The powers of the national Government of Canada have not been reduced one iota by this accord.” That is why the Quebec NDP opposes the accord — and why Broadbent supports it.

Myth No. 3. Increased judicial review will promote democracy and equality.

The underlying problem with Meech Lake is not the increased provincial input in federal institutions and policies, but the enhanced role of the executive, bureaucratic and judi­cial powers under the accord.

The role of the elected House of Commons and provin­cial legislatures is diminished through such means as annual First Ministers’ conferences on the economy and the constitu­tion. Mulroney and other first ministers are even claiming that none of the 11 legislatures “debating” the accord may amend it in any way. Intergovernmental agreements contemplated in the accord can bind successor legislatures, and leave no role for native people, Northerners or Francophone minorities outside Quebec who do not have governmental status. The Senate is here to stay. The amending formula becomes increasingly complex.

Above all, the accord effects a further huge transfer of power to the judiciary. Judges will have to determine the meaning of terms like “distinct society,” “national objectives,” and “reasonable compensation.”

Ironically, some critics of Meech Lake would rely on the courts to remedy perceived injustices in the accord, by extending the scope of judicial review under the Charter of Rights. Some unions and women’s groups are calling for an amendment that would make the “distinct society” clause subject to Charter protection of women’s equality rights. They point out that the accord specifies that the recognition of Quebec as a distinct society is not to affect federal jurisdiction over Indians or the multicultural character of Canada under the Charter. The failure to provide a similar exemption for women, they say, permits Quebec, in the name of promoting its distinc­tiveness, to override women’s rights.

In legal terms, the pro-Charter argument is less than overwhelming. It can also be argued, as does the Quebec women’s federation (FFQ), that in terms of the constitutional division of powers native people and cultural minorities are analogous with Québécois, in that they all have national or ethnic charac­teristics. Women, however, are not a nationality and there is therefore no need to mention them in the accord.

Politically, the pro-Charter argument is disastrous. It is offensive to Québécois, both male and female. It suggests that unless the Quebec government is subject to external consti­tutional constraints, it will continue to oppress women; that is, that the Québécois themselves are unable to eliminate sexual oppression. This position has divided Quebec and English-Cana­dian feminists and has been effectively exploited by Mulroney, Bourassa and other supporters of the accord to demoralize those in Quebec who criticize the “distinct society” clause as providing insufficient protection of Quebec’s vulnerable language and culture. (“You see, even this is too much for English Canada; it’s the best you can hope for.”)

The National Association of Women and the Law, tes­tifying before the parliamentary committee on the accord, cited the “potential” for “misuse of population control in the name of preserving or promoting distinct populations.” But the old stereotype of a priest-ridden Quebec engaged in a “revenge of the cradles” hardly squares with contemporary Quebec’s compara­tively progressive approach to women’s rights, reflected, for example, in the greater access to abortions. As the FFQ noted, “in Quebec, respect for women’s rights is increasingly a part of our political culture. The progress we have made in terms of women’s status is not unrelated to this characteristic as a distinct society.”

The federal government-sponsored Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women has even called for making the entire Constitution subject to the Charter — and for a judicial opinion on the accord before it is adopted by Parliament.

This resort to the Charter and the courts is misguided. As many in the left are coming to understand, the Charter of Rights is at best a dubious instrument for advancing the struggles of the oppressed and exploited.

Charter rights are abstract. Their content is defined by the judiciary, with its traditional conservative bias. Legal reasoning tends to discount arguments founded on history and class — essential considerations when assessing laws that engender inequality or that are designed to overcome it. Is it mere coincidence that the overwhelming majority of cases so far under the sexual equality provision of the Charter have been initiated by men seeking “equal” benefits for men?

The courts tend to favor the individual over the collective, and private enterprise over government. Thus the Supreme Court had no difficulty finding that the “fundamental” freedom of association in the Charter did not protect union members’ right to engage in collective bargaining or to strike, while the right of protection against arbitrary search and seizure protected the Southam newspaper chain from a federal law designed to curb monopoly concentration.

In fact, the general thrust of Charter litigation, as of all judicial review, is to restrain government action or legislation. This can be useful in some circumstances — for example in defending individual rights against arbitrary police action, or women’s right to choose against the criminalization of abortion. But what women, Québécois, and all working people need above all is positive government action that protects them against unfettered corporate power and the inequalities of the “free market”.

Charter litigation has definite limits as part of an offensive political strategy. It tends to divert attention away from the need for collective action to obtain specific reforms and governmental change, in favor of the courts and abstract judicial arguments of principle.

For example, opponents of cruise missile testing launched a court challenge under the Charter that received massive media attention. The courts in the end ratified the tests. Meanwhile, Operation Dismantle’s alternative strategy of promoting binding municipal referenda across Canada on cruise tests as well as NATO membership got lost in the Charter mania. Similarly, unions confronting wage-control legislation in several provinces chose to fight it with a Charter challenge in the courts instead of organizing on-the-job protests and strike action as they had in 1976 in response to Trudeau’s wage controls. Again, the courts upheld the legislation and the unions were back to square one.

An alternative approach would focus on rallying support for specific actions and laws rather than leaving the solution to the discretion of judges. For example, feminists say their desire to amend the Meech Lake accord is prompted by a recent ruling that the rest of the Constitution is not subject to the Charter. In that case, teachers and school boards in Ontario went to court to challenge the provincial government’s decision to extend Catholic school funding to senior grades. They argued that the protection of denominational schools in Ontario and Quebec in section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867 was contrary to the Charter. They lost. The Supreme Court said that it would not interfere with the “fundamental compromises” negotiated between the provinces and the federal government. In effect the judges threw the decision back into the political sphere, where it should have been all along. What should the Ontario teachers do now? Certainly not fight to make the Charter override the rest of the Constitution. Instead, they could join forces with the Quebec unions and community groups that have been fighting to secularize the schools by ending the religion-based distinctions in section 93.

The Charter directs us to rely less on legislatures and governmental power and more on the courts for solutions to our problems. It is no accident that its adoption coincided with the unilateral patriation of the Constitution following defeat of the Quebec referendum on sovereignty. The Charter is a cen­tralizing instrument: it subjects Quebec’s laws and government action to judicial scrutiny for compliance with a pan-Canadian jurisprudence. In doing so, it restricts Quebec’s capacity to develop its own institutions and laws adapted to its national character or distinctiveness.

Until now Québécois have been somewhat diffident toward the Canadian Charter. The Parti Québécois government was applauded when it invoked a Charter provision to exempt Quebec legislation from some key provisions of the Charter.

But in mid-April 1987, a few days before signing the Meech Lake accord,  Bourassa quietly let the provision lapse. With the accord, Charter politics now acquire greater force in Quebec — even though Quebec’s own Charter, an act of its National Assembly and therefore subordinate to the Canadian Charter, is in some respects more advanced. (For example, it prohibits dis­crimination on grounds of political views or sexual orientation, and it is directed against arbitrary discriminatory action by private agencies, not just governments.)

The proposal to extend the jurisdiction of the Charter, and therefore the courts, simply reinforces these trends. And it stands reality on its head. Quebec’s struggle for its rights as a nation, however imperfectly reflected in the Meech Lake accord, does not threaten the struggle by women against their oppression as a sex. The interests of Québécois and women lie in a common struggle against a central state that maintains the oppression of both.

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[1] Flavie Trudel, “L’Engagement des femmes en politique au Québec: Histoire de la Fédération des femmes du Québec de 1966 à nos jours.” I am indebted to Raghu Krishnan for drawing this work to my attention.

[2] Jill Vickers, Pauline Rankin, Christine Appelle, Politics as if women mattered: A political analysis of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993), p. 119.

[3] Toronto, Thompson Educational Publishing, 2^nd ed. 1994.

[4] Trudel, op. cit., p. 253.

[5] Ibid., p. 254.

[6] Vickers et al., op. cit., p. 9. See also “NAC Response to Federal Constitution Proposals,” October 25, 1991. Copy in my possession.

[7] Trudel, op. cit., p. 285.

[8] Richard Fidler, Canada, Adieu? Quebec Debates its Future (Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1991), pp. 159-60.

[9] Ibid., p. 163.

[10] Ibid., p. 164.

[11] Trudel, op. cit., p. 292. My re-translation from the French.

[12] Ibid., p. 292.

[13] Ibid., p. 316.

[14] Abbie Bakan, Quebec: From Conquest to Constitution, A Socialist Analysis (Toronto: An International Socialists Pamphlet). A pdf copy is in my possession.

[15] Ibid., p. 3.

[16] Dated February 17, 1988. Copy in my possession.

[17] Cy Gonick (ed.), Canada Since 1960: A People’s History (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 2016).