‘Our objective is a socialist Canada’ – interview with the Communist Party

Since its launch almost 15 years ago, the NB Media Co-op has published numerous articles covering progressive politicians and policies proposed by the NDP and Green Party but very few about the Communist Party. This week, Communist Party of Canada leader Elizabeth Rowley visited Fredericton. The party invited the NB Media Co-op to interview her, and we accepted. The interview with party leader Liz Rowley and Ivan Byard, General Secretary of the Young Communist League of Canada, was conducted on May 12 and edited for publication.

NB Media Co-op: A candidate for the Communist Party of Canada has run in the Fredericton riding in the last two federal elections. In the next federal election, are you planning to run a candidate in Fredericton and in any other ridings in New Brunswick?

Liz Rowley: It depends when the federal election is called. But yes, probably. Would we run more than one? Maybe, we’re a small party. Mainly what we want to do in the next federal election is put forward our views on the economic crisis and on issues of foreign policy.

NB Media Co-op: The Communist Party is one of the smallest political parties in Canada. What do you see is your party’s role within the Canadian electoral system?

Liz Rowley: We are the party of socialism; our objective is a socialist Canada. We’re pretty small at this point, we have been bigger, and we aim to get bigger. Campaigning in elections gives us a voice. We can speak to people about socialism but also our immediate policies, and to build the party and to build support for these ideas.

We think we have policies that will create jobs, that will strengthen universal social programs, stop privatization, convert war spending to civilian spending on education, health care, childcare, public pensions, all of these things that people need. We have a lot of ideas that are not particularly radical. But in the current political situation they appear pretty radical.

NB Media Co-op: Liz, you worked closely with the previous party president Miguel Figueroa in the 1990s to fight anti-democratic laws and policies that limited the influence of small parties. You took your fight all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Is there any chance of ever breaking the monopoly of the big parties?

Liz Rowley: We certainly hope so. We would like to see a coalition of progressive forces elected to knock out these big parties which are causing such harm to people. The court case was very important. It was the Mulroney government that aimed not only at small parties: their main target was actually the Bloc Québécois, which they regarded as a real threat because it split off from the Conservative Party. But they decided, ‘well, let’s get them all and really narrow politics down.’ The rules were horrendous; we had to sell everything and hand over the proceeds to the government. But we’re not about to disappear. We’re the second oldest party in Canada. The Supreme Court decision has become a marker of democracy in Canada.

NB Media Co-op: A main element of your current campaign is to rollback corporate profits. What would be your priority actions?

Liz Rowley: The government has proposed to increase the capital gains tax [from 50%] to 67%. We say let’s tax the whole 100%. Everybody else has their whole income taxed if they’re working stiffs. It would generate $90 billion over a period of five years. That’s a lot of money for housing, for education, health care, jobs, all that. We also want to see the corporate tax rate doubled, for starters, and then increased after that. We really need a new tax system that’s based on the ability to pay, so the load should come off the people and put on big corporations and the very wealthy.

We also have other tax measures. We want to get rid of the HST, because it’s a tax on consumption. We want to eliminate income taxes on people whose income is $40,000 or lower. Rolling back profits is also rolling back interest rates. Taking REITs out of the housing business. The government should get back into public housing, we say public housing on public lands. You know, after WWII, there was a massive social housing program, because there was a strong trade union movement. The soldiers came home and demanded, you know, our rights, the things that were promised to us.

NB Media Co-op: Most Canadians would likely agree with rolling back corporate profits but during an election, it’s never the top of the priority list, they are concerned about health care, about housing.

Liz Rowley: For this next election, what will be driving things is living standards. Considering the rates of inflation over the last few years, people are making less than they did, you know, 10 years ago, 30 years ago? Two million mortgages are coming up in the next two years and the banks have said publicly in the business pages that they are preparing for massive mortgage defaults. When I’m speaking at public events, I’ll say ‘look, it’s not that this country is poor. It is a very wealthy country. There’s a lot of money. The problem is it’s in the hands of the biggest corporations, and their profits are sucking out of the economy and out of workers’ pockets.’ We’re seeing the most massive transfer of wealth in generations from the working class to these powerful corporations and their investors. If that money was instead in the public coffers, it could be used to address all of these problems right away.

NB Media Co-op: A second element of your current campaign is that military spending should be cut by 75% and the funds spent on social services instead. You also want Canada to get out of NATO and NORAD and not get into the AUKUS military submarine program. Why is cutting military spending such a priority for your party?

Liz Rowley: Two reasons. One, Canada is getting more and more deeply involved in US military adventures around the world, by which I mean aggressions and supporting genocide in Gaza, and so forth. They’re already talking about using tactical nuclear weapons. This is fantasy, there is no such thing as a tactical nuclear war. Once they go, we’re done, that’s the end. We need an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace and disarmament.

And then, NATO is demanding that Canada contribute two percent of GDP. This government has indicated that they’re going to accept that, and the Tories are no different, and the NDP supports this. That’s a lot of money, and we’re going to see huge further increases in military spending. And what’s it for? Sending armaments to Israel, to Ukraine, maybe joining AUKUS the Australia, UK and US plan to build nuclear submarines, for the purposes of what:  provocation of China, and maybe the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and Vietnam as well, who knows? This is another very dangerous game. Building weapons is not the future. Instead, with this money, we want to build housing and expand Medicare, fully finance it, and it should include pharmacare and long-term care. Post-secondary education should be free. Public education should be properly financed, and so many other public services that everybody knows are in trouble and are being privatized, by stealth mostly.

NB Media Co-op: What’s your perspective on NATO’s role, and Canada’s role, in the war in Ukraine?

Liz Rowley: Chrystia Freeland said right at the beginning of the war when she presented her budget that Canada has to support Ukraine with money and weapons and so on, because they are fighting our enemy, which is Russia. She’s the one that said it’s a proxy war. And she wasn’t kidding, it is proxy war. It’s part of part of NATO’s plan to surround Russia. And just to be clear here, from our perspective, Russia is not a socialist country, it’s a capitalist country. These are the people who overthrew socialism, so they’re no friends of ours. And why is NATO interested? For strategic reasons, but also, they want the markets, they want the resources. This is a really aggressive foreign policy of imperialism, which Canada has bought into. It’s very dangerous.

Ivan Byard: This is an invasion by the Russian Federation. In the House of Commons, sometimes they will frame it as ‘we’re protecting democracy and Western values.’ But if you look at the economy of Ukraine, and you look at the economy of Canada, there’s a lot of overlap and there are profits to be made. Pork, potash, wheat, natural gas, these are some of the biggest exports and commodities in Canada and these are the staples of the Ukrainian economy. So when the price of oil goes up, a lot of people with businesses headquartered in Calgary are making a lot of money because oil and natural gas are not flowing into Europe. When fertilizer made from potash is not being sent around the world, this not only affects the price of potash mined in Saskatchewan but also affects farmers in Africa where basically, people are starving, and people are starving in Egypt because they’re not having access to staple goods like pork and wheat, and they’re not having access to the fertilizer to grow their own crops domestically. So when they say ‘democracy,’ there is a financial, economic vested interest in this war, because Canada’s economy and Ukraine’s economy overlap so much in terms of what our main economic products and commodities are.

NB Media Co-op: Your campaign includes developing an emergency plan to reduce CO2 emissions to net zero. How do you see that happening?

Liz Rowley: The big problem in Canada is the power of the oil and chemical companies. Canada is a resource economy, and these guys essentially call the shots. This is a very urgent situation; everybody knows that now. The thing to do to respond to that situation is to nationalize them. Presumably, a government that’s really interested in dealing with the problem would then shut down the oil sands and move rapidly towards renewable energy to develop that as a publicly owned sector. Also, to guarantee the jobs and the wages of people who are currently in the oil and gas sector, so they can move over into renewables which is more labor intensive. So there will be lots of jobs there, too.

NB Media Co-op: Liz, in the 1960s, as a student at the University of Alberta, one of your issues back then was reproductive rights. Improving access to abortion remains an ongoing priority for activists in New Brunswick. Why were you drawn to that issue so long ago, and is it a priority for the party?

Liz Rowley: Yeah, especially with what’s happening in the States. It is going to roll into Canada. The fundamental rights of women are under attack. Part of it has to do with right wing governments and their view of women in a very subservient role. But it’s also connected to capitalism: if you have that view of women, you can pay them less. There were always the A and B lists in employment, women always got paid less, and same with people of color, and Indigenous people, and so on. People know about this now, and they don’t agree with it. Men are objecting too for practical reasons, because you have to have two paychecks now to live. And if one of them is underpaid, it means the whole family is hurting. You also need childcare and the Liberal’s much vaunted $10 a day childcare is a failure because there aren’t the spaces. What’s fundamentally wrong is that they didn’t set up a public system.

NB Media Co-op: Liz, later on you were the leader of the Ontario Communist Party when the Bob Rae NDP government was elected in 1990, the first and only NDP government in Canada’s corporate heartland. He lost trade union support when in response to a recession, he ripped up negotiated contracts and implemented a wage freeze. Some analysts point to that example as what happens when the ideals of socialism meet the realities of governance. Do you have any reflections on that period and what lessons we can draw from that today?

Liz Rowley: I sure do. I was the leader of the party for part of that time, and for part of it, I was a school trustee in Toronto. The NDP had already got rid of socialism. They didn’t advocate or support socialism. In fact, more often than not, they were happy to attack socialism. They were advocating two things that got them elected: to represent workers fairly, and to bring in legislation that would benefit them. But from the moment they were elected, there was unremitting pressure on them from big business. The NDP melted, and on top of that they brought in wage rollbacks and so forth. People were very angry, and that’s why there hasn’t been another NDP government elected in Ontario, although we’ve had some really rotten Tory governments. People expected a lot more from the NDP.

NB Media Co-op:  Reading your party’s People’s Voice newspaper, the party sees trade unions as by far the most important and developed social formations of the working class but implies that trade unions are reformist rather than revolutionary because they deal with the immediate needs of people. How do you see reformist becoming revolutionary?

Liz Rowley: I don’t think that reformism is the same as dealing with the immediate problems. I think reformism is protecting capitalism. The role of the trade union movement is to protect workers’ interests immediately. This is very important; there’s lots being lost. If we have a criticism, it’s business unionism that focuses on ‘let’s make a deal with the employers.’ Most recently that was best represented during COVID, with the sign on the Canadian Labour Congress website: We’re all in this together, signed by the CLC and the Business Council. The CLC got that one wrong. As workers are finding out, we’re seeing all kinds of things privatized, the country is being sold out under the free trade agreements, which were really corporate constitutions. We call for Canada to get out of the free trade deals, get out of these military alliances, have an independent foreign policy and independent economic policy that’s in the interests of workers. While some of these issues have been taken on by unions, the labour movement needs to really punch above its weight here. If we’re looking for profound change, fundamental change, it’s the working class that will drive that, and hopefully the labour movement will play a central role.

NB Media Co-op: Your newspaper also mentions that many unions have adopted the position that a genocide is happening in Palestine, calling this potentially a big breakthrough. Why would having international issues influencing unions be considered a big breakthrough?

Liz Rowley: In Canada, since the 1950s, the trade union movement has pretty much focused on collective bargaining issues. Not exclusively, they have done important things with respect to Cuba solidarity, for example, tools for Nicaragua during the progressive government there. The idea is that the more that they take on political issues, international issues, also domestic issues, the better it is because there’s only so much you can do in bargaining. It’s about wages, pensions, stuff like that, but the problem facing working people today are really evidently much bigger than that: war, the environment, corporate power, and those things aren’t up for negotiations.

Ivan Byard: A very sophisticated understanding of class consciousness is to understand that you have more in common with a working-class person across the world, whether it’s in Palestine or Colombia, and that not only do you have a common enemy, in the ruling class of your own country, or with transnational capital, but more importantly, to understand you have common goals, you have common aspirations. Knowing that you are working class and your interests diverge from the ruling class, whether it’s the Irving family here, or the Thompson family, or the Westin family that owns Loblaws.

I know a trade unionist who just got back from a delegation of the postal workers to Cuba, where they worked and met with the Cuban postal workers. They understand they have common grievances, but they also have common aspirations, things they’d like to see at their job. He’s a member of Unifor, and a shop steward, and Unifor has worked to help support and build unions in Mexico in the auto sector, even though it’s not even the same employer, because they understand that for auto workers around the world, especially under NAFTA, when their wages go up, everyone’s wages go up. So it’s not just understanding they have a common enemy. But more importantly, understanding we have a common goal, and we have a common future.

Susan O’Donnell is on the NB Media Co-op board of directors. Gerry McAlister is an NB Media Co-op member and writer.