FREE TRADE

The fight against free trade grows

But where is the Canadian Labor Congress to co-ordinate a national movement?

By MIKE PHILLIPS

The leadership of the Canadian trade
union movement is being urgently cal-
led to centre stage of what, so far, has
been a largely spontaneous resistance
to the neo-conservative agenda — a re-
sistance that increasingly focuses on
Canada’s fight for economic and ulti-
mately political survival.

The latest polls tell us that Canadians
are saying no to free trade with the U.S.
in greater numbers than ever. In the 2]
months since the April 1984 sounding,
the percentage of the population favor-
ing free trade with the Americans. has
plummeted from 78 to 54 per-cent.

Since the start of the corporate drive
for massive concessions in the private
sector and the attacks by successive
Liberal and Tory governments on the
public sector and social services, work-
ers in all parts of Canada have fought
back tenaciously.

_ Where clear-sighted and militant
leadership was provided, such as the
autoworkers’ fight against concessions
in their industry, and the current battle
being waged in the Newfoundland pub-
lic sector against that provincial neo-
conservative government, resistance
has frequently been crowned with
victory.
; The emergence of Operation Solidar-
ity in B.C. and the Solidarity with it,
was a definite turning point in the fight-
back to stop the corporations and their

governments from driving the people's —

living standards and social rights back
about half a century in the name of in-
creased competitiveness, deficit cutting
and a “leaner, meaner’’ economy.
Confronting Big Business

Operation Solidarity inspired other
coalitions to form as the economic
crisis bit deeper and deeper into com-
munities the length and breadth of the
country.

Women’s organizations, the un-
employed, anti-poverty groups, the
churches, unions, community groups,
have all been coming together in many
provinces to confront the force of big-
| business and their governments. who

are being increasingly identified as the
source of the crisis.

There’s Solidarity Alberta, (not to
mention the unemployed movement,
the Dandelions), Newfoundland’s
Coalition for Equality, Quebec’s Sol-
idariteé Populaire, the Toronto-based
anti-free trade coalition and other
groupings in various cities.

The issues they’ve united around
have been diverse, but they’ ve all been
rooted in one common soil — govern-
ment’s monetarist response to the
crisis, with its loading of the burden on
working people by massively shifting
the country’s wealth into the hands of
the corporations.

Unemployment and the fight to save,

and extend social services emerged as -

the early issues. Now free trade with its
implications for deepening both of
these crises is the focal point.

In Ontario, the federation of labor is
well into a province-wide campaign
against free trade and for jobs that will
be topped off by a mass rally April 26 at
the Legislature. There is also a massive
coalition which has come into being to
save Ontario’s medicare system from
being underminded by the medical
association’s demand for the right to
bill patients more than the province’s
health insurance scheme provides.

On April 4, the coalition is planning a
demonstration at the Ontario Legis-

lature in support of the government’s
legislation to ban extra billing by the
province’s doctors. :

Minimal Role

But, what is disturbing in this im-
portant and long overdue trend across
the country, is the minimal role being
played by the top leadership of the
Canadian trade union movement in the
process.

At Dialogue 86, the Canadian Labor
Congress-sponsored economic sum-
mit, the perspective of intensified coal-
ition building from the grass roots up to
the country-wide level was raised, as
was the vision of a people’s alternative
economic program to counter the
Nielsen-Mulroney agenda.

Though mandated from its 1984 con-
vention to implement an ‘*Action Plan
to Promote Jobs and Justice’, which
easily incorporates both perspectives,
these initiatives came forward almost in
spite of the congress’ input.

In fact, church representatives with-
drew from the planning group for the
Dialogue because they preferred to de-
vote their energies toward developing
the unity process against unemploy-
ment and poverty, rather than staging
yet another sterile gab fest and platform
for business and government to prom-
ote their bankrupt policies. As it turned
out, both groups snubbed the Dialogue

and a healthy debate over the need fora
people’s alternative and coalition.
building around it, dominated the CLC
event. ,

The congress and its affiliates can
take credit for much of the education
that is obviously taking place among
Canadians on the free trade issue. But
as important as this stage of the fight for
Canadian independence is, it needs to
be followed up, and quickly, by the
kind of extra parliamentary mass
movement from one end of Canada to
the other that can turn the tables on the
Tories’ big business majority in parlia-
ment.

Hebert’s Hunger Strike

The symbolism of Senator Hébert’s
current hunger strike to save Katimavik
aside, Canadian youth, and everyone in
general would be well served by his

‘advice to get out and organize mass

action to force the Tories to show the
people of this country a little respect.

Canada’s pensioners demonstrated
this in their successful fight to save in-
dexed pensions. No amount of tactical
brilliance along the opposition benches,
alone, could block the big business
juggernaut from imposing its de-
regulated, de-indexed, contracted out,
de-industrialized, free trade vision for
Canada, mandate or no mandate.

The fightback on the collective
bargaining front and on the country’s
picket lines against concessions and
cutbacks, the mushrooming of coalition
movements at community and in-
creasingly provincial levels, and the
growing popular recognition of the
danger posed by free trade should be

taken as a signal to the union leadership _

that an offensive led by labor is in order,

A CLC leadership prepared to act on
this signal, by placing the trade union
movement at the centre of country-
wide movement for a people’s alter-
native to free trade and the rest of the
corporate plan to reduce this country to
a haven of raw materials and cheap

labor for the U.S. empire, will be per-

forming an invaluable, and historic ser-
vice to this country and its people.

The status quo won’t work

The success of the free trade fightback will be determined by its alternative program.

By GEORGE HEWISON

Those who would minimize the con-
sequences of free trade for Canada
often cite the historical debates which
have occurred around reciprocity and
thus conclude that nothing is new in the
current controversy.

While such an approach is both
interesting and useful, if not reaction-
ary, it masks a true understanding of the
new, basic forces at work which place
free trade so forcefully at the fore in
1986. Such an understanding is funda-
mental for the working class to find
alternatives to free trade and the con-
sequent loss of sovereignty for Canada.

The switch by dominant sections of
big business in Canada from Trudeau’s
two-track policy of allying with U.S.
finance capital while simultaneously
holding it at arms length, to the Tories’
one way ticket to total integration, in
fact mirrors the new global reality fac-
ing monopoly capital.

This new reality involves two ever
present countervailing tendencies —
the one towards integration, and the
other to increasing rivalries between
groupings of imperialist centres.

Lenin described the basic features of

imperialism as: the concentration of
production and capital to such a degree
that monopolies are created; the merg-
ing of bank and industrial capital to
form finance capital; the export of capi-
tal as distinct from commodities; the
formation of international capitalist
combines which share the world among
themselves; and, the territorial division
of the world among these international
combines:

Capitalism’s Last Stage

Imperialism is thus not only a stage of
capitalism, it is the logical outgrowth of
“laissez-faires’’ capitalism, the highest
and last stage of capitalism prior to
socialism.

The basic characteristics of im-
perialism revealed by Lenin are very
much at work in Canada and the capital-
ist world today.

The laws of capital accumulation
continue to operate and the process of
capitalist integration accelerates.
Monopoly groupings have now become
powerful transnational corporations
with budgets and power the size of
nation-states and larger.

At the same time capitalist accumula-

tion increases. This competition takes
place inside monopoly groupings, be-
tween monopoly groupings, (even
TNCs) and among capitalist states.

That is why we see both the co-
operation between giants such as Gen-
eral Motors and Toyota or Suzuki, and
the attempt to cut into one another’s
share of the market. It is why, while the
European Common Market is univer-
sally penetrated by U.S. capital it takes
steps to counter this penetration. It also
explains why, as the integration of the
European community grows, there is
also increased rivalry among commu-
nity states themselves.

Canadian monopoly capital, itself no
small actor in the capitalist world but an
economic midget by comparison to the
U.S. mammoth, is attempting to juggle
within the context of expanding its
Opportunities, while protecting itself in
face of increasing competition abroad.
It is increasingly being drawn into U.S.
imperialism’s orbit.

Leaner and Meaner

‘*Free trade’? is but one aspect of
capitalist integration, albeit a most
basic one. What is involved is the mat-

ter of the marketplace, or the place
where profit is realized. Within the con-
text of integration and competition, the
name of the game is to protect your
existing markets while reaching out to
gain more.

The expanding market is vital for ex-
panding production, and expanding
capital accumulation. Unfortunately
for Canadian monopoly, U.S., Japan-
ese and West European monopoly capi-
tal operate under the same capitalist
rules.

These countries are attempting to
expand their markets, and market
penetration at Canada’s expense. The
dominant sections of Canada’s corpo-
rate elite are thus convinced they can
survive in the economic jungle of the
500 plus TNCs, though it means the
sacrifice of their weaker brethren, not
to mention Canadian sovereignty.

In fact, the economic: shakedown
which would occur as a result of free
trade could well result in strengthening
the dominant sections of Canadian cap-
ital. Weaker rivals will be eaten up,
large portions of the state buetet will be
surrendered on the altar of *‘fighting the

see STATUS QUO page 7

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 9, 1986