A Rough Analogy

Grade 11 student Carl Niedermeyer unfurled a torrent of opposition to a newly instituted ban against any display of the image of the Nazi flag or swastika because of its negative connotation as a symbol of racism.

"To be told that showing our German pride using this flag is us being racist is not only an insult to us as human beings, but possibly even a bit racist in itself," says the 16-year-old Sutton resident.

The flag with a red background featuring a black swastika in a white circle flown by German troops during the Second World War of 1939 to 1945 has less to do with imperialist expansion, racism and genocide for some students than it does a 'folksy' culture of beer halls, the music of Richard Wagner and rebelling against authority.

Conservatives target the unemployed with EI changes

This article was originally published at Fightback.



Strict new changes to Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program took effect across the country on Jan. 6. The Conservatives’ plans to “reform” EI have been public knowledge since the Harper government tabled its last federal budget in March. Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Diane Finley claimed the new changes merely clarify what is expected from EI claimants and help better connect job applicants to available work. In reality, they represent the latest attempt by the Canadian bourgeoisie to make workers pay for the ongoing capitalist crisis through austerity and a reduction of the social wage.

Henceforth, EI claimants will be divided into three categories. “Long-tenured workers” have paid 30 per cent of their maximum annual EI premiums for seven of the last ten years, and collected benefits for less than 35 weeks during the past five years. “Frequent claimants” have filed more than three claims and collected more than 60 weeks’ benefits over the previous five years. Anyone else is classified as an “occasional claimant.” The net effect is to divide EI claimants between those who pay into the program but never or rarely collect benefits and those who make more frequent claims.

The revamped EI program will also introduce more stringent definitions of “suitable employment” and what constitutes a “reasonable job search” (in other words, preparing resumes, attending job fairs, and applying for jobs and job banks). Under the new regulations, the government will consider several factors when considering whether an EI claimant is suited for a particular job, including wages, type of work, commuting time, working conditions, hours of work and personal circumstances such as family obligations. As an example of what is considered “suitable,” the regulations define an acceptable commuting time as one hour each way — although, it could also be a figure that “could be higher taking into account previous commuting history and community’s average commuting time.”

Particularly hard-hit by the changes will be the Atlantic provinces, the economies of which are more dependent than the rest of Canada on seasonal employment such as fishing. During the winter months, when there is little work to be found in rural areas, many residents rely on EI payments before returning to their jobs when the season starts. In the wake of Harper’s restructuring of the program, frequent claimants may be required to take available work off-season rather than waiting for their old jobs to start up again — even if the new job pays 30 per cent less and is located an hour’s drive away.

While the government portrays the EI changes as common sense reforms designed to reduce waste while making it easier for people to find work, the reality is more complicated. In truth, EI “reform” represents the latest bourgeois attack on workers as the ruling elite seeks to make the most vulnerable members of society pay for the crisis of their system. Seizing on the pretext of a vast increase in the federal debt caused by corporate tax cuts and bailouts to banks and auto companies, the bosses are clawing back every historical gain of the Canadian working class.

As it aims to restore conditions of profitability, one of the biggest targets of the capitalist class is the social wage, which consists of benefits paid through the bourgeois state that workers managed to wrench from the bosses over years of struggle. This includes pensions, health care, and unemployment benefits. In order to pay off the debt and restore the rate of profit, capitalists are targeting every social program they can find as a source of savings. As always, the human cost of restoring economic equilibrium to the capitalist system is borne not by those who order the cuts, but by ordinary working people.

Youth and female workers, in particular, stand to lose out, as they are the most vulnerable to long-term changes in the job market that have reduced eligibility for EI. In recent decades, demand for ever-greater “flexibility” in the labour market has created a shift towards more temporary and part-time employment. This is reflected in numbers from Statistics Canada, which reported that 78.4 per cent of Canadians who lost their jobs in 2012 were eligible for EI benefits, compared to 83.9 per cent in 2010. In an economy that emphasizes the disposability of the worker, fewer and fewer people are able to reach the threshold of 420 to 700 working hours (generally only attainable at a full-time job) that allows them to qualify for benefits. The same Statistics Canada report noted that among EI contributors, the share working in full-time jobs decreased from 51 per cent in 2011 to 40 per cent. Eligibility rates for women and youth both dropped.

By making it harder to qualify for EI benefits and instituting a sliding scale of benefits that decreases benefits for each week the recipient is out of work — all while making no effort to reduce premiums — the Harper government is tightening the screws on the unemployed and forcing them to accept work in the more precarious short-term, temporary or part-time positions that increasingly dominate the economic landscape in advanced capitalist nations. At the same time, cutting benefits while maintaining premiums will provide the government with an additional source of funds to pay off the federal debt should EI once more generate a surplus.

Such a manoeuvre would come as no surprise from the Conservative government, which funnelled $55-billion from the EI surplus to help pay off the debt in 2008 — a move that then-NDP leader Jack Layton described as “the biggest theft in Canadian history.” But Harper’s theft was only the most recent in a series of attacks that have plagued EI for decades.

Unemployment Insurance was first established as part of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett’s Employment and Social Insurance Act of 1935, and was later expanded by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau, which made benefits more generous and easily available. Since 1971, those benefits have been cut and cut again. The federal government, originally obliged to make financial contributions to the program along with employers and employees, gradually reduced its contributions until they were eliminated completely by 1990.

The Progressive Conservatives cut EI in 1990 and 1993, before the Liberals took over the hatchet and cut it further in 1994 and 1996. Amendments made eligibility more difficult by increasing the hours of work needed to qualify. The Liberals’ role in cutting EI cost them dearly in lost votes from the Atlantic provinces during the 1997 election. After Harper was elected in 2006, the Conservatives refused to recognize the existing EI surplus, and in 2008 adopted legislation freezing the surplus indefinitely and putting EI premiums on a pay-as-you-go basis. That same year, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected a court challenge from two Quebec trade unions, the Confederation des syndicats nationaux (the province’s second largest union, representing 300,000 workers) and the Syndicat National des Employes de l’Aluminium, arguing that the government had misappropriated EI funds.

Now the Conservatives have further escalated their attacks on EI. The new changes are only the latest manifestation of the austerity the party has been mandated by the capitalist class with spearheading, and which is being felt in every area of economic life through cuts, layoffs, and downsizing. In simple terms, EI “reform” will force the unemployed to more quickly accept one of the precarious, low-wage jobs that are the new norm in Canada by making it more difficult for them to survive.

A larger point must also be considered. In the last analysis, the welfare state, which includes programs such as Employment Insurance, is only an attempt by the capitalist state to compensate for the failings of capitalism itself. Ever-subject to the irrational whims of the market, the capitalist system relies on what Marx called a “reserve army of labour” (the unemployed) to help keep wages down. The resulting waste of human potential is staggering. However, in most capitalist economies, unemployment has gone way over and above what Marx would consider a “reserve army”. Persistent, chronic, and endemic unemployment undermines the system from within. Where the anarchic free market permits human beings to suffer when their labour is not required, a rationally-planned economy would allow society to fully utilize all of the “human resources” at its disposal.

As part of an omnibus budget bill passed by Harper’s Conservative majority, the EI overhaul will go through as planned unless stopped in its tracks by a popular mass movement. Canadians have seen two such movements recently in the forms of the Quebec student strike — which targeted the tuition hikes of the Charest government — and Idle No More, which is currently engaged in an all-out battle to stop the implementation of Bill C-45. At first glance, the unemployed appear only as a small minority of the general population. But the same could be said for the Quebec students and First Nations activists who nonetheless pushed their concerns onto the national agenda, and through their efforts earned a great deal of support from the wider working class.

The NDP and many union leaders have come out strongly against the changes to EI. But ultimately, cuts to assistance for the unemployed are only a symptom of the larger problem: an economic system of which unemployment is the inevitable by-product. Bourgeois economists that refer to a so-called “normal” level of unemployment reflect the degree to which our present society has acclimatized itself to a certain, seemingly inevitable degree of human suffering. And indeed, so long as the means of production are privately-owned and geared towards profit, a certain subset of the population will be condemned to idleness and deprivation.

Only a planned economy under democratic workers’ control, where the means of production are publicly-owned and oriented towards the fulfilment of social needs, will allow society to eliminate the scourge of unemployment once and for all.

Four More Years

HOORAY! I'm so excited for my super cool progressive hero Barack Obama to start his second term!

Barack is a civil rights hero because he let gay Americans kill brown people on the other side of the world too. He personally supports gay marriage (now), but believes the states should ultimately decide. A champion of states’ rights, the president has clearly learned the lessons of the Civil War and the civil rights movement!

He's a champion of the little guy - ordinary, hardworking Americans like Jaime Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. But he's no liberal purist, either: Barack is more than happy to make little old ladies eat cat food if that's what the bankers demand!

But he's tough, too! He orders other people to push buttons that kill terrorists thousands of miles away! I know they're terrorists because the U.S. government says so, and because any military-age male killed in a strike zone is presumed to be a militant. The administration said so! Barack is standing up to Iran and its nuclear program, the same way George W. Bush stood up to Iraq and its nuclear program!

Barack Obama shows that America is never afraid to stand up for what's right! That's why he tortures whistleblowers and protects torturers.

And now, here's to four more glorious years. Congratulations, America! You’ve earned it.
 

Idle No More re-ignites social struggle across Canada

Note: This article was originally written for the publication Fightback and is expected to appear on their website www.marxist.ca after the Christmas break.

Thousands of protesters took part in demonstrations across the country on Dec. 21 under the banner of Idle No More, a grassroots movement dedicated to protecting the environment and Aboriginal treaty rights against new federal legislation. First Nations activists and their supporters mobilized nationwide, with the largest protest on Parliament Hill drawing more than 2,000 people. Solidarity rallies took place around the world from New Zealand to Los Angeles to the United Kingdom. Some activists also started blocking key roads and railways. In the span of a few weeks, Idle No More has become the most significant social movement in Canada since Occupy and the Quebec student strike.

The movement’s recent focus has been on stopping the federal omnibus budget bill C-45, now the law of the land after having received royal assent. Idle No More supporters argue that, contrary to Aboriginal treaties, the Harper government has pushed through Bill C-45 without consulting native leaders or gaining their free, prior and informed consent. The bill includes changes to the Indian Act that would give the Aboriginal affairs minister the authority to call a band meeting or referendum for the purpose of releasing reserve land, potentially a gateway to privatization.

Environmental concerns also play a key role in Idle No More. Changes made in Bill C-45 to the Navigable Waters Protection Act reduce the number of protected lakes and rivers in Canada from 2.5 million to 82 (coincidentally, the majority of bodies of water that remain under federal protection are located in Conservative ridings). The weakening of environmental regulations to boost corporate profits will increase pollution and contamination in native communities such as Fort Chipewyan, which has seen cancer rates skyrocket in recent years due to the nearby oil sands.

Idle No More supporters are demanding that the Harper government shelve Bill C-45 until it has met and consulted with native leaders. Their struggle has become embodied in the hunger strike of Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence, who at the time of writing had gone more than 22 days without eating. Leader of a First Nations community that attracted international attention in 2011 for its appalling living conditions, the increasingly emaciated Spence has pledged to continue her fast until the prime minister and governor-general meet with native leaders. Harper’s continued refusal to grant such a meeting raises the real possibility that the prime minister of Canada will let this woman die before he listens to her concerns.

Fightback unequivocally supports the efforts of First Nations to defend their land and resource rights as stipulated in the treaties. But Idle No More addresses issues of concern to all Canadian workers, including poverty, education, housing, public health, the environment and the Harper government’s ongoing attacks on democracy. First Nations face the same enemy as the broader Canadian working class. By forcing these topics into the national conversation, native activists are taking the lead in the ongoing struggle against the decaying capitalist system.

The current activity follows years of steadily mounting grievances. First Nations have faced state oppression and discrimination throughout Canadian history. Successive governments in Ottawa cynically signed and broke treaties depending on their needs of the moment, while Aboriginal inhabitants were pushed onto reserves with poor land or relegated to the fringes of urban society to live as a despised minority. State authorities attempted to erase every aspect of their culture and separated native children from their families, forcing them to attend abusive residential schools.

Today, First Nations people statistically suffer social maladies at rates far worse than the general population: more unemployment, shorter life expectancy, higher rates of incarceration, poverty and suicide, lower levels of education and greater substance abuse. More than 75 First Nations communities live under constant boil-water-advisory conditions, and residents of towns such as Attawipiskat live in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions with no running water or proper sewage. Such is the legacy of centuries of oppression in which Aboriginal Canadians were treated at best as second-class citizens.

Abuse inevitably leads to resistance. Over the last few decades, indigenous peoples in Canada have fought back in whatever way they could, illustrated during successive crises in Oka (1990), Ipperwash (1995), Gustafsen Lake (1995) and Burnt Church (1999). National days of action in 2007 and 2008 led to native activists blockading stretches of Highway 401 and the CN railroad between Toronto and Montreal. Leaders of these actions were often rounded up and arrested.

Many First Nations people hoped for change in 2008 after Stephen Harper issued an official apology on behalf of the Canadian government for the residential school system. The prime minister pledged a new relationship with First Nations based on partnership and mutual respect. But the government’s successive actions exposed Harper’s promise as meaningless verbiage, as The Toronto Star noted on Dec. 20:

Since 2008, the Harper government has cut aboriginal health funding, gutted environmental review processes, ignored the more than 600 missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada, withheld residential school documents from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, abandoned land claim negotiations, and tried to defend its underfunding of First Nations schools and child welfare agencies.

When some dared call attention to poverty, “corrupt” chiefs were blamed. Although the minister of Aboriginal Affairs, John Duncan, claims to have visited 50 First Nations communities and conducted 5,000 consultations, he and his staff clearly have not gained the First Nations’ consent on the seven currently tabled bills that Idle No More activists oppose.

After so many broken agreements and cutbacks, Bill C-45 was clearly the straw that broke the camel’s back – the moment when quantity turned into quality, when injustices accumulated over many years became too much to bear.

Idle No More began with four indigenous and non-indigenous Saskatchewan women – Sylvia McAdams, Jessica Gordon, Nina Wilson and Sheelah McLean – who began organizing “teach-ins” in Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert during November to build awareness around Bill C-45. Efforts continued when the Louis Bull Cree Nation held learning sessions in Alberta, and organizer Tanya Kappo took to Facebook and Twitter to spread the message further.

Momentum built on social media and led to a National Day of Action on Dec. 10. At the invitation of the New Democratic Party, First Nations leaders attempted to enter the House of Commons as the bill was being voted on, but were refused entry.  Agitation therefore built up further, culminating in an even larger day of protests across the country on Dec. 21.

While solidarity rallies took place from Vancouver to Halifax, the focus was on Ottawa, where legions of supporters were bused in from as far afield as Regina. By mid-morning on Friday, 500 supporters had already gathered on Victoria Island outside the compound where Chief Spence is staying in a teepee during her hunger strike. The demonstrators braved cold weather to rally on Parliament Hill to hear a variety of speakers including Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo, who said Spence’s hunger strike and Idle No More had awakened Aboriginal people across Canada.

Harper appeared unmoved by the day’s rallies, preferring to tweet about his love of bacon. But NDP leader Thomas Mulcair penned a letter to Harper in which he urged the prime minister to heed the message of Idle No More, commit to reconciliation and re-engage with native leaders.

“From coast to coast to coast, an unprecedented wave of grassroots action is sweeping across First Nations communities,” the Leader of the Official Opposition wrote. “When you met with First Nations leaders less than a year ago, you committed your government to working in partnership with First Nations Canadians. The #IdleNoMore protests are proof that Aboriginal Canadians are demanding you fulfill that solemn commitment.”

The NDP leader’s support for the aims of Idle No More is an encouraging sign, as are letters of support from the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and others. There is a widespread recognition that in challenging corporate power and standing up for native land and resource rights, First Nations people are fighting on behalf of all Canadian workers who want decent housing, high public health and education standards and a clean environment for their children to grow up in.

Therefore, Fightback wholeheartedly supports the Idle No More movement. The struggle of Aboriginal Canadians for basic rights and dignity reflects the struggle of all working class Canadians seeking a decent life. But advancing those goals in the long run will require greater unity between First Nations and the labour movement.

Defend native treaty rights and the environment!

Unity between native and non-native workers!

For a socialist Canada with equal opportunities for all!