Canada

Forging a new coalition

for radical change

by Judy Rebick

Good evening, it is a great pleasure to be here. I would like to tell 
you about a new development in Canada: a broad progressive 
coalition that includes the organized labor movement, including 
the Canadian Labor Congress, which is our equivalent to your 
AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the country. You may not 
be aware that we just had a convention of the CLC and elected a 
very left-wing leadership, including as president Bob White, 
former president of the Canadian Auto Workers, which broke 
away from the UAW on an anti-concession platform, and Jean 
Claude Pareau, leader of the postal workers.

The Action Canada Network is a multi-issue progressive coalition 
at the national level of the labor movement, the women's 
movement, students, teachers, farmers, nurses, and includes a 
Quebec wing, called Solidarit_ Populair. Progressive church 
organizations are an important part. It is a rather extraordinary 
exercise because it started as started as a single-issue coalition 
against the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and had 
enormous political impact. We were able to turn around public 
opinion on the Free Trade Agreement from maybe 20 percent who 
were against initially to a majority of people in Canada who were 
against the agreement at the time it was signed. Unfortunately, 
because we have three parties, the two parties that opposed the 
agreement got the majority of the vote but the one party that 
supported the agreement won the election. Now we are stuck with 
this free trade agreement, and it will get worse we think with 
NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement among U.S., 
Canada and Mexico].

We decided the end of that struggle in 1988 that we would keep 
the coalition together and develop what we call a People's 
Agenda. It is really a socialist agenda, although we don't call it 
that. The reason we don't call it that is that we have people who 
participate, for example, in the Council of Canadians, which is 
primarily a Canadian nationalist organization and is not socialist 
and which has people in it who support the Liberal Party in 
Canada. 

The Action Canada Network has managed to have a very 
important influence on Canadian politics, particularly in the 
present constitutional discussion. We were able as a coalition to 
present alternate political perspectives to whose being presented 
by the federal Tories and the other political parties. We have the 
New Democratic Party in Canada, which is a social democratic 
party. But as often happens with social democratic parties, when 
push comes to shove, electoralism and being worried about 
getting the vote comes before socialist or even democratic 
principles. We find that as a popular organization outside that 
political party we are much more able to present bold left 
alternatives than the political party itself, particularly on the 
constitutional issues.

Canada is deeply divided on political perspectives between 
Quebec and the rest of Canada. The New Democratic Party has 
been primarily based outside Quebec and has never understood 
the national question very well and been willing to take a stand on 
it. It has been their Achille's Heel. In the context of the 
constitutional debate, where the ruling party has been trying to 
implement a very right-wing agenda through the constitution, the 
Action Canada Network was actually able to present an 
alternative point of view and to defeat the worst aspects of that 
proposal. 

Politics in Canada is very different from here in the United States. 
As you know, our labor movement is much more progressive and 
all of our social movements are more progressive. Maybe I'll just 
talk for a moment about the women's movement. I am known as a 
radical and a socialist in Canada, and I am the president of the 
largest women's organization in the country. The National Action 
Committee on the Status of Women recently adopted a Women's 
Agenda which is based not only on the traditional demands of the 
women's movement _ on choice and child care and pay equity 
and affirmative action. We, and I mean the broad women's 
movement, have come to the conclusion that for women to 
achieve equality, it is not enough to win small reforms here or 
there, that we are basically faced with a society, with institutions 
that are built by white men for white men and that unless we 
transform those institutions, unless we fight the right-wing agenda, 
we will never win equality for women. Our Women's Agenda is a 
very radical agenda which takes up a broad range of economic 
and social issues, including racism and homophobia. This 
agenda was adopted by 550 women's organizations, from 
women's centers to rape crisis centers to women's committees of 
unions.

What's happening in Canada is that a whole range of social 
organizations are taking on a progressive agenda. They are going 
from a focus on single issue agendas to a much broader struggle 
for social justice. This is very exciting for us, but at the same time 
we have a polarization. We have right-wing forces, ultra-right and 
even fascist forces developing and an ultra-right party which has 
gotten some success, particularly in western Canada. We have a 
ruling party which tries to slavishly follow the Bush administration 
agenda. But what is happening in Canada is very exciting and 
shows some of the potentials of building socialism in the '90s. 

I will conclude with this. I notice in your brochure that you talk 
about achieving women's equality as a democratic issue. 
Personally, I think that that is wrong. I think that for socialism to be 
relevant in the '90s, we have to reject the Marxist notion that the 
central struggle for socialism is the working-class struggle against 
capitalism and understand that the struggle of women for equality, 
the struggle of racial minorities against racism and for equality, the 
struggle of gays and lesbians against homophobia, the struggle of 
people with disabilities for full access and participation in society 
are also central to the struggle for socialism in the 1990s.

What we have learned in the left and in the women's movement in 
Canada is that we also have to struggle inside our own 
organizations, because if we replicate patriarchal and racist 
relations of domination inside our own organizations, then we 
can't attract those people who will be the leaders of the fight for 
social justice in the 1990s. In the left, with all due respect, and I 
was part of the left, we can't have white men telling us that they 
know what the correct line is, and in the women's movement, we 
can't have white women thinking that they understand the reality 
of all women. And so for me the struggle for socialism or social 
justice in the 1990s is the struggle to develop a new process, a 
new understanding of developing theory, which comes from all of 
our experiences and not just those who happen to have the most 
access to power in our organizations.

Address of Judy Rebick, President, National Action Commission 
on the Status of Women and member of the New Democratic Party.