Among the speakers at the rally was Cappe's co-worker Gabriel Laperrière, who is 22 years old. Both are employed at Viande Connaisseur and are members of Local 500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW). The workers at Viande Connaisseur prepare and package meat for the 40 stores of the Maxi grocery chain in Quebec.

Laperrière said he campaigned in support of Cappe on the job, and discussed the war against Iraq and the Cuban Revolution with other workers, drawing on articles in the Marxist magazine Nouvelle Internationale.

After learning that workers at Maxi in eastern Quebec were on strike, he contacted the UFCW for more information in order to circulate a letter of support on the job. Together with Cappe, he visited a picket line of workers at Technilab, a pharmaceutical company north of Montreal.

Laperrière described a foreman's surprise at hearing him discuss the economic crisis and its political implications with another young worker in the factory. "The bosses are always surprised by our consciousness," he said.  
 
No to extradition of Basque activists
Ion Etxebarria, a Basque trade unionist visiting Montreal and a spokesperson for the committee in defense of Basque political prisoners, also spoke. He described the struggle to stop the extradition to Spain of Gorka Perea Salazar and Eduardo Plagaro Perez de Arrilucea, two Basque activists involved in social struggles and in the fight for the national rights of the Basque people.

"Salazar and de Arrilucia were sentenced in Spain to six and seven years in prison in the middle of the 1990s based on confessions extracted under torture," Etxebarria said.

He explained that the two fled to Canada where they asked for political refugee status, a request the Canadian government has delayed acting on for years. They have been imprisoned since last June when the Spanish government called for their extradition.

Yannick Duguay, a student at the University of Laval in Quebec City, spoke of the Young Socialists' support for the Cappe campaign. Duguay met the YS in Montreal after participating in the Summit of the People, held alongside the imperialist-dominated Summit of the Americas in Quebec City last April. He rejected the protectionist positions taken by antiglobalization activists.

"The Young Socialists base themselves on a scientific understanding of the crisis of the capitalist system and put forward the only solution to bring it to an end--that is, a revolutionary struggle to establish a workers and farmers government in this country, which will abolish the capitalist system of exploitation and join in the international struggle for socialism," he said.

"The Young Socialists study the lessons of past struggles of the working-class, which produces all of the wealth and has the capacity to change society," Duguay told the rally. "They collaborate with experienced communist workers active in the building of a working-class party capable of leading this historic struggle."

The YS had organized two literature tables and a public meeting for Cappe at the University of Laval in Quebec City, several hours drive east of Montreal. Of the 19 people attending the event, 10 young people bought the Militant and left their names to be contacted about other activities of the Young Socialists.  
 
Support on the job
A photographer for La Presse, the main daily newspaper in Montreal, came to photograph Cappe at work for an article on the campaign, said the socialist in the keynote address. The three-quarter page article was published three days prior to the election.

"As I was leaving the cafeteria where I had a coffee with the photographer, a co-worker said to me, 'Wait until we finish our break.' Fifteen minutes later, I found myself with about 10 of my co-workers behind me.

"When I turned to them and said, 'You're all aware that this is a photo for La Presse on the campaign for mayor of Montreal of a communist worker?' They smiled and shouted, 'Yes!'" La Presse published another picture, but campaign supporters displayed the collective photo.

"I am the only candidate in the elections who is a worker with a political program that defends the interests of working people," said Cappe. "My co-workers appreciated the fact that someone took them seriously. 'For once we are something,' said a women co-worker speaking about my campaign."

Several newspapers and electronic media noted Cappe's opposition to the war on Afghanistan, a central theme of his campaign. The media coverage was among the most substantial received by the Communist League in Montreal in a number of years.

"Unlike the journalists," said Cappe, "workers, farmers, and youth that I spoke with never asked me what the connection was between the war in Afghanistan and the municipal elections in Montreal."

Cappe explained that there are 12 Canadian companies with investments in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan just north of Afghanistan. He denounced the hypocrisy of the Canadian government, which supports the use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan--"bombs that reduce human beings to shreds"--after leading an international campaign for the adoption of a treaty against land mines.  
 
Assault on workers' rights
"The war which the governments of the bosses are waging in Central Asia is an extension of their attacks against us here--the growing layoffs, the housing crisis, police brutality, and national oppression of the Quebecois, the Acadians, and the Natives. We can't defend ourselves as workers here if we allow the massacre of our class brothers and sisters over there."

Bill C-36, currently being touted in the Canadian parliament as an "antiterrorist" law, "is a frontal assault against the fundamental rights won in struggles by workers and their allies, like the protection against arbitrary and improper arrest, the right to remain silent when arrested, and the freedom of association and expression," said the communist candidate.

He concluded by inviting those present to support the struggle of the 82,000 primary and secondary school teachers in Quebec for pay equity, a measure that would significantly increase the wages of a number of low-paid workers, mostly women.  
 
National oppression of the Quebecois
The November 4 election was the first in the new city of Montreal, the product of the forced merger of some 20 municipalities on the island of Montreal. The merger was imposed by the Party Quebecois (PQ) government as a way to reduce the costs associated with this level of state power by slashing social services to working people and the jobs of city employees.

Gérald Tremblay, a former Liberal provincial cabinet minister who headed a coalition opposed to the merger, won the election. He defeated the outgoing mayor of the former city of Montreal, Pierre Bourque, a champion of the merger.

The vote revealed the deep national and social divisions here. Columnist Lysiane Gagnon wrote the next day in La Presse: "You just have to look at the map of the new city of Montreal. The line is clear, too obvious to be ignored: on one side, the west [side of the Montreal island], English-speaking, liberal, mainly suburban, generally better-off and anti-merger, allied with three districts in the northeast with a strong non-English and non-French speaking population; on the other side, the east, mainly French-speaking, pro-PQ and pro-merger."

The French-speaking Quebecois are an oppressed minority within Canada, suffering discrimination based on their language. They make up 80 percent of Quebec residents and about 70 percent of the population in the greater region of Montreal. While the English-speaking minority, concentrated in the western part of the island of Montreal, has historically been privileged, the Quebecois continue to receive lower wages and substandard health and education services. The campaign against the merger was in essence a defense of the privileges of the English-speaking municipalities.

Alexandre Lampron is a garment worker and a member of the Young Socialists in Montreal.  
 
 
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