Vol. 75/No. 20      May 23, 2011

The election was held as working people face deteriorating economic conditions: a million and a half unemployed, rising gas and food prices, and unrelenting cuts to education programs, including rising college and university tuition. Medical care run by the capitalist government is subjecting workers and farmers to red tape and growing waiting lists, with results injurious to the health of millions.

In a shakeup of capitalist politics, the Conservatives won well over half the seats in parliament, giving the party its first majority government since 1988. The New Democratic Party (NDP)—a social democratic party founded in 1961 and linked to the officialdom of several unions mostly outside Quebec—replaced the Liberal Party as the official opposition for the first time, winning 102 seats in the 308-seat parliament.

The NDP’s biggest gains were in Quebec where it won 58 of 75 seats, mostly at the expense of the bourgeois-nationalist Bloc Quebecois (BQ), which runs candidates only in Quebec. The BQ claims to defend the interests of the Quebecois nationality in the federal parliament and promotes Quebec sovereignty. It dropped from 49 to 4 seats.

The Liberals, who have governed for much of the time since Canada’s founding in 1867 and who consider themselves Canada’s “natural governing party,” dropped to 34 seats nationwide.

“Working people face the same challenges after the election that we did before May 2,” said Joseph Young, the Communist League candidate in the Montreal constituency of Papineau.

“The NDP’s electoral gains haven’t strengthened us. They don’t in any way represent a step along the road to independent working-class political action,” Young explained.

In the elections, many union officials urged workers to vote for “anybody but Harper” to stop a Conservative win, while others campaigned openly for the NDP or, in Quebec, backed the BQ. Whatever their stance, all of them counted on blocking a new Conservative government with some kind of NDP, Liberal, and BQ coalition cabinet—an imperialist government they hoped would be more responsive to their pressure and a little less brutal in attacking the living standards and rights of working people.

“My supporters have not ended our campaign,” Young said. “We’re going door to door to introduce the Militant to workers and farmers and to talk with them about a working-class road forward in face of the blows of the world capitalist crisis and austerity drive of the ruling rich and their government in Ottawa,” he said. “We’re building solidarity with Air Canada workers fighting against more concessions, and Gate Gourmet airline food preparation workers on strike in Edmonton.

“And we’re explaining that working people need to build a revolutionary movement of millions to take political power out of the hands of the capitalist class and replace it with a workers and farmers government.”
 
 
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