The communist candidates are Joanne Pritchard, 43, a sewing machine operator and member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) in Montreal; Michel Dugré, 52, a meat packer in Toronto and longtime fighter for Quebec independence; and Derrick O'Keefe, 23, a meat packer and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), and a member of the Young Socialists in Vancouver.

Pritchard launched her campaign by visiting the picket lines of 1,200 striking truck drivers in the port of Montreal (see article on this page). And O'Keefe participated in a rally of 100 students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in defense of a woman's right to choose abortion.  
 
Why elections were called
This is the second time in a row the Chrétien government, elected in 1993 and reelected in 1997, called a general election well before the end of its normal four-year term. His move aims to take advantage of the upturn in the business cycle--with 4.5 percent economic growth in Canada in 1999 and an expected 4.7 percent this year--as well as the relative unpreparedness of the Canadian Alliance, the most serious electoral rival of the Liberals today.

The Alliance is a rightist party formed earlier this year by a fusion of the former Reform Party and forces from provincial wings of the Conservative Party.

Pulling the rug from under one of the Alliance's main planks--a 17 percent flat tax--the Chrétien government announced a series of major tax cuts some days before calling the election.

Taking advantage of what the Toronto Globe and Mail called "a rampaging economy [that] kept growing faster than anyone has expected," Ottawa also reached an accord earlier this fall with the provincial governments that will reinject several billions of dollars into the public health and education services, which the government's own sharp cuts have badly damaged over the last decade.

In calling the election now, the Liberal government seeks to use--especially against the Bloc Quebecois, a pro-independence formation that holds a majority of seats in Quebec--the Canadian nationalist hype that surrounded the recent death of former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

"The time is over," said Chrétien at the launching of his campaign, "for talking about constitution and separation. The Quebecois want to talk about economy and jobs."  
 
Decade of prosperity on our backs,
"For working people," Communist League candidate Michel Dugré explained, "the situation is completely different from that of the employers. This so-called decade of prosperity vaunted by the ruling rich was made on the backs of working people--workers, family farmers, and small producers such as truckers and fishermen."

During the 1990s, Canada's bosses and their government have sharply increased the intensity of labor and speedup in the mines, mills, and factories across the country; lengthened work hours; imposed huge cuts in social services; beefed up their police against those resisting the brutality and inhumanity of their system; attacked union and democratic rights; and maintained an imperialist military force in 19 countries, from Yugoslavia to East Timor.

"The Liberals use the right-wing, anti-working-class, pro-death penalty, pro-cop and anti-gay rights program of the Alliance as a foil," said Dugré. "The truth is that all the main contending parties in this election, including the Liberals, have sharply moved to the right over the last decade of increased capitalist exploitation, instability, and polarization.

"Liberal Chrétien, Conservative Joseph Clark, Alliance leader Stockwell Day, and most other capitalist politicians can wish as strongly as they can that the question of Quebec will go away quietly," added Dugré. "But Quebec remains at the center of politics in Canada, including in these elections." No wing of Canada's ruling class is able today to either smash the stubborn resistance by the Quebecois to their national oppression or to lead them in a successful struggle for independence.

It is this unresolved national question, explains the communist candidate, combined with the relative weakness of Canada as a smaller imperialist power compared to its rivals, especially its U.S. neighbor, that lies behind the growing regional fragmentation of bourgeois politics in this country.

As the elections approach today, the Canadian Alliance is essentially based in western Canada, the Liberals in Ontario and the English-speaking areas of Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois in French-speaking Quebec, and the Conservatives in the Maritimes provinces. Although it has a certain presence across the country, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is absent from Quebec.  
 
A working-class alternative
The communist candidates have been using their campaign to reach out to fellow working-class fighters and tell the truth about and connect their various struggles--from the Montreal truckers to the 1,200 striking nickel miners in northern Ontario and the 600 UFCW members battling Superior Poultry and Fletcher's Fine Food in Vancouver, farmers fighting for a decent living, and Native Mi,kmaqs defending their right to fish in the Maritimes. They are giving a working-class explanation of events such as the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the unfolding developments in the Yugoslav workers state.

"A key aspect of our campaign," said Derrick O'Keefe, "is to explain to these fighters that the source of all the problems faced by working people today is the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression.

"This system can't be patched up," added the Young Socialist. "It has to be overthrown and replaced by a mass movement of working people. This is what the workers and farmers of Cuba with their communist leadership did four decades ago. This deep revolutionary change made it possible for them to begin building a society based on human needs and solidarity, not the dog-eat-dog profit drive of the capitalists.

"This is what workers and farmers in Canada need: to forge an alliance of the exploited producers and establish their own government, a workers and farmers government, that will join the international struggle for socialism."

The Communist League has decided that in the ridings where there won't be a communist candidate to urge workers, farmers and youth to vote for the NDP candidate against those of the bosses, parties.

Although the NDP is a social-democratic party with a pro-capitalist program, its links to the trade-union movement will allow working people to express a basic class position by voting for it. This is true in Quebec too, where the NDP has a very weak presence and the trade union movement is supporting the Bloc Quebecois, a bourgeois nationalist party.

The Communist League takes this stance in the elections as a way to raise the need for the unions in Canada to embark on the road of independent working-class political action, including the launching of their own party in Quebec. This is a key component of the fight to transform the trade unions into instruments of revolutionary struggle acting in the interests of the exploited and oppressed majority.