CANADA AND EMPIRE
A New Socialist Editorial
Since the US government reacted to the attacks of September 11th, 2001 by accelerating its push for global dominance, there has been more talk about empire and imperialism than at any time since the 1970s.
With Canadian troops and police in Afghanistan and Haiti, the big boost in spending on the military in the last federal budget and active government support for the “structural adjustment” policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that have inflicted so much harm on people in the “Third World,” serious questions about Canada’s relationship to imperialism are harder and harder to ignore.
But because most anti-imperialist protest and analysis in Canada focuses on the US, such important questions often go unanswered. This special issue of New Socialist on Canada and Empire tackles some of them.
In our view, one of the reasons why the Left in Canada has a hard time coming to grips with Canada’s role in the world today is that most of the broad Left sees Canada as a nation under the thumb of the US. Much left-wing analysis has portrayed Canada as a dependent nation (similar to the so-called developing world, only richer) with a weak capitalist class that lacks a nefarious global reach of its own.
Such ideas are common on the moderate Left – in the NDP, NGOs like the Council of Canadians and among many labour, peace and social justice activists. Many people on the radical Left see things in a similar way.
This view of Canada leads people to assert that the best strategy for advancing socialism is to organize for a sovereign Canada, free from the controlling yoke of the US, and, furthermore, that the Canadian state can be a vehicle to realize this goal.
For the editors of New Socialist, this “left-nationalist” view has never really been very helpful in understanding Canada and its place in the world order, and it has even less credibility today than it did in the past, as the articles in this issue show.
The very existence of the Canadian state was made possible by the colonization of Aboriginal Peoples within Canadian borders. The theft of Aboriginal land and the denial of Aboriginal People’s rights to freely determine their own futures have only intensified since the emergence of the agenda of privatization, economic restructuring and capitalist expansion often called neoliberalism (reflected in deals like NAFTA).
No serious analysis of Canadian history or contemporary state polices towards Aboriginal communities can deny the colonial nature of Canada or lend credence to a political strategy based on asserting the sovereignty of the same state that denies Aboriginal Peoples and Quebec the right to self-determination up to and including independence if they so choose.
In our view, the notion that Canada is some kind of dependent nation can’t be squared with the reality of the Canadian state’s current role in Haiti or its pursuit of policies that destroy the livelihoods of millions of people in the Global South while giving free reign to multinational corporations – including Canadian companies - to plunder their resources.
This special theme issue of New Socialist aims to contribute to the development of a better understanding of Canadian capitalist society and its place in the imperialist world order. The articles it presents challenge different aspects of the view of Canada held by far too much of the Left.
Our theme section begins with an overview of Canada’s position within the contemporary global order. Other articles consider Canada’s relations with Aboriginal Peoples, the activities of Canadian corporations in the “Third World,” Canada’s role in Haiti, Canadian military intervention, the accuracy of claims that Canada is controlled by US capital, and racism and anti-racism in Canada. The last article looks at why so many people see Canada as an underdog and at what the analysis developed in the other articles means for the politics of social change.
The editors of New Socialist want to open up discussion and debate with this issue. We’re advancing analysis and arguments of a kind that traditionally have been dismissed without the serious consideration they deserve on the Left. In our view, people who want to transform Canadian society need a reliable understanding of this society and a political strategy that flows from this. But we don’t pretend that we can come up with them on our own. We see this special theme issue as a first step.
To encourage discussion and debate both with people who agree with the kind of perspectives presented in this issue and those who don’t, we are planning to feature responses in the next issue of New Socialist. We ask individuals or groups who consider these matters important to contribute. For the next issue, we will consider articles received by December 15, 2005, and we will accept letters until the end of the year.
