Canada: More of the same
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The June 2nd general election results were good news from a capitalist perspective, reports Harold Lavender. The horizon shows no major threat to rapid economic restructuring or government austerity budgets. But tensions around the Quebec national question suggest storm clouds ahead. Canadian imperialism increasingly sees its future in prying open the global economy for foreign investment and exports (by extending the North American Free Trade Area NAFTA to the rest of Latin America and above all by developing Asia-Pacific integration via APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cotheir economic agenda, and particularly in Ontario, the most populous province, the right-wing vote was evenly split between Reform and Conservatives.
Among the issues largely ignored in this election were the negative impact of global capitalist economic restructuring, massive government cutbacks in social spending, mass joblessness and underemployment, deepening poverty, no future for youth, attacks on affirmative action on women's and gay lesbian and rights, racism against visible minority immigrants and first nations, first nations right to sovereignty and accelerating environmental destruction. Social democracy
The vote of the social democratic New Democratic Party rose modestly from seven to eleven percent. But it scored a breakthrough in the Atlantic provinces. Canada's poorest region has been devastated by mass unemployment and government cutbacks. The NDP succeed in its very limited goal of electing more NDP members to Parliament and regaining its official parliamentary party status. But it failed to win back most of the working class votes lost in 1993, when its support plummeted from 21 to 7% of votes.
The NDP criticised Liberal promises as utterly worthless given their past record, and demanded "real targets on jobs" and greater commitments on social programs. But while the NDP campaign reached some people, it failed to have an impact in most regions.
The irrelevance and failure of social democracy was particularly evident in the industrial heartland of Ontario, where the operation)).
Domestically a drive to become "internationally competitive", and "fight the deficit"
through neo-liberal cutbacks federally and