Each year, the arrival of summer coincides with a surge of nationalism in Canada and Québec. The website of the federal government recently urged us to “celebrate Canada” from June 21 (National Aboriginal Day, as declared by the settler-colonial state) until July 1 (Canada Day), including Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (June 24) and even “Canadian Multiculturalism Day” on June 27. As workers, we have nothing to celebrate on these occasions, for we have nothing in common with the capitalists who run this country.

The Canadian (and Québécois) bourgeoisie would like us to celebrate that an opulent minority of people rule the roost and impose their whims on us from coast to coast. For a growing number of us, Canada means unemployment, poverty, low wages and precarious work while the rich get richer. It is characterized by systemic discrimination against women, youth and migrant people.

The real face of Canada is the one we saw last year at the G20 summit, where over a thousand people were arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested because they dared to oppose the stranglehold of a handful of leaders over the whole planet. It is the one we can see in countries occupied by the Canadian Forces (Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya...), where innocent people are killed to maintain the balance of forces in favor of the big imperialist powers. It is the one we can see in Africa and Latin America, where every day mining companies and other Canadian multinationals loot and plunder with the backing of the Canadian state.

“Canada, as the other states born of European colonialism in America, was built on violence, exploitation and oppression towards the First Nations.” This observation was made by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP Canada) in its Programme and is still a reality for over one million Aboriginal people that Canada keeps in a permanent non-citizen status under an antiquated colonial law that many consider genocidal.

This issue of Partisan will condemn the hypocrisy of the nationalist and patriotic discourse of the Canadian bourgeoisie and its Québec section. Canada Day, like all celebrations of the bourgeoisie, is not ours. The only holidays we celebrate are those that recall our struggles and resistance and evoke the revolutions to come: March 8, International Women’s Day; May 1st, International Workers Day; and the Aboriginal Day of Action on June 29. And the best way to celebrate these important events is to take to the streets and reaffirm our will to fight all the way to end the old bourgeois system!

Neither Québec nor Canada, but Socialism and a New Democracy!