25 April 2025
Amid a full-blown trade war with the United States, Canadian voters go to the polls on 28 April in a federal election that is expected to see the Liberals form a fourth consecutive government. Washington’s exchange of a series of tit-for-tat tariffs, not only with Canada but with most of the rest of the world, threatens to plunge North America and perhaps the global economy into recession or worse.
Adding to an already extremely volatile situation, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly made bellicose threats to annex Canada as the “51st state,” and has suggested using military force to acquire both Greenland and the Panama Canal. Unsurprisingly, the tariffs, the takeover threats and the Trump administration itself have become central issues in this election.
All of the main federal parties—Liberals, Conservatives, New Democratic Party (NDP), Greens and People’s Party of Canada—are fundamentally committed to governing in the interests of the ruling elite on Bay Street. The Bloc Québécois hopes to do the same for the Francophone ruling class in an independent Quebec. When these are the only “choices” on offer come election time, working people must show their disdain by spoiling their ballot.
The uncertain economic impact of the trade war, combined with Trump’s talk of annexation, have sparked a rise in reactionary Canadian patriotism, which the corporate media and political representatives of the Anglo-Canadian ruling class have enthusiastically encouraged. Even the Bloc Québécois, which faces electoral disaster, has had to downplay the issue of independence during the campaign. Only one-third of Quebeckers are in favour of exercising their right to self-determination through separation, and the province has recently experienced a surge in identification with, and even pride in, Canada. The clear purpose of this flag-waving is to soften up public opinion for the inevitable economic fallout of the trade war (e.g., inflation, unemployment, government cutbacks) and enlist support for Ottawa’s “Team Canada” approach.
The federal government has unveiled a “Choose Canada” campaign which implores: “Be your most flag-flying, maple leaf buying, local-adventuring self.” Protests prominently featuring the slogan “Canada is not for sale” have sprouted up. Booing the American national anthem at professional sporting events has become routine. #ElbowsUp, a Canadian hockey term referring to players using their elbows to defend themselves when competing for the puck in a corner, has appeared all over social media and taken off as a slogan of national unity among Canadians and defiance against the US. A host of “Team Canada” celebrities have heavily leaned into all things Canadian. Even the 1970s comic-book character Captain Canuck, a government agent with superhuman strength who defends Canada’s sovereignty, has had a resurgence. The cover of Captain Canuck’s 50th anniversary issue has the superhero, in a white and red outfit emblazoned with maple leaves, confronting Trump over his tariffs and annexation threats.
Since World War II, the aim of Canada’s foreign policy has been to carve out a position as junior partner to American imperialism. A second-tier imperialist power, Canada is deeply integrated into both the military and economic institutions erected and led by the United States. Contrary to left-nationalists who like to portray their own imperialism as somehow “nicer” and “friendlier” than its American counterpart, the Canadian ruling class is neither less rapacious nor more progressive.
Canada is a staunch US ally within NATO, NORAD and the Five Eyes surveillance network, and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) participate in all three theaters of geo-strategic interest to American imperialism: Eurasia, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. Canada was a key partner in US imperialism’s “war on terror”—a series of imperialist military adventures designed to reassert US control over Central Asia and the Middle East. Canadian forces participated in the NATO-led and United Nations-sanctioned imperialist attack and occupation of Afghanistan. CAF personnel flew combat missions and actively served in Iraq alongside US troops despite Ottawa formally sitting out that war. In 2011, Canadian naval and air forces took part in NATO’s massive military campaign to depose Muammar Qaddafi and secure the valuable oil and natural gas reserves in Libya. Since the beginning of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine in February 2022, Canada has committed $19.7 billion in “multifaceted support” to Kiev, $4.5 billion of which is military assistance, including artillery, battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles and ammunition.
Canadian imperialism has also benefited greatly from US-led trade and finance arrangements, including the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which replaced the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during the first Trump administration. CUSMA is the largest free-trade bloc in the world, with a combined GDP of $31 trillion, approximately 30 percent of the global economy. While Canada is America’s second largest trading partner, the US is Canada’s number one export market—a full 75 percent of all Canadian exports go to the United States. CUSMA is the principal economic instrument by which US and Canadian imperialism dominate neocolonial Mexico.
The Trump administration’s trade war is an incredibly risky gamble that may trigger a major realignment of competing imperialist blocs and escalate inter-imperialist rivalries. All of this threatens to jeopardize Canadian imperialism’s privileged status within a US empire in rapid decline (see “US Election: Imperialism & War,” 4 November 2024).
Following Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of sweeping tariffs on almost every country in the world, now “paused” for 90 days and dropped to a baseline 10 percent (except of course for China), Prime Minister Mark Carney declared:
“The system of global trade, anchored on the United States, that Canada has relied on since the end of the Second World War, a system that, while not perfect, has helped to deliver prosperity for our country for decades, is over. Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States, is over. The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect, and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.”
—Global News, 3 April 2025
The main concern of the Canadian capitalist class is to secure for itself the most advantageous position within a Trump-led North America. This necessarily involves renegotiating the strategic alliance between Canada and the US, i.e., the “new economic and security relationship” that both Ottawa and Washington have agreed to begin negotiating immediately following the election.
At the same time, the Canadian ruling class is openly diversifying and deepening its security and commercial relations with other Western imperialist powers such as Britain, France and Australia. This “made-in-Canada strategy” aims to make Canadian imperialism more resilient in relation to the United States and in part explains the Liberal government’s willingness to impose $100 billion in retaliatory tariffs.
In January, before Justin Trudeau announced he was resigning as Prime Minister and would not be leading the party in the next election, the Liberals were facing political extinction and the Canadian ruling class was looking to Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives to defend their interests. Since then, the Tories have seen their decisive lead evaporate and the Liberals are projected to win.
The Liberal comeback has been captained by newly installed party leader Carney and his “Canada Strong” platform. He has presented himself as an experienced dealmaker with the financial know-how to handle the economic turmoil resulting from Trump’s trade war. A former executive at the investment firm Goldman Sachs, and ex-head of both the Bank of Canada (2008–13) and the Bank of England (2013–19), Carney was personally responsible as the governor of Canada’s central bank for doling out tens of billions in government funds to the country’s biggest financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Upon assuming power, Carney quickly moved the Liberal Party to the right. He repealed the carbon tax for consumers, a key demand by the oil and gas sector, and pledged to make Canada the “world’s leading energy superpower,” while “fast-tracking” and “streamlining” the approvals process for large-scale national interest projects such as oil and gas pipelines. He enlisted the support of provincial and territorial premiers by calling for the removal of internal trade barriers, promoting inter-provincial trade and advocating a unified Canadian ruling-class response to US tariffs. And he scrapped the hike to capital gains tax and has promised to defer corporate income-tax payments by three months to give businesses more liquidity. All of this has been neatly packaged and presented as “free trade by Canada Day.”
Carney has also promised to balance the operating budget within three years and ensure a greater degree of fiscal discipline, summed up in the uninspiring slogan “Spend Less, Invest More.” In his acceptance speech as prime minister, Carney singled out and praised former Liberal PM Jean Chrétien for his “tradition of fiscal responsibility.” It was the Chrétien Liberals (1993–2003) who oversaw a massive campaign of austerity and cutbacks during their time in power. By the time Chrétien left office, over $26 billion in cash transfers had been removed from provincial budgets to reduce the federal deficit.
While reigning in government expenditures, “Team Carney” has nonetheless committed to increasing defense spending to 2 percent of GDP to meet the NATO member benchmark by 2030. Based on Canada’s current projected GDP for 2025, this would require an additional $20 billion on top of last year’s $41 billion; and with GDP projected to grow over time, defense spending is expected to reach $81.9 billion by 2032.
The Liberals’ resurgence contrasts sharply with the Conservatives’ dramatic decline. Party insiders describe a Tory campaign that is “highly disorganized,” ruled “by fear” and plagued with “dysfunction.” They have clearly struggled to pivot from easily scoring points against lame duck Trudeau to finding Carney’s political weaknesses. Prior to leading the party, Poilievre was known for his partisan rhetoric as a Tory “attack dog” in parliament under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government (2006–2015). Harper was recently dragged out of political retirement to officially endorse Poilievre in an effort to lift the slumping poll numbers.
While those running the Tory campaign are no doubt worried about losing support to the right-wing populist People’s Party of Canada led by Maxime Bernier, their bigger concern is shedding the perception that Poilievre is too much like Trump. From his “Canada First” campaign slogan to his occasional diatribe against “millionaire and billionaire global elites,” Poilievre’s populist rhetoric has created a somewhat uneasy relationship with corporate Canada. With Carney now at the helm, the Canadian ruling class is more confident that a retooled Liberal Party can best navigate relations with a Trump-led America.
The social-democratic New Democratic Party is facing possible collapse and merely fighting to keep official party status (i.e., a minimum of 12 seats). The NDP is polling so poorly that party leader Jagmeet Singh, who dropped all messaging that suggested he had any chance of becoming prime minister a mere two weeks into the campaign, is at risk of losing in his own riding of Burnaby, British Columbia. Singh is now primarily campaigning to position the NDP as the party in parliament “to hold government to account,” much like “in the last election [where] we promised dental care and pharmacare,” i.e., squeezing a few concessions from Carney in exchange for backing a Liberal government (YouTube, 10 April 2025).
While Singh has criticized Carney as having “spent his whole career serving the interests of billionaires, or shareholders and CEOs,” Singh’s NDP propped up the Liberals with a supply-and-confidence deal agreed in March 2022. That pact committed the New Democrats to supporting the Liberal minority government on confidence votes in exchange for legislative commitments on a few NDP priorities. The NDP only ripped up the agreement in September last year when Trudeau’s Liberals were lagging in the polls and it became politically expedient to jump ship.
Singh and the other pro-imperialist bootlickers running the NDP are promoting the same reactionary Canadian nationalism as that animating the campaigns of both the Conservatives and the Liberals, from whom they have struggled to politically distinguish themselves. The NDP fully backs Canada’s “retaliatory tariffs” now imposed on the United States and are pushing a disgusting online petition to “Buy Canadian. Boycott American.” They have also proposed reviving war-era “Canada Victory Bonds” to supposedly finance their “Build Canadian, Buy Canadian” plan to raise money for the conflict with the US. That proposal explicitly states: “We are in a trade war, and just like other wars, we will use Victory Bonds to support the trade war effort” (ndp.ca, 3 April 2025).
Singh and the NDP have also attacked the Liberals and Conservatives from the right. The NDP election platform calls for massive rearmament, modernization of military equipment and a recruitment drive to strengthen the CAF. This includes pledges to shore up “Arctic security” and echoes Carney’s pledge to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP. The NDP’s nauseating made-in-Canada military build-up also involves scrapping the $19 billion purchase of 88 F-35 fighter jets from US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin to instead “build the fighter jets Canada needs in Canada, using Canadian workers.” All of this is designed to reverse what the NDP claims are “decades of Liberal broken promises and cuts from the Conservatives” that have supposedly “undermin[ed] Canada’s ability to effectively promote our interests abroad”—i.e., project the military power of Canadian imperialism on the world stage (ndp.ca, 16 March 2025).
The NDP’s pro-capitalist ideology is mirrored by the treacherous labour bureaucrats atop the trade unions, all of whom seek to direct popular discontent away from resistance to corporate power in Canada and into noxious anti-Americanism and a focus on Washington. While many have declared support for the NDP in the election, a number have even openly endorsed Poilievre’s blatant courting of the working class in his “Boots Not Suits” plan, including the leaders of Canada’s Building Trades Unions (CBTU), the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB).
Unifor, Canada’s largest union in the private sector, representing 315,000 members, is pushing a nationalist campaign to “Protect Canadian Jobs” that calls “for all levels of government and industry to step up and coordinate a response to the continued tariff threats on targeted Canadian industries” (protectjobs.ca, 4 March 2025). To this end, Unifor President Lana Payne has joined the Prime Minister’s Council on Canada–United States Relations where she is calling for retaliatory tariffs, restricting foreign ownership, a “Made-in-Canada” industrial plan and increased military spending to defend Canadian “sovereignty” (unifor.ca, 18 February 2025).
While the leadership of Canada’s unions are bending over backwards to accommodate business elites, the capitalists show no similar concern for the well-being of their workers. Earlier this month, General Motors (GM) wasted no time in shuttering its CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, due to decreased market demand as a direct result of the trade war. The GM plant, employing approximately 1,200 workers, is projected to remain shut until October when it will reopen at 50 percent capacity with an expected 500 fewer employees. This comes only a week after automotive manufacturer Stellantis similarly halted production at its assembly plants in Windsor, Ontario and Toluca, Mexico. The official leadership of Unifor, which represents the workers in both Ingersoll and Windsor, has done precious little to prevent the layoffs, let alone mount any kind of fightback. Instead, Payne blamed Trump, China and foreign automakers, and obsequiously pleaded:
“General Motors must do everything in its power to mitigate job loss during this downturn, and all levels of government must step up to support Canadian auto workers and Canadian-made products.”
—protectjobs.ca, 11 April 2025
Explicitly refusing to offer any political support to the NDP in this election should be ABC for revolutionary socialists, yet a number of self-styled “Marxist” organizations are nonetheless calling to vote for them.
The International Socialists (IS) claim that the NDP’s connection to the trade-union movement alone is reason enough to support it:
“We have always called for a vote for the NDP because it is a class based vote—they still have ties to the trade union movement and respond, at least, to the demands of the union bureaucrats.
“But unless they dramatically shift to the left, the enthusiasm for their campaign among activists and their own base will remain terribly low.
“But unfortunately, we have yet to see that kind of bold thinking, which means they will likely be relegated to fringe party status after April 28.”
—socialist.ca, 3 April 2025
A dramatic “shift to the left” and “bold thinking” by the NDP leadership is simply not going to happen, something the IS openly acknowledges:
“The NDP, meanwhile, languishes in 3rd place, unable to distinguish themselves from the Liberal Party that they propped up for years.
“They are echoing many of the same nationalist talking points—calling to boost ‘made in Canada’ war industries, for example.
“And they are fighting a legacy of a consistent movement to the right in a vain, decades-long attempt to make themselves more electable.”
The idea that the NDP’s ties to the trade-union movement are in themselves sufficient to deserve a “class based vote” irrespective of political program, or absent real enthusiasm amongst the rank and file, is alien to Leninist electoral principles. The purpose of giving critical electoral support to (i.e., calling to vote for) social democracy is to dispel illusions among any leftist workers or radical youth, not create them. When the NDP is running on a platform upon which they are “unable to distinguish themselves from the Liberal Party,” there are simply no illusions to dispel.
The supporters of Spring Socialist Network, a right-wing splinter from the IS who publish Spring magazine, are also pursuing a perspective of “call[ing] for a vote for the NDP with no illusions that it will be a shortcut to socialism.” At bottom, their perspective boils down to “pushing the NDP further to the left” (spring.ca, 11 April 2025).
Socialist Action, which has been buried in the NDP for decades in an attempt to build the reformist “Socialist Caucus,” is similarly seeking to push the social-democratic labour traitors atop the NDP a bit to the left. Like the IS and Spring, they habitually call to “vote NDP without illusions” (socialistaction.ca, 6 February 2025) and claim in their program that “a vote for the NDP is a class vote against the bosses’ parties.”
Until its rebranding in 2024, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) also had a deeply ingrained political orientation towards the NDP, going back to its inception as Fightback a quarter century ago. “Fightback’s Program,” appearing in every issue of their newspaper, called for “NDP to power on a socialist program,” despite the fact that the NDP never has had, and never will have, a socialist program.
The NDP loyalism of the RCP’s forebears was graphically illustrated in 2011 when they wrote a fawning obituary for Jack Layton, then-leader of the federal NDP, which lamented the passing of “our Party leader.” They praised Layton’s political record and even suggested his earlier political career as a social-democratic municipal politician could serve as a “model” for the future (see “IMT Glorifies Layton’s Legacy,” 1917 No.34).
Now, the reborn RCP offers a very different assessment of the NDP:
“To understand why this is happening, all one has to do is ask: why would anyone vote for the NDP?
“The NDP is barely distinguishable from the Conservatives or the Liberals, rallying behind the Canadian capitalists—supporting counter-tariffs and ‘buy Canadian’ policies. Singh has even adopted Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s hypocritical slogan, ‘Canada is not for sale’.
“The collapse of the NDP illustrates the dead end of reformism.”
—marxist.ca, 3 April 2025
This fails to acknowledge that the RCP’s leaders, when the group was called Fightback, always voted for the NDP, which has not changed its politics. A “party” is supposed to provide leadership, yet not only is the RCP not running a single candidate, it refrains from explicitly telling workers not to vote for the NDP. Is that because its leaders don’t want to explain their own history of supporting the NDP no matter what, or because they fear alienating workers (or some of their own members) who have not broken from lesser-evilism?
The former Moscow-loyal Communist Party of Canada (CPC) and the ex-Maoist Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) are both fielding candidates in the election. Neither have campaigns that come close to standing on a program of political independence of the working class. The CPC are running on what they call “A People’s Agenda for Peace, Jobs and Democracy,” which pushes left-nationalist illusions that the main enemy of workers in Canada resides in Washington, not Ottawa:
“Adopt an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace and disarmament.
“Repatriate all troops deployed outside Canada and transform the Canadian army into a strictly defensive force.
“Defend Canadian sovereignty in the face of tariffs and threats.
“Stop and reverse the expansion of U.S. and transnational corporate control over key sectors of the domestic economy.
“Defend Arctic sovereignty by rejecting the U.S.-led militarization of the North; invest in sustainable infrastructure, transportation, and social services for Northern and Indigenous communities instead of funding NATO’s Arctic expansion.”
—Platform of the Communist Party of Canada, 2025 Federal Election
The CPC(ML) is campaigning under the slogan “For a modern Canada that defends the rights of all!” Their election platform calls to “establish an anti-war government,” “make Canada a zone for peace” and “oppose integration into the U.S. homeland security, war machine and wars of aggression!” (Platform of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, 2025 Federal Election).
Canada is an imperialist power with a deeply entrenched ruling class that defends its material interests through its own instrument of exploitation, the capitalist state. It is neither interested in “peace and disarmament” nor oppressed by the US. Instead, Canada acts as a compliant junior partner and ally to American imperialism. The bizarre calls to defend Canadian “sovereignty” promoted by these Stalinist outfits show they are not much of an alternative to the NDP and preclude revolutionaries giving them any kind of critical electoral support.
A vote for the NDP in this election is a vote for the party’s support of retaliatory tariffs, poisonous patriotism and a class-collaborationist strategy of propping up the Liberals. Working people must reject all this and decisively break from the NDP class traitors. Instead, the Canadian proletariat requires a mass revolutionary workers’ party—a Leninist (i.e., Bolshevik) vanguard party based on the Marxist program.
The capitalists are desperately looking to offload the cost of the trade war on workers not only in Canada but the United States and Mexico. The first step in building an effective working-class fightback against the impact of the trade war is recognizing that the main enemy is at home—our “own” ruling class and their political representatives in Ottawa. A major obstacle to this recognition is the existing leadership of the unions which, by wrapping themselves in the Maple Leaf, act as agents of the bourgeoisie in the workers’ movement. They aim to pit working people in different countries against each other, not unite them. The only way forward for workers across North America, and indeed the world over, is to join in a common class struggle against a common class enemy.
The highly integrated character of the automotive industry in North America graphically illustrates the interconnectedness of production across national lines. It is the material basis for international working-class unity, through which Canadian, American and Mexican workers can mount an effective counterattack. As long as production for profit is the key metric determining social priorities, humanity will never fully harness the potential power of the international division of labour. For that, a rationally planned, collectivized (i.e., socialist) economy is needed. In contrast to Trump’s proposed annexations, a voluntary socialist federation of North America is required to establish a framework in which working people can take hold of the reins of economic development and gear production towards meeting human needs, not private profit.
Spoil your ballot!
Break from the NDP—Build a revolutionary workers’ party!
Neither free trade nor tariffs!
For a socialist federation of North America!
Related articles
US Election: Imperialism & War (4 November 2024)
Marxism & Bourgeois Elections (1917 No.42)
Marxism & Indigenous Peoples: The Canadian struggle (1917 No.46)