Today marks 153 years of colonial genocide.
Although harms against Indigenous peoples began long before, July 1, 1867 was the inaugural celebration of Canada’s founding. Every July 1 since has been a celebration of colonial, capitalist genocide hidden beneath fireworks and the deceptive lyrics: “our home and native land…the true north strong and free.”
Canada has been built and continues to be developed on stolen land.
This process involves the genocide of Indigenous peoples: from outright murder to violent dispossession and displacement, starvation of communities, the residential school system, and the implementation of the Indian Act. This federal legislation was introduced to systematically oppress and replace Indigenous law and governance; it continues to morph the relationship Indigenous nations have to the Crown.
Disposing of the original inhabitants and securing the land to profit from is the first step of imperialist expansion. The second is securing a workforce to exploit. The rulers needed “a class of persons willing to work for wages” to build the country and create wealth for the elites. The starving Irish came in “coffin ships” to the cholera-infested Montreal to work and die. Chinese workers were imported to build the railways or work in the west coast canneries and mines alongside Japanese, Indigenous and Black workers. Today the temporary foreign worker program still brings cheap exploited workers. The wealth of Canada’s rulers is stolen from the land and workers.
Once the state acquires what it needs, as in the example of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Chinese labourers who built it are no longer needed and their presence is considered undesirable. The state introduced measures to discourage any more unwanted persons and thus the Chinese Head Tax was born. According to 2016 data, if you are a racialized woman you earn $0.59 for every dollar that a non-racialized man earns and if you belong to a racialized group there is a higher prevalence of poverty compared to non-racialized groups. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, characterized by low-wages, long hours and insecurity (and now COVID-19) allows for limited access to the Canadian labour market and limited residency and citizenship rights.
This is the lens in which we must view “Canada Day.” Not everyone experiences this country the same; the experiences of racialized people are a constant struggle against institutional and systemic racism for rights, safety, living wages, and liberation.
Canada’s violent past is not forgotten, although government and media try very hard to let it slip from memory. Reconciliation is touted as being achieved, Canada’s atonement assumed complete.
Black, Indigenous and People of Colour have not forgotten because state violence is the everyday lived reality affecting their employment, health care, housing, justice and physical safety.
The link between racism and capitalism in Canada has never been more clear.
The facade of Canada being built through the goodwill of the colonial government, an egalitarian relationship with Indigenous peoples, and the hardworking gumption of industry leaders has been collapsing for years, thanks to the tireless work of migrant labour organizers and Indigenous activists and movements such as Idle No More. We now have the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls which includes 231 Calls for Justice directed at government, institutions, social services providers, industries and all Canadians to address the high rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. The United Nation’s Declaration of Indigenous Right’s (UNDRIP) 46 articles recognize the basic human rights of Indigenous people along with their right to self-determination. In October 2019, BC was the first province to introduce and pass legislation that requires the province to enact legislative reform to ensure all laws are consistent with UNDRIP.
Any persisting self-righteous views that Canada “is not racist” or “at least not as bad as the US” is crumbling. This year’s genocidal birthday festivities are against the backdrop of a global pandemic, the largest civil rights movement in history and a preceding year of historic struggle and status quo disruption. A year of climate protests and the powerful resistance of Indigenous peoples declaring “Reconciliation is Dead” in response to the RCMP’s militarized raid on Wet’suwet’en territory.
The world has been rattled. These movements have described the explicit links between racism, neo-colonialism, capitalism and climate change. The COVID-19 global pandemic has proven the failings of the capitalist economic system that we live under. It values profit above human life as it always has, those considered disposable are racialized, elderly, disabled, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.
The rupturing of the status quo is mobilizing and inspiring but that anger and hunger for change must continue to be channelled. We’re approaching the end of asking for reforms and piecemeal concessions – Trotsky said that capitalism is incapable of giving large scale or lasting reforms. All the entanglements of colonial Canada cannot be solved under capitalism. As humanity hurtles towards climate catastrophe in the wake of a deadly global pandemic Socialist Alternative demands:
- Recognition of Indigenous title and jurisdiction over their ancestral lands.
- Defund the police and re-fund public services.
- Massive creation of public and unionized clean energy jobs to replace fossil fuel jobs.
- Build social housing with union labour.
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