Canadian Communists And TheFrench-Canadian Nation
—THE EDITORS.
1929
An early instance of the occurrence of the demand for national self-determination for French Canada appears in the Report of the Sixth National Convention, Communist Party of Canada, May 31-June 7, 1929, in the statement that
The struggle for free and full independence for Canada, the guarantee for complete self-determination (French-Canada) can only he achieved through revolutionary action, (p.9)
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1934
During the period of illegality under Section 98, the C.P. published a theoretical review (untitled); No. 3, May-June, 1934, carried an article "On Our Work Among the French Canadians," in which this passage occurs (p. 12):
What our party has failed to do in the past is to clarify and bring before the French-Canadian masses the policy of the party in relation to their national sentiments. While we do not make of the French question in Canada a national problem, we recognize that the French Canadians form a nation, that is, they occupy a common territory, they speak a common language, they have a common culture and are bound by a common economy. . . .
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What our party has failed to do in the past is to clarify and bring before the French-Canadian masses the policy of the party in relation to their national sentiments. While we do not make of the French question in Canada a national problem, we recognize that the French Canadians form a nation, that is, they occupy a common territory, they speak a common language, they have a common culture and are bound by a common economy. . . .
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28 THE MARXIST QUARTERLY
Therefore our first slogan . . . should be "The Right of Self-Determination up to Separation!" It is clear that, while the party as a whole issues such a slogan, the French-Canadian comrades must agitate and propagandize for internationalism, under the slogan of a "united working class struggle against the unified Canadian bourgeoisie."
Secondly: "Separation of State and Schools from the Church!"
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1935
The building of the people's party in French Canada must take place around the slogan of raising the French-Canadian living standard from its present low level to at least the level of the living standard of the other provinces in Canada. It must be built around the question of the struggle against war, around the fight against conscription, interwoven with and growing organically out of the national traditions and past of the French-Canadian people.
Toward a Canadian People's Front (p. 161): Report of 9th plenum of CC, CP of C, November 1935.
* * *
1937
In Quebec it is not beyond the realm of probability that many people who are now active in the nationalist movement and even in its separatist wing will be active supporters of a democratic people's movement as the issues become clear.
Tim Buck, "The People vs. Monopoly", Report to 8th Dominion Convention, CP of C, Oct. 8-13, 1937.
* * *
The co-report to the 8th CPC Convention, delivered by Evariste Dubé stated:
The toll wrought by tuberculosis is twice as high in Quebec as
it is in Ontario.
The infantile mortality rate in Quebec is an infamous scandal. While the rate for Canada as a whole is 73 deaths per thousand live births, the rate in Quebec at the beginning of this year stood at 105.7! The figure for Montreal is 118.7; for Lachine, the
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HISTORICAL NOTES 29
appalling figure of 333 or one death out of every three live births. . . . These figures place our cities in the same category as the worst centres in the world from the point of view of infant mortality: of the five worst cities in the world listed by the Canada Year Book, two are Madras and Bombay, in India; two others are Quebec city and Montreal!
It is against this shame of poverty that we French Canadian Communists proclaim a crusade, to put an end to this degradation and misery.
We declare that those responsible for these conditions are the multimillionaire exploiters of our people, who have dared to advertise Quebec as the home of "cheap, docile labor"; and on the strength of the lack of organization among the working people of our province, have piled up fabulous profits out of the sweat and tears and hunger of thousands of impoverished families. . . .
We declare that this situation can only be changed by organizing the working people to win better wages and working conditions, adequate relief and economic security; and that in this forward march to organization and economic betterment, upon which the Quebec people are already entering, the one obstacle in the path, the one adversary, is the organized power of the trusts and their agent in the seat of government -- DUPLESSIS, the enemy of liberty, of labor, and of the Quebec people: the public enemy of French Canada!
We are for a United Front of Progress in Quebec, of all those who will fight for better wages, for security, for health and culture and democratic liberty for the people of Quebec.
It is in the ranks of labor, in a strong and united trade union movement, that we will find the guarantee of success in creating a powerful Progressive Front in Quebec.
The struggle for wages before dividends -- Economic Security and the saving of the Home -- Taxation to make the rich pay -- the land and its fruits to the tiller of the soil -- civil and religious liberty -- peace -- and the winning of Education, Work and Opportunity for our Youth -- is that of the French Canadian masses who are seeking for a solution to their plight, and rallying to withstand Tory reaction and Duplessis. Our Party proclaims that THROUGH UNITY OF ALL AGAINST THE TRUSTS, WE CAN WIN
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FOR QUEBEC ECONOMIC, CULTURAL AND POLITICAL EQUALITY -- the things of which our people have been deprived by the stifling dictatorship of the French and English-Canadian multi-millionaires!
One thing, however, must be mentioned before closing: the effect on our Party of the participation of French Canadians in the ranks of our Battalion in Spain. One can sense a new feeling of seriousness and of responsibility among our comrades who are filling as best they can the places, here in Canada, of our fallen comrades, our Morins, Gosselins, Campbells from Quebec and Montreal. When Gosselin's father (also a Party member, in Pointe St. Charles) learned of his son's death on the Brunete front, he received the blow with quiet, communist courage -- and then went out with the copy of Clarté that had his boy's picture and an editorial saying how proud we were of him, and went from house to house with it till forty copies were sold. ... I think that typifies the temper that our young Party among the French Canadians is beginning to achieve: a temper that will face the struggles ahead, and go to meet them.
French Canada Awakens (mimeographed), pp. 7, u, 12.
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1940
Whereas in the last period, the oppression of French Canada was primarily expressed in the economic and social discrimination against Quebec, in the new situation it operates first and foremost in the enforcement on French Canada of the consequences of the bourgeoisie's war alliance with British imperialism. . . . This particular oppression is summed up, in the minds of French Canadians, in one word: conscription.
"French Canada: Thorn in the Side of Imperialism." S.B.R., in THE MONTHLY REVIEW, March 1940.
* * *
1942
Widespread opposition to conscription exists among the French-Canadian people, arising primarily out of their anti-imperialist
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HISTORICAL NOTES 31
sentiments and bolstered by the economic discrimination of big capital against them.
The Communist Party stands for the fullest satisfaction of the national aspirations of the French Canadians.
National Conference Resolution, C.P. of C., February, 1942.
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1943
The Labor-Progressive Party stands unreservedly for the establishment of full national equality for the French Canadians. The Party presses the governments, provincial and federal, to take immediate measures to redress the burning grievances of the French-Canadian people. It fights for the establishment of explicit constitutional guarantees of the cherished language rights of the French-Canadians. It works to win the support of English Canada for the achievement of full national equality for the French-Canadian people.
Program of the Labor-Progressive Party, pp. 9-10.
* * *
It is important to understand the fact that the democratic struggle of the French-Canadian people during the whole of the preceding period (leading to Confederation Ed.) had been a struggle for the right of national self-determination, for their right as a nation to choose their own form of state. In this respect it was of the same democratic character as the contemporary 19th century struggles of a whole number of European nations, fighting for the right to form their own national states. It differed from them in this, that it had merged with the general Canadian colonial struggle for self-government; and in the course of winning the essential prerequisites for this, the substance of French-Canadian political equality had been likewise gained.
The French-Canadian attitude towards the Confederation proposals was dominated by a profound concern lest the right to their own state be denied them by the English-Canadian majority. Events proved that there was ample justification for that concern.
S. B. Ryerson, FRENCH CANADA, pp. 63-4.
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1947
In the province of Quebec the problem of Dominion-provincial relations is different than in every other province because there it is at bottom the problem of the constitutional relationships between the two nations of Canada. For Canadians of French ancestry the issue of Dominion-provincial relations, today, is an inseparable part of their tenacious century-old struggle to maintain their language, their laws and their church. We sympathize with the desire of French Canadians to maintain their language, their civil code and their religion and we will fight for their right to maintain them inviolate. The fundamental desire expressed in the slogan: "Notre langue, nos institutions et nos lois" is in fact the ardent and unquenchable desire for national self-determination for French Canada. The Labor-Progressive Party supports that profoundly democratic aspiration and proclaims its aim to help the people of French Canada to achieve it in a truly democratic way. It must be emphasized, however, that an indispensable feature of any serious effort to unite and extend democratic support for the aim of national self-determination is action to achieve full national equality for French Canada now. Without serious and consistent efforts now, to abolish the economic, educational and other social inequalities imposed upon the masses of the people in French Canada, talk about struggle for national self-determination and for national equality would be an empty pretense.
—Tim Buck: French Canada versus Duplessis, L.P.P. National Committee Meeting, May 1947. In Our Fight For Canada, pp. 299-300.
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1954
The struggle for national equality and the survival of French Canada merges with and powerfully reinforces the movement for independence of the people of all Canada. . . .
The French Canadian working class, the most militant, best organized and most influential force, is destined to bring together a broad national front to save the French Canadian nation and to
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cooperate with the all-Canadian democratic national movement for the independence of our country.
In this struggle the long-standing demand of the French Canadian people for full national equality, unresolved by Confederation, will be satisfied in the only democratic way -- the guarantee of the right of French Canada to national self-determination up to and including secession. Victory for this democratic principle will open the way for the free and voluntary association of French Canada with English-speaking Canada in a federal state based upon the complete national equality of both peoples.
Canadian Independence and a People's Parliament: Canada's Path to Socialism. Program of the Labor-Progressive Party.
* * *
1964
1. Our country is approaching the centennial of confederation (1867-1967) with the state structure established by confederation itself in crisis. This has arisen because of the failure to recognize French Canada as a nation. The French Canadian people are justly demanding this recognition and the establishment at last of full national equality between themselves and English Canada.
2. We communists stand for the preservation of Canada as a united country. The interests of each of our two national communities, as well as the common interest of Canada as a whole, call for the recognition of the existence in Canada of two nations, English Canada and French Canada, each with the right of self-determination. This means, the right of each to arrange its affairs as it chooses and to decide on the form of state it prefers, whether separate or in voluntary union with the other. Unless this right is recognized from the beginning, for each of the two nations, there can be no voluntary union within a common, federal state, and the partition of our country could become a menacing possibility.
3. At our 17th National Convention in January, 1962, we said: "The Communist Party of Canada supports the demand for a new Canadian Constitution; for the negotiating, on a completely equal footing, of a new confederal pact between French and English Canada, safeguarding the equality of rights and the interests of
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34 THE MARXIST QUARTERLY
each, and containing explicit guarantees of the right of national self-determination for French Canada.
"Common effort toward the achievement of such a new democratic union of the Canadian peoples will contribute greatly to strengthening resistance to the encroachments of U.S. imperialism, and to the struggle against monopoly rule, for democracy, for independence and for peace."
4. Our country cannot be regarded merely as a collection of 10 provinces. It is made up of two national communities, French Canadian and English Canadian.
Two free and democratic communities, two nations within a united, federated Canada; is the aim of all progressive Canadians. If such a voluntary democratic union is not brought about and our country continues to be torn by national injustice, the social, economic and political consequences will be disastrous and the people of both French and English Canada will be imperilled even more than now by the United States.
5. The preservation of Canada as a united country requires a new constitution adopted by a constituent assembly of French and English Canada to replace the British North America Act of 1867. The principles which must govern such a new federal constitution are: an end to the non-recognition of the national identity of French Canada; unanimous agreement between the representatives of the two nations upon a federal pact between them that will guarantee the full equality of each; the working out of the means by which federal union could protect the joint interests of the two peoples.
6. The recognition of these truths, in French and English Canada alike, must be the purpose of a public campaign of education to combat feelings of Anglo-Saxon superiority in English Canada and national exclusiveness in French Canada, both of which are fostered by reactionary forces to keep the two peoples apart. By such means these forces seek to conceal the real problem, which is one of spelling out in a new constitution the ways by which the two peoples can agree voluntarily to live together in a federal state.
7. It should be the aim of progressive Canadians, and especially of the labor movements in French and English Canada, to work
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HISTORICAL NOTES 35
for the convening of a constituent assembly as quickly as possible. It would be of historical significance if the assembly could take place at the time of the 1967 centennial of confederation.
Canadian democracy is now called upon to fashion new constitutional instruments which will help the peoples of our country unitedly to deal with the levels which the rule of monopoly capitalism has fastened upon them.
The Communist Party places before the peoples of English and French Canada these proposals for the democratic solution of the crisis of confederation.
We will enter into discussion with all others who have proposals for the solution of the crisis of confederation. In such discussions we shall advance our own point of view and readily listen to and consider the views of others.
Resolution, 18th Convention, CP of C, April 1964
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1964
The French-Canadian struggle for self-determination and for the democratic reconstitution of the Canadian state is at bottom a social question. At this period of world development it is impossible to confine a national movement of this kind in a highly-developed capitalist country such as Canada, to narrow bourgeois legal ties. The anti-monopolist, social demands of the Canadian people for democratic controls over Big Business, for giving the people the benefits of the new scientific-technical revolution, for peace and new trade policies, merge with the French-Canadian struggle for national freedom. . . .
The rise of the democratic and national French-Canadian revolution in an imperialist state such as Canada constitutes an amazing verification of the truth of Marxism-Leninism that in the time of imperialism national movements inevitably take on an anti-imperialist character and are a constituent part of the road to socialism.
LESLIE MORRIS: "National and Democratic Revolution in French Canada." World Marxist Review, Sept., 1964.
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-- This OCR was prepared by Kathleen Moore in August 2014 for the legal research purposes of Habeas Corpus Canada. --
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