Statement of the Canadian Liberation Movement
First Published: New Canada, Vol 6, No 5, July 1975.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Canada is the number one colony of U. S. imperialism. In order to ensure this control the imperialists, aided by their stooges in the Canadian government, actively encourage U.S. emigration to Canada to dominate our national life and subvert the national liberation struggle from within.
Sixty per cent of union members in Canada are in U.S. unions. These unions act as willing tools of U.S. foreign policy and of U.S. companies. Their activities on behalf of the CIA are being exposed all over the world. U.S. unions promote “business unionism,” and indeed many of them are nothing but vicious rackets. Unlike the vast majority of unions all over the world, they have never opposed capitalism, but proudly proclaim themselves to be part of it. They have promoted the idea among U.S. workers that U.S. imperialism is vital to their interests and have encouraged U.S. workers to demand a share in its super-profits.
The Canadian Labour Congress is U.S.-union dominated; 70% of its membership belongs to U.S. unions affiliated to the AFL-CIO, the U.S. labour centre. Time and time again the national unions belonging to the CLC (which are U.S.-style unions) have sacrificed the interests of Canadian workers when U.S. unions have threatened to pull out of the CLC if they didn’t win their demands.
U.S. unions are preferred by the U.S. companies here and are supported by all major political parties and especially the NDP. As well, the whole government apparatus including labour law and labour boards favours U.S. unions over independent Canadian unions.
Canadian workers have taken the lead in the national liberation struggle, establishing independent Canadian unions and a national labour centre. As the working class has formed the core of national liberation struggles all over the world, this struggle of the workers to control their own organisations is central to the struggle for Canadian liberation. Yankee unions go home.
In our universities, Canadian citizens comprise less than 50% of the teaching staff; U.S. citizens are the majority of the rest. U.S. professors and graduate students dominate key departments in the humanities and social sciences where they promote the idea that Canada is an inferior version of the United States. They promote the use of U.S. data, U.S. textbooks and U.S. standards of learning.
Large numbers of U.S. professors have illegally taken the two year tax holiday (itself an outrage to encourage greedy U.S. professors to teach in Canada). And, using fraudulent means, have robbed the Canadian people of millions of dollars in taxes. U.S. graduate students get special privileges in the form of university scholarships and Canada Council grants.
Yankee businessmen in Canada are direct agents of U.S. finance capital. In the era of imperialism the imperialist control of the colony is exercised through the control of capital. By controlling capital, the United States controls investment, trade policy and industrial development in our country – of course for their own purposes. The CIA admitted during the Watergate investigations to having over 200 of their agents placed in U.S. companies abroad, on the CIA payroll.
The majority of U.S. oil company executives in the province of Alberta are U.S. citizens and they frequently intervene in Canadian politics. In the 1974 election campaign they organised protest demonstrations against the government taxation of oil monopolies. They promoted the slogan “Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark” during the so-called energy crisis. The purpose of these and similar actions is to promote regionalism and separatism – to balkanise and therefore to rule our country.
Through such organisations as the American club, U.S. businessmen conspire to rob the Canadian people of taxes. This has been proven by CLM and the 85% Canadian Quota Campaign through public exposure of American Tax Night in Canada.
U.S. citizens are highly placed agents in key government institutions. For example: Nicholas Volk, former officer for the Unites States Information Service (USIS) in Thailand, East Pakistan and South Vietnam, and former USIS officer with the U.S. consulate in Toronto, is today head of public relations at the CBC – one of the top five executive posts in our national broadcasting network. The attempt of the U.S. oil companies in Calgary to transplant Police Chief Gain from Oakland California to Calgary is another flagrant case – which was stopped by the people of Calgary.
Mason Gaffney, a former employee of the resources “brain trust” in Washington D.C. is yet another example. He is head of the B.C. Institute for Economic Policy Research – a new branch of the NDP government charged with developing economic and research policies for the province.
In the field of entertainment, Canadian theatres are filled with U.S. movies and plays. T. V. is dominated by U.S. shows, U.S. performers and U.S. plays. Stompin’ Tom Conners, a popular Canadian singer, has boycotted the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto for years because most of the performers – all the high-paid, top-billed ones – are Americans.
In the arts, direct imperialist agents like the American Friends of Canada organised to fill our art galleries with U.S. art in an attempt to erode Canadian culture and retard its development. Another example is Richard Wattenmaker, a U.S. citizen, hired to be chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
In addition to agents of U.S. imperialism in high positions in business, finance and cultural institutions, there are a large number of U.S. citizens who have come to Canada claiming to be left wingers, even anti-imperialists. These emigrants form a powerful fifth column in our country. (The term Fifth Column originated during the Spanish Civil War when non-combattant fascist agents were sent into nationalist held areas to break the morale of the anti-fascist forces through psychological warfare). In Canada, U.S. citizens (draft dodgers, professors, etc.) subvert our liberation struggle by imposing U.S. culture, U.S. values and U.S. interpretations of history on the Canadian people.
Then there are political groups like multiplying sects of Trotskyites, anarchists, Moscow line so-called Communist Party, who claim to be anti-imperialist while all the time maligning Canada as an imperialist power. These groups syphon off progressive Canadians, point their aggressive energies away from the National Liberation struggle and drown them in their quagmire of double-think and double talk. Among the most beligerent are woman’s liberation groups, fashioned after U.S. groups, which preach that woman’s liberation is isolated from the Canadian people’s fight for national liberation. By isolating women they greatly weaken the liberation struggle in Canada and consequently the liberation of women.
Many of the U.S. emigrants see Canada as a new American frontier. Primarily petit-bourgeois, they move to Canada because imperialism no longer benefits them at home. So they come to the colony with its cleaner cities and safer streets to escape – expecting to receive special privileges from Canadians.
One of the most obvious aspects of the Yankee invasion is the millions of U.S. tourists who flood Canada every year. They come here for a vacation – at our expense. Having polluted their own parks and recreation lands, they come to pollute ours. In hordes they come to choke our cities, hunt our game animals with helicopters, pollute our rivers and lakes and block our highways – expecting Canadians to wait on them hand and foot.
Our government calls this industry and spends millions of Canadian tax dollars to build highways to our most valuable resort areas where Canadians act as guides, chambermaids, bartenders and life guards for the invading hordes. It is not an industry because it produces nothing of value. Tourists are not guests for they are not invited. They just roll right in and prevent Canadians from travelling and enjoying the recreation facilities of our country – making us servants of their every whim.
In addition to the tourists, thousands of American youth descend on our country and bring with them the scourge of the U.S. youth culture with its drugs, escapism and lumpen life. The youth culture greatly serves the imperialist by enticing Canadian youth to opt out rather than fight against our enemies.
Yankees control Canadian sport. Both our traditional national sport, lacrosse, and its successor, hockey, are dominated by Yankees. With their money, made at the expense of the colonies they have taken over the National Hockey League. They have formed their own World Hockey League. Lacrosse, traditionally a community sport with teams competing on an amateur level, is being taken over by the U.S. sponsored National Lacrosse League. All of these leagues employ Canadian players – all of them make millions for the club owners. All of them are more like gladiator arenas than sports stadiums.
In football, Canadians are not allowed to play in the Canadian Football League. The rules are set so that only a few exceptional Canadians can play. The teams are stacked with second rate Americans who collect Canadian dollars and prevent Canadian youth from learning how to play. Our amateur sports leagues are nothing but training ground, at Canada’s expense, for the big American professional leagues.
Yankees write and print the books we read. They teach us from the time we are children to idolize American heroes, like Davey Crockett, while Canadian heroes, like Louis Riel, go unknown. We learn about George Washington while William Lyon MacKenzie is lost in the footnotes. The Americans we are told won all the battles and fought in the wars. Canadians? We were a contingent in the British army.
In the Churches, preachers propound the same theme. We are all brothers. The evils of the U.S. are made to weigh heavily on the conscience of Canadians; the virtues are only theirs. As in the schools and universities, the churches import American ideas and techniques to attempt to keep Canadians god-fearing and passive.
A person’s political conscience reflects his relationship to the means of production. The U.S. is an imperialist country and has been for over 100 years. This means that it has been living off its colonies – primarily Canada. While the vast majority of U.S. people are basically good, they have been trained to support imperialism, to live off the resources and exploitation of colonies peoples. Their presence in Canada only serves to strengthen the colonial status of our country and the colonial mentality of our people.
All over the world where people in U.S. colonies have stood up to the imperialists they have raised the slogan “YANKEE GO HOME”. This is why the Canadian Liberation Movement adopts the slogan and calls on the people of Canada to stand up to the imperialists, drive them from our country by putting into practice the international slogan YANKEE GO HOME.
In the long run in the world wide fight against imperialist oppression the U.S people will be our friends because the hold of U.S. imperialism over American people’s minds is strengthened by the strength they draw from the colonies, through exploitation of the colonial peoples. It is our international duty as Canadians to, as part of the unified struggle of all oppressed people, drive imperialism out of Canada, cut off its resources at the roots and smash the imperialist machine.
Yankees use Canada as a safety valve. Here they can escape, the decadence and squalor wrought by the imperialists in the imperialist heartland. Here they can find relative luxury and security rather than fight against the imperialist system which has destroyed their own country. By driving those Americans who would turn our country into another cesspool of filth and corruption we are doing a service not only to ourselves but more importantly to the whole world.
There is never going to be a revolution in the United States as long as the United States can freely exploit its colonies to prop up its regime at home. U.S. citizens who wish to fight imperialism should do so at home. The CLM will unite with any genuine anti-imperialist groups in any country of the world including the United States, and join in the world wide fight against U.S. imperialism.