The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) recognises that Canada is a country built up by immigrants. Apart from the Native Indians and Inuit people, everyone in Canada is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant.
The Canadian government uses this fact to divide the people on a racist basis. Immigrants are referred to as being either “Italians”, “Portuguese”, “Greek”, “Spanish”, etc., or as being from Asia, Africa or Latin America. It describes as “Canadians” those who have come from England or white dominated countries. The main aim of the Canadian monopoly capitalist class is to supress the minorities so that they can be totally and collectively exploited. To this end, artificial barriers are set up to divide the minorities from the rest of the Canadian working class. For instance, the government spares no effort in promoting its rubbish on “Multiculturalism”, in order to divide the people on the basis of race and language. Furthermore while all the minority people, and in particular the people from Asia, Africa and Latin America, are imported into Canada to be used as wage slaves, the bourgeois press constantly slanders them, blaming them for the problems created by the monopoly capitalist class itself – such as unemployment.
The entire Canadian people are comprised of approximately two thirds national minority and immigrant people. The national minority people are racially discriminated against, socially and politically repressed. The present Canadian government is continuing the old colonial policy on immigration established under the aegis of the British colonialist at the turn of the century, and it viciously discriminates against the national minority people. In this respect, the worst hit section is composed of people from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Once in Canada, immigrants have no social or political rights – which means that they have no rights at all.
The Canadian government deliberately persecutes progressive immigrant people and promotes the handful of reactionaries among them, especially those who committed crimes against the people during the Second World War. Canada is a haven for fascists and old nazis. When the national minority people fight for their rights they are jailed, racially abused and deported. Historically this has always been the case. During the 1930s, over 30,000 immigrants and naturalised Canadians were deported from Canada for “becoming public charges” and participating in the political life of the country i.e., demanding their basic right to a job, wages, unemployment insurance and the right to politically organise.
At the discretion of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration, any immigrant can be barred from citizenship. There have been cases where some people who have lived in Canada for over sixty years still do not have citizenship. Any progressive person who participate in politics before getting citizenship has no chance of getting it afterwards. The same is true for those people seeking immigrant status in this country. The Canadian Department of Manpower and Immigration has thousands of people in Canada “under investigation” for participating in the political affairs in this country or their country of origin and refuses to grant them immigrant status or citizenship. At the present time, the Canadian monopoly capitalist class is streamlining its immigration procedures so as to be able to deport progressive people without the right of appeal.
The exploitation of immigrants is also increasing manifold, and visitors to this country are given the right to work for slave wages for a period convenient to the Immigration Department, without ever being granted immigrant status or having the hope of remaining in this country.
There is discrimination in wages, housing and all other aspects of life. The Canadian government is currently engaged in dividing the national minority people and using them against each other glaring examples are the Tibetans brought to this country to smash the strike struggles of the Inuit people, and the large scale propaganda done against the Ugandan Asians, West Indians and others.
The police make a regular habit of going around to the people’s homes in the community and threatening them with deportation if they protest in any way against the existing conditions. The police and their lackeys in the communities also wage a terror campaign against the immigrant people by issuing threats against their families in their home countries. Whenever the situation gets bad for the Canadian monopoly capitalist class, they attack the national minorities first.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) considers that over the past few years there has been a new awakening and solidarity amongst the national minority and immigrant people, especially the people of African, Asian and Latin American origin resident in Canada. They are organising themselves under various groups for the purpose of fighting racist attacks in Canada and supporting the national liberation struggles in their own countries. The national minority people in this country have made tremendous contributions in the building of the solidarity movement between the Canadian working class and people and the national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America – especially the solidarity movement in support of the Vietnamese people, the entire Indochinese people, the armed agranian revolution of the Indian people, and the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people against Israel Zionism and U.S. imperialism.
The CPC(M-L) considers that the participation of the immigrant and national minority people in the political affairs of this country greatly strengthens the anti-U.S. imperialist struggle in Canada, strengthens proletarian internationalism and shows us that the struggle of the immigrant and national minority people in their own countries is against the common enemies of the entire Canadian working class – U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on all the national minority people to unite with each other and with the entire Canadian working class in order to effectively fight against political repression, racial discrimination and national chauvinism.