Looking Back at 2025
by Barry Weisleder
Socialist Action is a revolutionary workers’ party that puts a great emphasis on political education. At the same time, SA is an activist organization. Last year, SA initiated or joined more than 75 education, political action and protest events.
SA has many practical accomplishments to its credit. It presents candidates in local elections, strives to build a class struggle left wing inside mass working class organizations, and promotes international solidarity. From Palestine to Venezuela to Sudan, from Alberta teachers to BC government employees to Ontario college support staff to Quebec union members, and to the cross-country strike by postal workers, 2025 was a year of revolt against austerity and repression.
The world knows that the Trump peace plan for Palestine is a fake and a fraud. There is no ceasefire. Daily bombardment from the air and shootings on the ground by Israeli forces still take a heavy toll. The trickle of food and medical supplies condemn many in Gaza to an early grave. Zionist settler pogroms on the West Bank kill scores of people and displace hundreds. South Lebanon is occupied. Beirut is bombed. At the same time, IOF soldiers meet stiff Hezbollah and Hamas resistance. Rockets pierce the Iron Dome, exacting a price for genocide. Dockworkers in Greece, South Africa, Spain, Morocco and other countries refuse to handle cargo, especially weapons destined for Israel. In Italy a massive general strike advanced the hot cargo campaign. Container ships are avoiding the Red Sea and Suez. While Trump offers Netanyahu a blank cheque for genocide, the largest anti-war movement since Vietnam is mobilizing millions globally. Socialist Action pledges to participate everywhere it can to demand an end to the Apartheid state, for a Democratic and Secular Palestine, From the River to the Sea. It is also important to protest Washington’s ‘permission’ to Volodymyr Zelensky to use long-range U.S. missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia. Putin’s bombardment of residential areas must be condemned as well. It’s time to end the war that enriches the merchants of death. Socialists say ‘Negotiate, Don’t Escalate’. Disband NATO. Stop the inter-imperialist war over Ukraine. No to U.S. invasion of Venezuela.
The federal Liberal minority government tabled its first budget on November 4. As predicted, it proved to be a war budget, one that steals tens of billions from health, education, public services, and climate action in order to pour it into quadrupling Canadian military spending and buying American weapons systems. By way of comparison, there is $81 billion over 5 years going to the armed forces, and only $13 billion to build affordable housing. The federal budget includes tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country, increased border militarization, and attacks on migrants. It presents ongoing subsidies to new fossil fuel infrastructure, mega pipelines, and large-scale extraction projects, to be erected across Indigenous lands without Indigenous consent.
Washington’s trade war persists. Sadly, the only response considered by Canadian officials is the counter-tariff, and in the case of Doug Ford, the purchase of expensive TV ads that extol Ronald Reagan. No consideration is given to protest, including strike action by workers on both sides of the border who are harmed by protectionist tariffs. The patriotic framing of the issue by capitalist politicians is designed to evoke support for ‘sacrifice’, social expenditure cutbacks, and so-called ‘nation building’ mega-projects that will enrich the very wealthy and harm the vast majority of workers and consumers. It is the very framework of the latest federal Liberal budget.
Clearly, the Mark Carney Liberals have shifted dramatically to the right, incorporating many of the policies of the hard right wing Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre. Carney’s agenda is viciously anti-labour. It has virtually terminated the right to strike in the public sector, applying Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to break a number of strikes.
The Liberals are moving rapidly to dismantle Canada Post Corp. on the road to privatization of its vital services. Completely abandoning the rhetoric of environmentalism, Carney is stepping up efforts to fast-track pipelines that will cause forests to burn longer and more extensively. The government is speeding up the plunder of resources in flagrant violation of Indigenous land rights.
Ottawa is piling injustices upon migrant workers, immigrants and racialized minorities while comforting neo-Nazis and racist scum. The ruling class is turning decisively towards authoritarianism. In the works are federal Bubble Zones where free speech, especially pro-Palestinian speech, is banned. Ontario has seized control of large school boards, leaning towards the abolition of elected trustees. Premier Thug Ford is merging dozens of regulatory agencies to cover up more cuts.
In Canada, and around the world, the rights of trans people remained a political issue. New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta have taken steps to strip trans people of their privacy, dignity, and equal access to medical care. The Alberta Conservatives invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to shield transphobic laws from challenge, continuing an ugly and abusive trend in the province’s history where the same clause was used to protect homophobic marriage laws, and eugenicist sterilization practices. Washington has launched a wave of similar attacks, cutting medical funding for youth, revoking identification documents, and overruling the scientific definition of “biological sex” to forward a regressive political agenda. The UK Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of instructing legal and medical institutions to only acknowledge birth sex, effectively erasing trans people from public life. Trans people from both countries have begun to flee, fearing for their safety from persecution. None of these actions have made life safer or better for anyone - transphobia hurts everybody – evident in the IOC’s ban of trans women and cis women with high testosterone alike from Olympic competition. Wanton cruelty is instituted to appease bigots and scapegoat a vulnerable community for socioeconomic decline for which trans folks could not possibly be responsible. Inherent rights should never be up for debate. Our gender diverse comrades are in need of protection, support, and solidarity now more than ever before.
Public health care and education are on life-support. There’s mega money for war; not so much for housing and affordable food.
Forever wars and brutal genocide mark this ugly period in human history. Disgracefully, no party in Parliament calls for a cut to military spending. None demand that Canada exit NATO, the war mongers’ alliance. Among NDP leadership candidates only Yves Engler, the Socialist Caucus nominee, demands a break with the U.S. war machine. Only Yves said vote to defeat the Liberal budget.
Interim NDP leader Don Davies nervously stated that the NDP Caucus of MPs needed more time to study a document that seeks the elimination of 40,000 federal public service jobs. On November 17, two of the seven NDP MPs abstained in the Commons vote. Shamefully, that ensured passage of the war/austerity budget 170 to 168. Had all NDPers voted No, as did Bloc Quebecois MPs, the Liberal Speaker of the House could easily have broken a tie in favour of the government. Instead, Davies put privilege before principle, just as Jagmeet Singh and his caucus did in propping up the Justin Trudeau regime for over two years. The results for the NDP and the working class were disastrous.
Socialists refuse to condone passage of a budget that guts public services, attacks migrants, exploits Indigenous lands, fuels climate collapse, ramps up war and militarism, and allows Canada’s richest corporations to hoard wealth while ordinary people suffer.
The Policy Platform for the Yves Engler Leadership Campaign champions a bold anti-capitalist alternative. The platform unapologetically calls for a socialist transformation of Canada - “organizing working and oppressed people to dismantle corporate control, give democratic and economic power to the working class and build a society rooted in justice, equality and solidarity”. Its analysis and demands reflect the insights and lessons from real world struggles in the communities, workplaces and campuses. It envisions a reinvigorated NDP of workers, Indigenous people, youth and all those resisting imperialism and fighting to expose the injustices of capitalism.
The NDP Socialist Caucus is amongst the strongest supporters of the Yves Engler for NDP leader Campaign. Several hundreds of left activists from inside and outside the NDP are committed to a bold and unapologetic socialist transformation of Canada. This could lead to a new united Socialist Movement. The Municipal Socialist Alliance is likely to present candidates in the upcoming city elections.
There will be many more struggles against capitalist austerity, against imperialist wars, and greater efforts to stop environmental plunder! SA seeks to overcome conservative labour leadership and social democratic obstacles to a militant workers’ agenda. Engagement in these struggles is critical to building the revolutionary workers’ party which is indispensable to leading the working class to victory, to make a better world, to create a world truly fit for humanity.