05) RURAL CANADA AND THE HARPER GOVERNMENT'S POLICIES
The following commentary by David Tymoshchuk, a member of the Jacob Penner‑Norman Bethune Club of the Communist Party in Manitoba, is also a contribution to the CPC's debates for the Party's 37th Central Convention, which takes place April 5-7 in Toronto.
The current Canadian government has imposed the will of the Conservative Party to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board through removing the main reason for its creation in the first place: single desk selling. Rural Canada, in particular Western Canada has traditionally been a strong base for the Tories and in the past the Social Credit party. It should be noted that petite‑bourgeois populist base that has been a major component of Tory support may very well suffer at the hands of the party it has elected to represent its interests. As it turns out big business monopoly capital is of more interest to the Tory elite and policy makers at this juncture in time. This is yet another facet in the ongoing rightward trend among all major electoral political parties as evidenced in the ongoing NDP vs. labour situation.
As Canada continues to urbanize, electoral maps are redrawn, and the rural population becomes less important in the eyes of big business parties. Such views have resulted in a creeping disenfranchisement if not by actual seats, then in spirit by ignoring the views of rural populations or by selective hearing of influential members of such populations ( i.e. bourgeois capitalists who stand to benefit from demographic shifts). It seems the conservatives are taking a gamble that now that they have reached a more entrenched and incumbent seat in power, that they can afford to crush not only the rural working class and small farmers. Many small farmers being targeted (or forsaken in policy) built up co‑operatives, the pool elevator system, and often organized politically for the CCF, or the Communist Party of Canada. Many farmers settled and toiled on homesteads, and still had a connection and responsibility to the land they toiled on. In a twist of irony, small farmers have been forced off the land via policy favouring larger factory farms repeating what was done to the Aboriginals they had displaced through the Tories John MacDonald era National Policy of mass settlement and forming western colonies of Eastern Canada (though with less coercion and related tragedies).
Killing of the CWB's single desk brings Canada in line with United States (a major opponent of the single desk) and the WTO wishes and ideals of so‑called "Free Market" political economy. This single desk of a major world supplier of grain has had huge influence in the global grain markets and seen by many to have an anchor effect (argued as either high or low pressure on food prices depending on viewpoint). With the bargaining power of the single desk cut away, what effects on food prices to now shrinking food supplies, along with environmental changes remains to be seen.
Not only is the budget and policy toward agriculture and the CWB destroying way of life of traditional farming but severely effecting the survival of small agribusiness based communities. The reduction of the number of small farms and the bypassing of local supply businesses (akin to the loss of corner stores in urban environments) due to supply contracts or larger suppliers with cheaper inputs. Combined with the general aging and flight of working age youth to more promising job markets in urban centres. Small businesses (petite‑bourgeois) are suffering and an opportunity to gain strategic support by mobilizing from this development has been made available.
Aging farmers, some now in their 80s and 90s, are the last of many farming generations and a sea change is in full swing to wage based young farm workers versus the traditional owner‑operator family based operation. It's akin to a corporate feudal system as the means of production (of food) is shifting to the direct control of the capitalist class who own shares in corporations that have taken control of the land. Many of these corporations are foreign controlled as globalization knows no bounds. And national food security has the potential to become a serious concern.
Interconnecting with immigration policy, these new corporate farms are large beneficiaries of these policies as they are a main exploiter of foreign temporary workers. Racism in rural communities due to the introduction of foreign workers further put negative pressure on the unity of the working class in rural areas. This situation is a revisited "White Anglo Saxon Protestant" established settler versus Eastern European etc. new settler generations ago.
Acuteness of the rural situation is almost like an early warning system of imperialism's progress.
* Environmental destruction and intensive land over‑use. Marginal land deforested for agricultural use ( energy intensive, low labour methods demand more land plus sheer volume of inputs GMO seed, chemicals and rising food prices make such marginal lands finally marginally profitable.)
* Concentration in trust like supply chains: Chemicals, Potash‑fertilizer. Ugly end result of capitalism's profit motive: (food recalls, monoculture specialization crate calves, battery cage hens, misuse of antibiotics, GMOs etc.)
* Dehumanizing exploitation of workers imported like any cheap resource.
* Control of basic means of production transferred back to bourgeois corporations.
* Huge investment in capital to bring about these changes. Plenty of foreign capital involved.
* Vertical integration of agricultural corporations in supply chain. An example being factory hog barns being controlled through either ownership by feed mill companies and rendering plants (in turn owned by meat packers). Or through contracts that dictate supply of products to hog producer by a subsidiary of meat processor and sale of finished product back to the meat plant at set prices. Or in case of cereal grains, contracts to buy seed, fertilizer and chemicals from a corporation and selling back at a contracted price as many elevator companies have developed this business model over the years.
The Communist Party must keep the situation ongoing in rural areas in mind when completing the final draft of the main political resolution if it is to be comprehensive in its analysis.
Solidarity with farmers and agricultural workers is key as after all the sheaf of wheat is a major component of many Communist Parties' symbols, including our own. Uniting forces in rural areas is a major hurdle. Aboriginals, small farmers, foreign workers, and small business owners need have a common target to get them to defeat the current government and further to reject the capitalist system and towards a socialist alternative.
(The above article is from the April 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)