On January 6th, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, publicly announced his resignation from his position as Prime Minister and as the leader of the Liberal Party, concluding a nine-year tenure in office. Following this announcement, the process of electing a new party leader has commenced. Six candidates are contending for the leadership role, to later fight the opposing Conservative party with Pierre Polievre as its leader. but we shall focus on the two primary and most prominent candidates: former banker Mark Carney and Member of Parliament Chrystia Freeland.
Mark Carney has a banking and economist background, having served as governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England after graduating from Harvard. He advised Trudeau, who sought to recruit him, but Carney declined multiple times due to disagreements with Trudeau’s economic policy saying he is "not the only Liberal in Canada who believes that the prime minister and his team let their attention wander from the economy too often" [1]. In his leadership campaign, he promised to remove the unpopular carbon tax. "My government would immediately remove the consumer carbon tax, but we won't stop there. Instead, we'll create a system of incentives to reward Canadians for making greener choices, " he said in Halifax. He has also warned Canadians of the upcoming Trump tariffs, proposed alternative solutions for battling the environmental crisis by introducing a carbon border adjustment, and promised to deal with Canada's housing crisis [2].
Chrystia Freeland has a strong political background, as after graduating from Oxford she worked as a journalist and after joining the Canadian House of Commons (Canadian parliament) in 2013, she rapidly increased her popularity inside the liberal party and got to hold the position of deputy PM. She has resigned her position as the deputy PM after an argument with Justin Trudeau concerning Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods. In her speeches, she has said, that Canada should “push back against 'America First' economic nationalism” and promised to negotiate a deal with the US [3][1].
As was said above, there are other candidates running for leadership in the liberal party, but as of today, those are the frontrunners. Who should the people support?
Working people should back the candidate and party dedicated to serving the interests of the majority — the working class. Support should go to the party focused on uplifting the working class towards peace and prosperity, steering clear of crises, destruction, and frivolous political maneuvers. The only way for the working class to achieve these objectives is through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat – a government that represents the workers exclusively and not the capitalists – as the capitalist class has repeatedly demonstrated their indifference towards the workers, and subsists by the exploitation of workers.
Capitalism is incapable of addressing urgent issues such as climate change due to the inherent anarchy of production; meaning the lack of centralized control over the market, which is instead influenced by various corporations, each exerting different impacts on the economy while prioritizing their own profit interests. Like, for instance, Shell Canada Limited, being a part of a bigger company “Royal Dutch Shell” lobbies many of the politicians within the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada while being one of the biggest polluters on earth. That is why despite Carney’s and Trudeau’s disagreement on climate policy, where they give different solutions – both solutions apply the same market logic. Their solutions at best are too slow and ineffective to deal with the scope and scale of the climate problem, and at worst serve to “greenwash” corporations as they continue to act in the manner that reaps them the greatest profit, irrespective of the effect of such a pursuit on the environment.
A planned economy presents an actually sustainable resolution to these issues, as market incentives or taxes fail to address the corporations directly. As the corporations control almost of the organisation of production hence the resulting pollution, they have done the most harm to the Earth’s ecosystem and therefore are responsible for causing climate change in the first place. (more on that in our earlier article: The Climate Crisis: How Capitalism Destroys the Earth ). In contrast, a planned economy will socialize these corporations, thereby providing a unified and effective approach to global challenges such as climate change based on a democratic, rational and scientific central plan. The plan is not speculative, or based on incentives for an economy split between groups of owners, but instructive.
Statements like “the liberal government doesn’t pay enough attention to the economy” are nonsensical and meaningless, as they just assume that a different face in the government can solve the economic problems (while the same capitalist faces continue to own and run the economy), not the change in the system that directly causes those problems. Names like Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Justin Trudeau, or Pierre Pollievre won’t fulfill this role, as they do not represent the working class, despite their misleading and demagogic claims in Parliament.
True control over the future of workers will only arise under socialism, where the workforce wields power, eventually eliminating class structures and dissolving the state, which currently exists to allow capitalists to exploit the labour of the people. With democratic centralism, the power of the people will thrive, ensuring workers have their voices heard, contrasting with the bourgeois “democracy” that maintains power for the top 1% and allows them to bribe politicians to enact laws that favour them. Only through the dictatorship of the proletariat can the workers attain democracy for themselves. In order to achieve this, we need a genuine communist party to lead the workers down this route; we are involved in the work towards the formation of such parties – join us.
Sources:
[1] BBC - Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader? - January 31st 2025
[2] CBC - Carney says he'll scrap the carbon tax, introduce green incentive program if he becomes leader - January 31st 2025
[3] BBC - Chrystia Freeland to run for leader of Canada's Liberal Party - January 17th 2025