Across Canada, the crises we face are multiplying, from devastating floods and fires to a soaring cost of living and a crumbling health care system. But while the average person bears the brunt, Canada’s billionaires have pocketed an extra $78 billion since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives are using our pain to rise in the polls, fanning the flames of division while they serve the corporate class.
But this doesn’t have to be our future.
On Tuesday, October 22nd, The Council of Canadians hosted a roundtable, called The Many Can Defeat the Money, to discuss how we build the people power we need to take on the corporate and conservative agendas.
The event brought together more than 800 people from across the country, with our panelists offering urgent and inspiring insights on the tasks ahead.
Here’s what they had to say.
MEET PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE
To build a more powerful movement, we need to make space to hear where people are at.
Laura Walton, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour, had just finished doing an 11-stop tour that heard from hundreds of people across Ontario. “People are angry,” she shared. “One of the things that we kept hearing all the time is, ‘I haven’t had a space to come and talk,’ and that really opened up some eyes.”
Syed Hussan, organizer with the Migrant Rights Network, has had the same experience talking to migrants across the country. “There’s just not enough resources, so everyone is struggling. This is important because it’s not just a migrant issue, it’s citizens and migrants alike. People are struggling in an economic crisis where rent is too high and it’s simply not possible to pay for it,” he said. “People are looking for answers […] people are angry and they’re looking to blame someone.”
“Disaffection with establishment Liberals is at all-time levels,” noted Martin Lukacs, author of the Trudeau Formula. “Half of Canadians are living pay cheque to pay cheque. More than two-thirds of Canadians feel that ‘everything is broken’.”
We cannot ignore the sense of disaffection and anger that people are feeling. We need to acknowledge the realities of people’s lives, their feelings, and create spaces for us to understand what people are going through.
Someone is to blame – and we know who they are
Unfortunately, the blame for our struggles isn’t always being directed at the people who are truly responsible. “On our tour we had a lot of people blaming Trudeau for stuff that was 100 per cent Doug Ford,” said OFL President Laura Walton. Hussan also spoke to the scapegoating of migrants, Muslims, and the homeless.
After we meet people where they’re at, we have to be able to point the fingers at the real culprits. As author and activist Judy Rebick put it, “the answer is to go after the rich.”
As Martin elaborated, “we on the progressive left have to give people a strong sense of connectedness against a common enemy, and we have to name that enemy. I think we could get a lot better at being crystal clear about who we’re up against. The oil barons, Bay Street, corporate landlords, rip-off bosses, and the media moguls who sugarcoat a rotten and rigged system. And then, I think we need to tell a story about what we’re fighting for as well.”
However, the problem is not only the rich; it’s also the politicians who are putting corporate profit over social good. Hussan warned us, “The Liberals are already implementing conservative-like policies. We are not just trying to talk about defeating the Conservatives. We’re trying to defeat the Conservative agenda, which has already been implemented.”
Being able to connect people’s anger at low wages, a crumbling healthcare system, or the cost of living, to the people who are profiting from our misery is a crucial part of getting on the same page. From there, it is much easier to show how electing politicians who are pushing for more privatization and corporate control is not the answer.
TAKE ONE MORE STEP
In the leadup to the election, many of us are asking ourselves how we can push back against corporate control and the politicians who will work for profit instead of people.
Hussan had an answer for all of us who are asking that question in this moment: “If you’re somebody who mostly goes to panels and signs petitions, you need to take one step forward. If you’re someone who generally goes to rallies, the invitation is to start trying to organize one. If you’re somebody who donates, you donate more,” he said. “We are absolutely capable of winning the justice in the world that we all deserve, and it requires each and every one of you to take one step forward.”
Acting and organizing for a better world is difficult. Pushing ourselves to take another step forward is hard, but as Hussan reminded us, “the scale that we have at our fingertips is immense.” More than 800 people from across the country attended the webinar. Each of them belongs to a community. If they all take one single step forward, from attending webinars to going to rallies, from going to rallies to planning them, from donating haphazardly to donating strategically, the impact on their communities, and on Canada as a whole, will be massive.
Building a movement for a better future starts with each of us taking a step. And, as Judy shared, “It doesn’t feel good to sit and watch. What feels good is to go out and try and change something, even if it doesn’t succeed […] Even if you don’t succeed in your ultimate goal, you’re going to succeed in changing some people, which feels good. When it feels good, more people get involved.”
We get to build the movement that we want to see, towards the world we want to build. Attending rallies, meeting with your MP, sharing skills and strategies, photocopiers and food, are all steps we can take to change ourselves and others. What is your next step?
POWER UP AND SHOW UP
But where do we take our next steps? Hussan invited us to answer the following questions: “What is your actual power, and where can you actually influence decisions?” Instead of debating the bigger picture, he issued an invitation: “Organizing is in place…how can you defeat Pierre Poilievre’s agenda that’s being put in place by your municipal council, your provincial representative, or your boss?”
We can and should start by changing things for the better in the places and communities that we spend time in. By building relationships and power there, we build our capacity to take on larger issues, like corporate greed and conservative political agendas in the upcoming federal election.
Laura shared an important strategy to build the change we want: showing visible signs of support. “What happens by showing visible displays of high majority, like super majorities, the naysayers start to go, ‘Oh, well the movement is this way. I best get my bum over on that side.’ I think that’s what’s really super important.” Visible displays of strong support convince everyone that the fight we’re waging is worth it.
Working for a better world also doesn’t stop at your workplace, church, or political party. The more people we can connect with on shared concerns, the better. As Hussan shared, “if you are organizing in your community, and you keep showing up day after day, people will trust you and believe you because you will show up for their struggles.”
Starting in the places we already occupy gives us somewhere to start building the relationships and momentum to make things better. Showing up for others doing similar work builds the trust we need to succeed.
CHANGE THE POLITICAL CLIMATE
With the rising cost of living and increasing social and political polarization, we are living through challenging times. Despite this, as Judy Rebick laid out, “while the movements are stronger than we’ve ever seen, the political left is weaker than I’ve ever seen it […] we’re still not seeing any major force that’s speaking out.”
Martin Lukacs shared that he recently attended the Conservative Party convention. There, a political strategisttold him that the left was missing their chance to push for progressive and just programs and policies. “She told me, and this was a quote, ‘if they’re not going to get it from a Bernie Sanders on the left, they’ll take it from someone on the right.’”
The political right is currently dominating political and social discourse – but we have an opportunity to change that. Hussan reminded us that “politicians will go whichever way the wind blows, so we must be the wind.”
Political parties are not going to do this work for us. As Martin clearly stated, “it’s incumbent upon us to do that work, and I do think that when movements are strong, when the left is strong, when labour is militant, regardless of who’s in power, they will shift.”
If we connect with people where they’re at, if we can clearly point to the true corporate villains and the politicians doing their bidding, and if we can be loud and persistent about progressive solutions that put people before profit, we can be a new wind and reshape politics in Canada. But it’s not going to be easy. Laura reminded us that “none of this is a spectator sport.” Shifting the wind will take a lot of work, but we don’t have to do it by ourselves. We just have to take the next step.
WE MUST BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN
If we are to win the better world we know is possible, we must believe that struggle produces victory, because it has.
The webinar panelists shared stories of remarkable struggles, spanning decades, for which victory seemed impossible. But they won.
“I think the most successful struggle I’ve ever been involved with is the pro-choice struggle,” said Judy Rebick, who emphasized the important tasks of talking to as many people as you can in a structured way and providing services that enable people to play many different kinds of roles in the movement.
“I work with Grassy Narrows First nations. For 60 years. this community of 1,200 people had their river poisoned. They didn’t stop,” said Hussan. “It took them more than half a decade, but now the river will be clean.” The story of Grassy Narrows’ struggle highlights the importance of determination, especially when the struggle spans decades.
In Ontario in the 1990s, the labour movement organized a series of strikes and protests, known as the Days of Action, to resist the Harris government’s brutal austerity cuts to public services.
“What we saw in Ontario then was one of the biggest social movement mobilizations that has ever existed in this country,” said Martin. “The Days of Action saw 250,000 people marching in the streets of Toronto.”
Building on this tradition of labour movement militancy in Ontario, last year education workers built a powerful strike, which came very close to sparking a province-wide general strike, in response to the Ford government’s attacks on workers and communities.
“The most powerful moment of my entire life so far is when I gave my power away to every other education worker for them to do what they needed to do,” said Laura, who was president of the CUPE local which led the strike.
This strike was possible because the union took a methodical approach, based on Jane McAlevey’s “Organizing for Power” trainings, to have one-on-one conversations with every single member of the union and build a consensus on a strategy to fight to win.
“In a year’s time they were able to do member-to-member contact and discussion with 55,000 people,” said Martin. There is power in building inclusive community in our movements. Judy said that the pro-Palestine movement that has built up over the past year is the most powerful movement she’s seen since the 60s. “When I walked onto the [University of Toronto] encampment, I felt like I died and went to heaven. Everything I fought for in my life was there: diversity, the kindness, the love, the emotional intelligence.”
The Council of Canadians is building the alternative we know is possible: policies rooted in care, collective well-being, justice, and hope for a better tomorrow. This webinar was just the beginning – take the first step of joining our mailing list if you haven’t already. We’ll be in touch with ways to take action so the many can defeat the money!
