DENNIS HOWLETT is a founding member and Steering Committee member of the Action Canada Network and co-chair of the Network's Education and Communication Committee. During a recent visit to Sydney, he was interviewed by LISA MACDONALD for 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳.
What is the Action Canada Network?
The ACN is a coalition of social movement groups formed in 1987 initially in response to the Canadian government beginning negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States. This was an agreement not just about lowering tariffs but included things like harmonising standards for pesticides, prohibition of any restriction on exports of water or energy even in times of scarcity, giving multinational drug companies a 20-year monopoly on the patents of drugs.
It restricted government control over American investment so that no government would be allowed, for example, to limit the amount of profits that are taken out of the country. The North American Free Trade Agreement is, as Ronald Reagan described it, a new economic constitution. It potentially gives freedom to multinational corporations to do what they want and restricts what governments can do to regulate capital in the interests of the majority of the people.
It was a big issue for labour because obviously jobs were at stake. Women were concerned because some of the most vulnerable industries were those were women are employed. Anti-poverty groups were concerned that the more competitive environment would increase the pressure from business for cuts in social programs.
We realised that, because it was being advocated by the largest corporations and by the United States government, we didn't have a hope in hell of fighting it unless we banded together.
Over the last few years of working together we've achieved a much more radical and comprehensive policy and point of view on the part of the participating organisations than any of them had before becoming part of the coalition.
How does the ACN gets its ideas across to people and forge consensus around major issues between such a broad range of organisations?
By working together and coordinating the various communications vehicles that we have — the union newspapers, the women's movement papers, the church magazines and all the rest of it, we have access to over half the adult population of Canada. Even though we continue to have a frustrating time with the mainline media, which is owned and controlled by a very small corporate elite, we can reach more people through these networks than the largest daily newspaper in Canada.
The other thing is educational programs, conventions and so on. We've really encouraged a building of mutual understanding between each other's movements.
We've been hit hard by the implementation of free trade and other parts of what we call the "corporate agenda". Free trade goes together with the regressive tax policies, cutbacks in social programs, privatisation, deregulation and all that. Because we're helping people to understand that this is a whole package, we've been much better able to resist some of the impact of it. By supporting each other when the government tries to attack one particular sector, we've been able to fight back.
The ACN has been credited with playing a significant role in the downfall of Brian Mulroney and his conservative government in the last elections.
Yes, the Progressive Conservative party was essentially wiped out. From holding government, they were left with two seats in the whole of Canada. The Liberal party had a landslide victory.
The first action of the new government was to cancel a $5.6 billion military helicopter contract. They did that because we had made that a major election issue. The conservatives were campaigning on the deficit and how we need to eliminate the deficit and cut back social spending. We pointed out that they were cutting all the things that benefit people. Military spending was going up, and the helicopters were the most visible symbol of that.
The Liberal Party was forced to make a pre-election commitment that they would not implement NAFTA despite the fact that it was passed by parliament prior to the election.
I think the key will be what kind of pressure the ACN and coalition of social movements is able to put on. In May we mobilised over 100,000 people on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in opposition to free trade and for what we call a people's agenda — a positive program of economic and social policy.
We're beginning to create a new political dynamic where we are not dependent on just political parties or on electoral politics. We do need to continue to struggle on the electoral front, and we need progressive parties in order to be able to do that. But we also need strong independent social movements. Even if you elect a progressive party, if you don't keep the pressure on them, they're going to buckle under.
In putting forward an alternative to free trade, we have avoided a narrow protectionist position, and we've worked together with our Mexican counterparts in talking about what kind of alternative trade policy we would propose.
This is a new kind of response in Canada, where unions have always said "don't move jobs anywhere". Now they're more prepared to support the struggles of their Mexican brothers and sisters in demanding respect for unions, better wages, better working conditions because Canadian workers realise that if those kinds of basic minimum standards are respected, then there's not as much of a threat of jobs being lost.
What has been the role of the labour movement and its leadership in the new politics in Canada?
One of the strategic things that we recognise is the importance of trying to encourage a new kind of trade union perspective and politics. We've found that developing coalition politics is one of the most effective ways of reshaping the politics of the labour movement.
We have a similar type of connection between most of the labour movement and the New Democratic Party (NDP) as you have in Australia between the labour leadership and the Labor Party.
The NDP has not been in national government but has held provincial government. The experience, in Ontario particularly, has been one of betrayal, so we are having similar experiences as you.
Even though we've had some success in influencing the party policies and even gaining control in some sense over the party structures, we haven't been able to control the governments that it's formed.
But we do have political muscle now because we have cooperation among the movements that make up the base of the NDP. We are able to play party politics much more effectively than we ever could when we simply had left caucuses within the parties.
The Canadian labour movement, even though hit hard by the recession, has been able to maintain for the most part the percentage of workers who are unionised; they have for the most part avoided concession bargaining. Compared with labour movements in other parts of the world, they've actually done quite well.
This is because the leadership in the last few years has been made up of people who have supported the social unionist approach. This has been a more successful strategy than that of the old guard in trying to strike a deal with a labour party or enter into concession bargaining.