A battle within the New Democratic Party in Canada is shaping up over the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union. Will organized labour stand for the NDP's Mulcair entering a trade agreement that will force austerity down the throats of Canadian workers and drastically slash living standards in Canada? If Mulcair and the NDP support CETA they can kiss all chances of winning national power good-bye. What a shame this would be. What CETA is really all about is assuring Canada a greater role in its development as an imperialist nation.
Is it in the interest of the socialist New Democratic Party and Canada's working class to have Canada become a stronger imperialist nation than what it already is? Definitely not.
We see the terrible price the American people and the U.S. working class is paying for the "pragmatism" of labor leaders supporting U.S. imperialism and for Canada to continue down the road of imperialism the cost and consequences to Canada's working people will be a disaster, too.
It should be noted that the U.S. CIA's labor front group, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), of which the Canadian Labour Congress and the AFL-CIO are prominent and leading members, continue to push workers towards acquiescing--- if not outright support--- for Wall Street's, Bay Street's and the Square Mile's (and the rest of the G-8/G-20) imperialist agenda in undermining the the influence of the most militant anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and pro-socialist unions affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions and hundreds of other unions just as militantly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and pro-socialist without any international affiliations.
All of these so-called "trade agreements" are intended to weaken labor, further intensify the exploitation of labor and enable cheaper extraction of natural resources, processing of natural resources and manufacturing in maximizing the profits of the multi-national corporations.
Any union leader who pushes such "trade agreements" as being beneficial to the working class either is a dim-wit or collaborator with management and no political party supporting such agreements can be seen as pro-labor or a friend of labor let alone a working class based political party.
Thomas Mulcair, the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party shouldn't even be considering supporting CETA and anyone contemplating supporting or voting for the NDP (which should be each and every worker and every single union along with anti-imperialists in Canada or anyplace else in the world) should let Mulcair know he shouldn't even be entertaining ideas about supporting Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union.
Progressives and socialists work to weaken and defeat imperialism not prop it up and strengthen imperialism because we know the harm imperialism brings to working people everywhere so Thomas Mulcair's search for a position regarding CETA becomes something anti-imperialists from all countries need to be aware of and speaking out on.
It is when issues like this come up working people need some kind of organizational structure crossing borders in order to collaborate and strengthen the anti-imperialist movements.