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| Canada Kanada Kanata ᑲᓇᑕ Zhaaganaashiiwaki | |
|---|---|
 Flag
 Coat of arms
| |
 | |
| Capital | Ottawa |
| Largest city | Toronto |
| Official languages | English French |
| Dominant mode of production | Capitalism |
| Government | Federal parliamentary bourgeois state |
• King | Charles Windsor |
| Justin Trudeau | |
| Mary Simon | |
| History | |
| 1 July 1867 | |
| 17 April 1982 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 9,984,670 km² |
| Population | |
• 2021 estimate | 38,436,447 |
| Currency | Canadian dollar |
Canada is a settler-colonial and imperialist state in North America. It was founded as a colony of the British Empire, and to this day it remains a monarchy which shares its monarch with the United Kingdom. Despite being a wealthy country in terms of GDP, over four million people, more than 10% of its population, do not have access to sufficient food.[1] Canada exists as an accomplice of U.S. imperialism and has supported the apartheid regimes of South Africa and "Israel" and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, Libya, and Haiti.[2]
History
Pre-colonial
Before colonization, Canada was home to the Algonquin, Athapaskan (Dene), Inuit, and other indigenous peoples. Most of them lived in hunter-gatherer societies, though the peoples of the Pacific coast saw the beginnings of class society.[3]
French colonial rule
British colonial rule
First U.S. invasion
In late 1775, the Continental Army invaded what is now Canada and captured Montréal, occupying it until the summer of 1776. It failed to take Quebec City, and General Richard Montgomery died during a siege in December 1776.[4]
Later U.S. invasions
The USA attempted to invade Canada ten times during the War of 1812. General Zebulon Pike burned down the city of York (now Toronto), and the British burned Washington, D.C. in revenge.[5]
British dominion
1930s
During the 1930s, the anti-Semite William Lyon Mackenzie King ruled Canada and refused to allow Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany into Canada.[2]
Settler colonialism
Following colonization by the British Empire, Canada was under direct British rule until 1867. In 1876, Canada passed a law that prevented people from testifying or having their case heard in court if they did not adopt Christianity.[6] Children were prevented from speaking their native languages and forced to adopt Christianity and the culture of the settlers. Canada was one of only four countries to vote against the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.[7]
In 2020, indigenous people were seven times as likely to be murdered as settlers.[8] Even though they only make up 4% of the total population, natives make up 36% of imprisoned women and 25% of imprisoned men.[9]
Westward expansion
Residential schools
Canada forcibly assimilated much of its indigenous population by sending Native children into residential schools from 1831 to 1996.[10] The terrible conditions at these schools led to many deaths, and children were often buried in unmarked graves at the schools. In 2021, 751 graves were uncovered at a single school in Saskatchewan.[11] In British Columbia, two more mass graves were found, one at Kamloops with 215 indigenous children[10] and another with 182 graves at Cranbrook.[12]
Support for imperialism
Canada spies on its citizens as part of the Five Eyes alliance[13] and is part of the international terrorist organization NATO. It intervened in the Russian Civil War to help the monarchist White Army, invaded Korea in 1950, and invaded Libya in 2011.[citation needed]
Ukraine
Canada's military also trained far-right Ukrainian groups including Military Order Centuria and the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. In 2018, Canadian officials met with the Azov Battalion but did not denounce their far-right ideology. Canada's federal government has spent over $890 million on training Ukrainian forces as part of Operation Unifier.[14]
Mining companies
Canada has a long history of supporting far-right dictatorships abroad, even against the wishes of the USA, in order to protect the interests of its national bourgeoisie.[15] To this day, 75% of the world's mining companies are based in Canada, mostly because of the state's very lax rules on what said companies do outside of Canada.[16] Canadian mining companies continue the state's long tradition of killing, stealing from, and otherwise oppressing the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. One such example of this is the Marlin mine in Guatemala, built on Indigenous territory.[17]
Economy
Politics
Parties
The current government in Canada is headed by the Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau, which is the neoliberal party of the big monopolistic bourgeoisie. The Conservative Party, the main opposition party, has traditionally drawn its support from the agricultural sector of monopoly capitalism. Those are the only two parties to have ever led governments in Canadian history. The New Democratic Party is a social-democratic party represented in the House of Commons, and is considered "left" by Canadian standards.[3] Another social-democratic party in the House of Commons is the Bloc Québécois, which only runs candidates in the province of Quebec.
Neo-Nazism
On September 22, 2023, the Canadian Parliament applauded the Waffen-SS member Yaroslav Hunka and called him a "Ukrainian hero". Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is the granddaughter of the Nazi collaborator Michael Chomiak, who wrote an antisemitic newspaper during the war and worked closely with Joseph Goebbels.[18] Despite knowing about his past, Freeland frequently denied and evaded questions on his culpability for a number of years.[19]
Canada is also close to unveiling a "Victims of Communism memorial" in Ottawa with a planned 550 entries. Over 330 of these planned entries are known (and have been for at least a few years) by the department of Canadian Heritage to have likely or definitely been Nazi collaborators. Many private donations to the construction of the monument were made specifically in the name of well-known Nazis, such as Roman Shukhevych, "a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator" and Ante Pavelić, who "is considered a chief perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Balkans".[20]
References
- ↑ Thin Lei Win (2020-01-20). "Millions go hungry in wealthy Canada - and some die young as a result" Reuters. Archived from the original on 2021-02-23. Retrieved 2022-05-22.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lee Camp (2023-02-08). "Canada Is Part of the US War Machine, with Pitasana Shanmugathas" MintPress News. Archived from the original on 2023-02-10. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Canada," in Boljšaja sovjetskaja enciklopjedija, 3rd ed. (Moscow: 1970), vol. 11, pp. 293-310.
- ↑ David Vine (2020). The United States of War: 'Why Are So Many Places Named Fort?' (pp. 95–6). Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520972070 [LG]
- ↑ David Vine (2020). The United States of War: 'Invading Your Neighbors' (pp. 122–3). Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520972070 [LG]
- ↑ Andrew Armitage (1995). Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (pp. 77–78). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
- ↑ UN adopts Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007-09-13). United Nations News Centre. Archived from the original on 2014-09-25.
- ↑ "Homicide rate for Indigenous people 7 times higher than non-Indigenous in Canada" (2021-11-26). CGTN. Archived from the original on 2021-11-27. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ↑ Nick Estes, et al. (2021). Red Nation Rising: 'Indian Killers' (p. 51). [PDF]
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Hundreds of unmarked graves found at another indigenous school in Canada" (2021-06-24). CGTN. Archived from the original on 2021-07-03. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ↑ "Canada: 751 unmarked graves found at residential school" (2021-06-24). BBC. Retrieved 2021-12-31.
- ↑ "182 unmarked graves discovered at another indigenous residential school in Canada" (2021-07-01). CGTN. Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ↑ James Cox (2012). Canada and the Five Eyes Intelligence Community. [PDF]
- ↑ Christy Somos (2022-04-28). "Mounting evidence Canada trained Ukrainian extremists, gov't needs to be held to account: experts" CTV News. Archived from the original on 2022-05-03. Retrieved 2022-05-22.
- ↑ Tyler Shipley (2020). Canada in the world: settler capitalism and the colonial imagination: 'Peace and Scorched Earth; Saving Somoza: Falconbridge, Inco and Canada’s Cold War' (pp. 231-2). Fernwood Publishing. ISBN 9781773631141 [LG]
- ↑ Owen Schalk (2021-09-06). "Going for Gold: Neocolonialism and Canadian mining in Africa" People's Voice. Retrieved 2022-12-27.
- ↑ Tyler Shipley (2020). Canada in the world: settler capitalism and the colonial imagination: 'Contemporary Canada and the Rise of Fascism; Blood of Extraction' (p. 477). Fernwood Publishing. ISBN 9781773631141 [LG]
- ↑ Benjamin Zinevich, Morgan Artyukhina (2023-10-06). "How Canada and the U.S. ‘normalize’ and promote Ukranian fascists" Liberation News. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
- ↑ Peter McFarlane (2024-10-10). "Despite Chrystia Freeland’s denials, her grandfather was complicit in the Nazi genocide" The Breach. Archived from the original. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
- ↑ David Pugliese (2024-10-07). "Victims of Communism memorial faces call to remove over 330 names linked to Nazis, fascists" Ottawa Citizen. Archived from the original on 2024-10-07. Retrieved 2024-10-27.