We had the opportunity to speak with Jack Hicks, a Canadian socialist activist, about his impressions of the new Trump administration and the political situation in Canada. Here are some of his thoughts.
Interview by Cesar Latorre
How do the people feel about the Trump government? What did they say about the different declarations of Trump?
Opinion polls show that Trump and his government are highly unpopular in Canada. That was the case before his tariff war and his threats to annex Canada and turn it into the US’s 51st state, but those two things have made him wildly unpopular. Only a hard-right section of the Conservative Party and the much smaller People’s Party support him.
Most Canadians strongly support the country’s single-payer medical care system, which provides most services at no cost to the patient, and find the US heath non-system bizarre and cruel. While one quarter of Canadian households own at least one firearm gun ownership is highly regulated and there is widespread revulsion at the US’s ‘gun culture’.
Canadian nationalism feeds a sense of superiority to American society, a smugness which masks the very real shortcomings of Canadian society. That said, most Canadians are genuinely alarmed about where Donald Trump is leading the US.
What do you think about the last elections in Canada?
It was a wild one! The Conservative Party, under right-wing leader Pierre Poilievre, had heald a 30 point lead in the polls for over a year. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hed become very unpopular, in part due to Poilievre’s relentless personal attacks against him. When the Liberal leadership forced Trudeau to resign, and installed former central banker Mark Carney to replace him, Poilievre was robbed of his favourite whipping boy.
Poilievre had thundered against the so-called ‘carbon tax’, a charge on greenhouse gas emissions that aimed to incentivize lower emissions by making polluting activities more expensive. Carney’s first act as Prime Minister was to scarp the task – removing one of Poilievre’s easiest targets.
One of Poilievre’s favourite claims was that “everything is broken” – which he held Trudeay personally responsible for. Trump’s attacks on Canadian sovereignty caused many Canadians to compare their situation to that of their neighbours to the south, and to realize that Canada is not “broken.”
Poilievre is a divisive, nasty, hard-right figure, and while he managed to whip up his base (and steal votes from the People’s Party) he was unable to win over many voters to the left of the Conservative Party. The Liberals managed to win over some Conservatives who found Poilievre personally distasteful, many social democrats who wanted to ensure that the Conservatives didn’t win, and even sections of the nationalist vote in the largely French-speaking province of Quebec. The Liberals’ choice of a ‘father figure’ central banker to challenge Donal Trump paid off big-time.
The Liberal Party is a shapeshifter, capable of remarkable changes of direction in order to hold onto power. When Justin Trudeau took over a wounded party in 2013 he stopped a drift to the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) by taking the party in a slightly more progressive. After taking over an equally wounded Liberal Party in 2025 Mark Carney has stopped the Conservatives in their tracks by taking the party significantly to the right.
Canada is now government by the most right-wing Liberal government in many decades. Carney has accomplished this much faster that most observers believed possible. The Liberal mantra now is to “protect Canadian sovereignty” by significantly increasing military spending, and pouring money into defence industries in the hope of boosting the overall economy (in part through increased exports of military equipment). Carney has promised to significantly reduce the time allowed for evnviromental assessment of major industrial projects, while claiming that this will not have negative effects on the economy. And despite his history of concern about global warming he plans to increase hydrocarbon production. Far from his rhetoric of distancing Canada from the US Carney seems intent on renegotiating the relationship and then deepening integration with the US. In short, rather than electing a Conservative government Canadians elected a very conservative Liberal government.
What is the situation of the left?
The electoral left in English Canada is a much weaker than it used to be. The social democratic NDP lost most of its seats in the House of Commons, and no longer hold official party status. In the two of ten provinces with NDP governments they govern much as Liberals do in other provinces. The situation in the French-speaking proving of Quebec is a bit better, but not by much.
Unions are for the most part bureaucratic and weak, and controlled by social democratis who are increasingly aligned with the Liberals rather than with the NDP. It’s not a pretty picture, as there has been no recovery from the neoliberal offensive of the 1990s and 2000s.
The one bright spot in Canadian politics in the last 10 to 15 has been the increasing militancy of some sections of the Indigenous population, although no sustained mobilization has been achieved. There has been a significant shift in how non-Indigenous Canadians view their country’s history as revelations have entered public consciousness about how harshly First Nations children were treated at government-funded, church-run ‘Indian residential schools’ over a period of 160 years, and how many children died while attending them. The discovery of thousands of unmarked graves on church properties has shaken many who had no knowledge of such atrocities.
What is the situation of the working class in Canada?
Canada is a wealthy First World country with a well-entrenched ruling class. Despite the current difficulties with Trump, Canada is a junior partner in American imperialism.
As is the case in most countries, the rate of profit has declined significantly in recent decades and Canada is now forecast to have one of the lowest economic growth rates in the developed world in the coming years. Having a central banker as Prime Minister will not change that. For the first time in history, many young Canadians feel that their lives will not be as prosperous and secure as those of their parents. It remains to be seen what impacts this will have.
Many Canadians lucky enough to own their own homes have big mortgages, and are scared of whether they’ll be able to make their payments. For others, rents have risen sharply in many parts of the country and there is a shortage of rental units in many cities. It is no exaggeration to say that Canada is in the midst of a major housing access and affordability crisis, one that capitalism is unlikely to solve.
Given the weakness of the electoral left and the unions, it’s no surprise that many Canadian workers are hoping that Carney’s Liberals can improve their situation. They are likely to be very disappointed with what he delivers.
What do you think about the tasks of the revolutionaries in Canada?
Socialists in Canada today need to develop the theory and practice needed to build the seeds of revolutionary organizations the size of those that existed here not all that long ago. We must take inspiration from the successes of others, and seize on whatever opportunities present themselves here. The capitalist world is in crisis, and we have to build and present an alternative.
I would like to note three specific challenges for revolutionaries in Canada.
First, Indigenous struggles will remain central to Canadian politics. Carney’s plans to fast-track industrial developments, especially energy projects and pipelines, will inevitably results in serious conflict with Indigenous nations. Revolutionaries must support Indigenous resistance movements, and must seek build resistance to Canadian capitalism rather than just resistance to a specific project or to the government of the day.
Second, Carney appears to have abandoned even Trudeau’s largely performative actions re: climate change. As I write this, large sections of the country are on fire and many thousands of people have been evacuated from their communities and their homes. The devastation caused by global warming is only going to increase, and revolutionaries must be active participants in climate-related movements – and argue for anti-capitalist politics within them.
And finally, no revolutionary anywhere can shirk their responsibility to support the rights of the Palestinian people.
As Rosa Luxemburg put it, the future is a choice between socialism and barbarism. I choose socialism!
