First paragraph (Teaser):

This is the fifth part of the booklet From Nationalism to Internationalism. We will publish it in six parts. This booklet tells the story of an activist over a period of about 35 years. His booklet is both intended as a criticism of past activities (for example, a critique of the Maoist current in which he’d long evolved) and to show that these same activities were alien to the proletariat.

Internationalists Communists of Montreal (ICM)

http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38437 First part
http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38799 Second part
http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38837 Third part
http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/38948 Fourth

Rest of the text:

Meanwhile, I have always been active in the CEQ and the Teachers Alliance and I continued to be active in these very organizations that sabotage workers struggles up until 2002. For more details on the account of my thirty years of union involvement, see the pamphlet, “Du syndicalisme critique à la critique du syndicalisme, Témoignage d’un ex-syndicaliste en colère”.

The fact that I have come to reject the union as a workers’ organization doesn’t mean that I don’t participate in the struggles of my brothers and sisters in education – far from it. In attending teaching conferences, for example, I make proposals for taking our struggles beyond the corporatist union framework, to spread them to other workers on common basis.

After the dissolution of In Struggle! , I joined a few militants who met regularly to critique Stalinist “Marxism” and above all his idealist vision of science. This small intellectual discussion group lasted only for about a year. One of its topics for discussion was the Lyssenko affair.

One of Stalin’s favorite scientists, Lyssenko so aggressively attacked genetics that it ended up being relegated, finally, to “bourgeois pseudo-science” and was banned in 1948 by the USSR. Many scientists were subjugated to Lyssenko’s theories, which had the approval of the Central Committee of the Stalinist party. The consolidation of State capitalism in Russia was made at all levels of society. The Stalinist “Inquisition” had disastrous effects even for bourgeois science. Thus scientists published letters in which they admitted their mistakes and praised the wisdom of the Stalinist party. Those who refused lost their jobs. Some were even sent to labor camps; others just disappeared. Indeed, in the 1930s, the Stalinist State tried to discredit academics labeled as bourgeois and too often educated abroad, to replace them with “sons of the people” whose advancement depended on the State and who were in this case much more malleable. For more detail, read the novel, “White Robes” by Vladimir Dudintsev, 1987. This is the plight of a scientist who refused to comply with the theses of Lyssenko condemning genetics.

After the sinking of the m-l, I drifted along in the sea of militantism like a passenger on the raft of the Medusa without really knowing where I was going. In fact, I got even more bogged down in reformism and nationalism without even realizing it. Bourgeois ideology is most insidious.

Fight against pesticides in a suburban town

In 1989, I founded a group against the use of pesticides (GFP – Groupe pour en Finir avec les Pesticides). Suburbanites who wanted a lawn as green as a billiard table, poisoned by fumes from pesticides, made me sick. This was my little eco-trip in the sense of “think and act locally” a slogan that some anarchists like in particular.

The town’s ultra-conservative mayor had a representative of the monopoly, Chemlawn, as his resource person on pesticides. This monopoly easily gained a foothold in the municipal councils with a strong opposition to the use of chemical pesticides. Moreover, when another municipal council passed a ban on chemical pesticides a few years later, Chemlawn already had its “green” pesticide. The Greens are even promoting this monopoly by saying that “The industry will adapt to this new reality and will offer alternatives, as is already the case with some companies (including Chemlawn! ). (Memo submitted to the Task Force on pesticides in urban areas by the Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides).

But for workers, nothing has changed; the monopoly still continues to reap surplus value. I speak of this struggle to show that it is always possible to earn a few scraps, but it calls into question an entire political and economic system, an economic regime which, by the same premise of its existence (the need to accumulate exchange value, to profit), has destroyed Earth’s environment and caused the greenhouse effect. What’s more, these few scraps won are never more than an illusion of victory in which financial corporations, in concert with politicians, are willing to concede within this mystification called democracy.

In reality, for these companies, their pseudo ‘environmental-protection’ has a duo purpose in both serving their interests and paying off at the political level. For minor or major politicians like Al Gore, this helps to distract the masses of workers from the struggle against the cause of environmental destruction – the profit motive, that is. There is a disturbing truth that they won’t talk about – that the real cause of these catastrophic climate changes is the capitalist system in its inexorable rush for profit. Completely at odds with reality (where the satisfaction of needs lies in a permanent dialectic with its environment), for the capitalist enterprises, development and survival of their businesses is not found in environmental preservation or in the development and satisfaction of human needs: they find themselves with the immediate capacity to rake in surplus-value as fast as possible, regardless of the repercussions in the short or long term.

Years ‘89 and ‘90: collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites

This collapse was no surprise to me. None of these countries were communist. And their so-called planned economy had nothing to do with socialism, either. It was, rather, a kind of totalitarian capitalist economy rooted in imperialism, pitted against another type of more liberal capitalist economy. Gorbachev’s attempts to reform State capitalism were unsuccessful in persuading the Russian bourgeoisie whose senior leaders were in the “communist” party. Economic ruin due to the arms race was a factor in this collapse. The transition from a dominant and authoritarian state capitalism to a privatized capitalism, supported and supervised by the state, has gone rather smoothly. The Russian working class has not revolted because it wasn’t their society that was transformed but rather the form of its exploitation. The October 1917 Russian Revolution will always remain a brilliant inspiration for me. It demonstrated that the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeois class. It was the isolation of the Russian working class that crushed the revolutionary possibilities of 1917. What existed in Russia during the 1920s and afterwards bore no resemblance to communism – state capitalism was in full construction. Nowhere in the world has there ever been a communist society. The October 1917 Russian Revolution was the first step toward world communist revolution in an international revolutionary wave that ended the imperialist war and lasted several years. The failure of that revolutionary wave, particularly in Germany in 1919-23, condemned the Russian Revolution to isolation and rapid degeneration. Stalinism was not the product of the Russian Revolution, but its gravedigger. The bourgeoisie’s biggest lie for the past 80 years has been in calling Stalinism “communism”.

Summer of 1990: The Mohawk bourgeoisie’s struggle against the Quebec and Canadian bourgeoisie

March 11, 1990, the Mohawks of Kanehsatake began a peaceful vigil in the Pines to protest the expansion of a golf course by the municipality of Oka on what they consider their ancestral land.

July 11th, the SQ attacks Mohawk occupiers. A policeman in the Intervention Unit (SWAT) is mortally wounded. The culprit is never found but evidence indicates that his colleagues accidentally killed him. Following this attack, the Mohawks erect barricades. In Kahnawake, on the South Shore, Mohawks block highways leading to the Mercier Bridge, in solidarity with Kanehsatake.

August 14th, the army moves in near Mohawk territory.

August 20th, the army arrives at Oka and Châteauguay to replace the SQ at the barricades.

August 28th, the army closes in on Kahnawake; cars carrying women, children, and seniors fleeing the army are stoned by nationalist demonstrators on their exit from the Mercier Bridge in Ville La Salle. The SQ is on the scene but does nothing to stop it. A Mohawk elder, Joe Armstrong, dies a few days later of cardiac arrest.
August 29th, the barricades blocking the entrance to the Mercier Bridge are dismantled.

September 29th, Mohawks of Kanehsatake are arrested and taken to the military base in Farnham, headquarters of the Sûreté du Québec in Montreal. Some of those arrested are victims of police brutality.

The Québecois state and its media with demagogues like Gilles Proulx did everything during the struggle to incite hatred between proletarian Mohawks and the Québecois.

I joined le Regroupement de solidarité avec les Autochtones (Solidarity with Native People) established the day after the armed attack by the SQ. That summer, the Coalition organized several activities in support of Mohawk leaders’ nationalist land claims, such as blocking René Lévesque Boulevard for hours in front of the offices of Premier Robert Bourassa.

I was still in the nationalist quagmire even if it was that of the Mohawks. This crisis was in fact a struggle between two bourgeois social classes that used Mohawk nationalism on the one hand, and Canadian and Québecois nationalism on the other.

Mohawk activists acted without giving a damn about the problems they caused for tens of thousands of workers by the closure of the Mercier Bridge. ‘Class solidarity’ was something of a united front between proletarian and bourgeois Mohawks. It was not the cause of proletarian Mohawks that the aboriginal elite fought for, but for “the land and only for the land.”

Regroupement de solidarité avec les Autochtones (Solidarity with Native People) says in its leaflet, The Trial of the Mohawks, page 101, the struggle for national liberation, the Mohawk nation that defends itself, solidarity with the Mohawk nation. The capitalist Mohawks in their struggle against the capitalist Québecois and Canadians have in fact, hijacked this Coalition. The federal state along with the Québecois state assumed the leadership of the repression.

Solidarity between workers should come before the struggles of the bourgeoisie. The Quebecois nationalist bourgeoisie was angry that summer in 1990 because on one hand its struggle against the Meech Lake Accord took second place, and on the other it wanted to assume full control over its territory. Moreover, PQ ministers had already said that the presence of a possible Quebec army would crush indigenous uprisings in the scenario of an independent capitalist Quebec.

****
In the wake of its occupation of Mohawk territory and in view of the imminent war in Iraq, the Canadian army was recruiting. So at the Centre Saint-Croix, adult education center, as part of a one day open-house on various trade and professional schools, the Canadian Army came to recruit (‘inform’ in its hypocritical choice of words). I propagandized against the army’s presence at the Center. From time to time, army recruiters show up at adult education centers with these young proletarians in their sights. Never do you hear any denunciations – what’s worse, this sort of thing is done in full collaboration with counselors in training.

Memoir that plays into the hands of bourgeois democracy

During the second referendum on Quebec independence in 1995, the PQ set up commissions on the Future of Quebec. These commissions were an underhanded attempt to manipulate public opinion by presenting submissions from nationalists of all stripes. But, to the astonishment of the nationalists, a great number of grassroots organizations, women’s groups, students and unions would present their reformist demands to be implemented in an independent Quebec To think that this sovereignty project of the Quebec bourgeoisie had any positive aspect to the working class, would be completely illogical. The proletariat has only one homeland, the whole world. Left to myself politically, I supported bourgeois democracy in presenting a submission to the Montérégie commission.

Well obviously I was neither for the YES or NO, but the text was still imbued with a profound leftist mindset as I wrote in this memoir: “The illusions of a “national” solution to the social crisis must be swept away by the harsh realities of the global capitalist economy. To do this, we need tools: unions (disencumbered of a certain current leadership subject to the dictates of the market and the PQ), community groups, women’s groups, students associations… These are useful tools that we should make more use of, but there are other tools we still lack: revolutionary programs and organizations to put an end to this inhumane system, which has not always existed and is not eternal as claimed by proponents of the free-market.”

I still had confidence in organizations such as unions and community groups that owe their existence to the capitalist state through the laws and regulations that manage them and the regular subsidies they receive. All these reformist organizations will never serve workers’ interests, though. The individual members have even more difficulty seeing international revolutionary perspectives. The customs of bourgeois democracy (elections, lobbying, parliamentary committees, the parliamentary spectacle) distance these individuals from any action toward the creation of a global party for the working class. In the housing rights group: Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), for example, its leader François Saillant (ex-Mao In Struggle!) held his position for over twenty years, and his group made regular presentations and memorandums that were more or less useless to universities or parliamentary committees. These unions and grassroots organizations tried endlessly to revitalize parliamentarism with more or less realistic proposals from within the system that they tried to accommodate as well as can be expected, given their levels of sincerity or opportunism.

A more recent example comes from the text, United for the future of Quebec and the world that was signed by dozens of social groups on August 26, 2007. It illustrates well the Holy Alliance between the bourgeoisie and the melting pot of grassroots organizations, unions and religious groups.

These groups, funded by the State or by contributions from proletarians, are staunch defenders of bourgeois democracy and they make a point of announcing it. It is among other things one of their justifications for the perpetual quest for State subsidies.

“True, we’re tired because that’s what it takes, because in a democracy that advances through public debate and not by violence, social progress is only achieved by constant work and through the insistence necessary to bring humanistic considerations, that will never be obsolete, back to the forefront.”

Yes they are tiresome, but they never get tired of repeating the same crap: everyone is nice, we are all equal citizens, long live debate with politicians and business people, etc. They’ll do anything to make believe that there is social progress, while right before their eyes, conditions for workers decline on all levels with the decadence of capitalism.

While denying the existence of class struggle, they show a sickening tolerance for the exploiter class.
“We are the future of Quebec not only in openness but in fraternity because for us women, men, young and old, francophones, anglophones, allophones and indigenous people, the believers, the non-practicing, agnostics and atheists, heterosexuals, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals and transsexuals, rich, poor, and middle class, the powerful and the beaten, the able-bodied and the handicapped, small families, big families, the blended families, and the single-parent families, the urban, the rural and suburban, are human beings above all, citizens of a Quebec that have everything to gain with everyone thriving and living life to the fullest. And we believe that we must make every effort to explain ourselves to one another and to understand each other better, so that the freedom of each extends to where the freedom of others begins.”

In order for the utopia of ‘capitalism with a human face’ to continue, according to them, “we must make every effort to explain ourselves to one another and to understand each other better, so that the freedom of each extends to where the freedom of others begins.” They thus promote nationalism “the future of Quebec, class collaboration, “brotherhood” with the rich and powerful “citizens of a Quebec that have everything to gain by everyone thriving and living life to the fullest”

In other words, the worker works with respect for his boss and the latter will surely do the same so long as there is debate and tolerance on both sides. What a load of crap is this drivel from groups and unions fully integrated into the capitalist state.

List of some of the signatories:

Alternatives
Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante
ATTAC-Québec
Au bas de l’échelle
l’autre Parole
Carrefour de solidarité internationale (Sherbrooke) Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ)
Centre de femmes l’Étincelle
Centre de formation sociale Marie-Gérin-Lajoie
Collectif Echec à la guerre
Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN)
Conférence mondiale des religions pour la paix
D’abord solidaires
Engrenage Noir
FRAPRU
Front commun des personnes assistées sociales
Groupe de théologie contextuelle québécoise
JOC nationale du Québec
Présence Musulmane Montréal
Presse-toi à gauche
Regard Alternative Média
Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE)
Regroupement intersectoriel des organismes communautaires de Montréal (RIOCM)
Syndicat de la fonction publique du Québec (SFPQ)
Syndicat de professionnelles et professionnels du gouvernement du Québec (SPGQ)
Table de concertation des groupes de femmes du Bas Saint-Laurent
Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes
Table des groupes de femmes de Montréal
Union des consommateurs

1996 socio-economic summit

The union centrals colluded with the PQ government under Lucien Bouchard to achieve a zero deficit during the 1996 Economic Summit. Employers, the State and unions, hand in hand in every sense of the term, convened for the well being of Quebec’s capitalist economy. I denounced this agreement wherever possible, though I still hadn’t clearly seen that for years the unions had been institutions organically linked to the state for sabotaging workers’ struggles. No unions were summoned to the General Assembly on this zero deficit agreement. As always, it advanced the defense of State capitalism in aid of the private sector. More than 30,000 jobs were cut, a dozen hospitals closed, along with many more cuts in social programs, etc…

The real influence of trade unions and popular groups in capitalism’s time of crisis is an insidious endeavor to enable the bourgeois State to reduce taxes and duties for businesses by cutting the social “burden”. To think that this group of sell-outs thought to make us believe for a moment that the State would reduce the tax burden on workers because of this agreement…

Another consequence of this State policy on Zero Deficit was the crushing of the strike of 45,500 Quebec nurses in the summer of 1999. Fines of tens of millions of dollars were imposed. Lucien Bouchard, PQ Premier, bowed to the Law of Zero Deficit to deny nurses’ demands.

I demonstrate [see Appendix VII, Data on major Quebecois companies] that Quebecois capitalism reached the stage of imperialism several years ago, and among other things criticize certain nationalist demagogues who would have us believe that Quebec is a semi-colony of Canada. Canada is an imperialist country and an independent Quebec will be one too. The Quebec economy corresponds to the definition of imperialism that includes the following five basic characteristics:

The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a degree that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
Extract from V.I. Lenin Imperialism, The Highest Stage of capitalism

Quebec monopolies exist, whether State or private, that does not change their goal: to exploit the workforce here and elsewhere in the world. All this is to accumulate capital for a Québécois bourgeoisie as parasitic as any bourgeoisie of any other country. Companies such as Bombardier close plants in Canada to invest in countries of the capitalist periphery. Workers from these factories, who enjoyed relatively good salaries, find themselves overnight on unemployment and welfare.
Capitalism in its decadence also increases the production of fictitious capital. More and more room is left to speculation and new financial products are created for it. The economy is increasingly based on these parasitic activities. Bourgeois speculators like Vincent Lacroix of Norbourg or Conrad Black are more and more prevalent and we haven’t seen the last of their ilk. The whole capitalist system is bankrupt but the media at the behest of the ruling class would have us believe that it’s on account of losers like Lacroix, Black, and Rousseau of la Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

For over thirty years, financial crises have occurred regularly: the stock market crash of 1987, then in 1990, the American savings and loan, in 1994 the US bond market, between 1997 and 1998, the financial crises that hit countries like Thailand, Korea and Hong Kong and then Russia and Brazil, and finally the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000-2001, and the crisis in Argentina. Since August 2007, a new and terrifying jolt manifested in financial terms with the bursting of the real-estate bubble (the Sub primes) and the cascading defaults of many banks and mortgage and loan companies, with appalling economic and social repercussions, notably the severe recession in the United States. It seems that it has not yet hit bottom in relation to the gravity of the current situation, other consequences are still pending (1). We’ve heard it again and again, that the crisis was a real-estate crisis then a financial crisis. But in reality it’s neither one nor the other. The real-estate crisis hides deeper structural causes.

Marx has described this kind of crisis well:
« The contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, however, lies precisely in its tendency towards an absolute development of the productive forces, which continually come into conflict with the specific conditions of production in which capital moves, and alone can move.

There are not too many necessities of life produced, in proportion to the existing population. Quite the reverse. Too little is produced to decently and humanely satisfy the wants of the great mass.

There are not too many means of production produced to employ the able-bodied portion of the population. Quite the reverse. In the first place, too large a portion of the produced population is not really capable of working, and is through force of circumstances made dependent on exploiting the labour of others, or on labour which can pass under this name only under a miserable mode of production. In the second place, not enough means of production are produced to permit the employment of the entire able-bodied population under the most productive conditions, so that their absolute working period could be shortened by the mass and effectiveness of the constant capital employed during working-hours.

On the other hand, too many means of labour and necessities of life are produced at times to permit of their serving as means for the exploitation of labourers at a certain rate of profit. Too many commodities are produced to permit of a realisation and conversion into new capital of the value and surplus-value contained in them under the conditions of distribution and consumption peculiar to capitalist production, i.e., too many to permit of the consummation of this process without constantly recurring explosions.

Not too much wealth is produced. But at times too much wealth is produced in its capitalistic, self-contradictory forms.

The limitations of the capitalist mode of production come to the surface:

In that the development of the productivity of labour creates out of the falling rate of profit a law which at a certain point comes into antagonistic conflict with this development and must be overcome constantly through crises.

In that the expansion or contraction of production are determined by the appropriation of unpaid labour and the proportion of this unpaid labour to materialised labour in general, or, to speak the language of the capitalists, by profit and the proportion of this profit to the employed capital, thus by a definite rate of profit, rather than the relation of production to social requirements, i.e., to the requirements of' socially developed human beings. It is for this reason that the capitalist mode of production meets with barriers at a certain expanded stage of production which, if viewed from the other premise, would reversely have been altogether inadequate. It comes to a standstill at a point fixed by the production and realisation of profit, and not the satisfaction of requirements. »
Capital, Volume III Part III
Chapter 15. Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law

Politicians, the global justice movement and trade unionists really like to use the terms globalization and neoliberalism instead of capitalism. This is on account of what has happened in the last twenty years. Partly it is due to leaps in technology that have allowed any product of any kind to be manufactured and assembled anywhere in the world (such as Bombardier trains); and on the other hand it is the beginning of the dismantling of the social safety net. The socio-economic summit of 1996 was one of many government interventions since the early ‘90s.

“…the state has started to dismantle social assistence, social insurance and health services, and even education and research. The pairing of indebtedness and low profits, and so less taxes stemming from the productive sectors and less chance of self-financing, has made the weight of welfare insupportable, and it had to be progressively reduced, a process which threatens the heaviest of consequences but which has no end in sight. The paradox that present capitalist society is living through is that, unknown in previous decades, and, in the face of a technological potential which has no precedent in human history, more is always produced but at lower rates of increase, and an ever smaller part of this wealth finds its way into the social state.”
For a Definition of the Concept of Decadence IBRP December 2003

Quebec is part and parcel of Canadian imperialism with its monopolies invested the world over, relocating their businesses to purchase workforces at rock bottom prices. Like all imperialist powers, it is in cutthroat competition with other imperialist powers such as Brazil. Consider how the state of Quebec helps Bombardier compete against the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embaer with the help of the Canadian federal state. It should be noted that between imperialists, there are at times agreements, at times hostilities, depending on several factors such as the rise of class struggles and economic crises. But what prevails is the creed of every man for himself. The state is the guarantor of their development by organizing trips abroad for them, conferences, the Summit of the Americas, by passing laws on free trade, deregulation and the repression of our class. During the period of decadence, private capital could not exist without the ongoing guidance and assistance of state capitalism.

(1) Since September 2008, the world’s bourgeoisie has been nationalizing banks and bankruptcy insurance companies, injecting trillions of dollars into central banks to maintain credit – one of the means capitalism uses to overcome overproduction. It’s the world's working class who will pay for this subsidy with their sweat and blood.

Annexe VII

Data on major Quebec companies

These Quebecois monopolies are among over 500 of the largest companies in Canada. They are a strong indication of a Canadian imperialism with a very solid base in Quebec.

Monopolies............................Revenues (2008).........................Number of employees
(billions of dollars) ( Québec)......(total)

Power Corporation....................37,1........................................ 4467 .........26158
The Desmarais family has a fortune estimated at 4.41 billion.

Bombardier............................ 19,72........................................13068..........62422
Revenues of this military industrial enterprise were generated from: support and training of NATO pilots, maintenance contract of Canadian CF-18 fighters and Sherpa american aircraft, co-development of American drones, commercial planes sold to military contractors, movable bridges for the US Army, development of CI-327 a plane with vertical takeoff capability. This places Bombardier amongst the top military suppliers in Canada. It’s a true monopoly with over 90% of its revenues generated outside of Canada. In 2008, it made 1.4 billion in profits. The Bombardier family is worth a fortune estimated at 1.71 billion.

Couche-Tard (Food Industry) ....15.57..................................... 4000...........45000
Couche-Tard has become the fourth largest North American company in the convenience-store sector with a combined network of over 4672 stores. This Quebecois monopoly is has spread not only throughout Canada, but in at least 29 American states.

Hydro-Québec ..........................12.72......................................19297........... ~21000
In 2006, Hydro-Québec sold its international subsidiaries in China, the United States, Costa Rica, Australia, Panama, Peru and Chile. The sale of its subsidiary in Chile to a Canadian consortium made a profit of 813 million. According to HQ, the capital thus accumulated will enable them to build dams in Quebec on the backs of the international working class. In 2008, profits from this state-capitalist enterprise were over 3.14 billion.

Desjardins (Credit Union) ...........11.28.....................................39119............43357
This former Credit Union, founded in the early 20th century, figures well in the pack of Canadian capitalist enterprises. Over 20% of its revenues come from outside Quebec. And so the subsidiary of Desjardins group in Florida, founded in 1992, has assets of over 150 million. Développement international Desjardins (DID) is a component of Desjardins Group, which for 35 years has supported financial institutions in twenty countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Eastern and central Europe. DID works in partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Government of Quebec, the World Bank and other multilateral organizations.

METRO grocers.......................,,,, 10.73...................................32000...............65000
Metro with Metro Plus, Super C, Loeb and Brunet, A&P, Dominion, Food Basics, The Barn and Ultra Food & Drug, the pharmacies Brunet and Clini Plus, is a monopoly of food and pharmaceutical distribution in Quebec and in Ontario.

SNC-Lavallin.................................. 7.1.................................... 5212................ 21300
This is the largest engineering firm in the world. It has empolyees in more than one hundred countries, including France, Spain, Brazil, and the United States. Established, among others, in the defense sector, especially for business contracts in defense, while providing operations and maintenance to the Canadian Navy, as well as support overseas for the Canadian Forces in infrastructure and logistics in remote locations. SNC-Lavalin produces large amounts of munitions for military forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Qué6.16................................. 813................... ?
La Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec, a state-capitalist company, has 220 billion in assets. It has assets in 3000 companies in over fifteen countries including Russia, Brazil, India, France, Poland, China, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and the United States. An example that this state-run enterprise is part and parcel of imperialism: one of its subsidiaries, Ivanhoe, owns or manages 15 shopping centers in Brazil. This same subsidiary plans to buy or build shopping centers in China. La Caisse holds investments in Canada with a value of over 100 billion – with 33.4 billion in Quebec. Its investments of over 80 million are: Yellow Pages, BCE, SNC-Lavalin, Groupe CGI, Cogeco, Power Corp., and Rona. The current crisis in the international financial system has caused 39.8 billion in financial losses to the Caisse de dépôt et de placement. Note that in 2008, Claudette Charbonneau, president of the CSN and Henri Massé ex-president of the FTQ sat on the Board of the la Caisse.

National Bank of Canada.................... 6.03.............................10419...................... 12751
The Bank has had to cancel 575 million from its books as a result of its investments in commercial paper (Subprime).

Saputo................................................. 5.06........................... 2605......................9500
The Saputo family has an estimated fortune of 2.15 billion. Saputo has made acquisitions in the United Kingdom, in Argentina and in the United States (Alto Dairy). The company is the 11th larger dairy processor in the world and the most important in Canada.

Rona.................................................. 4.89...........................14500.................... 29300

Cascades............................................ 4.02.............................4711....................12529

Quebecor.............................................3.73............................11065...................17100
Quebecor is established in several countries. Pierre-K & Érik Péladeau have a fortune estimated at 800 million. A conflict between the 250 workers of Journal de Montréal (Quebecor) since the January 24, 2009 lockout and the vote for the strike came three days later by more than 99%.

CGI..................................................... 3.71............................. 9000....................25000
CGI Group is very active in the United States, in Europe and in India.

Federated Co-op ................................3.61 ..............................9872....................11175
The slaughterhouse of Olymel, specialist in blackmail closure, is a subsidiary of Federated Co-op.

Agropur co-operative..........................2.82 ..............................2983....................4747
Agropur co-operative is the largest dairy co-op in Canada. Agropur and Adecoagro (established in Argentina, in Brazil and in Uruguay) has reached an agreement to form a joint-company to develop new dairy businesses in South America. Agropur also invested up to 200 million in the USA in its acquisitions of Trega Foods in Wisconsin and Schoeder Milk in Minnesota. Like the Federated Co-op, these companies are 100% capitalist monopolies.

Transcontinental...................................2.43.............................. 5507..................13744
Established in the United States (Redwood Custom Comm.& Rastar) and in Mexico.

Jean Coutu (Group) (PJC) ...................... 2.37............................... 15276...............61000
The Coutu family has a fortune estimated at close to a billion. The Jean Coutu Group has a stake of 32% in the American pharmacies, Rite Aid. The Jean Coutu Group (PJC) is now the fourth largest company in its sector in North America and the second largest in both the eastern United States and in Canada.

Gaz Métro............................................. 2.2 .................................1844................. 2155
Holds the subsidiary Vermont Gas Systems et Green Mountain Power Corporation (GMP) since April 12, 2007. GMP is the second largest electricity distributer in Vermont.

Garda World (Security Corporation)........ 1.1.................................7000..................50000
Garda acquired the California firm, ATI Systems in 2007, making it second in securities transport in North America. It also acquired Kroll Security International in the UK. It is established in 35 American states where it employs 7000 people as well as in 139 other countries, including Iraq.

Cirque du Soleil...................................... 0.77............................... 1700................... 4500
The Circus is permanently established in the United States, in Japan and in Dubaï. Guy Laliberté is worth a fortune estimated at 2.8 billion.

Monopolies in which the QFL Fund has major investments. The Fund has assets of more than 6.4 billion.

Transat A.T.............................................. 3.5.................................3400...................6400
Established in the UK

SSQ Financial Group................................ 1.7................................ 1371....................1421

The FTQ solidarity” Fund (with CSQ) shows how trade unions are part and parcel of imperialist investments. Thus until 2006, the Fund was associated with international subsidiaries of Hydro-Québec in Panama, in Peru and in Australia. As of May 31, 2009, the Fund was in partnership with 2000 capitalist enterprises.

The figures on these vulture capitalists are from the July 2008 issue of Commerce Magazine and from the business section of the daily, LaPresse, and from websites:
http://listes.affaires.com/super500New/liste500.asp et http://argent.canoe.com/

According to l’Action nationale, the Quebecois nationalist monthly magazine,
"One hundred French-Canadians have become rich. They consider themselves equal to English Canadians. They are right. But these successes are not enough. A nation must possess a network of capitalist businesses or co-operatives, powerful enough to provide longterm employment to all persons able to work. We are far from that objective.”… …“The infuence of the mammoths [foreign multinationals] will only offset that if Quebecers establish and operate businesses of similar size."
Rosaire Morin December 1998 in L’Action nationale

To further the development of quebecois monopolies, the nationalists need to maintain the dominant bourgeois ideology that it’s federalism that oppresses our class and not American, Quebecois, Canadian or any other capitalism. Rosaire Morin would have us believe that the “capitalist businesses or co-operatives [want] to provide sustainable employment to all persons able to work.” Actually it is the extortion of the surplus value on the backs of the working class that they want most fervently. The state, federal as well as provincial, is at the the service of these capitalist enterprises.