As Mark Carney’s government prepares a sweeping austerity agenda—gutting public services, fuelling militarism, and expanding fossil fuel projects—John Clarke argues that a new wave of resistance is emerging. From Indigenous land defence to public sector strikes, these struggles point toward a growing fightback against Canada’s deepening class war.

The recent Air Canada flight attendants’ strike showcased remarkable defiance against exploitative conditions and government strike-breaking, inspiring workers across Canada. Yet, the imposed settlement exposed serious limits on union democracy and bargaining power. The struggle offers both a powerful example of resistance and a warning for future labour battles.

The intensifying depredations of the changing climate, coupled with their disproportionate effects on poor and working class people, have very major implications when it comes to the shape and directions of the class struggle. Climate change requires that workers and working class communities respond, to a much greater degree than in the past.

Carney is quite prepared to ensure that capitalism becomes considerably less “inclusive” in order to weather the storm. At this relatively early stage of the game, he is leaving no doubt as to the course his government will chart. A highly interventionist state power will be subordinated to the imperatives of capital regardless of the broader consequences.

We often speak of a “housing crisis” and it is certainly true that profit-driven housing provision means rapidly intensifying hardship for hundreds of thousands of people. However, the beneficiaries of upscale redevelopment and parasitic speculation are now experiencing a crisis of their own, as the speculative bubble they’ve created bursts spectacularly.

The deployment of the police, including specialized units, to disrupt protest activity and movement building has continued into our own era, but it is also important to understand that more everyday police functions centre on forms of social control that are linked to the political priorities of the ruling establishment.

As the US redefines its global role and its approach to international relations with Trump at the helm, the world is going to become a far more unstable and threatening place than it already is. In this enormously challenging context, the pivotal but still uncertain question will be the scale and strength of working class resistance and the popular struggles that are taken up.

As we see in the case of ongoing efforts to criminalize disruptive forms of climate protests, establishment thinking is embracing the idea that stricter limits must be set on the freedoms that have been conceded by liberal democracies. You can object to the destructive conduct of fossil fuel companies, but if you challenge their operations you will be treated as a terrorist.

The decline of the Liberals is part of an international trend where the political centre finds it harder and harder to hold off challenges from the populist right. The inability of the Biden-Harris administration to forge an effective alternative to Trump is an obvious case in point. The Conservatives in Canada are poised to benefit from Trump’s victory.

The Canadian establishment doggedly enables Israel and finds it advantageous for supporters of the Palestinian struggle to be contained. However, the lobby’s role in equating Jewish identity with Zionism and labelling opposition to this colonialist ideology as antisemitic is a potent factor that we should not underestimate.