In my June CD column on Mark Carney’s class war I suggested, “We can see an effective consensus emerging in Canada’s political establishment on the need to respond to the threat of Trump’s trade war with a concerted drive to remove barriers to profitability and boost ‘competitiveness.’ This is already taking on the dimensions of a major assault on workers, communities and the environment.”

With a federal budget drawing near, there is no doubt that the Carney government in Ottawa will be playing the leading role in pursuing an agenda of unprecedented austerity, along with a transfer of resources to fuel rampant military spending and a highly interventionist state regime that will grease the wheels of exploitation and profit-making. In this, there will be a particular emphasis on facilitating the most destructive fossil fuel projects.

In that same article, I also argued for the need for a Canada-wide common front of social resistance to the Carney-led attack and I concluded that “the attempt to put the burden of the trade crisis on the backs of workers and communities is producing the deep injustices and the simmering anger that can unleash such a movement.”

Emerging resistance

I’m very far from wanting to promote overconfidence, especially given the scale of the attack that we face and the general lack of preparedness to fight back in a united and powerful manner. That being said, it is also clear that Carney and his cohorts are not going to be able to impose their regressive agenda on workers and communities without some serious fights. Evidence of this is all around us.

First of all, we should never underestimate the explosive potential of Indigenous resistance in Canada. The Carney government and its provincial and territorial counterparts will find that their drive to unleash harmful and dangerous oil and gas projects—steamrolling over Indigenous rights in the process—is a risky proposition.

When assessing the prospects for Indigenous resistance in a particular situation, it is always important to take stock of the reactions coming not only from the leadership bodies recognized under the Indian Act but also those that emerge from within Indigenous communities. The latter are likely to be less patient, restrained and respectable; as such, they are of prime importance.

The officially approved Indigenous leaderships have themselves expressed simmering indignation, bordering on expressions of open defiance, in response to Carney’s intended course of action. Very clearly, the Indigenous compliance that he hopes for is likely to prove a very challenging proposition.

According to The Walrus, the First Nations Major Projects Summit that the Liberals staged this July was far from a glowing success. There was bitter resentment over Bill C-5, the legislation that clears the way for the projects. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs complained that ‘the summit’s “sole purpose” was to serve notice that the bill “is now the law of the land” and that First Nations should “fully accept and accommodate that reality.” Chief of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, Craig Nootchtai, went further, calling the event “a subjugation.”

Beyond these official reactions, we have already seen some initial efforts by Indigenous communities to mobilize active opposition to the intensified resource colonialism that is being undertaken by Carney and his provincial allies.

In June, Toronto Today took note of an Indigenous protest camp erected on the grounds of the Ontario Legislature in response to the passage of Bill 5, which gives the Ontario government “the power to designate ‘special economic zones’ and allow certain exemptions from provincial laws and regulations, such as environmental assessments or consultation with Indigenous communities, with the aim of speeding up economic development.”

One of those participating in the action argued that the legislation represented “yet another example of ‘economic genocide’ of First Nations people.” Very plausibly, he predicted that “the protest is just the beginning of Indigenous opposition to the new legislation.”

During the same month, as APTN reported, people from the Attawapiskat and Neskantaga communities in northern Ontario established a “quasi-permanent encampment” near a proposed bridge designed to facilitate extractive operations in the Ring of Fire area. One participant stated, “Our message is simple: no one will cross the Attawapiskat River without our free, prior and informed consent.”

The pursuit of a “nation-building” strategy largely focused on environmental degradation and the denial of Indigenous rights is likely to be met with much greater levels of resistance as it gathers momentum and its impacts intensify. We need only remember the massive level of Indigenous-led resistance that emerged in 2020 in response to RCMP attacks on Wet’suwet’en land defender camps. The economic disruption resulting from this struggle created a political crisis for the federal government of the day.

Public sector workers

Quite obviously, Carney’s harsh austerity measures, and the further erosion of public services that they entail, will inevitably be accompanied by a huge attack on public sector workers. This assault will certainly spread beyond federal jurisdiction and intensify the pressure on provincial and municipal workers across the country. There is strong evidence to suggest that the Carney-initiated war on public sector workers and their unions will lead to some very major class battles on this front. Indeed, fights of this kind are already breaking out.

As I have already suggested, the impending federal budget will likely prove a decisive moment in the implementation of hyper austerity and vast public sector cutbacks. Carney himself has made no effort to conceal his intentions in this regard and has even boasted about them.

Writing in The Guardian last month, Leyland Cecco reported that Carney had proclaimed, “It’s an austerity and investment budget at the same time. And that is possible if we’re disciplined.” Of course, the brand of investment that he has in mind has nothing to do with meeting the needs of communities.

In August, The Maple’s Adam D.K. King warned of impending federal cutbacks on an historic scale, noting that “PSAC and other federal public sector unions have been warning for months about the potentially catastrophic impact of the Liberal government’s proposed plan to cut spending by 15 per cent.”

Such massive cutbacks would result in huge job losses among federal public sector workers with ripple effects on provincial and municipal workers as the other levels of government respond with cuts of their own. Across the country, we already see public sector workers moving into struggle in response to the austerity agenda that is being imposed on them.

Despite Carney’s assurances that he will represent the ‘national interest,’ his government is presently engaged in an all-out attack on postal services and the workers who deliver them. As Dru Oja Jay at The Breach has pointed out, “billionaires stand to gain enormously from gutting Canada Post, and their hidden role is shaping the entire fight.” Accordingly, the Liberals have “announced plans to cut door-to-door delivery… to replace postal workers with community mailboxes, speed up deliveries through subcontracted gig labour, and quietly hand over profitable routes to private couriers.”

As postal workers continue their struggle, now in the form of rotating strikes, and as other federal public sector workers prepare to challenge looming austerity measures, provincial workers in various parts of the country are fighting back. It is a prelude to the bigger and more decisive battles that lie ahead.

A statement issued by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) on October 9 informs us that “full-time college support staff at all 24 of Ontario’s colleges have been on strike since September 11, 2025, with job security as the top demand.” The 10,000 striking workers are confronting “proposed cutbacks—including automation, outsourcing, and mergers [so that] protections won this round will be instrumental in fighting future layoffs.”

Some 51,000 teachers are currently on strike in Alberta in what the CBC dubs “the largest walkout in provincial history.” It is abundantly clear that this struggle also flows from the general attack on public services and on workers who deliver them. It reflects “long-standing concerns, including wages, overcrowded classrooms and a lack of supports for students with complex needs.”

Meanwhile, in BC, the Times Colonist reported on October 9 that “two unions representing British Columbia professionals and public service workers escalated their weeks-long job action on Thursday to include about 26,000 staff across more than 20 ministries and provincial Crown corporations and agencies.” The BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) stresses that “public service workers are facing an affordability crisis” and challenging the cumulative impacts of austerity.

As Carney prepares to intensify the austerity attack and the other elements of his regressive agenda, we can see that resistance is already underway. The measures the Liberals and other levels of government will seek to impose in the coming months will greatly increase the need to fight back.

Indigenous communities and public sector workers are already demonstrating the prospects for the development of major resistance. What is urgently needed, however, is a determined effort to create the kind of powerful common front that can go beyond individual struggles and build a united and coordinated resistance. Carney and his cohorts have drawn up their plan of attack and the time to prepare a decisive fightback is upon us.

John Clarke is a writer and retired organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). Follow his tweets at @JohnOCAP and blog at johnclarkeblog.com.