Communism in Canada
Interview with Comrade Hardial Bains, April 2, 1997
Edited for transcription
Dan Fonda (hereinafter DF): Since you recently celebrated your 27th anniversary as a national party, can you tell us how it happened 27 years ago? How did it come into being?
Comrade Hardial Bains (hereinafter HB): Well 27 years in the history of Canada and the world have been quite momentous years, since we founded the Party. The aim of the Parry was to oppose the capitalist restoration which various forces were organizing in the Soviet Union and other places, as well as to have, in Canada, a Communist Party which is a party of real social revolution, not to come power at a city level or provincial level or federal level, but to actually create a new society on the basis of a modern constitution, with a modern economy and so on, and we enter the modern era. 27 years afterwards big changes have taken place and one of the most important aspects in which the changes have taken place is that what we were afraid of has happened, the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union led to its collapse, has led to anarchy and chaos in the whole of Eastern Europe as well as in many countries in the world, even though the capitalists these days sort of glibly “oh, you know, I’m alright…” But they are responsible for these things and the same anarchy and chaos in the economy, politics, is appearing in other places. Like in India, there is a government of 13 different political parties. Imagine the state of the parliamentary system. The same has happened to Italy, the same in various other places, same in Albania, their institutions simply do not work. They are not consistent with the aspirations of the people there. So, for 27 years, we have learned a great deal and we are more than convinced than ever that we need social revolution.
DF: I want to get to that quickly but I just want to talk a little bit about yourself because your background is microbiology. How did you happened to come into your position?
HB: My background is also a communist. I haven’t been called that for a very long time and I was born in a very definite period, just before the Second World War, actually when the war began. Then you go through the Second World War, go through the 50s, 60s, these were extremely, you can say tantilizing periods in which people made their personalities, they made a statement about themselves. Where did they stand? Fascism had fallen, the nazis had fallen, everybody hated the Americans, and they got known for all the crimes they had committed. Where we were going to go? Communism! And then we found that there were these people who called themselves communists, like Khrushchev, later on Brezhnev, they were doing the same things. So not only did we had to fight the traditional, you can say, forces we thought were very wrong for the world, but we also had to fight our own comrades. And it has been a long fight.
DF: Tell me a little bit now, how does your Party differ from the other communist party in Canada, tell us what the difference is.
HB: The Communist Party of Canada was founded in 1921 and in the course of its development they sort of merged into what is generally known as the Liberal-Labour alliance. They even changed their name in the 40s into the Labour-Progressive Party, and later on re-adopted the name, afraid that some Marxist-Leninists may call themselves communists and so on. This Liberal-Labour alliance is an illusion that somehow the centrist forces like the Trudeau Liberals or before that the Pearson Liberals and some social-democrats like the CCF before and later on the NDP, somehow, with some magic, will change the situation. Far from the situation changing, even their paradise, the Soviet Union, fell. So now, where are they going to get their ideology? Where are they going to get their positions? The shocking part is that instead of analysing and standing on their feet, they are thinking that India is going left, they applauded the united front government in India as a left government. So as far as I am concerned for all intents and purposes the Communist Party of Canada is finished, because it is not itself ideologically sound, like we are. We developed our own ideology from Canadian and international conditions. We were no one’s agents. So when these events took place, it didn’t destroy us. Now who is going to give them their ideology? But this doesn’t mean that many members, especially the veterans and the young communist, are no good; there are quite a few very good communists and we hope that all communists will get together and create a mass communist party. But as far as this other party is concerned, I see no future for them.
DF: Tell me a little bit more, because this communism you’re talking about is the modern communism, is that right? (HB — Yes, yes.) That you’ve written about. So how does this differ from the communism of Stalin and of Brezhnev and so on?
HB: Well, one cannot link Stalin and Brezhnev. They were two different eras. Stalin’s era was the era of socialist revolution, social construction, the defeat of nazism, the defence of the Soviet Union, the anti-fascist force and all. And then it followed by opposition to American expansionism, which was organizing coup d’etats all over the world, interfering with the anti-colonial struggle, national liberation movement, and so on. Brezhnev comes at a particular time to compete with U.S. as an imperialist power. So he organizes a huge military industrial complex, he participates in the armed race, and so that result of that armed race was that their economy collapsed by the beginning of the 80s. So where we differ from Leonid Brezhnev and Gorbachev is in this — that a communist state cannot have national ambitions. It cannot just be looking for its own interests. So its ambitions have to be, you can say, in essence the ambitions of all the peoples of the world. When Brezhnev attacked Czechoslovakia, we denounced it in 1968; the same thing we did with the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; with the other interferences they had in Eastern Europe; when Khrushchev changed and all the leaders in Eastern Europe changed; and then Gorbachev came and you know what happened, they even assassinated Ceausescu and others. So the point is that communist ambitions are ambitions for all the peoples of the world. It’s not a system of domination, but it is a system whereby all the peoples stand on their own feet, express themselves, have a peaceful coexistence, have economic, cultural, social exchanges, and do not have any designs of domination over one another. This is where we fundamentally differ with Brezhnev, this is why all this period we fought what we called Soviet social-imperialism.
DF: And what about the current communist states that we have now. Is there the same differences there as well?
HB: Well there is a difference, say, if we take Cuba. Cuba without the Cuban revolution will have nothing. So their independence is directly linked with Castro’s revolution. If anyone thinks that they can do without that and Cuba can still be independent, they are gravely mistaken. So they have to carry on on their independent path, defend the Cuban revolution. (DF — Sorry when you say they’re independent, independent from what?) Independent from the U.S., independent from the European Union, independent from all these other imperialist powers. Because you know that Cuba, if the revolution ever fails, will be devoured by the Americans. Cubans will be reduced to abject slaves. This is not the case today. In spite of all the anti-communist propaganda, Cuba is one of the few countries in the world which carries out full a social welfare program in spite of the economic crisis and so on. That is the strength of the Cuban revolution, the strength of Cuban people’s quest for independence. In China, in 1989, there was speculation that China would break up, that the People’s Army would split, and so on. It didn’t. And we knew it would not because China, if not united as a state, will go back to the pre-1949 situation as a colony for Europe and North America. Chinese may differ with one another, somebody may regard capitalism and somebody may regard socialism, but no Chinese wants to go back to the pre-1949 situation. So the Americans are caught, so is the European Union, because capitalism will mean going back to the 1949 situation, it will mean to subordinate themselves. It is a very complex contradiction there.
DF: In your literature, when you talk about the overthrow of the capitalist class, tell us, who is the capitalist class, what do you mean by that, who is that group of people?
HB: Well in Canada today the capitalist class is those who own the main means of production, you have major industries — auto, railways, post office, manufacturing, mines, and so on. And who really controls it, this is the financial oligarchy, the rich of this country, some directly and some through the state. So we suggest overthrowing them both literally as well as in terms of eliminating their social system. By literally we mean that there are some force, let us take five banks, do you know they make decisions for all of us? You can go as an individual citizen or as a collective of the country. Some managers from their system say “Okay, tell me where you were born.” It’s unbelievable that nobody questions this. So these people cause, from time to time, disasters. If you look in the various parts of Canada it’s marked by small cities coming up, small towns, and then becoming ghost towns. It causes tragedies for people. And so people, one day, will have to ask — why did you do these things to your own people? And then the second issue is of the system. Today we have a system which openly says “do everything for us”, that is the rich, and they should be liked like Bombardier is paid 87 million dollars, but when it comes to poor, they say “oh we have too high of a deficit, cut down this program, that program, when it comes to education or when it comes to health.” So somebody has to ask this question — it does cause disasters for many Canadians. This is what we mean by overthrowing the capitalist class.
DF: So when you say, again, that the capitalist economy is destructive, especially to the individual, what do you mean?
HB: First of all, capitalists are destructive to the collective and the general interest of the society, and then to the individual taken in a concrete term, not as a generality because as a generality, the capitalist system is a system of individualism — few make it and then they say look at the example, this person came as a poor immigrant, he had nothing, he had 5 cents in his pocket, and now he has become a millionaire. Or you take the example of people who have made their billions through the paper market. And so the issue here is that because of their attack on the collective, we cannot have a collective will, it means Canadians cannot discuss things by saying we have the same interest, we cannot pursue those interests and as a result, all kind of problems occur and we are left here listening to the most god awful propaganda. These days they talk about lowering the age to punish the youth, from 12 years to 10 years to 8 years, maybe next time they are going to take it to the womb! How is it possible that if there was a collective will, if there was a collective discussion, that somebody can do these things? Then in terms of the individual, look at young people who, at least in our time in the 60s, if you did your bachelor of science or bachelor of arts, you literally could expect somebody to send you a ticket and give you a job. Is this the case today? People with PhDs have nowhere to go. It’s what kind of future these people have. So capitalism, first it’s the collective and the general interest of the society, and then the individual in concrete terms. And so this society, which speaks of standing for the individual — how many individuals do you think are happy here? (DF — I don’t know) Jean Chretien has repeated many times that people in the world will give their last cent to come here, very well, but has he ever talked to any Canadian about how they feel? Job insecurity has become an epidemic, everybody knows various other ills of society. All the problems which existed in 1867, whether the question of Native people, whether the question of Quebec or the question of national minorities, they have not been sorted out.
DF: So what would you do then to, for instance, you talked about the current state of insecurity among ourselves, people that have jobs, we’re not sure where we’re going to have a job next week or next month, the jobless rate is officially at 10 per cent but everybody seems to say that it’s higher than that — so what would you do to correct those?
HB: Well the starting point is that immediately two changes have to be brought — one is in the political process, whereby it is not political parties who select candidates, people should select candidates themselves and elect them, and then they also have to have the right to set the agenda and so on. (DF — So sort of like proportional representation?) Proportional representation is the same thing, it still marginalizes everybody and its the political parties that decide. For instance, now a national leader of a party can nominate any candidate by law. Anybody who wants to run as a Marxist-Leninist, they need my signature. It doesn’t matter how many people may be behind them, who wants them to be a candidate, if I don’t put my signature it will not happen.
DF: So sorry then, you’re saying that in individual ridings we wouldn’t have the party system, we would just vote for the person that we wanted to represent that riding, is that right?
HB: No, the issue here is that the voters have to involve themselves in politics — electing candidates, setting the agenda, and recalling people who they don’t like, recalling legislation which they don’t like. Say, if this system had existed in Ontario, Mike Harris would have been recalled many times over, because this democracy, the 19th century democracy, what has happened is — on one hand there is a universal franchise, but still the property owners control the dominant parties. So the popular will comes in clash with the interests of the rich. In return, when this clash takes place, the only thing that Mike Harris or anybody else can say is “well, you elected me” but we have no choice in that it’s your system, you bring five jokers on a voting ballot and then we have to tick a mark. And we don’t know any one of them — why doesn’t selection take place in the universities and the factories, in the neighbourhoods, why don’t people select their own candidates? This is absolutely crucial to come to the 20th century and prepare to enter the 21st century. Jean Chretien says that we are not going to touch the constitutional question. It’s very convenient for them that we are not going to touch it because they want to see people cynical, they want people to be extremely upset with politics, politicians, and so on. It’s very convenient for them. (DF — Why?) Because people, once they’re not engaged, can have any kind of government, they can carry on in whichever way. It is possible that the Jean Chretien type of person could become Prime Minister of Canada? A man from Shawinigan, they popularized him as a simple man. The 20th century requires a man with a broad vision, not a simple man, but a man of science, a man who’s a statesman, a worldly wise man, a man who can see Canada as an integral part of people’s liberation on the world of scale. Jean Chretien cannot see, he merely sees where his direct interest is.
DF: Because there is something where you mention that you want to get together with the other political parties and raise the profile of politics. So explain that.
HB: We are now in the final period of putting final touches on our program that we want different political parties, political personalities, journalists and others, actually to speak about what should be our agenda. Just take that as an example. So that discussion should not finish, it should carry on until the time of election day, let people decide. Nobody should say “well this is the agenda, this discussion is finished.” But now, before the election has even begun, they have declared “well, deficit is the issue” or “accountability of the Liberal government is the issue”. Who cares about the Liberal’s accountability? Who cares what they say about deficit finances? You go across the country and people are worried about social programs, they are worried about job security, they are worried about what is happening to their children, to their families, they are worried about what is happening to the environment and our relations internationally. But they have set the agenda. Cherest, as you know, has two members of parliament and he was presented as of he was a hero of a Canadian politician, with his little program of decreasing the tax burden by 10 per cent and all this, another deception, was given such a large amount of coverage. No other person was interviewed, nobody asked us. We had a meeting with the broadcast arbitrator, the person who decides how much time each political party has. His name is Mr. Grant. For several years, we have been informing him that between political parties there can be only equality and not equity.
DF: Explain the difference.
HB: Equity is, say you have a country where some national minority is being badly done by, and you say you will have an affirmative program to undo that situation. So in a way, for that national minority which is in a bad position, you will take some other measure which otherwise you would not take and you would bring the situation to an acceptable level, to affirmative action and all that. Equality is where everybody has to have the same playing field, same resources, and so on. How can there be equity between political parties, number one. But when equity is practised between political parties it is not to help these small parties, it is not to say that we will have an affirmative action program, that we will hear Hardial Bains more on the radio, television, to let his views be known, over somebody else who’s already well known or whose views already get known because of the Prime Minister’s and so on. So Grant made an interesting comment last time — he says “make a proposal to us”. Well we have been making proposals every year! And he rejects it by saying there is no consensus between parties, which is also not true. There’s a consensus between all small parties.
DF: But not among the major ones.
HB: They are anti-democratic parties, they cannot have that because they can safeguard their position only through arbitrariness.
DF: When was the last time you met with Mr. Grant then, was that this past year?
HB: Just three or four weeks ago, three weeks ago, no even less than that, two weeks ago there was a meeting of all the parties.
DF: And again his answer was that their wasn’t consensus?
HB: Yes. And another interesting thing was that there was a CRTC person there as well as somebody from CBC. The issue was raised that in Canada electors do not have an informed vote. They are not informed what the issues are and so on. So they try to say, yes, that this is the case. But for anybody who watches CBC, they are a fanatical prejudicial lot who, many times, I get embarrassed even looking at them because they are his master’s voice. Whatever agenda is set they carry on with it. So CRTC actually had to admit that, yes, there is a problem, they tell us make a proposal. But CRTC is the one which is to set things right, why don’t they make a proposal themselves?
DF: Okay, but they asked you to make a proposal.
HB: Yes and we will, we will very soon.
DF: Well you’ll have to very soon.
HB: But for us, you know, it will require a lot of funds and after all this, they will ignore us; elections will come and go, somewhere one year, two years, three years after there will be some small news somewhere that CRTC accepted or rejected it and so on. The point is that this is so glaring that the Canadian electorate goes to vote without being informed on the issues. They don’t even know which political parties are in action. Even this much is not known to them.
DF: There’s something else that you say about politics and about people and about the people that are involved. You say that in our society this, this is kind of interesting I thought, that we’re discouraged from entering politics. (HB — Yes) The youth especially. Can you go on about that?
HB: Discouraging takes place in various ways. Number one: politics is considered merely a mechanism to capture some positions. In Canadian society, very few people think that the elected positions are very few. The Prime Minister is not elected, the Cabinet is not elected, the Governor General is not elected, the armed forces are not elected, civil servants are not elected, nor the judges and these are the pillars of society. Then you have a Senate which is not elected, but you have election to the House of Commons. Even then, the election, politics is merely presented like this — you want to make a career, enter the House of Commons, will it be beneficial to you? Can you make a better career there than doing something else? Then many young people enter politics by actually having feelings against the status quo parties and they get persecuted. You know, this is called a democratic society, but in a high school you cannot have form a club to discuss politically. (DF — I didn’t know) Yes, without having a principal agreeing, without a teacher agreeing, they will not make any facilities available to you and generally there is a lot of discouragement. And then finally the issue is when a political mechanism is used for people to gain privilege over one another. You don’t have to be political, you can join a labour union, you can be a member of the Canadian Labour Congress and come to some arrangement somewhere, you can be on the Business Council of National Issues, you can be somewhere else, you can declare your own special interest group, you could be an ethnic minority, an immigrant, a woman, a youth. So politics, in the strict sense of the word where people participate in governing themselves, politics doesn’t exist here because they don’t participate themselves. Representative democracy was alright between propertied classes; one group of property people can come to power today and then wait three, four years and then another will do whatever they wish. This is no longer when you have universal franchise and a collective interest, when you have a general interest of society. This democracy simply doesn’t work.
DF: A lot of people say that communism is godless and I’m wondering if you’d like to explain a little bit about its role or lack of role in a communist state.
HB: Yes. Communism is godless in the same way all modern sciences are. Modern science has its origin in a repudiation of creation science, all the mystical and hodgepodge theories. The whole period of the enlightenment, the period of the age of reason and other periods, have been known in rejecting medievalism, hocus-pocus and so on. At the same time there is the issue of individual conscience. When communism comes to individual conscience, communists have no statement to make on this. Communism or a communist state does not, in any way, tell anybody what they should practice. At the time of Karl Marx, once there was a very good controversy because somebody had written that we will ban religion and all this, but he said religion will not be banned in a socialist state. As a society develops, people may choose not to practice religion, they may choose to do that. So as a science, whether we speak for natural sciences or social sciences, god has no place in it. As right to conscience, as a matter of individual conscience, communists are not against anybody practising religion. This is what the position is.
DF: I wanted to talk a little bit about your policies but I think that you’ve covered a lot of that. I just want you to talk a little bit about Quebec and what do you think we should be doing with Quebec, for instance let’s go back to the referendum, what was your position on that?
HB: Well the issue of Quebec really is a question whether Canadians, you know, want to be modern or not, whether to enter 21st century as equal, independent, fraternal people building their country or if they want to remain in old fights emerging from the 19th century. The Liberals have decided to keep the old fights going. So our stand in Quebec in the last referendum was that Quebec people are sovereign people. As a sovereign people, they have a right to remain in this confederation or not remain in the confederation. But we are very confident that as a sovereign people, if they decide to separate, they will also decide to have a modern union between Quebec, Canada, and Native peoples. So there is a more exciting prospect whereby people build their new confederation themselves as free people. But some want to keep the old confederation and carry on old mythology and lies, some people even say Canada has a constitution. A royal proclamation is called a constitution? That’s what the British North American Act was! And to suggest that the Canadian people actually voted for confederation is another mythology. Canadians didn’t vote for a constitution in 1982 either. So the point is that Canadian people will do as they did in the period of Spicer Commission. Do you know how many people talked about a constitution there? (DF — Quite a few) Yes. How many proposals and so on? We should have that, we should have a modern constitution and everybody should give their views.
DF: When you go campaigning door-to-door, what kind of reaction do you get? Do you have conversations like we’re having now? I mean some people, obviously you must.
HB: Yes, yes. We have very activist people, they have conversations all across the country and amongst these things there are generally a lot of agreement. But you see, Canada is ruled by creating an atmosphere of anxiety and fear. Like after, say, somebody listens to you and agrees with you and so on, but says “well you may not get elected.” Then what? Of course they are not going to let the Marxist-Leninists get elected. They will do everything possible, like Marxism-Leninism in this country, it is slandered through the universities, through the high schools, it is slandered through the official representative of the Canadian government, provincial governments and so on. And still we are supposed to face this.
DF: I mean we did elect a communist member with Fred Rose. It could still happen.
HB: Yes. That election didn’t mean anything, it only meant that the people in Montreal were awakening, slowly opening their eyes. And they knew that capitalist politicians are not going to do anything for them. But the issue here is that what we are saying is very exciting and people accept that, but the political mechanism is used to divert people into something else. Like the person who got elected from Ottawa Centre, where I’m probably going to run again, you ask him what vision you have for Canada; or if you ask any Conservative, Reform Party candidate, he has no vision for what Canada will look like in the 21st century; if Jean Chretien doesn’t have a vision, why is he in politics?
DF: Tell me, what’s your vision for Canada in the 21st century then.
HB: Well I already talked about that in various ways. I would like Canada to change its direction in the economy, stop paying the rich, impose a moratorium on debt, increase investment in social programs, enact a modern constitution, implement no election without selection and so on. All people should be accepted as sovereign, Quebec people, Native people, their hereditary rights should be recognized. There should be a modern citizenship law whereby all of us are equal instead of having what they call their “bilingualism by culturalism” under which only two languages and two peoples are recognized. In international affairs, all countries should be equal, all the military and economic blocs should be ended, there should just be a United Nations that should also be modernized. But people should do that. It’s very exciting.
DF: You don’t have a provincial wing, do you, for the Marxist-Leninists? You’ve only run federally, is that correct?
HB: We also run provincially from time to time. But we don’t organize in that way as a provincial wing.
DF: So how do you organize then?
HB: We have just our regional committees and provincial committees in various areas and which will run for both.
DF: And you’re planning on running candidates in how many ridings this year?
HB: Well we have to run the minimum 50 candidates to be recognized as a political party and at one time when we had quite a large momentum, we ran 176 candidates.
DF: When was this?
HB: This was in the 1980 election. (DF — Is that so?) Yes. And this time it could be anywhere between 50 and 100.
DF: And you’ve got a new policy this year you’re trying to run 50 per cent women candidates, 50 per cent youth candidates.
HB: We always have a lot of women.
DF: Okay. But how are you going to ensure that you have 50 per cent women and 50 per cent youth?
HB: Well it depends, we don’t interfere.
DF: You’re not going to impose like…?
HB: No, I don’t go to tell anybody. If women are not very active and youth are not very active, how do you nominate a woman and a youth? So it presupposes that we have very active women and very active youth. In this area, I’m quite sure there will be 50 per cent youth and 50 per cent women because that’s the composition of the Party in Ottawa. In some city this may not be the case.
DF: You have a website, you have the Marxist-Leninist Daily, which is published every week. (HB — Marxist-Leninist Daily is every day, we also have weekly) But the funding for that, that comes from…?
HB: The funding for it comes from the members and sympathizers and so on, and our Party, right from 1970, has never accepted money from anyone else.
DF: Okay. And how much does it cost to run that? Your party, per year, can I ask you that?
HB: Well it’s very expensive considering the readership, but during the last, I will say two years, especially one year, the interest in the Party is growing. And it’s very surprising and we are very happy about it, people write to us literally every day. They’re inquiring about the Party, want to join the Party and so on. Once the readership say, goes over 2,000 people a day, then it will not be a burden, then it can cover its own cost. It won’t pay the volunteers but it will cover the printing and other costs. And we have a plan to transform our Party into a mass party as we go on.
DF: You’ve been leader for 27 years, how have you managed to hold on to the leadership for so long?
HB: Leadership in the Communist Party is actually the central committee plus the leader. The leader doesn’t have any power actually in a Communist Party. A leader cannot set the policies, a leader cannot, in any way, override anything. And the leader cannot be elected directly by the membership. The leader is elected only by the central committee. And so the central committee, you can say, is the power body and the way the leaders are chosen is the way the central committee’s composition is chosen, is the question of line during the period, how will you sort out various problems facing you. Like the problem we are posing for ourselves at this time is how to transform ourselves into a mass communist party. So for this reason you need to have a coherence — ideological, political, economic — which then goes from your party to the masses of the people. Societies cannot be changed without having that coherence. So this central committee, from the 6th Congress, has been tackling with this problem and that’s why it is the leader. If it stops, it will be replaced.
DF: So how many people are on this committee then?
HB: It has 23 full members and alternate members and, by the way, the majority of them are women.
DF: Oh is that so? (HB — Yes) And you meet how often?
HB: Usually once in three months at least because it’s a policy setting vote, but these days, since last year, we actually have a large meeting that we invite about 40 to 50 people to come and we have these national or central forums in which that whole policy is presented so that other people can also get their opinions. We just held one very recently on the occasion of our 27th anniversary of founding the Party.
DF: And this is, of course, is on top of the Congresses you have every what, four years or maybe five years?
HB: Generally every five years.
DF: You have one scheduled for 1997 do you?
HB: Yes. This Congress is going to be held in Ottawa from September 25th to October 4th this year.
DF: What are you expecting in this next election? What are your goals? What are you hoping for?
HB: Well we are very well organized to raise the issue with the people about the need to prepare the country for the 21st century. So for us, participating in the election is another forum for struggle. Last time they were trying to suggest that the communists might be wiped out because they won’t have 50 candidates. We will have 50 candidates and prove to them that they will not be wiped out. Then we will take the issue to the electorate in various ways; the issue is not who comes to power, the issue is a year, two years down the road, what is going to happen to us? The 21st century is around the corner, what will be known? We will be known as peoples. And lastly, which is very important, we hope to forge a certain level of understanding with other small parties. In Quebec we have been very successful, there is already an alliance of small parties there and it has existed for one year and slowly they are trying to take some actions. Literally all the small parties have joined. In Canada federally we have nine parties which agreed on the broadcast time and so on. But there will be other areas, there will be space to get together, for example, in Canada, even within the present system. It would be good if say, the Liberals and others were democratic, they would say that any serious party should have their leader and chief as somebody else in the House of Commons. It would only enrich the House of Commons. But they know then that they cannot convert the House of Commons into a circus. So somebody must go there and say “well, I am not a rustic man, I am a man of science, both natural and social science, and according to this, this is the way society should be run.” So we hope to go with various political parties and say “hey, if you are serious, your views may not be acceptable to us but these are serious views, like the Christian Heritage Party or the Natural Law Party or the Libertarians, which generally will be known as right-wingers, or the Green Party.” And we previously had a national party and so on. But we said you have serious opinions, let us develop them, let’s discuss. Discussion is good for everybody here. So we hope to come to some arrangement with these political parties, we think that they’re very serious political parties.
DF: The other thing I want to talk to you about as well, again speaking about your ambitions and so on. Tell me, who votes for CPC(M-L), who votes for the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)? Describe for me the typical voter that you have.
HB: Let’s say in Montreal, if you want a real vote. One time there was a judicial recount in one of the ridings there. When the counting was done the first time, our candidate was shown to have 100 votes, then in the judicial recount it was over 500 votes. So who are these people? They are known in returns, you can see with the neighbourhood and other factors. First of all, we have advanced workers voting for us, and then we have many women who vote for us and then we have young people who vote for us. The most exciting and positive votes are from the people who are the generations coming out of the settlers, in the sense of people who have a stake in the Canadian society. They are not just transient coming and going, and in this there are many immigrants of course who have a lot of stake in Canada, but communism more and more is being accepted by the permanent settled population across the country.
DF: But mostly urban?
HB: Mostly urban.
DF: And working class, as you said?
HB: Yes. Advanced workers.
DF: Something you’ve been talking a little bit about is the collapse of the Soviet Union and that hasn’t harmed your cause at all? You’ve said you’ve had an increase in…?
HB: Yes but if we were their agencies, their gramophone… (DF — then it would) They’re sure that we have nothing to say. We had our own heads, even when I was small and was a communist I said the only thing one has is one’s head. If you lose your head or hand it over to somebody else, then you have nothing. So even though we were communists, we have a red flag and all this, we never stopped doing our independent thing. And this is what characterizes the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada. And that’s why they hated us, because we could say to Brezhnev that you’re a social-imperialist, that if you follow this arms race, it will cause disaster to your economy and so on. Because we were thinking, we went through this period fighting, generally speaking 1989 up to present. And we are so far from anything damaging happening. Of course there are all kind of people, they come and go, and when they see difficulties… Let me give you one very interesting instance. In 89, we were in an excellent position in Montreal. We had recruited more than 5,000 members, 1,500 of them signed to form the Party in Quebec, to register the Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec. We were going great guns, Tiananmen Square took place, and the whole thing collapsed. Not our fault, but it amassed because people were thoroughly confused. And so we get affected generally by international events. People, rightly or wrongly, start connecting us; like many people look at us they say “oh, what about Soviet Union?” Well we have been opposing the Soviet Union since 1958–59! They don’t listen to what our policy was, why we opposed the Soviet Union. So internationally, that is the kind of impact it has. One time there was a Chinese contradiction with Vietnam, in 1979, and we had the same disaster, but otherwise, as far as the Party is concerned, it doesn’t have that impact because we do our own thing and we stand on our own feet.
DF: Mr. Bains it’s been very interesting talking to you, thank you very much and good luck in the next election.
HB: Thank you very much.
