Letters in Defense of USW Rail Workers and Mohamed Harkat

Partisan Defense Committee

Lac-Mégantic: Defend USW Rail Workers!

Two members of the United Steelworkers (USW) in Quebec continue to face a serious judicial witchhunt in connection with the oil train explosion that ripped through the heart of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in 2013, killing 47 people. This disaster was no accident. It was industrial murder on a grand scale, shaped by money-pinching cutbacks, layoffs and criminal neglect by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA) rail company, and aided and abetted by the federal government’s gutting of safety regulations at the behest of these same rail bosses.

In the aftermath, we have seen a stark example of capitalist class “justice.” The two USW unionists—train engineer Tom Harding, an industry veteran of more than 30 years, and traffic controller Richard Labrie—face 47 charges of criminal negligence causing death that could lead to imprisonment for life. A former MMA operations manager, Jean Demaître, faces the same charges. Meanwhile, MMA CEO Ed Burkhardt, notorious for flouting elementary safety measures in the name of profit, has not been targeted by the police and the courts.

The fireball was ignited after multiple failures in an engine and the braking system of an unattended train caused several dozen tank cars loaded with crude oil to roll down a steep hill and derail. From day one it has been clear to all but the wilfully blind that Harding and Labrie are being used as scapegoats. “It’s not them we want!” yelled a Lac-Mégantic resident as the accused were vindictively perp-walked through the town two years ago. “The boss” should be the one in handcuffs, he added. More recently, revelations buried in a Transportation Safety Board report show that MMA had sought to save time and money by ordering engineers not to apply an additional set of train brakes that could have averted the tragedy. The government’s Transport Canada agency never intervened to stop this.

Below is a March 28 Partisan Defense Committee letter of solidarity to the USW in Quebec.

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Please find enclosed a $200.00 Partisan Defense Committee donation toward the defense of Brothers Tom Harding and Richard Labrie. It is outrageous that the brothers are facing charges at all. For 10 years before the disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Ed Burkhardt and MMA were setting new records for accidents and derailments among North American railways. MMA’s drive for more profits meant cuts to safety measures and attacks on working conditions—in other words, this was a disaster waiting to happen.

The fact that two trade unionists are being witchhunted by the Quebec courts perfectly reflects capitalist class justice. Moreover, it was the Canadian government that aided and abetted this crime by gutting safety regulations at the behest of the rail bosses. Acts of industrial mass murder such as Lac-Mégantic get written off as collateral damage by the capitalist rulers and their courts.

The only way to establish and enforce safety in dangerous industries such as rail is by mobilizing labour’s social power. A single winning Canada-wide rail strike would do vastly more for safety than tens of thousands of pages of Transportation Safety Board recommendations. Workers must be able to shut down unsafe equipment and operations with the full backing of the unions.

For your interest, I am enclosing two copies of Spartacist Canada No. 185 (Summer 2015), the newspaper of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste which has an article in defense of these trade unionists (see page 3), “Defend USW Rail Workers!”

In solidarity, we demand “Drop the charges against Harding and Labrie!”

Stop Deportation of Mohamed Harkat!

The Canadian state’s long-standing vendetta against Ottawa resident Mohamed Harkat in the name of the “war on terror” has accelerated under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal regime. In March, the Canada Border Services Agency issued a report recommending that Harkat be deported to his native Algeria, where he is threatened with torture and death.

Not a shred of evidence has ever been presented against Harkat. He was never charged criminally but instead slapped with a “security certificate,” a judicial weapon forged decades ago by the regime of Pierre Trudeau and sharpened subsequently by the Harper Tories. Harkat was thrown into solitary confinement in 2002 amid a wave of racist anti-Muslim hysteria. Since his release more than three years later, Harkat’s bail conditions have amounted to detention in his own home, where at times he was forbidden from using a computer or admitting anyone with a cellphone.

We reprint below a March 28 letter by the Partisan Defense Committee to the Justice for Mohamed Harkat Committee.

Dear friends,

Please find enclosed the Partisan Defense Committee’s cheque in the amount of $100.00 for the legal defense of Mohamed Harkat. For nearly 14 years, under Liberal and Tory regimes alike, he has been and remains the target of a relentless state vendetta, enduring years in jail and then house arrest under extremely onerous conditions. Outrageously, when the security certificate against Mohamed was upheld two years ago, the Supreme Court declared that he had “benefited from a fair process”!

The “war on terror” has been from the beginning a political pretext to expand the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state. While the first targets of the ruling class have been the vulnerable Muslim minority, the organized labour movement is also in the sights of the ruling class. For example, the Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-51) outlaws any interference with “critical infrastructure” or “economic or financial stability,” a direct attack on workers’ right to strike. The fight to defend Mohamed Harkat and all those targeted by the “war on terror” dragnet is in the interests of all working people.

We demand that the deportation proceedings against Mohamed be dropped immediately and that this vicious state persecution cease so that he and his wife Sophie can live their lives as they please. Defend Mohamed Harkat!

The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste. To contact the PDC, write to: Partisan Defense Committee, Box 314, Station B, Toronto ON M5T 2W1. Email: pdctoronto@bellnet.ca; website: partisandefense.org.

We encourage others to support the defense campaigns described above. To contribute to the legal defense of Tom Harding and Richard Labrie, write to: Syndicat des Métallos, 565 boul. Crémazie est, Bureau 5100, Montréal QC H2M 2V8. Cheques should be made payable to “Syndicat des Métallos” with “Justice for USW rail workers” noted on the cheque. For the legal defense of Mohamed Harkat, write to: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Committee, 14 Perkins St., Ottawa ON K1R 7G5. Cheques should be made payable to “Justice for Mohamed Harkat Committee.”