The Socialist Equality Party and the University of Toronto Students for Social Equality will hold a public meeting in Toronto, Sunday, June 27, under the theme “The Canadian and US elections and the tasks of the working class.” The meeting will discuss pivotal issues that have either been excluded or distorted in the official election debate, including:

* the global eruption of US militarism and colonialism and the impossibility of opposing the occupation of Iraq and imperialist war through the existing political framework;

* the role of Canada as an imperialist power and partner of the US, the calculations behind the Liberal government’s decision to not officially join the US invasion of Iraq and its subsequent attempts to ingratiate itself with the Bush administration;

* the growth of economic insecurity and social inequality throughout North America and the anti-social policies being implemented by all levels of government and all the parties of the establishment, from the neo-conservative Conservative and Republican parties through the Quebec indépendantiste Parti Québécois and the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP).

* the failure of the trade unions and their nationalist orientation and the need to counterpose to the plans of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Liberal and Conservatives to forge a still closer economic and geopolitical partnership with Wall Street and Washington the struggle for the unity of the North American working class against capital.

The Toronto meeting will be a unique forum where these questions will be discussed and debated from the standpoint of the independent interests of working people. Particular attention will be paid to the need to base an opposition to imperialism and the assault on the social position of the working class on an internationalist program and, from that standpoint, the enormous political significance of the campaign the US Socialist Equality Party is mounting in the 2004 US elections. The SEP is standing its own candidates for US president, vice president and Congress, in an ambitious attempt to bring before the largest audience a socialist alternative to the two-party system of the US ruling elite, the Republicans and the Democrats. Speakers at the meeting will include Keith Jones, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) and a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, and David Walsh of the US SEP and the Arts Editor of the WSWS. We urge all SEP supporters and all readers of the WSWS to attend the Toronto meeting.

Toronto
Sunday, June 27, at 1 p.m.
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Room 8200 (8th Floor)
252 Bloor Street West
(near the St. George Subway)