Canada’s Conservative government is again taking the country to war, this time in Iraq and Syria. Under the facade of a “humanitarian intervention” against the extremist group ISIS, the Canadian military is participating in a major US-led war whose real aims are: the shoring up of the pro-US regime in Iraq; the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is a close ally of Russia and Iran; and the strengthening of US imperialism’s military-strategic hegemony over the world’s most important oil-exporting region.

Like the 2003 Iraq war, the current war is being sold to the public through a pack of lies. ISIS did not fall from the sky. It is a direct product of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US “regime change” wars in Libya and Syria. Its fighters have been funded, organized and trained by the US and its key allies in the region, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Over the past two decades, Canada, under Liberal and Conservative governments alike, has put paid to its previous claims to be a “peacekeeper.” Canada has joined or supported every US-led war since the 1991 Gulf War, including the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected president, the 2001 war in Afghanistan, and the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya.

Join the IYSSE at Toronto’s York University for a presentation by Keith Jones, the national secretary of the SEP (Canada). Jones will examine the reasons for Canada’s aggressive, imperialist foreign policy and its connection to the breakdown of global capitalism and the ever-widening assault on workers’ social and democratic rights.

Wednesday, October 15 at 4:30 PM
York University (main, Keele St. Campus)
Ross Building, Room N 120