Militant greetings on International Working Women’s Day

On this International Working Women’s Day, the Young Communist League of Canada extends a militant greeting to women struggling for bread and roses in the face of growing threats to safety and security for women around the world and in Canada.

International Working Women’s Day was brought forward through the struggles for improvement in working and living conditions fought for by women, often at the front of the charge in working class struggles such as the hunger marches of the 1930s and the struggles for the rights of women to vote and to work. Gender-based violence, workplace harassment, and unsafe working conditions continue to be front and centre issues for women entering the workforce, especially in sectors such as health care and education.

In Canada, we salute the militant women who have led the struggles within the labour movement through the needle trades and garment workers who fought for an 8-hour workday. We recognize the struggles waged by Dorise Nielsen who fought for women in the needle trades and salute the women fighting today for much of the same struggles: equal pay and equal representation in the workforce. The struggle for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women is led by the mothers and sisters calling for justice, searching landfills, rivers, and communities, for the thousands of women and girls who have been left by the Canadian state and law enforcement to suffer without answers.

We remember women such as Celia Sanchez Manduley and Pastorita Nuñez who galvanized the women’s struggle in the July 26th movement that overthrew Batista and brought lasting change for Cuban women. We remember the long fought struggles of the Sudanese Women’s union, who fought for the independence of the Sudanese people from British rule. Today these women are fighting on the front lines against the genocide in Sudan. 

Indeed, peace is a requirement for equality. Women are always a victim of war, their rights are ignored and delayed as their homes and their families and their communities are destroyed. Therefore this International Working Women’s Day we emphasise the importance of the struggle for peace. To fight for peace and disarmament is to fight for equality. 

It is clear to us as Young Communists that the main force sustaining patriarchy and male chauvinism today is capitalism. The drive to produce new generations of working people has always fallen on women, who, in modern capitalist society, are forced to work the “double burden” of both the regular work day and unpaid domestic labour, including cleaning, child-rearing, cooking, and other household duties. The patriarchy and the capitalist system rely deeply on each other and mutually reinforce one another. Communists have always taken up the call for increased gender equality, and have continuously fought for accessible childcare, reproductive healthcare, truly equal pay rates, and higher rates of education for women and gender-oppressed people.

Today and tomorrow, the YCL-LJC remains committed to the fight against all forms of oppression. Oppression strengthens and reinforces the exploitation of one class over another.

Solidarity with Ontario students organizing against cuts to OSAP and cuts to public education

“I wish them all the best, run it like a business.”
– Premier Doug Ford in response to job cuts at Humber Polytechnic. 

The Young Communist League of Canada – Ligue de la jeunesse communiste condemns the most recent attacks against students and workers by the Doug Ford government. This is part of a wider series of austerity measures meant to sell off public post-secondary education to the highest bidder. 

On February 12th, 2026 the Ford government announced an end to the multi-years long tuition-freeze by hiking tuition fees by 2% each year, and a drastic change in OSAP that reduces grants to a maximum of 25% and loans to a minimum of 75%. This saddles students with more student debt.

The Ford government’s injection of $6.4 billion dollars into post-secondary education has done little to stave off the years of chronic underfunding. Even after the announcement, colleges like Fanshawe, Algonquin, and Humber announced more job and program cuts, adding to the 10,000 academic and non-academic staff already laid off. 

These cuts are not new strategies being implemented by Ford’s government but rather in line with the ongoing attacks subsequent governments have taken against the institution of public education across the country. The difference with these cuts is that these OSAP changes aim to reduce the working class’ ability to access post-secondary education and to appeal to the corporations that benefit from alternate job training, such as the corporations who have been awarded job-training funds via the Skills Development Fund, including many of Doug Ford’s election campaign supporters.   

These cuts and tuition hikes come right after the Ford government rammed through Bill 33, which attempts to stifle student organizing and the existence of democratic student unions on campus through “right-to-work” style policies. This is the playbook of the Ford government – try to crush opposition and then push through austerity measures. It also comes after a series of heavy cuts from the federal government, with Carney seeking to undermine public services and public education to the tune of rapidly expanding and investing 5% of Canada’s GDP into the NATO military budget. 

The ruling class in Canada, represented by the various monopoly interests who sit on boards of governors across the country will benefit from the privatization of education as well as the increase of student debt. Representatives from Canada’s big five banks have representatives on several boards of governors at colleges and universities across the country, the same banks that make a profit off of private student bank loans. We have seen the Liberal government blame migrants and international students for the housing and cost-of-living crisis that Liberal policies and corporations have exacerbated. This scapegoating has resulted in the caps on international students, leading to the funding crisis in post-secondary education, which has been exploiting international students for their tuition fees to fund colleges and universities in the absence of public funding for education. The root cause of this crisis is capitalism in decline. 

The YCL-LJC supports the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario in their recent mobilization against the tuition fee increase and changes to OSAP. We call on students and student organizations to mobilize in every faculty, department, and with campus workers.

The YCL-LJC demands:

  • Public post secondary education must be fully funded. Stop Privatizing our Universities! 
  • More grants not loans! 
  • Free, democratic, accessible quality education for all!
  • Reverse the OSAP cuts, cancel student debt!
  • Stop the attacks on student unions and organizing on campuses!