Science for the People “Canada”: statement of solidarity with international students and migrant workers on the December 18th Day Without Migrants

December 18, 2024December 18, 2024

Science for the People “Canada”: statement of solidarity with international students and migrant workers on the December 18th Day Without Migrants

English / Français

Since the formation of our collective in 2022, Science for the People “Canada” has been built by scientific knowledge workers from many different regions of the world. We are deeply affected by the new wave of attacks on migrant workers and international students, including a total freeze on two major permanent residency streams in Québec. We support the call by the Immigrant Workers Centre-Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants (IWC-CTI) for international students and workers to get organized and fight back.

In addition to endorsing the key demands of the IWC-CTI on the December 18th day of action, we recognize the following:

1. International students from the Global South are increasingly “migrant workers” first and “students” second, with university tuition merely serving as the extortionary price of admission for selling one’s labour in the Global North. In many cases, these labour and migration dynamics are the consequence of a global system of imperialism which, in Canada, serves first and foremost the capitalist class.

2. International students, who comprise 34.6% of temporary immigrants to Canada, serve to prop up Canada’s underfunded education sector. As a result of massive reductions to the proportion of public funding for post-secondary institutions (47% of university operating costs in 2018 compared to 80% in 1990), universities are increasingly dependent on corporate donors and exorbitant tuition fees shouldered by international students, many of whom are seeking a pathway to permanent residency. While tuition for domestic students has remained nearly constant, international student fees have increased by 97.7% from 2006/7 to 2023/24, after adjustment for inflation. International students provide more funding for Ontario post-secondary education than the government does.

3. International students are a growing source of invisible and informal on-campus labour, particularly in labour-intensive STEM fields. International students comprise 50% of doctoral students in the faculty of sciences at UQAM, and 46% of faculty of science graduate students at McGill.

4. A system of stipend-based labour compensation falsely classifies many STEM post-graduate workers as “students” or “trainees” rather than “workers” – despite the fact that, in practice, these “trainees” serve as full-time employees and are responsible for the vast majority of scientific labour within Canadian universities and research institutions.

5. In addition to preventing scientist-workers from unionizing or even understanding themselves as “workers,” the deliberate sleight of hand that classifies students and post-graduates as “trainees” makes the migration status of international students dependent on their continued “good standing” with a particular institution. This helps to guarantee the steady supply of cheap and precarious student-workers with little to no legal recourse against exploitative and unsafe working conditions.

6. International students are also a significant and growing source of precarized labour off of campus. For international STEM doctorates lucky enough to receive a research stipend at all, Québec’s FRQNT stipends are currently a meagre $25,000/year, with many annual stipends set even lower. A growing proportion of international students working full-time in the laboratory or in the field are therefore forced to take second jobs in order to make rent, with 56.7% of international graduate students and 36.3% of international bachelors students reporting a T4 income in 2018*.

7. As of November 15, 2024, international students in Canada are officially permitted to work a maximum of 24 hours a week off-campus on a student visa. However, these limits are often inadequate to the cost of living, incentivizing under-the-table employment, unofficial overtime, and informal job contracts.

8. In addition to exploitative working conditions, international students are vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse. For example, 41.6% of international students from Francophone universities in Québec have experienced at least one incident of sexual violence on campus. The academic sector is characterized by high rates of sexual harassment, which are particularly egregious within STEM.

9. International students are often hesitant to seek support against harassment, attend protests, or join a union or political organization because they fear that conflict with university administrators or law enforcement could impact their immigration status. Exploitative working conditions are exacerbated by language barriers and manufactured uncertainty surrounding one’s political rights and legal protections as an immigrant.**

10. While STEM degree-holders continue to enjoy significant privileges compared to other workers, post-graduate education is rapidly expanding while the post-graduate job market is shrinking, reflecting significant changes to the nature and purpose of the graduate degree over the last 30 years. While a postgraduate STEM degree was once a signifier of class privilege, or a mechanism of so-called “upward mobility” as a ticket to a professional-managerial job, a growing proportion of post-graduate students in Canada are now better understood as precarized, temporary workers, who are expected to perform an ever-growing number of years of informal labour as “trainees” in order to gain access to the formal job market at all. Graduating with an average debt of $41,100 CAD, this new “academic precariat” faces increasingly slim odds of obtaining a job related to their years of specialized “training,” and/or of remaining in the country in the case of international post-graduates.

As scientists and friends of science, these facts compel us to stand in solidarity with all international students and workers, temporary foreign workers, and refugees on December 18th to demand status for all, and working and living conditions that are stable, secure, and dignified. As we suffer the consequences of a nation-wide housing crisis, stipends and salaries that are deeply inadequate to meet the rising costs of living, and a general deterioration of social and economic conditions, we reject the federal and provincial governments’ attempts to scapegoat migrant workers and international students for these problems. We know very well that these economic hardships do not result from immigration, but rather from the systematic underfunding, deliberate neglect, and privatization of public services – carried out by the same political class now attempting to blame immigrants for their own failures. Further, as anticapitalists and anti-imperialists, we recognize that the solution to these injustices, on both the local and global scale, requires organizing for systemic political change by building collective power where we are — in our laboratories, in our workplaces, in our unions, and on the picket line.

Science for the People « Canada »: solidarité avec les étudiant·es internationaux·ales et les travailleur·euses migrant·es pour la Journée sans Migrant·es du 18 décembre

English / Français

Depuis la création de notre collectif en 2022, Science for the People « Canada » a été construit par des travailleur·euses scientifiques venant de différentes régions du monde. Nous sommes profondément touché·es par la nouvelle vague d’attaques contre les travailleur·es immigré·es et les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, incluant un gel total de deux programmes menant à la résidence permanente au Québec. Nous répondons à l’appel lancé par le CTI aux groupes communautaires à nous organiser et à riposter contre ces attaques.

Nous soutenons les revendications du CTI et reconnaissons les faits suivants :

1. De plus en plus, les étudiant·es internationaux·ales du Sud global sont principalement des « travailleur·euses migrant·es » et secondairement des « étudiant·es », les frais d’inscription exorbitants servant de coûts d’admission au pays, donnant aux migrant·es le privilège de vendre leur main-d’œuvre dans le Nord global. Ces dynamiques de migration sont souvent le résultat d’un système global impérialiste dont, au sein du Canada, la classe capitaliste est le bénéficiaire principal.

2. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, qui représentent 34,6 % des immigrant·es temporaires au Canada, servent à soutenir le secteur de l’éducation sous-financé du pays. En raison de réductions massives dans la proportion de financement public des institutions postsecondaires (47 % des coûts de fonctionnement des universités en 2018 contre 80 % en 1990), les universités dépendent de plus en plus des dons provenant des entreprises et des frais de scolarité exorbitants payés par les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, dont beaucoup cherchent à obtenir une résidence permanente. Alors que les frais de scolarité pour les étudiant·es domestiques sont restés à peu près constants, les frais pour les étudiant·es internationaux·ales ont augmenté de 97,7 % entre 2006/07 et 2023/24, une fois ajustés pour l’inflation. En Ontario, les étudiant·es internationaux·ales financent davantage l’éducation postsecondaire que ne le fait le gouvernement.

3. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales constituent une source croissante de travail invisible et informel sur leur campus, particulièrement dans les domaines à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre, dont les STIM (sciences, technologie, ingénierie et mathématiques). Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales représentent 50 % des doctorant·es en sciences à l’UQAM et 46 % des étudiant·es des cycles supérieurs en sciences à McGill.

4. Un système de rémunération basé sur des bourses fait en sorte que de nombreux·ses travailleur·euses des domaines STIM sont faussement classé·es comme des « étudiant·es » ou des « stagiaires » plutôt que comme des « travailleur·euses » — alors qu’en pratique, ces « stagiaires » remplissent les fonctions d’employé·es à temps plein et assurent la majorité du travail scientifique dans les universités et centres de recherche.

5. En plus d’empêcher les travailleur·euses scientifiques de se syndiquer ou même de se reconnaître comme des « travailleur·euses », le tour de passe-passe délibéré qui classe les étudiant·es des cycles supérieurs comme des « stagiaires » engendre une dépendance de leur statut migratoire sur leur statut d’étudiant·es « en règle » au sein de leurs établissements. Cela garantit un approvisionnement régulier de main-d’œuvre bon marché constituée de travailleurs·euses précaires peu enclins à contester des abusives conditions de travail.

6. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales sont également une source importante et croissante de travail précaire hors campus. Pour les doctorant·es internationaux·ales en STIM qui ont la chance de recevoir une bourse de recherche, les bourses du FRQNT au Québec s’élèvent actuellement à un maigre 25 000 $/an, avec de nombreuses bourses annuelles fixées encore plus bas. Une proportion croissante d’étudiant·es internationaux·ales travaillant à temps plein en laboratoire ou sur le terrain sont donc obligé·es de prendre un deuxième emploi pour payer leur loyer : 56,7 % des étudiant·es internationaux·ales des cycles supérieurs et 36,3 % des étudiant·es internationaux·ales en premier cycle ont déclaré un revenu T4 en 2018*.

7. Depuis le 15 novembre 2024, les détenteur·ices de visas étudiants au Canada sont officiellement autorisés à travailler un maximum de 24 heures par semaine hors campus. Cependant, ces seuils sont souvent insuffisants face au coût de la vie, ce qui leur mène à travailler au noir, à faire des heures supplémentaires non officielles, et à accepter des contrats informels.

8. En plus de ces conditions abusives de travail, les étudiant·es internationaux·ales sont vulnérables au harcèlement et aux abus sexuels. Par exemple, 41,6 % des étudiant·es internationaux·ales des universités francophones du Québec ont subi au moins un incident de violence sexuelle sur leur campus. Le secteur académique est marqué par son haut niveau de harcèlement sexuel, surtout dans les domaines STIM.

9. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales hésitent souvent à demander de l’aide, à participer à des manifestations ou à rejoindre un syndicat ou une organisation politique, craignant que des conflits avec l’administration universitaire ou la police n’affectent leur statut migratoire. Ces conditions de travail sont aggravées par les barrières linguistiques et par le fait que les patrons cultivent l’incertitude par rapport aux droits et aux protections légales en vigueur.**

10. Bien que les détenteur·ices de diplômes STIM bénéficient encore de privilèges importants par rapport à d’autres travailleur·euses, le nombre d’étudiant·es en cycles supérieures augmente rapidement tandis que l’offre d’emploi se raréfie, un signe que des changements majeurs par rapport à la nature et au but des cycles supérieurs sont survenus au cours des 30 dernières années. Alors qu’un diplôme supérieur en STIM représentait autrefois un signe de privilège de classe ou un mécanisme de « ascension sociale » vers un poste professionnel, beaucoup d’étudiant·es en cycles supérieures au Canada sont maintenant classé·es comme des travailleur·euses précaires et temporaires, qui doivent s’attendre à ce qu’iels aient à travailler de plus en plus longtemps de manière informelle comme « stagiaires » afin d’accéder au marché de l’emploi formel. Avec une dette moyenne de 41 100 $ CAD, les membres du nouveau « précariat académique » font face à des chances de plus en plus minces d’obtenir un emploi en lien avec leurs années de « formation spécialisée » ou de rester dans le pays.

Le 18 décembre, en tant que scientifiques et allié·es de la science, nous nous tenons solidaires de tou·s·tes les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, des travailleur·euses étranger·ères temporaires et des réfugié·es, et exigeons un statut pour tou·s·tes ainsi que des conditions de travail et de vie stables, sécurisées et dignes. Alors que nous subissons une crise du logement, des bourses et des salaires profondément insuffisants face à l’augmentation du coût de la vie et une détérioration générale des conditions sociales et économiques, nous rejetons les tentatives des gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux de faire des travailleur·euses migrant·es et des étudiant·es internationaux·ales des boucs émissaires pour ces problèmes. Nous savons très bien que ces difficultés économiques ne résultent pas de l’immigration, mais plutôt du sous-financement systématique, de la négligence délibérée et de la privatisation des services publics — orchestrés par la même classe politique qui tente aujourd’hui de blâmer les migrant·es pour ses propres échecs. De plus, en tant qu’anticapitalistes et anti-impérialistes, nous reconnaissons que nous ne pourrions contrer ces injustices qu’en luttant pour un changement du système politique et en construisant une puissance collective là où nous sommes — dans nos laboratoires, nos lieux de travail, nos syndicats et sur les piquets de grève.

Pour en lire plus :

Rapport du Sénat sur les conditions des étudiant·e·s internationaux·ales (Senate Report on International Student Conditions)

L’état de l’éducation postsecondaire au Canada 2024 (The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2024)

Références :

* Un revenu T4 correspond à toute rémunération versée par un employeur à un employé au cours d’une année civile, à l’exclusion des bourses et des subventions. Le pourcentage d’étudiant·e·s internationaux·ales de niveau postsecondaire recevant des feuillets T4 est passé de 17,6 % en 2000 à 46,6 % en 2018.

**Pour plus d’informations :
Les dessous obscurs de l’éducation internationale (The Shadowy Business of International Education)

Les étudiantes internationales : le rapport sur une main-d’œuvre invisible.(Women International Students: The Invisible Workforce Project Report)

September 8, 2023September 8, 2023

To fight genocide and ecocide, we must abolish the RCMP

This post is a from the Autumn 2023 Rage Climatique journal; read the full journal here. Members of Science for the People Canada are supporting the Week of Climate Rage taking place September 25-29 in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). Join us at the anticapitalist climate protest, September 29th at 2pm, Place George-Etienne-Cartier.

Support the Abolish C-IRG campaign: https://abolishcirg.org/

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The Community-Industry Relations Group (C-IRG) is a secretive, armed detachment of Canada’s federal police force, specifically established to police Indigenous-led resistance to resource extraction projects. In calls to abolish the C-IRG, we see more clearly than ever how police abolition, ecological restoration, and Land Back are one and the same struggle. To work towards police abolition is to deliver a blow against colonialism, extractivism, the climate crisis, and capitalism itself.

The myth of the “public” sector

Like almost everyone who attended public school in Canada, I was misled to believe that the government played a mostly neutral or even sometimes positive role in conflicts between resource extraction companies and the communities they harmed. Our textbooks were filled with examples of US and Canadian legislators passing regulations and bylaws that seemed to protect everyday people from the pollution of profit-seeking private companies.

The myth that there is any kind of meaningful, antagonistic relationship between Canada’s public sector and Canada’s private sector is a powerful propaganda tool for the capitalist class. The reality is that our settler-capitalist government and its colonial legal system were created in tandem with the establishment of extractive industries, expressly to support capitalist accumulation through violent force. Capitalists established a bourgeois government and colonial police force to remove Indigenous inhabitants, to crush the armed resistance of the people, and to fend off competing American capitalists who would otherwise begin to encroach upon “their” resources. Contrary to what we were all taught in school, in the vast majority of cases, the state holds a gun to the heads of the people so that the capitalist class may rob, drill, pollute, and clear-cut with impunity. “Canada” to this day remains “three mining companies in a trench coat,” no matter how many millions of dollars are spent on “CanCon” media productions that try to fabricate a vacuous nationalist mythology based on hockey, timbits, liberal multiculturalism, and “reconciliation.”

The RCMP: 150 years of colonial violence

The North West Mounted Police (NWMP) was the direct predecessor of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), established in 1873 on the heels of the Métis Red River Resistance. It was created for the express purpose of clearing Indigenous communities from Western Canada and crushing any remaining pockets of rebellion, so that the new settler-colonial state could be joined from coast to coast. In one of the first of many social and ecological crises precipitated by the Canadian state, the NWMP were also in part responsible for the near-extinction of the buffalo on the Western plains. The NWMP immediately embarked on the project of pushing Indigenous people further and further West to allow for encroaching European settlements to establish enclosed cattle ranching, right atop the traditional grazing land of the buffalo. Meanwhile, U.S. settlers engaged in a systematic campaign of buffalo slaughter to clear the way for ranching and white settlements to the South– this was done to try to induce starvation and disease in Indigenous populations, to force dependency on colonial food rations, and to corral Indigenous people onto reservations under the constant threat of starvation. Once the buffalo were all but a distant memory, the police engaged in routinized humiliation and sexual violence by withholding food rations to reserves in order to “secure their access to teenaged Indigenous women,” among other atrocities.

Over the years, the RCMP along with provincial police forces have consistently overseen the rights of the capitalist class to systematically bull doze, clear-cut, and drill on Indigenous land. But they have been met at every turn by heroic anti-colonial resistance and struggle. During the armed conflict at Oka in 1990 over the expansion of a golf course and the development of condos on Kahnienkehaka land, the Quebec police department sent in officers with M-16s, tanks, helicopters, jets, artillery units, and even naval forces to repress resistance at both Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawake. The armed standoff lasted 78 days and ultimately saw the successful blocking of the golf course expansion. 5 years later, the RCMP carried out a 31-day siege of Secwepemc territory and arrested Ts’peten land defenders during the Gustafsen Lake Standoff in BC. In 2013, the RCMP arrested over 40 Elsipogtog First Nation members opposing shale gas and fracking projects on their territory. These are but a few of hundreds of examples in the history of so-called Canada that highlight the centrality of state police forces in settler-capitalists’ centuries-long crusade to exploit the “rich natural resources” on which the wealth of “Canada” is built.

The Community-Industry Response Group

Today, as the climate crisis worsens and Indigenous-led resistance grows, the reactionary state repression of land defenders has become increasingly efficient and consolidated. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of the identity of interests of state and industry is the creation of the C-IRG (Community-Industry Response Group). The C-IRG is a secretive paramilitary detachment within the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), specifically established in 2017 to streamline the violent repression of Indigenous-led resistance against resource extraction projects in BC. So far, at least $50 million has been spent over the last 6 years to surveil and beat back land defenders at Fairy Creek, the Wet’suwet’en-led resistance to the CGL pipeline, several First Nations’ protests against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, the Coast Salish Nation’s resistance to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, and resistance at the Site C hydroelectric dam.

What is known about the C-IRG in BC has been revealed through access to information requests by investigative reporters, and from research led by land defenders like Molly Murphy in collaboration with Research for the Frontlines. The C-IRG has been described as free “mercenaries” for the oil and gas industry, hired and paid for through public tax dollars. This special detachment consists of “volunteer” RCMP officers who specifically put their names forward to work alongside private industry to police Indigenous-led resistance to pipeline construction and logging. Some are paid $100 per hour, working 18.5 hour shifts at a time. They routinely remove their name badges to avoid accountability for misconduct, and have become infamous for sporting fascist “thin blue line” badges in their place. The group is funded through a 70:30 split between the provincial and federal governments. In other words, the C-IRG is a racist, self-selected, highly remunerated, state-funded paramilitary group that provides free intelligence and “quick-response” armed security for the owners of oil, gas, logging and mining companies.

Among their favourite tactics is stimming– a psychological warfare technique where cops play unnerving noises and keep bright lights on at all hours of the evening in the campsites, walking through the camps non-stop to prevent land defenders from getting rest. This is meant to break land defenders’ morale and create tensions within the camp. Floodlights, loud speakers, cameras, and other sensors are trained on the sleeping quarters of prominent activists. During confrontations, the C-IRG is also authorized to use “pain compliance” techniques, including face holds that involve gouging land defenders’ eyes with the index and middle finger.

“Private-public partnerships” are the colonial way

The RCMP also collaborates intimately with private firms to spy on activists. At Fairy Creek, they helped the Teal Jones logging company’s private security agents infiltrate activist camps, who then conducted covert ops and shared surveillance intelligence with the C-IRG. If ever there were any doubts about the extent of collusion and coordination between the RCMP and private industry, some at Fairy Creek reported company loggers physically pinning down land defenders then calling over C-IRG officers to finish the job. In other words, loggers openly assaulted individuals with impunity, right in front of police officers, in order to facilitate their formal arrest.

As these investigations point out, injunction law is the resource extraction industry’s greatest weapon, allowing judges to consider each case in isolation without regard to the validity of Aboriginal Title. All the company needs to do is make the case that they will suffer “irreparable harm” if their project is not allowed to advance. The majority of the C-IRG’s operations consist of the armed enforcement of these illegitimate civil injunctions.

The C-IRG is currently under CRCC review after the RCMP received over 500 complaints in areas where the detachment was active. But no matter how much the Canadian state attempts to reform, rename, or rebrand these forces under different names or through “cultural sensitivity training,” we must never be fooled. Our capitalist government will never support Land Back in any material sense– it will never allow for the collective stewardship of our forests, mountains, and waterways so long as there is more profit to be squeezed from the mines, fracking projects, and monocultures of lumber.

For those still holding out hope that electing a “progressive” party might help stall or reverse the climate apocalypse, it’s worth remembering that almost all of the violent crackdowns on Indigenous groups by the C-IRG in BC were funded and supported by the so-called “progressive” provincial New Democratic Party (NDP), who have held a majority government in the province since 2017. In 2022, they pledged $230 million in additional funding to the RCMP to grow rural police detachments, recognizing the increased importance of protecting the capitalist class’s massive mining, logging, and natural gas projects in the face of growing Indigenous-led resistance.

“Democratic” elections at both the provincial and federal levels in Canada have time and time again proven to be highly effective propaganda campaigns– they are exercises in democracy for the capitalist class only, who get to select every four years the particular flavour of welfare-state capitalism or free-market capitalism they’d like to enjoy. In a faux-democratic system designed and controlled by settler-capitalists to serve the interests of resource extraction and labour exploitation, there has never been an electoral party that truly and materially delivers on Land Back. Capitalists rest easy knowing that state-funded mercenaries like the C-IRG will always be there to back up their pipelines and logging projects, no matter the colour of the posters that hang in the office of the incumbent.

Abolition and environmental stewardship are the same struggle

Police abolition– and especially the abolition of the RCMP– is central to the fight against ecocide and climate change. If completed, the 670-km Coastal Gas Link pipeline will transport 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas to export terminals on the coast, to be processed, exported, and burned. Canadian liquified natural gas exports are set to soar thanks to new market penetration opportunities brought about by the war in Ukraine, with new export terminals being considered on the West Coast, East Coast, and even in Québec.

And now, seizing the opportunity to greenwash the production of semiconductors and batteries, the Canadian state has arbitrarily labeled a whole host of new metals and minerals as “critical” and “essential,” in much the same way that “oil and gas” was labeled critical infrastructure in the mid-2010s. This designation, in conjunction with Stephen Harper’s Bill C-51, means that resistance to fossil fuel extraction can now be considered domestic terrorism– with Indigenous land defenders and their supporters labeled members of “fringe terrorist groups” by intelligence agencies. As Canada expands its domestic mining operations to deliver on “critical mineral” for “green” batteries and semiconductors, their promotion of these mines to “critical infrastructure” could allow the state to come down on protestors with the full force of its intelligence, surveillance, and paramilitary apparatus.

There is an inextricable and increasingly obvious link between police abolition and ecocide. Accelerating extreme weather events and climate-related catastrophes make the former an ever more urgent necessity, because climate disasters and social upheaval only strengthen the fascist tendencies of the liberal capitalist state, as demonstrated by the creation of the C-IRG. To dream of reversing or even just curbing our precipitous ecological decline, and slowing the exponential proliferation of extreme weather events, we must make rapid and sustained progress towards abolishing the armed forces that have enabled capitalists to exploit the land for far too long.

Category: SftP Canada