An Open Letter to Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP)
Dear Mr. Layton
The Harper Conservative Government is a minority government of wealth and privilege. The first priority of Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty during the current global economic crisis has been to ensure that investor classes that live parasitically from corporate, bank, energy and arms profiteering are protected first. These are the interests that form the political support base of the Conservative Party.
The Harper Conservative Government has no record of protecting wage earners thrown out of work and onto the streets. Where is that record?
The Conservatives beginning with Brain Mulroney are the party and government that undermined the unemployment insurance system, turned it over to general revenue where it was plundered and used for everything except insuring the lost earnings of the unemployed.
Canada’s unemployment insurance benefits are far below the OECD average tied for last with Great Britain. To suggest as you and your advisors are doing, that by giving this discredited minority right wing government NDP Parliamentary support, you can charm and inveigle Prime Minister Harper to act in the interests of the unemployed is illusory.
There is one issue confronting Canada and its people in any confidence vote arising in the House of Commons in the days ahead. That issue is the overriding urgency of dealing a crushing defeat to the right wing Harper Government and to rid the country of its poisonous affect on democracy.
The majority of Canadians have never supported the right wing extremism represented by Prime Minister Harper. A direct and unambiguous rejection of its policies accords with what most Canadians want.
We call upon you to go over the heads of your clever advisors, over the heads of Parliamentary in-fighting and go directly to the labour movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement and Canadian electorate with a simple statement of unequivocal opposition to Conservative rule.
No NDP support for the right-wing Harper Conservatives.
Don Currie, Chair,
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Friday, September 18, 2009
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Fidel and Health Care for the People
Dear Friends of Peace and Socialism
Upon reading the latest Reflection by Fidel Castro Ruz : http://solidnet.org/cgi-bin/agent?news/021cuba8sep09.doc on the cowardice and duplicity of the Dutch company Philips in reneging since 2006 on its obligations to supply Cuba and Venezuela with advanced medical equipment, by cravenly caving into pressure from first the Clinton, then Bush and now apparently the Obama administration, it helps to put into perspective the real essence of the public debate and struggle under way in the United States over health care. The struggle has become clouded in liberal and right wing extremist rhetoric and reeks with hypocrisy.
The Obama government is posing as an advocate of a humane and improved health care system for citizens of the USA while at the same time perpetuating long standing US imperialist policy of interference in the attempts of the Cuban and Venezuelan people to solve their health care needs. The policy is causing untold damage to people in these countries in need of health care by denying them high tech diagnostic equipment. President Obama is responsible for hurting the men, women, children and youth of Venezuela. The same interests that seek to deny the people of Venezuela medical equipment are the same interests that attack the Canadian health care system. To say otherwise is the worst possible kind of opportunist evasion.
How then can we consider Obama or any liberal-democrat would be reformer to be a reliable advocate of a truly human health care system? One cannot have a reactionary foreign policy and a progressive domestic policy. What is important is to advance and fight for the type of health care system we need, instead of taking sides with one or the other of a losing proposition.
Fidel’s expose underlines once more, the consistency of all of the governments of the United States from the end of WW2 to now to react with hate and envy at any and all attempts of other peoples to take paths of development that do not have the approval of US Presidents and the powerful imperialist interests they so faithfully serve. Rest assured the US imperialists disapprove of the Canadian public health care system with the same hatred as they express for the Cuban and Venezuelan system.
As a Communist I find it unacceptable, for left progressives anywhere to give uncritical support to Obama without exposing his unforgiveable complicity in perpetuating long standing US imperialist foreign and domestic policy. Obama seeks to change the image of US imperialism not its essence.
There can be no real advance for the people of the USA or the America’s and that includes Canada, and for that matter the world until US imperialism is defeated. That must be said first as we undertake struggles to wrest reforms from this monstrous system we know as capitalism in the imperialist era. In fact that is why we undertake them. There can be no health care advance for the people of the USA until there is a public health care system in which for profit health care is excluded entirely. A private-public mixed health care system is a private for profit system that attempts to profit out of the public purse and the personal wages, savings and incomes of working people. A retreat from public health care in Canada to a private public mix is being promoted everyday by profiteers, many US health care, drug and supply giants who seek to destroy the Canadian system. They are the same interests that hate socialist Cuba and Venezuela and seek to deny their people needed equipment.
As I read material emanating from the left progressive forces in the USA, much of which is useful and informative, I am more and more struck by what seems to me to be a delusionary, self absorbed, rosy and uncritical view of the line of the Obama administration that is retreating in confusion everyday under a right wing onslaught from the hopes of the people of the USA that brought it to power. To continue to deliberately evade that reality seems to me to be laying the basis and objectively supports what the right wing is striving for, a major political defeat for the left, democratic, labour and people’s movements.
As we Canadians confront a possible federal election, it is up to the conscious progressive left and in the first place the Communists, to go to the people with a program that begins with saying the obvious, capitalism is incapable of meeting their expectations for full employment, health, decent housing, and a truly human life. We fight for reforms to make things better but we do not cover up the fact that we do so with the aim of overthrowing and defeating the system of capitalism that is the cause of the misery of economic depression and war.
No other forces on the left are saying that convincingly. No other task is more important.
Don Currie
Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Upon reading the latest Reflection by Fidel Castro Ruz : http://solidnet.org/cgi-bin/agent?news/021cuba8sep09.doc on the cowardice and duplicity of the Dutch company Philips in reneging since 2006 on its obligations to supply Cuba and Venezuela with advanced medical equipment, by cravenly caving into pressure from first the Clinton, then Bush and now apparently the Obama administration, it helps to put into perspective the real essence of the public debate and struggle under way in the United States over health care. The struggle has become clouded in liberal and right wing extremist rhetoric and reeks with hypocrisy.
The Obama government is posing as an advocate of a humane and improved health care system for citizens of the USA while at the same time perpetuating long standing US imperialist policy of interference in the attempts of the Cuban and Venezuelan people to solve their health care needs. The policy is causing untold damage to people in these countries in need of health care by denying them high tech diagnostic equipment. President Obama is responsible for hurting the men, women, children and youth of Venezuela. The same interests that seek to deny the people of Venezuela medical equipment are the same interests that attack the Canadian health care system. To say otherwise is the worst possible kind of opportunist evasion.
How then can we consider Obama or any liberal-democrat would be reformer to be a reliable advocate of a truly human health care system? One cannot have a reactionary foreign policy and a progressive domestic policy. What is important is to advance and fight for the type of health care system we need, instead of taking sides with one or the other of a losing proposition.
Fidel’s expose underlines once more, the consistency of all of the governments of the United States from the end of WW2 to now to react with hate and envy at any and all attempts of other peoples to take paths of development that do not have the approval of US Presidents and the powerful imperialist interests they so faithfully serve. Rest assured the US imperialists disapprove of the Canadian public health care system with the same hatred as they express for the Cuban and Venezuelan system.
As a Communist I find it unacceptable, for left progressives anywhere to give uncritical support to Obama without exposing his unforgiveable complicity in perpetuating long standing US imperialist foreign and domestic policy. Obama seeks to change the image of US imperialism not its essence.
There can be no real advance for the people of the USA or the America’s and that includes Canada, and for that matter the world until US imperialism is defeated. That must be said first as we undertake struggles to wrest reforms from this monstrous system we know as capitalism in the imperialist era. In fact that is why we undertake them. There can be no health care advance for the people of the USA until there is a public health care system in which for profit health care is excluded entirely. A private-public mixed health care system is a private for profit system that attempts to profit out of the public purse and the personal wages, savings and incomes of working people. A retreat from public health care in Canada to a private public mix is being promoted everyday by profiteers, many US health care, drug and supply giants who seek to destroy the Canadian system. They are the same interests that hate socialist Cuba and Venezuela and seek to deny their people needed equipment.
As I read material emanating from the left progressive forces in the USA, much of which is useful and informative, I am more and more struck by what seems to me to be a delusionary, self absorbed, rosy and uncritical view of the line of the Obama administration that is retreating in confusion everyday under a right wing onslaught from the hopes of the people of the USA that brought it to power. To continue to deliberately evade that reality seems to me to be laying the basis and objectively supports what the right wing is striving for, a major political defeat for the left, democratic, labour and people’s movements.
As we Canadians confront a possible federal election, it is up to the conscious progressive left and in the first place the Communists, to go to the people with a program that begins with saying the obvious, capitalism is incapable of meeting their expectations for full employment, health, decent housing, and a truly human life. We fight for reforms to make things better but we do not cover up the fact that we do so with the aim of overthrowing and defeating the system of capitalism that is the cause of the misery of economic depression and war.
No other forces on the left are saying that convincingly. No other task is more important.
Don Currie
Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Sunday, April 05, 2009
NATO's 60th Anniversary - WW2 Canadian Vet Speaks Out
Guest Blog
John Beeching is Honorary Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
He is a veteran of WW2 and a life long activist for peace and socialism. Below are John’s comments on the 60th Anniversary of NATO.
NATO 60 year celebration
Today CBC news announced in a report on NATO that that it was NATO 60 year celebration. 60 Years to protect the profits of the rich is nothing to celebrate. Not when in this year 2009 millions are out of work or being laid-off while most in the third world countries are existing on a pittance.
NATO was not created to protect the world people or any country from attack. It was created to protect the world from communism and establish globalization led by the United States of America. The result is that millions on millions are living on substandard conditions.
Soviet Union Unaffected by the Great Depression
While the capitalist world was in the grip of mass unemployment and class warfare, the Soviet Union, by 1929 a mere 12 years into the building of socialism was unaffected by the Great Depression gripping the entire capitalist world. The Soviet Government, after a bitter struggle to defeat US and British interventionist forces attempting to restore the old hated Czarist regime, had embarked on an ambitious plan to electrify the country, modernize agriculture and construct new industries. The Soviet Union provided work for all and implemented universal free education and health care. The homeless were being housed. Collective and state farming methods rapidly made the country self-sufficient in food and agricultural products
John Beeching is Honorary Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
He is a veteran of WW2 and a life long activist for peace and socialism. Below are John’s comments on the 60th Anniversary of NATO.
NATO 60 year celebration
Today CBC news announced in a report on NATO that that it was NATO 60 year celebration. 60 Years to protect the profits of the rich is nothing to celebrate. Not when in this year 2009 millions are out of work or being laid-off while most in the third world countries are existing on a pittance.
NATO was not created to protect the world people or any country from attack. It was created to protect the world from communism and establish globalization led by the United States of America. The result is that millions on millions are living on substandard conditions.
Soviet Union Unaffected by the Great Depression
While the capitalist world was in the grip of mass unemployment and class warfare, the Soviet Union, by 1929 a mere 12 years into the building of socialism was unaffected by the Great Depression gripping the entire capitalist world. The Soviet Government, after a bitter struggle to defeat US and British interventionist forces attempting to restore the old hated Czarist regime, had embarked on an ambitious plan to electrify the country, modernize agriculture and construct new industries. The Soviet Union provided work for all and implemented universal free education and health care. The homeless were being housed. Collective and state farming methods rapidly made the country self-sufficient in food and agricultural products
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Use Canadian Clean Hydro Electrical Power for Canadian Needs!
Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail business writer, broke a story on December 30th reporting that Hydro Quebec is negotiating with two New England states for the first long term export of Quebec hydro electrical power to the USA in two decades. The 20 year sweet deal for US consumers requires approval of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). No mention was made of any Canadian approvals.
The deal will require two private US power utilities to invest $700 million (U.S.) to build a transmission line from a substation in Sherbrooke Quebec to New Hampshire USA where clean Quebec hydro power will be distributed through the New England power grid to provide non-polluting Canadian generated electrical power to Boston USA.
Ontario, desperately in need of clean power and anticipating imports of Quebec Hydro power, planned to build a transmission line from Quebec to Ontario. Slowness of the McGuity Liberals to conclude a deal on the project between Canada’s two largest and most industrialized provinces means the line may now be used to transmit Quebec hydro power through Ontario to the USA leaving Ontario out in the cold.
The plan to export large volumes of clean Quebec hydro electrical power to the USA occurs at a time when Canadian environmentalists are demanding that Ontario seek alternatives to its reliance on coal fired and expensive nuclear generated electrical power.
US environmentalists are calling for boycotts of energy imports produced from the Alberta Tar Sands. Nothing like having it both ways, use clean Canadian hydro power (No Buy American ban on this commodity) to meet President Obama’s targets for clean energy while at the same time damning Tar Sands production that employ Canadian workers.
Canadian environmentalists need to reassess. So long as Canadian energy is considered an exportable commodity instead of a national resource needed to serve the common good, neither Canadian jobs nor the environment can be protected.
The answer is obvious! Nationalize all Canadian energy and do it now! Develop east west hydro electric grids and construct east west natural gas and oil pipelines with up graders and refineries in Canada to process the products. That is real stimulus and job creation.
A new energy policy is needed to serve Canadian needs first. Then we can talk about exporting surpluses to the USA.
Left Turn Canada!
The deal will require two private US power utilities to invest $700 million (U.S.) to build a transmission line from a substation in Sherbrooke Quebec to New Hampshire USA where clean Quebec hydro power will be distributed through the New England power grid to provide non-polluting Canadian generated electrical power to Boston USA.
Ontario, desperately in need of clean power and anticipating imports of Quebec Hydro power, planned to build a transmission line from Quebec to Ontario. Slowness of the McGuity Liberals to conclude a deal on the project between Canada’s two largest and most industrialized provinces means the line may now be used to transmit Quebec hydro power through Ontario to the USA leaving Ontario out in the cold.
The plan to export large volumes of clean Quebec hydro electrical power to the USA occurs at a time when Canadian environmentalists are demanding that Ontario seek alternatives to its reliance on coal fired and expensive nuclear generated electrical power.
US environmentalists are calling for boycotts of energy imports produced from the Alberta Tar Sands. Nothing like having it both ways, use clean Canadian hydro power (No Buy American ban on this commodity) to meet President Obama’s targets for clean energy while at the same time damning Tar Sands production that employ Canadian workers.
Canadian environmentalists need to reassess. So long as Canadian energy is considered an exportable commodity instead of a national resource needed to serve the common good, neither Canadian jobs nor the environment can be protected.
The answer is obvious! Nationalize all Canadian energy and do it now! Develop east west hydro electric grids and construct east west natural gas and oil pipelines with up graders and refineries in Canada to process the products. That is real stimulus and job creation.
A new energy policy is needed to serve Canadian needs first. Then we can talk about exporting surpluses to the USA.
Left Turn Canada!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Prime Minister Harper Preaches to the Converted
Don Currie, Editor, Focus on Socialism
March 10, 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s speech before a big business crowd in Mississauga Brampton Ontario on March 10th re-stated his government’s pledge that the interests of wealth and privilege will continue to come first as the country slides into depression, and the working class and the unemployed are welcome to go along for the ride. He was heartily applauded by the partisan audience.
As he was speaking to the upscale crowd, GM workers and retirees with their backs against the wall were being urged by their union leadership to vote in favour of a roll back in wages and pensions to keep GM in business and a shrinking work force temporarily employed to produce cars that most people can’t afford to buy.
Meanwhile in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP chided Finance Minister Flaherty for not admitting the economic situation for wage earners was dire, as though the Conservative minister really cared. The Conservative finance minister is content to rebut all criticism of his failed policies for working people by claiming that Canada is hostage to the financial melt down in the USA. Flaherty claims that until US banks start lending there is nothing to be done. Finger pointing is a safe bet for Flaherty and a convenient way of dealing with any future failure as the US economy continues to slide with no bottom in sight. Even as Flaherty was speaking in the House Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal Reserve Board characterized the economic debacle as worse than the Great Depression.
At the same time Minister Flaherty boasts that Canada is the envy of the G20 because the Canadian chartered banks aren’t failing and are well capitalized unlike US banks. Canadian banks are all reporting quarterly profits in spite of the real economy tanking. What’s up? Bank profits and unemployment are rising at the same time! Minister Flaherty is mute about rising bank profits and a disintegrating real economy. He says nothing about this obvious anomaly because he worked for this outcome.
The Finance Minister was instrumental in backstopping the banks with $200 billion of government guarantees long before there was any talk in Parliament about a stimulus budget for workers and communities. Flaherty knows that the banks don’t have to lend to the real economy to make profit. They are doing fine on spreads between a falling Bank of Canada rate, high interest credit cards, safe mortgages and loans (the government removed the toxic debt and burdened CMHC with it) to preferred lenders that really don’t need the money anyway. Canadian Banks got their Harper Government “stimulus” up front last October after President Bush convened the G20 and all present agreed to pump 2% of GDP into the economy. Do the math. Two percent of $1.3 trillion GDP is about $260 billion; $200 billion for the banks and the rest for a “stimulus” budget that has within in lots of room for big business insiders to do very well. Flaherty only presented the budget to Parliament after it was vetted by a blue ribbon big business committee.
The actual amount of stimulus that will reach workers and communities is dubious. There is no reason for the opposition parties to rubber stamp it. There is stimulus and then there is talk of stimulus. The opposition charges that the budget is entangled with a number of Conservative plans having nothing to do with infrastructure funding. Environmentalists are concerned about the removal of restrictions on industrial development on inland waterways. Women workers are angry about the budget endorsing pay equity discrimination. The budget is not user-friendly compelling small communities to come up with co-pay money they don’t have and foisting P3’s on infrastructure projects that private investor abuse. Flaherty is bullying the Senate and the opposition to rush through the budget, before the people realize what is really in it. The Conservatives do not want the public to look too closely at the budget (all 300 plus pages of it) for fear of what they might find there. The Conservatives have stuffed the budget with barbs and hooks and at the same time, as a side show, are attempting to slip through the Finance Committee a $3 billion no strings attached pork barrel.
The Canadian people are paying a heavy price for the failure of the faint-hearted Ignatieff Liberals recoiling in fear from joining with the NDP and the Bloc to administer a crushing defeat to the Harper Conservatives when they had the chance. The Liberal and Conservative back room brain trusts held their noses, gave each other a little “upper class hug” and signaled to the Bay Street, Calgary Petroleum Club, the Irving Empire, the Montreal and Vancouver investor groups, and the TSX, that as much as they find each other distasteful, when the chips are down they will unite against any threat of organized labour and the movements of the people gaining a position of influence over Parliament.
The academic-intellectual left advice to labour to be “more clever and persuasive” in pleading with capitalism to reform itself is not helpful. An article in the last issue of CCPA Monitor suggesting to their 10,000 readership that progressives should support pleading for a place at the corporate table as a means of democratizing capitalist decisions is typical. Likewise, the Lakeland Institute, correctly lambasting the Stelmach government for funneling $5 billion to the oil investors continues to fail to demand nationalization the whole energy sector as the way to end its privileged position in the economy. The entire gamut of left academia remains timid and mute about the ruinous influence on the economy of $492 billion over 20 years allocated by the Canada First Defense Policy of the Harper Conservatives.
The G20 finance ministers will be meeting next week in preparation for their April Summit. The global depression is much worse than Flaherty and Harper are prepared to admit. The Conservatives are going to the G20 with one eye on the event and the other on their political base. That base doesn’t include organized labour. Flaherty and Harper will be coming back to Canada after the G20 to sell the plans of the IMF, the World Bank and G7. They will confront at the meeting a brawl among the USA, the EU, as they confront the rising power of China, Brazil, India.
Now is the time for organized labour to send a message to the Government that Canadians will not accept any plans of international finance capital that require the working class and the farmers to make more concessions to save the profit system.
Organized labour and the left-progressives confront a challenge. Either continue to support one of the alternatives offered by the Liberals or the Conservatives, fronting for corporate and banking capital, or begin the difficult task of organizing now around an independent program of economic development for Canada.
What is happening to the autoworkers, forced into concessions and condemned to long term unemployment is a template for what the employers will be demanding from steel, forestry, transportation, the energy sector and what remains of manufacturing. Following employer attacks on the productive sector workers there will be pressures on the civil service and the entire service industry for wage rollbacks and benefits concessions.
Labour needs its own summit! Relying on the banking and corporate elites to plan our future is a mugs game. Labour can and must lead the country!
Left Turn Canada!
March 10, 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s speech before a big business crowd in Mississauga Brampton Ontario on March 10th re-stated his government’s pledge that the interests of wealth and privilege will continue to come first as the country slides into depression, and the working class and the unemployed are welcome to go along for the ride. He was heartily applauded by the partisan audience.
As he was speaking to the upscale crowd, GM workers and retirees with their backs against the wall were being urged by their union leadership to vote in favour of a roll back in wages and pensions to keep GM in business and a shrinking work force temporarily employed to produce cars that most people can’t afford to buy.
Meanwhile in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP chided Finance Minister Flaherty for not admitting the economic situation for wage earners was dire, as though the Conservative minister really cared. The Conservative finance minister is content to rebut all criticism of his failed policies for working people by claiming that Canada is hostage to the financial melt down in the USA. Flaherty claims that until US banks start lending there is nothing to be done. Finger pointing is a safe bet for Flaherty and a convenient way of dealing with any future failure as the US economy continues to slide with no bottom in sight. Even as Flaherty was speaking in the House Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal Reserve Board characterized the economic debacle as worse than the Great Depression.
At the same time Minister Flaherty boasts that Canada is the envy of the G20 because the Canadian chartered banks aren’t failing and are well capitalized unlike US banks. Canadian banks are all reporting quarterly profits in spite of the real economy tanking. What’s up? Bank profits and unemployment are rising at the same time! Minister Flaherty is mute about rising bank profits and a disintegrating real economy. He says nothing about this obvious anomaly because he worked for this outcome.
The Finance Minister was instrumental in backstopping the banks with $200 billion of government guarantees long before there was any talk in Parliament about a stimulus budget for workers and communities. Flaherty knows that the banks don’t have to lend to the real economy to make profit. They are doing fine on spreads between a falling Bank of Canada rate, high interest credit cards, safe mortgages and loans (the government removed the toxic debt and burdened CMHC with it) to preferred lenders that really don’t need the money anyway. Canadian Banks got their Harper Government “stimulus” up front last October after President Bush convened the G20 and all present agreed to pump 2% of GDP into the economy. Do the math. Two percent of $1.3 trillion GDP is about $260 billion; $200 billion for the banks and the rest for a “stimulus” budget that has within in lots of room for big business insiders to do very well. Flaherty only presented the budget to Parliament after it was vetted by a blue ribbon big business committee.
The actual amount of stimulus that will reach workers and communities is dubious. There is no reason for the opposition parties to rubber stamp it. There is stimulus and then there is talk of stimulus. The opposition charges that the budget is entangled with a number of Conservative plans having nothing to do with infrastructure funding. Environmentalists are concerned about the removal of restrictions on industrial development on inland waterways. Women workers are angry about the budget endorsing pay equity discrimination. The budget is not user-friendly compelling small communities to come up with co-pay money they don’t have and foisting P3’s on infrastructure projects that private investor abuse. Flaherty is bullying the Senate and the opposition to rush through the budget, before the people realize what is really in it. The Conservatives do not want the public to look too closely at the budget (all 300 plus pages of it) for fear of what they might find there. The Conservatives have stuffed the budget with barbs and hooks and at the same time, as a side show, are attempting to slip through the Finance Committee a $3 billion no strings attached pork barrel.
The Canadian people are paying a heavy price for the failure of the faint-hearted Ignatieff Liberals recoiling in fear from joining with the NDP and the Bloc to administer a crushing defeat to the Harper Conservatives when they had the chance. The Liberal and Conservative back room brain trusts held their noses, gave each other a little “upper class hug” and signaled to the Bay Street, Calgary Petroleum Club, the Irving Empire, the Montreal and Vancouver investor groups, and the TSX, that as much as they find each other distasteful, when the chips are down they will unite against any threat of organized labour and the movements of the people gaining a position of influence over Parliament.
The academic-intellectual left advice to labour to be “more clever and persuasive” in pleading with capitalism to reform itself is not helpful. An article in the last issue of CCPA Monitor suggesting to their 10,000 readership that progressives should support pleading for a place at the corporate table as a means of democratizing capitalist decisions is typical. Likewise, the Lakeland Institute, correctly lambasting the Stelmach government for funneling $5 billion to the oil investors continues to fail to demand nationalization the whole energy sector as the way to end its privileged position in the economy. The entire gamut of left academia remains timid and mute about the ruinous influence on the economy of $492 billion over 20 years allocated by the Canada First Defense Policy of the Harper Conservatives.
The G20 finance ministers will be meeting next week in preparation for their April Summit. The global depression is much worse than Flaherty and Harper are prepared to admit. The Conservatives are going to the G20 with one eye on the event and the other on their political base. That base doesn’t include organized labour. Flaherty and Harper will be coming back to Canada after the G20 to sell the plans of the IMF, the World Bank and G7. They will confront at the meeting a brawl among the USA, the EU, as they confront the rising power of China, Brazil, India.
Now is the time for organized labour to send a message to the Government that Canadians will not accept any plans of international finance capital that require the working class and the farmers to make more concessions to save the profit system.
Organized labour and the left-progressives confront a challenge. Either continue to support one of the alternatives offered by the Liberals or the Conservatives, fronting for corporate and banking capital, or begin the difficult task of organizing now around an independent program of economic development for Canada.
What is happening to the autoworkers, forced into concessions and condemned to long term unemployment is a template for what the employers will be demanding from steel, forestry, transportation, the energy sector and what remains of manufacturing. Following employer attacks on the productive sector workers there will be pressures on the civil service and the entire service industry for wage rollbacks and benefits concessions.
Labour needs its own summit! Relying on the banking and corporate elites to plan our future is a mugs game. Labour can and must lead the country!
Left Turn Canada!
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Speech from the Throne and the 41st Parliament
Defeat Harper and Move On!
After debasing Parliament, expressing contempt for the majority of Canadians who do not support their policies, the Harper Minority Conservatives are now pleading for a second chance. Their repentance is phony.
Following the throne speech, initial statements by Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader and Liberal war horse Ralph Goodale, were remarkable and contemptible showing that they may betray the NDP-Liberal Coalition and prop up a lame duck Conservative Prime Minister.
There is no basis for a national consensus under a Conservative Prime Minister. Unity can only be built around progressive economic and social programs. It can never be built on reaction and backwardness.
The Harper government needs to be swept aside for reasons that go beyond the budget. The Harper Conservatives are unrepentant far right neo-cons. They are incapable of redemption. Their time is up.
Under the Conservatives Canada has declined on all vital benchmarks. Canada has less jobs, less science, less arts, less mass participation in sports, recreation. Fewer youth can go to university and post secondary education. There is more homelessness; more poverty, less optimism and more despair.
The Harper Conservative Government is fundamentally a neo-con government of the Thatcher-Reagan-Mulroney-Bush ilk: after all the others have been consigned to the rubbish heap of history, Harper lingers on – now his time has come.
Neo-cons are slaves to the capitalist free market. They are anti-labour. Neo-cons are for privatizing the public health care system and using pension funds for private investment. They are for the militarization of the economy. They are anti-science. They oppose regulation of banks, markets, health, and all forms of industry.
Neo-cons are against pay equity for women. They oppose the legitimate demands of first nations and aboriginal people’s for the redress of all outstanding land claims and rights. They are against single desk marketing and work to abolish the Wheat Board. Neo-cons oppose universal child care. They oppose universal unemployment insurance for all. They oppose public housing. They believe in punishing the addicted and imprisoning adolescents. They are intolerant of racial minorities, immigrants and attempt to challenge the separation of church and state. They are against the CBC and all public broadcasting. They are contemptuous of creative artists, writers, public sports and recreation for all. They are penny pinching and mean and they should not be in power.
Throw them out!
Left Turn Canada!
After debasing Parliament, expressing contempt for the majority of Canadians who do not support their policies, the Harper Minority Conservatives are now pleading for a second chance. Their repentance is phony.
Following the throne speech, initial statements by Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader and Liberal war horse Ralph Goodale, were remarkable and contemptible showing that they may betray the NDP-Liberal Coalition and prop up a lame duck Conservative Prime Minister.
There is no basis for a national consensus under a Conservative Prime Minister. Unity can only be built around progressive economic and social programs. It can never be built on reaction and backwardness.
The Harper government needs to be swept aside for reasons that go beyond the budget. The Harper Conservatives are unrepentant far right neo-cons. They are incapable of redemption. Their time is up.
Under the Conservatives Canada has declined on all vital benchmarks. Canada has less jobs, less science, less arts, less mass participation in sports, recreation. Fewer youth can go to university and post secondary education. There is more homelessness; more poverty, less optimism and more despair.
The Harper Conservative Government is fundamentally a neo-con government of the Thatcher-Reagan-Mulroney-Bush ilk: after all the others have been consigned to the rubbish heap of history, Harper lingers on – now his time has come.
Neo-cons are slaves to the capitalist free market. They are anti-labour. Neo-cons are for privatizing the public health care system and using pension funds for private investment. They are for the militarization of the economy. They are anti-science. They oppose regulation of banks, markets, health, and all forms of industry.
Neo-cons are against pay equity for women. They oppose the legitimate demands of first nations and aboriginal people’s for the redress of all outstanding land claims and rights. They are against single desk marketing and work to abolish the Wheat Board. Neo-cons oppose universal child care. They oppose universal unemployment insurance for all. They oppose public housing. They believe in punishing the addicted and imprisoning adolescents. They are intolerant of racial minorities, immigrants and attempt to challenge the separation of church and state. They are against the CBC and all public broadcasting. They are contemptuous of creative artists, writers, public sports and recreation for all. They are penny pinching and mean and they should not be in power.
Throw them out!
Left Turn Canada!
Friday, January 23, 2009
President Obama and Real Change
Don Currie, Chair CPS
The litmus test for the international working class and all oppressed people as to whether or not the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA represents real change will be revealed in the months and years ahead in his government’s attitude to the struggles of the people of other countries that choose a path of economic and political development different from that prevailing in the USA.
Will the Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the declaration of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and insist on doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?
The people of the USA as is their inalienable right are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for real change, if that change includes recognition and support for the right of other peoples to do likewise.
In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory and inaugural speeches of President Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a graceful and long overdue retreat from empire and acceptance by the people of the USA of the necessity to live as others do, within their own borders and within their own means, or whether the appeal for unity is around a new, revised and perhaps less belligerent version of US imperialist destiny.
While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.
That is not a small consideration for Canadians who will inevitably be compelled out of economic necessity to call for a recasting of any and all agreements with US finance capital that limit Canadian sovereignty, restrict Canadian independent economic development and interfere with Canadian sovereign ownership and control of its own resources. Most revealing will be the attitude of the Obama Government to the majority opinion of Canadians as expressed in the last federal election to end to Canadian participation in the US-NATO war of aggression in Afghanistan.
Nothing that is said here should be understood to mean that Canadians do not also confront the urgent need to denounce and break with the imperialist ambitions of our own state monopoly rulers and its interference in the internal affairs of the peoples of other countries.
The challenge confronting the Canadian people is the same as people of the USA, whether we will permit our state monopoly ruling class to continue to pursue its imperialist ambitions at the expense of our dignity and at the expense of other peoples or whether we will use our own resources and ingenuity to overcome the process of deindustrialization that threatens our economy with ruin.
That issue becomes the only principled basis for the unity the working classes of North America, an anti-imperialist unity that will be understood and greeted by all the oppressed people of the world suffering from the curse of underdevelopment, poverty and oppression imposed on them by all of the leading imperialist states.
Left Turn Canada!
The litmus test for the international working class and all oppressed people as to whether or not the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA represents real change will be revealed in the months and years ahead in his government’s attitude to the struggles of the people of other countries that choose a path of economic and political development different from that prevailing in the USA.
Will the Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the declaration of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and insist on doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?
The people of the USA as is their inalienable right are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for real change, if that change includes recognition and support for the right of other peoples to do likewise.
In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory and inaugural speeches of President Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a graceful and long overdue retreat from empire and acceptance by the people of the USA of the necessity to live as others do, within their own borders and within their own means, or whether the appeal for unity is around a new, revised and perhaps less belligerent version of US imperialist destiny.
While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.
That is not a small consideration for Canadians who will inevitably be compelled out of economic necessity to call for a recasting of any and all agreements with US finance capital that limit Canadian sovereignty, restrict Canadian independent economic development and interfere with Canadian sovereign ownership and control of its own resources. Most revealing will be the attitude of the Obama Government to the majority opinion of Canadians as expressed in the last federal election to end to Canadian participation in the US-NATO war of aggression in Afghanistan.
Nothing that is said here should be understood to mean that Canadians do not also confront the urgent need to denounce and break with the imperialist ambitions of our own state monopoly rulers and its interference in the internal affairs of the peoples of other countries.
The challenge confronting the Canadian people is the same as people of the USA, whether we will permit our state monopoly ruling class to continue to pursue its imperialist ambitions at the expense of our dignity and at the expense of other peoples or whether we will use our own resources and ingenuity to overcome the process of deindustrialization that threatens our economy with ruin.
That issue becomes the only principled basis for the unity the working classes of North America, an anti-imperialist unity that will be understood and greeted by all the oppressed people of the world suffering from the curse of underdevelopment, poverty and oppression imposed on them by all of the leading imperialist states.
Left Turn Canada!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
An Open Letter to All Members of Parliament
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
1 250 355 2669
Email: editor@focusonsocialism.ca
Website: www.focusonsocialism.ca
January 20, 2009
Canada is the first country US President Barack Obama will visit following his January 20th Inauguration.
Canadians will be watching closely to see if during President Obama’s visit, there is a single Canadian political leader that will have the courage to publicly repudiate the long record of collusion of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government with the President George W. Bush Administration’s policies of pre-emptive war and regime change.
President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada will be the opportunity for all Members of Parliament to call for a new direction in Canadian US relations based on the restoration of Canadian sovereignty lost during the long bleak years of the Bush Republican-Harper Conservative collaboration.
The opportunity has been presented to the Liberal, NDP and Bloc coalition to publicly enunciate a new direction for US-Canadian foreign, military, economic and political relations that can begin by disengaging Canada from the ruinous affects of membership in NAFTA, SPP, NORTHCOM and NATO and to align Canada with people’s progressive movements in the USA and around the world that seek peace and economic development that provides full employment, affordable housing, food, public medical care and education, child care and pensions for the millions that do not now have such basic needs.
It is important that the leader of the official opposition be sent a message. If Michael Ignatieff leader of the Liberal Party of Canada intends to become Prime Minister it can only be as the Prime Minister of the majority of Canadians that have consistently rejected the Conservative Party. Anything less, risks more years of minority Conservative government rule.
Should Mr. Ignatieff continue to equivocate, there is nothing preventing the NDP and the Bloc, leaders of organized labour, the peace movement, democratic and patriotic organizations of the Canadian people from speaking out resolutely for Canadian independence from US imperialist oversight.
In welcoming President Obama the left democratic peace and progressive movements are called upon to restate some fundamental truths for the benefit of the new incoming Barack Obama US administration and those in Canada who will greet him in our name.
Canadians are a sovereign people. From coast to coast to coast including the far arctic, all of the nations that inhabit this land, all those who labour in its economy, all those who contribute to its accomplishments, all those who value and seek to conserve its vast natural resources, its grandeur, wilderness and natural beauty, all those who believe in the youth and in their right to a future, all those who dream and fight for peace and justice for all people of the planet, all those who do not live in envy of anyone; the people of Canada who call this place our home and native land will decide its destiny.
Left Turn Canada!
Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
1 250 355 2669
Email: editor@focusonsocialism.ca
Website: www.focusonsocialism.ca
January 20, 2009
Canada is the first country US President Barack Obama will visit following his January 20th Inauguration.
Canadians will be watching closely to see if during President Obama’s visit, there is a single Canadian political leader that will have the courage to publicly repudiate the long record of collusion of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government with the President George W. Bush Administration’s policies of pre-emptive war and regime change.
President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada will be the opportunity for all Members of Parliament to call for a new direction in Canadian US relations based on the restoration of Canadian sovereignty lost during the long bleak years of the Bush Republican-Harper Conservative collaboration.
The opportunity has been presented to the Liberal, NDP and Bloc coalition to publicly enunciate a new direction for US-Canadian foreign, military, economic and political relations that can begin by disengaging Canada from the ruinous affects of membership in NAFTA, SPP, NORTHCOM and NATO and to align Canada with people’s progressive movements in the USA and around the world that seek peace and economic development that provides full employment, affordable housing, food, public medical care and education, child care and pensions for the millions that do not now have such basic needs.
It is important that the leader of the official opposition be sent a message. If Michael Ignatieff leader of the Liberal Party of Canada intends to become Prime Minister it can only be as the Prime Minister of the majority of Canadians that have consistently rejected the Conservative Party. Anything less, risks more years of minority Conservative government rule.
Should Mr. Ignatieff continue to equivocate, there is nothing preventing the NDP and the Bloc, leaders of organized labour, the peace movement, democratic and patriotic organizations of the Canadian people from speaking out resolutely for Canadian independence from US imperialist oversight.
In welcoming President Obama the left democratic peace and progressive movements are called upon to restate some fundamental truths for the benefit of the new incoming Barack Obama US administration and those in Canada who will greet him in our name.
Canadians are a sovereign people. From coast to coast to coast including the far arctic, all of the nations that inhabit this land, all those who labour in its economy, all those who contribute to its accomplishments, all those who value and seek to conserve its vast natural resources, its grandeur, wilderness and natural beauty, all those who believe in the youth and in their right to a future, all those who dream and fight for peace and justice for all people of the planet, all those who do not live in envy of anyone; the people of Canada who call this place our home and native land will decide its destiny.
Left Turn Canada!
Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
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