Bob Rae's "Out the Other Side"

The media is reporting the Liberal leadership race as though it mattered.

Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff and Dominic LeBlanc are talking over the heads of the people to Bay Street pleading with finance capital to be given a second chance “and this time we promise to get it right … much farther right.”

Too late…the right bower is all sewn up by the Harper Conservatives at the moment.

Rae, trivializing his anti-labor record as NDP Premier of Ontario promised that if elected Liberal leader he will “use that experience” to lead the country through the current economic crisis and “out the other side.”

The Ontario Labour movement knows well what the “other side” is as Rae envisions it. Labour experienced it when Rae was Premier and imposed the burden of an economic downturn on public employees. Unabashedly Rae wants organized labour to follow him once again, alluding to sacrifices unions will be expected to make to help him help big business get out of the debt crisis mess they have created.

The “other side” is more capitalism. The “other side” is a capitalism much the same as it is now, only leaner, meaner and a more exploitive capitalism that will continue to leave behind it hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers and their families permanently displaced from the workforce.

Rae said he is going this week to explain his epiphany and vision to Bay Street. Where else would he go since he has no audience among organized labour and the working people for his warmed over neo-liberal pap.

What Rae didn’t say should concern workers and farmers. He didn’t speak about the growing militarization of the Canadian economy, energy sell-out to the USA, the de-industrialization of the country, boom and bust market capitalism and the contraction of all democratic and civil rights and freedoms after decades of neo-liberal and neo-con rule.

What Rae, Ignatieff and LeBlanc can’t ignore is that the whole country is to the left of all of the opposition parties…and the gap is widening.

As a matter of fact, the working class is to the left of the “left”, and that is what the Communists and leaders of the popular movements of the people need to study and act upon.

Let Turn Canada!