by Barry Weisleder
Ontario votes on October 10 –
Fight for an NDP Government on a Workers’ Agenda
Municipal services are in crisis. Public education is threatened with further fragmentation and cuts. Aboriginal communities are besieged by wealthy developers. Medical drug prices continue to soar. Job loss, poverty and homelessness are on the rise. Global warming is unchecked, propelling humanity towards an unprecedented catastrophe. Crucial issues are at stake in the Ontario provincial election set for October 10, 2007.
For working people and the poor, the best way to advance the struggle for social justice is to vote for New Democratic Party candidates, to vote Yes in the referendum on Mixed Member Proportional Representation, and to strive for an NDP government based on a Workers’ Agenda.
Electoral gains for the labour-based NDP would be a blow to big business and would foster more opportunities for the working class and oppressed social layers to escalate struggles and to advance effective demands to deal with the evils of capitalism.
Socialists applaud NDP proposals to reverse the downloading of social services by the province and to rescue municipalities from fiscal ruin. We welcome party pledges to phase out coal plants, cancel nuclear power expansion, promote conservation, and substitute renewable electricity sources. We commend NDP policies to more rapidly raise the minimum wage, provide dental care for kids and folks without dental coverage, regulate the predatory Payday loan industry, increase the provision of social housing, end the claw back of the National Child Benefit Supplement, and to implement a form of proportional representation.
While the NDP election platform is superior to those of the capitalist parties, the Liberals, Tories and Greens, it falls far short of meeting the needs of the vast majority of Ontarians. Much more could be done, not only by tapping the province’s huge budgetary surplus, but by raising taxes on giant corporations and the rich, by ending corporate subsidies, and by extending social ownership into lucrative sectors.
Moreover, the NDP and Labour movement leadership is completely missing the boat on the latest challenge to public education: the provocative demand by the Progressive Conservative Party for public funding of all religious schools. The Green Party countered this with a call for a single, secular, publicly-funded school system. The effete response of the governing Liberals, and the third place NDP, is for the ‘status quo’, that is, continuing to fund both the public secular and Catholic school systems. This socially untenable position, which invites further fragmentation of the chronically under-funded public education system, should be resolved by the NDP in favour of a unified secular system of English and French schools, combined with a full reversal of the cuts stemming from the discredited funding formula of a previous Tory government.
Socialists believe that the current election campaign represents a golden opportunity for the NDP to stand up for public institutions and to challenge the growing concentration of power in the hands of the corporate elite, the staggering degree of inequality and poverty fostered by neo-liberalism, and the fundamental lack of democracy in Ontario’s government and economy.
Instead of tailing the winds of change, the NDP and its labour allies should be in the forefront, advocating solutions to the problems inherent in capitalist rule.
Liberal, Green and Conservative politicians offer no avenue for working class solutions – they are central to the problem of capitalist minority rule. Only by strengthening the confidence and unity of working people, and asserting the independence of the workers’ movement from the parties of big business, can we seize the opportunity to move forward. Campaigning now for an NDP government, and fighting to commit it to a Workers’ Agenda, is the way to go.
Drop the charges against Shawn Brant!
Mohawk activist Shawn Brant, 44, is going to trial in what
promises to be the most political case ever heard in a Napanee,
Ontario (Canada) courtroom.
Brant faces nine charges of mischief and breach of bail
conditions for leading a protest on the Aboriginal Day of Action,
June 29. He told the court at a bail hearing, through his lawyer
Peter Rosenthal, that the June 29 protests "had been successful in
raising public awareness and providing leverage in
negotiations.
near Tyendinaga Mohawk territory in eastern Ontario, where Brant
resides. Rosenthal referred to a public opinion poll showing that 35
per cent consider such blockades legitimate.
Brant expressed satisfaction that the protests had prompted
the government to enter negotiations, and said that he would await
the outcome and refrain from civil disobedience. Superior Court
Justice Denis Power took great offence at this, characterized Brant's
statement as "arrogant" because it was not sufficiently submissive to
government authority, and decided to keep him behind bars awaiting trial.
He and other First Nations militants acted on the democratic
idea that Canada's rulers cannot rule with impunity. Canadian
governments have stalled on indigenous land claims for decades, while
corporations proceed to seize native land, build on it, pollute it,
and strip mine it for resources. This is what was happening at the
gravel quarry near Deseronto until Mohawks occupied the site in March 2007.
Protests, indeed, are working to expose injustice, rally
public support, and push the authorities towards a resolution of
disputes. The initial denial of bail to Brant was a brutal political
reprisal against a Mohawk man with a clean record, jailed because he
puts the rights of his people ahead of the sanctity of the capitalist
state. The charges against him are no less repugnant.
On appeal, bail was granted on August 30 by Justice Robert
Fournier, but not without imposing strict conditions, including
confinement of Brant to his house for the next 30 days, plus $100,000
in collateral posted by his mother and a family friend.
Over one hundred people met on August 29 at the
Steelworkers' Hall in downtown Toronto to hear Shawn's wife Sue
Collis, author Naomi Klein, lawyer Howard Morton, and Natercia Coelho
(wife of political detainee Gary Freeman). The gathering, hosted by
the Tyendinaga Support Committee, demanded that the charges against
Brant be dropped and that aboriginal land claims be honoured.
A pre-trial hearing will commence in Napanee on October 5.
For more information, and to make a donation to the Defense
Campaign for Shawn Brant please visit: www.ocap.ca
Heroin from Afghanistan, where over 2,500 Canadian soldiers serve in an imperialist occupation of the country, is increasingly making its way to Canada and poses a direct threat to the public, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
Paul Nadeau, director of the RCMP’s drug branch in Ottawa, said in August that about 60 per cent of the heroin on Canadian streets comes from Afghanistan.
Do you remember the argument made by the ‘preventative war’ strategists that ‘we must fight them (i.e. the terrorists) there so we won’t have to fight them here’?
Concealed were the costs of collaborating with re-cycled terrorists and professional drug lords who run the puppet government in Kabul. Obscured was the vast network of opium farmers and transporters, on both sides of the conflict in the war ravaged economy. Not mentioned is the human cost of countless dead Afghan civilians and 69 slain Canadian Forces personnel, the latest three falling in one mid-August week, all from Quebec where public opposition to the war is reaching new heights.
More reasons to demonstrate on October 27 to demand ‘Canada out of Afghanistan’.
Capitalist ‘Admissions’ dept. working overtime
Quebec police admitted that (at least) three undercover agents were playing the part of protesters at the international leaders’ summit in Montebello, Quebec. One undercover cop had a rock in his hand. He and the others were caught trying to agitate a crowd of union members to take more aggressive action against uniformed police.
The release of previously censored portions of the Maher Arar report amounts to an admission by the RCMP that they knew American authorities were deporting Arar to the Middle East to be tortured for information. The report confirms that when the Canadian government publicly denied he was in danger of torture, Ottawa was lying.
Presumably, the same applies to Abdullah Almaki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, three Canadian citizens who were arrested in Syria, and were imprisoned and tortured in Syria and Egypt between 2001 and 2004, despite never being charged with a crime.
And admitting that his early support for the invasion of Iraq was wrong is Michael Ignatieff. He’s the former hot shot academic and current Etobicoke-Lakeshore MP who in 2006 ran for federal Liberal leader. Ignatieff’s admission was couched in weasel words suggesting it had more to do with following public opinion rather than a change of mind. His silence on another controversial aspect of his support for the so-called war on terror – the use of harsh interrogation techniques with terrorism suspects – tends to confirm the shallow opportunism of Ignatieff’s shift on the Iraq war.
All in all, it was a busy month at the ‘Admissions Department’ for the capitalist rulers of our ‘liberal democracy’.
Conrad Black lacks the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie
It’s not so much that he stole money. It’s that he did it with unbridled arrogance, unapologetic zeal, and lavish ostentation. Now that Conrad Black, a.k.a. Lord Black of Crossharbour, former CEO of Hollinger International, is a convicted felon four times over, facing up to 35 years in an American jail, the capitalist media chooses to dwell on... his hubris.
After all, theft is endemic to the capitalist system. So, why belabour it? Why even ponder how Black, born into a millionaire clan, became a billionaire by swindling two corporate widows of the Argus Corporation in 1978, and by pilfering the Dominion Stores’ pension fund in 1984 (until an Ontario court ruled in the supermarket workers’ favour, ordering Black to return $37.9 million). By then he had already denuded and dumbed-down an array of community newspapers, bought the Daily Telegraph in London, and was well on his way to controlling 50 per cent of Canada’s print media, plus the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun-Times and notable others. After all, isn’t cannibalism the way of the business world. To say nothing of the ‘ordinary’ practice of maximizing the squeeze on workers, whose labour is the basic source of profit.
But Conrad went too far, you say? Well indeed, when it comes to capitalist greed, he did the full monty. He chucked the fig leaf, elbowed his way into the clubs of the super-rich, and routinely sued his detractors. When he crudely rewarded himself with huge ‘non-compete payments’ when selling off newspapers in a given market, he said ‘let the shareholders howl’. For a man who was so instrumental in shifting the elite political agenda to the right (via his vanity press “The National Post” and by other means), Black showed an amazing inability to grasp that his way was no way to rule the roost in a sophisticated late capitalist society where liberal democratic rights, albeit under attack, still remain notionally in force.
For such indiscretions, for the sheer paucity of upper crust ‘nobility’ he so strove to attain and exude, Black may go to jail, or more likely engage in years of further litigation at the cost of his purloined assets, having already lost a legion of opportunistic ‘friends’. (On August 27, Black’s lawyers submitted a formal appeal for a new trial.)
And the system that made it all possible, having once again rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic, just keeps sailing along.
Nunavut’s housing crisis causes lung disease in Inuit infants
The housing crisis in Canada’s northernmost territory, Nunavut, has been blamed for a range of social problems from poor school performance to family violence. Now a new study points to it as the cause of the highest rate of hospital admissions in the world for infants with respiratory infections.
“Rates of admissions to hospital for babies with bronchiolitis and pneumonia are 40 times higher for Inuit babies than they are in southern Canada,” said Dr. Thomas Kovesi, a respirologist with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
That rate reaches up to 306 per 1,000 babies, says his study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
“Inadequate home ventilation and overcrowding contributes to the high rate of lower respiratory tract infection observed among Inuit children,” it concludes.
The study’s statistics, compiled in the Baffin region communities of Pond Inlet, Cape Dorset, Igloolik and Clyde River, are stark. It found 80 per cent of homes have substandard ventilation. Tobacco smoke was “nearly universal.” Occupancy stood at 6.1 residents per home. Most homes are smaller than 1,000 square feet (93 square metres), while the Canadian average is 2.39 residents per home.
In crowded quarters viruses circulate and babies often get seriously ill. About 40 per cent of infected infants get sick enough to be airlifted to Iqaluit, the territorial capital. Of those, 10 per cent must be flown south for treatment, creating a trauma of separation for infants and mothers. Many of the sick face lifelong lung problems.
Private sector housing is exorbitantly expensive, so most Inuit rely on social housing. Over 1,000 families are on waiting lists. With Canada’s youngest population and highest birth rate, Nunavut would have to build 273 units a year just to keep pace – much more than the 70 or so the Nunavut Housing Corp. averaged between 2000 and 2006. It would cost $1.9 billion over 10 years to reach ‘national standards’.
But how does that compare to the $3.4 billion the Harper federal Conservative government pledged to spend on new military patrol ships to police Canada’s Arctic northwest passage (not to mention about $4.3 billion for operations and maintenance over their 25-year lifespan), or the vast fortune being spent by wealthy resource corporations developing diamond mines or oil and gas extraction in the far north?
It’s just a matter of priorities.
Corporate takeovers:
Inter-penetration of Capital works both ways – always against workers
Lately, some die-hard Canadian nationalists, including top flight business executives, have been wringing their hands over the so-called “hollowing out” of the country’s corporate landscape due to foreign buy-outs.
As it turns out, Canadian companies did more shopping abroad last year than foreign big business did in Canada.
According to the Investment Industry Association of Canada, as reported in the Toronto Star on June 26, Canadian business scooped up almost 800 foreign firms in deals worth a total of $111 billion. Foreign companies purchased 175 Canadian companies with a total transaction value of $84 billion in 2006.
And the trend appears to be continuing this year. Canadian companies bought 134 foreign firms during the first three months of 2007 compared to foreign takeovers of only 46 Canadian businesses.
Huge acquisitions by the barons of Bay Street include Goldcorp’s takeover of Glamis Gold Ltd. for $8.5 billion, Thomson Corp.’s $18.2 billion (U.S.) deal to buy Reuters Group PLC, and Great-West Lifeco Inc.’s acquisition of Putnam Investments Trust for C$3.9 billion.
Foreign takeovers of prominent Canadian companies, such as Inco Ltd., Falconbridge Ltd., and Fairmont Hotels and Resorts made headlines over the past year. And now with Stelco sold to US Steel, and telecommunications giant BCE Inc. up for grabs, there are loud demands that Ottawa intervene.
So, what’s going on here, and who stands to benefit?
Well, one set of tycoons want protectionism (e.g. banks, telecom). Another set wants all restrictions on capital removed. Neither side in this shell games represents the interests of working people. Mergers and takeovers primarily mean job losses and consumer price gouging – regardless the nationality of the owners.
So, what’s the answer? Neither Canadian nationalism nor so-called ‘free trade’.
To put human needs before private profits we need a government that moves decisively to democratize the economy, to bring the giant corporations and banks into public ownership under the control of workers and our communities. That’s called socialism – which all the tycoons and CEOs worldwide will fight to the bitter end.
Seniors fear for their future
One-third of Canada’s senior and near-senior citizens fear that they will outlive their bank accounts, and half of those over 60 are employed because they say they need the money, according to a poll by Decima Research released in July.
The latest Canada Census data shows that seniors, specifically those older than 80, are the fastest growing segment of the country’s population. For the first time in history there are more than four million Canadians aged 65 or older. That means about one in seven Canadians is a senior. Fifty years ago, just one in 13 were seniors. That trend will continue to grow with the demographic bulge known as baby boomers (born after 1946) just recently turned 60.
Thirty-three per cent of respondents 60 and over said they are worried about outliving their resources and assets. One-third said they were working either part- or full time. Nineteen per cent indicated that their financial situation was worse or much worse than five years ago.
Many boomers and wartime babies don’t have enough savings for retirement. For those lucky enough to have Retirement Savings Plans, the amounts are typically around $60,000 – which is not enough for 30 or 40 years after retirement.
Can the establishment handle a seniors’ revolt? There will likely be one.
