NDP Socialists hit Afghan war extension, Liberal coalition

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Socialist Action july 2010 11 New Democratic Party activists sauga, Thornhill, several Toronto constituencies, and from as far away as Winnipeg, Manitoba, gathered at OISE U. of Toronto on June 12 for the Annual NDP Socialist Caucus Federal Conference. Although the next NDP federal convention is June 2011 in Vancouver, B.C., the NDP Socialists are wasting no time in addressing the big issues that face the working class today.

At the top of the SC agenda is ending the war of occupation in Afghanistan and opposing any coalition, let alone merger, of the NDP with the Liberal Party, or any capitalist party. NDP MPs have been too soft-spoken during the current campaign by the business media and the Liberal Party to extend the imperialist war mission beyond the 2011 Canadian troop removal deadline.

One New Democrat MP, Jack Harris, who was part of the infamous Liberal Bob Rae-led junket to Kandahar, has mused about the need for Canadian forces to remain as trainers and to build “institutions” in Afghanistan, which implies a fighting presence there.

That brings us to rumours of a merger with the Liberal Party, the political pillar of Bay Street rule and the whole private profit system of environmental, labour and indigenous injustice. While NDP Leader Jack Layton says ‘no one is authorized to engage in talks’, so-called party ‘saints’ Ed Broadbent and Roy Romanow are talking potential ‘deals’ with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and other Liberal honchos. Sadly, the outrageous prospect of such a merger seems credible only because the NDP has moved so far from its CCF and working-class roots.

After illuminating presentations and discussions on domestic social policy (John Clarke, OCAP; Alex Johnstone, women’s and children’s rights; Robert Ling, End Prohibition of Cannabis) and foreign policy issues (Michael Skinner, Exiting the Afghanistan Quagmire; and this writer speaking on the campaign for democracy, anti-militarism and international solidarity in the NDP), conference participants got down to work on resolutions.

The gathering reaffirmed policies advanced by the SC in the lead up to the 2009 NDP Federal Convention in Halifax, and added three new ones: Legalize Cannabis, Make CPP Benefits a Decent, Living Income for Retirees, and Support the Cochabamba (Bolivia) Protocols on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

The conference mandated the incoming SC federal steering committee to write a new resolution on ending the Alberta Tar Sands Project.

All current SC policy resolutions are posted on the SC web site: www.ndpsocialists.ca and will be circulated extensively across the country through NDP riding associations, affiliated unions and youth clubs. The aim is to persuade local organizations to discuss, adopt and forward the SC resolutions to the federal NDP convention for debate, vote and, hopefully, adoption there.

Leading this effort will be the newly elected NDP Socialist Caucus federal steering committee consisting of: from Toronto, Carol Bailey, Elizabeth Byce (elected SC treasurer), Judy Koch, Christos Draxl, Hans Modlich, Esther Mwangi, Doug Phillips, Ross Ashley and Barry Weisleder (elected SC chair); from Hamilton, Robert Ling; from Oakville, Sean Cain; from Thornhill, John Orrett; from Montreal, Robbie Mahood; and from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Rosemary Hnatiuk.

NDP activists who agree with SC policies and principles and who are interested in joining the SC federal steering committee, which operates primarily through inter net consultation, should send a message via the website, or call (416) 535-8779.

Inside the Ontario NDP, the Socialist Caucus remains the driving force behind grassroots challenges to postponement of the provincial convention by the party establishment and to its ongoing support for public funding for Catholic mere mention of its name causes Kandahar-based staff with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) “go pale and silent”, according to the Toronto Star.

To date, 20 per cent of the siltblocking canals and sub-canals has been dug out. In other words, 80 per cent of the planned works, including the replacement of neglected hydraulic systems and generators at Dahla Dam itself, remains undone. Canadians involved in the project live like prisoners inside a police compound, unable to move without Watan’s permission.

The fiasco of the Dahla Dam, set against the mounting death toll of foreign soldiers and local civilians, highlights the wages of imperialist occupation—in support of a regime of war lords and drug barons. This is what the Liberal Party openly, and the Conservative government covertly, wish to extend past the 2011 deadline for removal of Canadian troops. — B.W.

separate schools. Although the ONDP Provincial Council meeting on May 29 reaffirmed the party’s regressive position on those issues, it was only after a vigorous council debate animated by SC activists. A lively lunch-time forum, attended by 30 ONDP councillors and observers, showed that the NDP Socialists represent the best hope for democracy and the turn to the left so essential to NDP survival in the current neo-liberal climate.

So does the SC defense of NDP federal MP and deputy leader Libby Davies (Vancouver East). She was denounced on July 15 by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae and NDP Leader Jack Layton—simply for stating that the Israeli occupation of Palestine began in 1948.

The fact that the Zionist state was founded on the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs, and the ethnic cleansing, killing and incarceration of many more since 1948, is widely recognized worldwide, including by most NDP members. It explains why the global campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid has gained the support of many unions, municipalities and leading personalities internationally. Telling the truth should be commended, not condemned. Hands off Libby Davies! — B.W.

ntario’s health minister, Deb Matthews, admitoral health of the province’s 500,000 working poor. In the 2007 election campaign her Liberal Party promised to introduce dental care for low-income Ontarians, followed up by a budget commitment in 2008 to provide $45 million annually for three years to help half a million impoverished workers unable to afford private insurance coverage. Now, it seems, that is barely enough to cover dental care for children of the poor.

Thirty-two per cent of Canadians do not have dental insurance, and 17 per cent avoided seeing a licensed dentist last year because of cost, according to Health Canada. As a result, an underground industry of unlicensed and sometimes dangerous dentistry preys upon the poor, and often new immigrants.

Desperation is born of hardship, deepened recently by the Ontario Liberal government’s regressive Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and its heartless elimination of the Special Diet Supplement to welfare ($250 a month for food). After inflation, welfare benefits today have only 55 per cent of the buying power they had in 1993. Liberals at Queen’s Park smile daggers while they make workers and the poorest folk pay for the bail-out to resource industries and auto giants, for the crisis of their profit system. — B.W.

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Dental plan has no teeth for Ontario poor O ted in June that there is no money to improve the