No coalition with Liberals! Fight for socialist policies! Vote NDP on May 2!

Scan page 8

(Above) File photo: March 2010 Toronto assembly sponsored by the NDP Socialist Caucus. In the May election, the NDP should advance a program committed to socialist The defeat in the House of Commons of the most hated federal government in a long time triggered the fourth election campaign in seven years. Voters across the Canadian state go to the polls on May 2 to choose their pill for continuing eco­ nomic maladies. With unemployment at nearly 9 per cent officially (double that figure if one includes discouraged work­ ers and the chronically underemployed), with the average person in debt to the tune of $100,000, with homeless shelters and food banks strained to the breaking point, voters have much to ponder.

The Stephen Harper-led minority gov­ ernment Conservatives, mired in election financing and deceit scandals, booted from office for being found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to disclose the cost of their corporate tax cuts, and their plans for new prisons and stealth combat jets, are asking for a majority.

Harper began his campaign in full at­ tack mode, hyping the threat of “a coali­ tion of free-spending opposition parties.” He portrayed his agenda of social cut­ backs, war spending, and gifts to the rich and powerful as “staying the course”— this in the midst of a dismal economic “recovery.”

The Liberals under Michael Ignatieff donned populist vestments. While skew­ ering Harper’s undemocratic suspension of Parliament (twice), Ignatieff champi­ oned support for more child-care spaces, and for more aid to students burdened with rising tuitions. He claims to be for stronger public pensions and health care. His hope is that the electorate will forget, or at least forgive, the Liberal sponsor­ ship scandal, the severe social cuts of Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin in the 1990s, and Liberal deci­ sions to send the Canadian military and police to Afghanistan and Haiti.

Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Quebecois ad­ vanced its demands for more federal transfer payments to Quebec, down­ played the Bloc’s commitment to bour­ geois sovereignty, and put a “progres­ sive” veneer on a pro-system perspective.

The Green Party’s Elizabeth May con­ centrated on trying to win a first seat for the party. Her policies would force work­ ing people to pay for the mess created by capitalism, with a regressive carbon tax, and measures that favour “green­ ing” of the private sector. Notwithstand­ Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks to media following fall of his government on March 25, following Parliament vote of no confidence.

ing her platform, exclusion of May from the TV leaders’ debate, which is posed again, would be outrageous.

Jack Layton and the labour-based New Democratic Party had a golden opportu­ nity to offer a refreshing and radical al­ ternative. But Layton started off with the totally uninspiring slogan “take the strain off your family budget, make everyday essentials less expensive.”

It is commendable that Layton wants to help seniors, extend the ecoEnergy Retrofit programme for homeowners, remove the federal sales tax on home heating bills, and put an 8 per cent cap on the interest that can be charged by policies—advocating strong antiwar, environmental, and working-class measures.

An International Educational Conference credit card firms. But this is comparative­ ly small stuff. The timidity of these pro­ posals reveals something else—that the labour party brass is unwilling to reverse the huge tax concessions to big business of the past 20 years; that it lacks the courage to challenge the agenda of capi­ talist austerity. The NDP campaign even shies away from a call for dismantling the country’s war budget and ending Ot­ tawa’s participation in US/NATO aggres­ sion. Sadly, this is reflected in Layton’s decision to back the Western interven­ tion into Libya (see article below).

Given the failed state of globalized capi­ talism, the need for an alternative is evi­ dent. Instead of “strained family budgets,” the NDP should decry the one-sided class war being waged from the top down. It should stress the need to fight back with bold socialist measures, instead of paltry reforms. Workers who vote NDP in their millions have the power to shake up their party, toss away its Liberal-look-alike policies, and make the NDP fight for soci­ ety’s vast majority, the working class and the poor. Direct involvement in the NDP campaign now is critically important to that end.

Participation in a coalition government would be a dead end for labour and the left, notwithstanding the fact that coali­ tion is perfectly legal in Canada and com­ mon around the world. Harper’s attempt to demonize the notion of coalition is a crude attempt at self-preservation by exploiting political ignorance and antiQuebec chauvinism (although the BQ has never actually been proposed as a coali­ tion partner by any party). The fuss he’s made over a possible Liberal-NDP coali­ tion is doubly hypocritical because Harp­ er proposed an alliance of Conservatives, New Democrats and the Bloc as an alter­ native to the faltering Paul Martin Liberal minority government in 2004.

Socialists oppose coalition for a radically different reason. Coalition with the Lib­ erals or with any capitalist party would seriously undermine the tenuous orga­ Julius Arscott cupation abroad.

The central issue today is not the moral­ ity or behaviour of the Tories (repugnant as they are). It is the continuing capitalist crisis and the assault on working people. The answer should be to make capital pay for the crisis it created. If the goal is a just and sustainable society, it only makes sense to institute a steep tax on wealth, to reverse the corporate bailouts, and to democratize the economy.

Instead of trying in vain to tame an irra­ tional system, it is time to break the logic of the capitalist business cycle, to get off the treadmill of capitalist waste and op­ pression. It is time to put an end to profit from war and environmental destruction. It is time to dump the whole G20 agenda overboard.

To that end, Socialist Action advocates a number of concrete measures, policies in the interest of working people and the vast majority of NDP voters, which the NDP should be pushed to advance: Put people, and the preservation of nature, before profits. Nationalize the banks, mining companies, Big Oil and Big Auto. Create jobs through public investment, public ownership, democratic planning and workers’ control. Convert industry, transportation, and homes to green en­ ergy efficiency.

Rapidly phase-out nuclear power and tar sands development. Repair our dis­ integrating roads, bridges, railways and port facilities. Make Employment Insur­ ance more generous and accessible. Raise the minimum wage to $17/hour. Shorten the workweek to 30 hours without loss of pay or benefits. Double the benefits in the Canada Pension Plan and Guaranteed In­ come Supplement. Abolish student debt. Make all education free. Fund health care and the arts. No corporate bailout.

Open the company books. Steeply tax corporations, speculators, and the rich. Abolish the HST. Uphold aboriginal land claims and local self-governance. Abolish the Senate and institute direct Propor­ tional Representation in Parliament. Stop the deportations, full rights for migrant workers. Impose boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid. End the occupation of Afghanistan and Haiti. Hands off Libya. Reduce the Canadian military to a disaster-relief and rescue force. Get Canada out of NATO now!

It is a delusion to think that economic expansion will fix everything, that there is a market solution to the recurring cri­ ses of capitalism. The capitalist market created the problem. Only a social revolu­ tion can solve it. Only by taking control of the major means of production, only by instituting broadly participatory, demo­ cratic planning, only by effecting a rapid green conversion to meet human needs, fully in tune with nature, does humanity have a hope of survival.

That means challenging the pro-cap­ italist direction of the labour and NDP leadership. It means fighting for an NDP government committed to socialist poli­ cies. It means opposing an NDP coalition