Vote NDP in June 12 Ontario election
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Liberal, Conservative, and Green parties, which rep resent different factions of business elite, and only different versions of the austerity agenda of capital.
By pulling the plug on Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal minority government at Queen’s Park, Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath gambled big time, and left her supporters puzzled. The gamble is that voters disgusted with the scandal-plagued Liberal Party regime will turn to the third-place NDP, as opposed to the openly labour-hating Conservatives under Tim Hudak, who lead in opinion polls.
The puzzle is whether Horwath will campaign to the left, or to the right of the Liberals. In rejecting the provincial Liberal Budget on May 2, the NDP leader made the issue one of “trust,” and hinted that the Liberals were engaged in a desperate spending spree to win votes. This seems in line with Hor wath’s refusal to support the $14/hour minimum wage campaign backed by the union movement, and her populist anti-tax agenda focussed on the “mid dle class.”
While the labour leadership is divided over the aborted Liberal Budget, which offered a pay raise for home-care workers, a new retirement income scheme, and some investment in public transit, now is the time for Labour to demand these things and much more from inside the NDP campaign.
Workers’, students’, women’s, seniors’, tenants’ and anti-poverty organizations need to come together to stop Hudak, and to replace the Wynne regime with an NDP government committed to socialist policies.
At the policy forefront should be demands for a major shift of the tax burden from workers and the poor, onto the big banks, corporations, and the rich. This is urgently needed to reverse the austerity cuts and to invest in the construction of affordable hous ing and mass public transit. A major boost in fund ing is needed to revive health care, education, social services, recreational facilities, and to repair longneglected infrastructure, like roads, bridges, railway tracks, water pipes, sewers, and electrical systems.
A massive public works initiative, as outlined above, will generate tens of thousands of jobs, es pecially for the nearly excluded new generation of young workers, including aboriginal youths. But many more jobs are needed. An NDP government should not hesitate to use public ownership, under workers’ and community control, to create useful, meaningful jobs for all, with decent pay and ben efits, including good defined-benefit pension plans.
The NDP should give voters something to vote for, not just someone to vote against. The key to prog ress is the fight for a Workers’ Agenda. n the War. Now that he is in a position of influence and power, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, he has metamor phosed from antiwar activist to imperial ist war hawk.
Fortunately for Harper and Kerry, they can hold these positions and contradict them freely, for it is clear as day that their actions are not motivated by principle or respect for international law, but by crude geo-political strivings for power and profit abroad.
Unfortunately for Canada, the media’s rabid focus on Putin’s wrongdoings have blown the situation out of proportion. While condemnation of his oligarchical regime is justified, it is no reason to take our own government’s sabre-rattling rhetoric at face value.
Canadians who are outraged Russia’s actions, but were not so opposed to Canada’s presence in Afghanistan,