October Election Looms – Fight for an NDP Gov’t. & Socialist Solutions

by Barry Weisleder / September 2008

As we go to press, a Canadian federal election in October seems likely. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority government have grown weary of tepid resistance from the Liberal official opposition—despite surviving more than 40 confidence motions and passing three budgets. The Tories are prepared to disregard their own ‘fixed election date’ law, and risk their tenuous grip on the steering wheel in favour of a chance at driving the ship of state harder and faster to the right.

In a transparent attempt to disguise their aims, the Tories abandoned MP Ken Epp’s anti-abortion bill that seeks to make injuring or killing a fetus a criminal offense. But they did nothing to disguise their devotion to big business (promising more corporate tax cuts) or to conceal their indifference to laid-off workers (a stunning 55,000 jobs lost in July alone), the environment (even ignoring the sub-minimal Kyoto accord), or medicare (by favouring a two-tier system).

They do not hide their disdain for culture (by slashing $44.8 million in arts spending by April of 2010), for peace (by sacrificing more lives and billions of dollars in the Afghan quagmire), or for honesty in government. Indeed, it is the Tories’ haste to put an end to parliamentary committee investigations into their illegal election financing schemes, and the farcical Maxime Bernier affair (leaving classified documents at his ex-biker girl friend’s house) that impels them to go to the polls. Most of all, it is fear that the economy and the environment will be in much worse shape a year from now that has emboldened Harper to pull the plug on Parliament.

The Liberal Party, led by the charismatically challenged Stephane Dion, counterposes their ‘green shift’ plan to Harper’s soft ‘cap-and-trade’ market plan—in other words, they promote more regressive taxes to save the planet, as opposed to the Tories’ laissez-faire business climate-change model. The Green Party pushes even harder for regressive taxes on fuel and waste. None of the capitalist parties has much to offer the jobless or the homeless, except perhaps a Wal-Mart greeter’s apron or a soldier’s battle fatigues.

This leaves the door wide open for the union-based New Democratic Party. The NDP website highlights health care; clean air, land and water; economic security; anti-poverty measures; and democratic reform. The party’s policies include a commitment to train more doctors and nurses, provide free dental care and drugs to seniors, stop federal subsidies going to for-profit health care, and expand home care.

The NDP promises to implement energy efficiencies, develop renewable resources and transportation alternatives, reduce college and university fees, and establish public child care. Its platform calls for pension security, pay equity, a $10 federal minimum wage, and more accessible employment insurance.

The NDP pledges to invest $1.6 billion in social and co-op housing, to resolve aboriginal land claims, and to respect native self-governance. It says it will halt Canada’s integration into the U.S. energy and ‘security’ net, and the health, safety and environmental lower standards of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

Unfortunately, none of these proposals challenge corporate control of the economy. Lacking too are policies designed to ensure adequate funding of its modest reforms, such as major tax hikes aimed at big business and the banks, and the nationalization of the oil and gas companies, plus the use of industry super-profits to develop safe, clean energy alternatives. Sadly, there is no mention of removing Canadian military forces from Afghanistan, quitting NATO, demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and giving support to U.S. war resisters.

And there is still no indication that the NDP will fight for government, rather than meekly seek to fortify the ‘loyal opposition’ or, as bourgeois pundits put it, act as the ‘left wing moral conscience of the country’. For one thing, the NDP is not very left wing. For another, failure to fight for government tends to reinforce the ‘lesser-evil’, tactical voting syndrome that siphons NDP votes towards the Liberals.

The best way forward is for labour unionists, socialists, feminists, and all progressive people to get involved in the party’s election campaign as active partisans of working class political independence and the struggle for an NDP government committed to a Workers’ Agenda.