PEOPLE'S VOICE - Issue of MARCH 16-31, 2021

The following articles are from the March 16-31, 2021 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper.

1. Oppose the new Cold War against China
2. Communists condemn Uyghur genocide declaration as baseless
3. CPC centenary: The Communist Party, Norman Bethune and the fight for socialized medicine
4. Struggle continues against cops in Vancouver schools
5. Solidarity with Quebec workers’ fight to protect health and safety laws
6. Free Julian Assange – Defend progressive journalism and the right to dissent!
7. Ford’s electoral reform brings restrictions for labour, privileges for the rich
8. Alberta budget a downhill ride for working people
9. Haitian people insist: “Moïse has to go!”
10. The K-shaped recovery – Kapitalist and Kolonialist

Oppose the new Cold War against China 

Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada

The imperialist campaign to foment a new Cold War against the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which began in earnest with US President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” in 2011 and accelerated sharply under the Trump Administration in recent years, continues to unfold. The Trudeau government, with the support and encouragement of all other parties in parliament, is playing an increasingly active role in this dangerous and highly de-stabilizing offensive against China. Those who stand for peace, disarmament, mutual respect and cooperation in international relations must speak out now in opposition to these ominous developments.

The main objective of this rancorous all-sided campaign of demonization is to blunt China’s economic and technological advance, tarnish its international prestige and diminish its influence in order to preserve US global hegemony over the world’s peoples and resources. Most alarming of all, it aims to create a pretext to justify a sharp escalation in arms spending and preparations for war which, by definition, would include the first-use of nuclear weapons. These war preparations to encircle China include the expansion of existing US bases and the construction of new bases in the Pacific “archipelago”, plans to install new intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the region and the increasingly provocative naval presence by the US and its allies, including Canada, in the South China Sea and the Straits of Taiwan.

This global game of chicken is fraught with danger. After suffering more than one hundred years of humiliation and oppression at the hands of Western colonial powers and Japanese imperialism, China and its peoples have stated repeatedly that they will not surrender to foreign interference, intimidation and dictates of any kind. Instead, they have called for a global ‘reset’ and a return to harmonious economic, political and diplomatic relations on the basis of equality, non-interference and mutual respect in line with the UN Charter and international law.

To its shame, Canada has played an increasingly vociferous role in this imperialist offensive. In December 2018, Canadian authorities detained Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, in Vancouver, where she has remained under house arrest ever since, while fighting a specious extradition order based on “fraud” charges for her company’s violation of US unilateral sanctions against Iran. This past October, a parliamentary committee accused China of “genocide” for its treatment of the Uyghurs and other national minorities in Xinjiang. Canadian ambassador Bob Rae repeated these groundless allegations on the floor of the UN General Assembly, stating that “there’s no question that… what the Chinese are doing fits into the definition of genocide in the genocide convention.” Yet, even as he was levelling these accusations, he admitted that “an investigation needs to be conducted to gather the required evidence.”

Last month, Canada signed a joint statement along with the US, Britain and Australia – four of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance (New Zealand, to its credit, refused to endorse) – condemning China for the arrest of 55 right-wing politicians in Hong Kong for subversion under the region’s new national security law. The championing of these US- and British-sponsored seditious activists who promoted street violence and the storming of the Hong Kong parliament in July 2019 in much the same anti-democratic manner that resulted in the ultra-right assault on the US Congress this past January, is ironic in the extreme.

And most recently, 13 MPs from all five sitting parties – including not only a number of Tory and Liberal members but also Denis Trudel and Stephane Bergeron from the BQ, NDP MPs Heather McPherson and Jenny Kwan, and both Green MPs Elizabeth May and Paul Manly – signed an open letter demanding that the International Olympic Committee move the 2022 Winter Olympics from China to avoid having athletes “tainted” by participating in the global sports competition which “would be comparable to the 1936 Berlin games under the Nazi regime.” This pathetic move is doomed to failure, but it is setting the stage for an imperialist-sponsored effort to boycott the 2022 Olympics, much like the Western-backed boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. It is yet another initiative to deliver a blow to China’s international image and to further stoke this hybrid war.

Imperialism’s economic, political and military offensive against China is framed and justified by a vicious ideological campaign tinged with racism and anti-communism. This cyber-information warfare configures the PRC as an ‘aggressive adversary’ or ‘enemy’ that threatens national security, the independence of other countries, and world peace as a whole. This “big lie” – repeated over and over ad nauseam – turns reality completely on its head. It is US/NATO imperialism which has waged wars of aggression and occupation, imposed punitive and illegal sanctions, constructed a web of over 800 foreign military bases around the globe and fomented destabilization and ‘regime change’ against countless countries around the world over many decades. China, on the other hand, has not engaged in a foreign war for more than 40 years (its brief military incursion into northern Vietnam in 1979 being the last such instance).

Its groundless accusation that China is guilty of ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang, feigning concern for the Muslim population, is particularly galling in its hypocrisy. It is precisely US imperialism which has murdered – either through direct military action or punitive economic sanctions – millions of innocent Muslims in Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya and the Occupied Territories of Palestine over the past two decades alone. It is the US and its allies which were responsible for the slaughter of millions on the Korean peninsula, in Vietnam and throughout South-East Asia. It is US imperialism that supported fascist coups and massacres in Indonesia, in Central America and Chile, and which has caused over 30,000 to perish in Venezuela due to economic strangulation since 2017. And of course, it is the US and Canadian states that stole the lands and impoverished and decimated Indigenous populations on its own territories for centuries and continue to do so. This is the true face of ‘genocide’ – then and now.

The Communist Party of Canada therefore condemns the coordinated campaign to whip up a new Cold War against China and the active participation of the Canadian state in promoting this nefarious and dangerous operation. Specifically, we urge all of our members and friends to support the campaign demanding the immediate release and repatriation of Meng Wanzhou, to oppose efforts to sabotage the 2022 Winter Olympics and demand that the Trudeau government end all hostile actions and political attacks on the PRC. Only such a turn in Canadian foreign policy will help to restore friendly and principled relations between Canada and the PRC and serve the cause of world peace.

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Communists condemn Uyghur genocide declaration as baseless

PV staff

The Communist Party of Canada has condemned the Parliament’s January 22 declaration that the Uyghur people of China are the victims of genocide. The motion was presented by the Conservative Party and has no basis in fact and is part of the new Cold War campaign to undermine China’s growing economic and political influence. 

The Party notes that the Chinese government’s campaign in Xinjiang province combines a commitment to fighting poverty with the need to confront recruitment by terrorist forces. “Unlike the US, which responds to acts of terrorism with illegal wars and invasions, waterboarding and other tortures, the Chinese government has responded to acts of terrorism and terrorist recruiting by the extremist East Turkistan Islamic Movement … with pre-emptive secular education programs, job creation, vocational training and other action to stop it and prevent its spread.”

Terrorist organizations in Xinjiang are responsible over 200 acts of violence in recent years, resulting in over 160 deaths and over 440 injuries. The East Turkistan Islamic Movement has been deemed a terrorist movement by the United Nations and several countries including the US, European Union and Britain.

The right-wing disinformation campaign claims that the Chinese government is acting to reduce Uyghur population growth and suppress the community’s culture, language and religion. However, as the Communist Party statement explains, the opposite is true. “The Uyghur population has grown by 25 percent during the last ten years as a result of the three-child policy in effect for the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Kazaks, Hui and other national minorities in China. Uyghur women and their families have been encouraged to have children, not prevented or sterilized without their consent. Uyghurs are not prevented from speaking their language and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has received state support from the central government for developing the Uyghur language and culture. Uyghur Muslims are free to practice their religion and the proliferation of over 25,000 mosques in Xinjiang is proof that this is the case.”  

Incomes and living standards are rising in Xinjiang where the per capita GDP of $8,300 is well above that of India ($6,700), Pakistan ($5,860) or Bangladesh ($4,700).

The Communist Party notes that, while the charge of genocide in Xinjiang doesn’t hold up to any serious examination of the facts, “it precisely describes the policy and actions of successive Canadian governments towards Indigenous peoples in this country since Confederation and before.”

While the Liberal cabinet officially abstained from the vote, it is clear that they remain in lock-step with the US government’s hawkish foreign policy towards China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and the Middle East. This includes support for US regime change operations, sanctions, military buildup and mass disinformation campaigns. That the NDP and Green Party supported the motion indicates the degree to which those parties have adopted imperialist foreign policy.

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has enthusiastically repeated this disinformation and publicly supported the genocide declaration. “The actions of the CLC to repeat this Big Lie, without any facts, shows how far the Liberal Party has penetrated the leadership of the organized labour movement in Canada,” stated the Communist Party.  

The charges of genocide are part of a long line of false information that imperialist countries have used as a pretext for aggression and war. These include the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” that never happened, but launched the US war on Vietnam, “the incubator babies” and “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist, but launched the US war in Iraq, and the “chlorine gas attacks” that never occurred, but launched new US bombing raids on Syria. With this Cold War declaration, the Canadian government has contributed to the deepening danger of war.

The Communist Party is calling on the progressive and democratic movements to “demand that the Canadian government stop parroting lines from the US Cold War campaign on China and instead focus on finding political solutions to the problems facing both countries, including the illegal detention and possible extradition of Meng Wanzhou to the US – another legacy of the Trump administration.”

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CPC Centenary:

The Communist Party, Norman Bethune and the fight for socialized medicine

Dave McKee

Canadian media and politicians claim that this country’s public healthcare system is “what separates us from the Americans.” Social democrats have baptized Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)/New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Tommy Douglas as the “Father of Medicare.” Election after election, opinion polls position healthcare as one of the key public concerns. Yet, for all this attention, the history of the struggle for socialized medicine in Canada remains poorly understood.

Douglas’ moniker is not an unfair one – without a doubt, he placed a high priority on creating universal provincial public healthcare when he was the CCF premier of Saskatchewan. He implemented key reforms and fought the medical establishment in Saskatchewan (and throughout North America) in 1962, paving the way for his successor, Woodrow Lloyd, to fully implement the universal healthcare program – the first in North America – which Douglas had introduced just prior to assuming federal leadership of the newlycreated NDP. Saskatchewan’s provincial system was used as the model for the Canada-wide health system created four years later by Lester Pearson’s Liberal government.

But leaving the story there – which far too many sources do – suggests that healthcare was designed and delivered to a passive population by a small handful of enlightened social reformers. Nothing could be further from reality.

For decades prior to Douglas’s government, workers and socialists had pressed for socialized medicine. This included communists who campaigned for healthcare at all levels – municipal, provincial and federal. A full three decades before the successful breakthrough in Saskatchewan, members of the Communist Party won a majority on the municipal council of Blairmore, Alberta where one of their key reforms was expanding the local public health service during the Great Depression.

The first motion for provincial healthcare in Manitoba was introduced in the legislature by James Litterick who was elected for the Communist Party in 1936. The motion was defeated, but reflected the growing demand among the working class. The first legislation for a cross-Canada healthcare system was introduced in the federal legislature by Fred Rose, a Communist Party member who was elected for the Labor-Progressive Party in 1941 and re-elected in 1943.

The communist who is best known for championing healthcare is Norman Bethune. His commitments to medicine and socialism eventually led him to the Spanish Civil War where he developed the mobile blood transfusion unit with the International Brigades and to the struggle against fascism in China where he trained and led volunteer medics in the Chinese Communist Party’s “guerrilla medical service” and saved tens of thousands of lives.

Following medical school, Bethune established his first practice in Detroit in 1924. His office was located among the city’s working poor and he quickly encountered the restriction and misery that is the sad accompaniment to the affluence of capitalism. He commented that practicing medicine in the midst of the shabby housing, poverty and sickness was “like putting a mustard plaster on a wooden leg.”

By the time he returned to Montreal in 1928, Bethune was full of anger at the class-based realities of healthcare and grappling with the contradiction between, on the one hand, the capacity of modern medicine to cure sickness and, on the other, the unwillingness of modern capitalist society to facilitate the universal provision of that care. He was increasingly drawn to radical political pamphlets and newspapers in an effort to explore and understand this connection. It led him to the Soviet Unionin 1935 where he learned that healthcare was provided free of charge, as a constitutional right, in well-furnished facilities. 

Inspired by the Soviet experience, Bethune joined the Communist Party of Canada and organized the “Montreal Group for the Security of the People’s Health.”  This group of doctors, nurses and social workers met regularly well into 1936 to plan a socialized medical system for Canada. 

Leading up to the Quebec provincial election in 1936, the Group prepared a detailed set of proposals for a socialized provincial medical system and released a manifesto on the eve of the vote. As part of their preparatory work, they helped to establish a Montreal-wide scheme of medical care for people on relief. This municipal effort and the pre-election work brought a large part of the population into action on the issue of socialized medicine. In addition, much of the logistical and administrative details pertaining to a socialized medical system were worked out and these provided some of the groundwork for the introduction of universal public healthcare across Canada years later.

Central to the Communist Party’s work on healthcare has always been its understanding that it is the masses who make change. Notwithstanding the importance of political leadership, without strong organizations of workers, farmers, health professionals and intellectuals, the dream of socialized medicine would have been just that and nothing more. In the current context of neoliberal cutbacks and privatization, the struggle to defend and expand healthcare requires the same degree of militant mass mobilization.

Informed by the work of its earliest members and driven by the needs of the working class and the dynamics of capitalist society, the Communist Party of Canada has continued to be a key voice for defending and expanding healthcare. This is reflected in the current push for universal pharmacare that includes a nationalized pharmaceutical industry and for publiclyowned and operated long-term care to be provided through healthcare – demands that have become urgent during the coronavirus pandemic.

The struggle for socialized medicine and healthcare is one of the clearest examples of how the history of the Communist Party is intertwined with that of the labour and people’s movements. Based on this fact alone, the Party’s centenary is something for the whole working class to celebrate.

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Struggle continues against cops in Vancouver schools

Kimball Cariou

Despite several years of pressure by students, parents and anti-racism activists, armed police officers remain in Vancouver schools. Last year, the Vancouver School Board (VSB) announced a review of "cops in schools" but the process has been slowed by pandemic conditions, bureaucratic inertia and the reluctance of some school trustees to fully recognize the serious negative impacts for many students and staff.

The June 2020 decision to conduct a review came after requests to cancel the program from the District Parents Advisory Council, the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers Association and several organizations representing Vancouver’s Black community.

The School Liaison Officer (SLO) program involves 17 Vancouver Police Department (VPD) officers and one Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer and is funded by the VPD and RCMP. With office space in 18 secondary schools, the officers interact with upwards of 48,000 children in their daily K-12 education, according to an article by Tyee journalist Katie Hyslop.

After an initial draft of the review was made public in early March, the VSB announced a consultation meeting on March 8. This could give concerned people from the public education community a real opportunity to put some heat on the nine trustees, only two of whom – OneCity's Jennifer Reddy and COPE's Barb Parrott – have called to cancel the program.

Seven other trustees have so far failed to respond to public pressure. This sad reality illustrates how the balance of forces on the VSB has shifted to the right since the 2002-2011 period when progressive trustees like Adrienne Montani, Patti Bacchus and Jane Bouey were usually in the majority.

Several incidents in recent years have pointed to a failure to properly address systemic racism in Vancouver schools. In one case, Hyslop writes, a school liaison officer stationed at Lord Byng Secondary for the 2018-2019 school year was one of two officers involved in the shooting of a person of colour experiencing mental distress in 2014. No charges were laid against the officer, but a member of the BC Community Alliance, representing Black organizations in Vancouver, raised the issue at a VSB committee meeting to support the call to cancel the SLO program.

Other incidents at Lord Byng have raised serious concerns, especially the shockingly inappropriate police and administration handling of an anti-Black racist bomb threat made by a student at the school in November 2018. In the wake of that case, two Black students left the school.

Last October, seven delegates (six of whom identified as Black or African-Caribbean) addressed a VSB committee and called for the program’s immediate cancellation. Several spoke about barriers they faced in signing up to speak, including requirements to share what they planned to say ahead of time and even being rejected because another member of the Black community had already signed up to speak to the same issue.

The delegates received an apology from the committee chair (school trustee Lois Chan-Pedley), but the VSB’s later changes to how the public can address committees did not include improvements.

OneCity trustee Jennifer Reddy points out that "back in June 2020... hundreds of parents and students describe(d) how having police officers in school made them feel less – not more – safe. I had serious concerns about the presence of police in schools undermining the Access Without Fear guidelines for families with uncertain immigration status, the VSB’s affirmation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the history of policing failures for Indigenous and Black students and families."

Now, Reddy and Parrott are urging trustees to listen to the voices of young people, especially Black and Indigenous students, and to be prepared to do more than pay lip service to anti-racism slogans. The community will be closely monitoring the March 8 board meeting and the Board's follow-up actions.

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Solidarity with Quebec workers’ fight to protect health and safety laws

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada expresses its full support for the unions, workers, democratic and popular organizations of Quebec who are campaigning against Bill 59, An Act to Modernize the Occupational Health and Safety Regime, which the Legault government introduced last fall. 

The legislation is a Trojan horse – under the pretext of "modernizing the occupational health and safety regime" and extending health and safety laws to cover 94 percent of employees, it shamelessly attacks workers’ rights to safe employment and compensation for work-related injuries. Bill 59 represents a series of substantial setbacks that minimize the rights of injured workers in order to maximize capitalist profits. It is no coincidence that only the employers support this despicable law. 

Under the changes, it will be left to employers to design and choose the doctor responsible for prevention programs. Currently, the doctor is chosen by a joint committee of representatives of employers and workers. Moreover, the role and powers of these joint committees is likely to be greatly diminished since the time allocated to their meetings and deliberations varies according to the risk level associated with the activity in question. For 63 percent of employees, this level is considered low, so they would only have access to ridiculously weak prevention measures.

The sector-specific organization of risk assessment means that female-dominated areas such as health and education would be considered low risk, while male-dominated ones would be deemed high risk. In addition to this gender discrimination, it is scandalous that the health sector would be recognized as low risk during a pandemic in which 90 percent of COVID-related claims to Quebec’s Commission for Standards on Equity, Health and Safety in the Workplace (CNESST) involve workers in this sector. 

Bill 59 strikes hard at compensation of workplace accidents and the recognition of occupational diseases, forcing injured workers to face many additional obstacles. Among these, the proposed legislation does everything possible to force workers to return to work early – even those who are receiving medical care. CNESST will have the power to force early returns without the consent of the attending physician. The commission will also have the power to add new criteria for the eligibility of occupational diseases. Bill 59 will also abolish the already insufficient physical rehabilitation program for workers who are victims of serious accidents. 

Far from being safe, workplaces in Quebec are accidentprone and conducive to occupational diseases. In 2019, there were more than 94,000 work accidents – nearly 260 per day – and close to 13,000 cases of occupational disease. Due to the pandemic, statistics for 2020 and subsequent years will likely be even worse.  

The Legault government is gambling with workers’ health and safety in the middle of a global COVID-19 pandemic which has been particularly cruel for Quebec. Bill 59 disproportionately attacks workers who do not have union protection, particularly precariously employed workers who are overwhelmingly women and racialized people. 

Quebec’s occupational health and safety regime was won through significant labour struggles. For several years, unions have tried to update it and ensure that it covers the majority of workers, but corporations have always blocked these efforts. This is the context in which the Legault government is forcing through this legislation which is not a "dusting off," but a “levelling down” which seriously attacks these hard-won rights. 

If passed, Bill 59 will be a setback not only for Quebec workers, but for all who fight against the Legault government’s anti-social and anti-people policies. Opposition to this legislation is likely to be decisive, especially since governments will do everything possible over the next few months to make working people pay for the current economic crisis. Fighting Bill 59 is a first step to stopping Legault's pro-corporate policies and demonstrating the militancy and determination needed to win a People’s Recovery – not a corporate one. 

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Free Julian Assange,defend progressive journalism and the right to dissent!

Communist Party of Canada

Around the world, as the contradictions of capitalism sharpen, neoliberal governments are becoming more aggressive about clamping down on dissent. This includes increasing attacks on journalists and media that are critical of capitalism, that expose the crimes of imperialism or that work to build solidarity with progressive struggles.

One of the key examples of this is the case of Julian Assange, the Australian journalist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. Assange came under attack from the US government after WikiLeaks published extensive information about US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as about intelligence operations at US diplomatic missions around the world. The information included details about war crimes committed by US and allied forces such as previously coveredup civilian casualties and the use of psychological warfare and torture.

Immediately upon publication of these leaked documents, the US government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks, Assange and US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (who was convicted of leaking the information and imprisoned for seven years). Well aware that he would not receive anything close to a fair trial in the US, Assange avoided extradition by seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain where he lived for seven years until the Ecuadorian government withdrew his amnesty and he was arrested by British police.

Since his arrest in 2019, Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison while his extradition to the US is pending. In January, a British judge denied his extradition on the basis that his health has declined during imprisonment to the extent that his life is jeopardized. On February 12, US President Joe Biden formally appealed that ruling and pressed for Assange to be sent to the US for trial on charges of espionage.

Assange has now become the target of three US presidents from both the Republican and Democratic parties. If convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison. But this case is about much more than Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

The Canadian government has been fully complicit in this campaign against Assange, a stance that is rooted in Canada’s support for – and reliance upon – US imperialism including its military aggressions. Throughout the nine-year ordeal, the Canadian government has maintained a conspicuous silence, no doubt out of fear that this country’s own crimes may be exposed through WikiLeaks.

Just three months after Assange’s 2019 arrest from the Ecuadorian embassy, Canada’s then Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland co-hosted a conference on media freedom with British Foreign Secretary Jeremey Hunt who had overseen the arrest. She made no mention of Assange whatsoever. Instead, she stated that Canada and Britain were “working together to defend media freedom and improve the safety of journalists.”

Through its deliberate silence, the Canadian government is a partner in Assange’s persecution and torture as well as in the overall attack on journalistic freedom and the right to dissent.

Throughout this case, Assange has received support from media, legal, medical and human rights organizations around the world. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Nils Melzer stated in 2019 that as a result of his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy and his subsequent imprisonment, Assange “showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.” In 2020, the group Doctors for Assange, which includes over 200 medical practitioners from 33 countries, demanded an end to his “torture and medical neglect.” At his 2020 extradition trial, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute condemned Assange’s mistreatment including the limits which the British legal system placed on his ability to communicate with his lawyers.

The only “offense” that has been committed is telling people around the world about the crimes of US imperialism. If this is in fact a crime, it is one that thousands of labour, peace and solidarity activists as well as thousands more journalists, researchers, academics and writers across Canada are also guilty of.  What is at stake in Assange’s persecution is the freedom to publish critical analysis of the actions of the capitalist state: the very right to dissent. 

The labour and progressive movements in Canada should be at the forefront of a campaign for Assange’s freedom. These movements have all faced similar attacks – from the Padlock Law during Maurice Duplessis’ “grand noirceur” to CSIS espionage against leaders of unions like the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to police raids on 2S/LGBTiQ bookshops and publishers to the arrest and jailing of Indigenous journalists covering land actions at 1492 Land Back Lane and many other examples.

One of the most consistent targets of these state attacks has been the Communist Party which has been illegal for approximately onethird of its hundred-year history and experienced extended periods of state surveillance and infiltration and whose leaders have been imprisoned on several occasions.

The Communist Party of Canada condemns the decade-long legal campaign against Julian Assange, the use of psychological torture by the British and US governments and the complicity of the Canadian government in these attacks. We call for Assange to be freed immediately.

We encourage the labour and progressive movements in Canada to take up this demand and to put pressure on the Canadian government to work for Assange’s freedom.

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Ford’s electoral reform brings restrictions for labour, privileges for the rich

Drew Garvie

In the last days of February, Doug Ford’s Conservative government unveiled new plans for electoral reform in Ontario. The changes in Bill 254, The Protecting Elections Act, increase the political power of corporations while putting new limits on election participation for organized labour. Ford hopes the changes will get his government re-elected to another term next year.

The bill will double annual donation limits, place further limits on “third party” spending, prolong per-vote funding to large political parties and increase the available number of advance polling days. While increasing advance polling days from five to ten will be helpful in the event of a pandemic election, the more substantive changes involve donations and spending limits.

The Conservatives have been campaigning against “third-party spending” in Ontario for many years with previous Tory leaders blaming the union-backed Working Families Coalition for their defeats. The Coalition was effective in building opposition to key Conservative policies like “right-to-work” legislation and attacks on the public sector.

Far from being threats to democracy, unions are democratic, working-class organizations. Third parties are often described as “special interest groups” but the workingclass makes up the vast majority of the population in Ontario – its interests are the interests of the majority. Corporations on the other hand are entirely top-down organizations with accountability only to a small number of shareholders whose sole interest is profit.

Sweeping election changes were introduced by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government in 2016 which was caught in a series of “cash for access” scandals that lifted the veil on wealthy donors paying large sums to lobby government ministers. Wynne’s legislation banned unions and corporations from donating directly to political parties. It also established spending limits for third parties which were set at $600,000 for the six-month period prior to a general election. The Conservatives now want to extend the time period to one year before an election in order to further curtail any possible opposition by the labour movement. This anti-labour policy was invented by the Liberals and is now being expanded by the Tories.

While pretending to oppose “third parties” in general, the Conservatives are not actually against corporate-controlled third-party election campaigns. It was not labour that spent the biggest amounts during the 2018 election, but groups like Ontario Proud which spent nearly half a million in money fundraised directly from real-estate developers and non-union construction companies. This campaign was pro-Conservative and helped to propel Ford into office.

The government’s other reforms open the door to shifting funds from big businesses back into the Conservative Party’s coffers. Annual donations will be doubled to $3,300 a year per person to a party, candidate or constituency association. When you consider that an individual can potentially make a $3,300 donation to the three different donation categories in a year, the annual donation limit will now stand at almost $10,000 to any particular political party.

In 2016, there was concern that corporate donations could still occur if companies gave funds to individuals to make donations. The Liberal government’s weak solution was to add a declaration to any donation saying that it was voluntary and made with personal funds. In 2019, the Ford government removed the requirement for this declaration. The Conservatives hold large dinner fundraisers with tickets costing over $1200 each that have a large presence from corporations and lobbyists.

Spending limits for election campaigns should be dramatically lowered in order to stop the best-funded parties from buying elections. Instead, Ford has focused only on the area of third party spending through which the working class and its organizations are able to make an impact with their own voice.

The government is also extending the per-vote funding that goes to the large political parties which began with the 2016 reforms. While Ford previously said that he would cut this funding, he has decided to increase and extend it with the reasoning that parties need stability to weather the economic crisis. However, the political parties in Queen’s Park did not see a substantial drop in donations last yearand Liberal donations tripled. The Conservatives are set to receive almost $6 million this year under the per-vote funding.

The Communist Party receives no funding at all through the per-vote subsidy since the Liberals introduced a threshold to ensure that smaller parties do not benefit from it. This is a form of state funding that only goes towards the largest parties.

The Ontario Conservatives are trying to portray themselves as defenders of democracy against third parties’ special interests. However, since Ford took office, there have been a series of scandals connecting donations to Conservatives with political influence.

In 2019, it was revealed that Ford was doing photo-ops through his personal propaganda outlet, Ontario News Now, involving at least five businesses whose owners had donated funds to the Ontario Conservatives. These included Pelee Winery, Patriot Forge and Curtainsider. This year, it emerged that the government had used ministerial zoning orders thirty-seven times in the last two years to push through development by overriding local planning and existing zoning rules. Fourteen of these orders were for development on sites with environmental concerns and nine of these cases directly benefited developers that collectively donated more than $250,000 to the Ontario Conservatives. Three of these same developers had previously donated $150,000 to Ontario Proud in 2018.

It is true that Ontario is in serious need of electoral reform, but the reforms on offer from the Ford government need to be defeated. The Communist Party continues to fight to deepen democracy including through equal access to media and debates, a mixed member proportional representation electoral system, much lower campaign spending limits, right-to-recall legislation affecting all politicians and capping politicians’ salaries at the average workers’ wages. Ontario Communists continue to fight for extending the voting age to 16 and allowing all inhabitants to vote in municipal and provincial elections regardless of immigration status.

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Alberta budget a downhill ride for working people

PV Alberta Bureau

To market its new budget, released on February 25, Alberta’s United Conservative government chose the image of a family flying down a hill on a toboggan. It’s an eerily appropriate choice – with its massive drop in healthcare workers’ wages, huge decline in education spending and plummeting funding for municipalities, the budget guarantees working people a swift downhill ride to austerity and privatization.

Health

The Kenney government is budgeting $20 billion over three years to subsidize construction, including new hospitals. This is beyond ironic, since the budget targets healthcare workers for 1.2 billion in wage cuts. Since the projection is to add 7,000 healthcare jobs, this can only mean that healthcare in general is targeted to become a low-wage sector. After picking a fight with the province’s doctors over the past two years, resulting in significant loss of services in some smaller centres, this budget only ensures continuing resentment and an ongoing shortage of doctors by retaining the cap their pay.

K-12 education

While K-12 education funding is slated to rise by $26 million over three years, the amount actually going to school boards and schools will drop by $26 million. Money specifically for instruction of students from pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 will drop by $117 million, or 1.7 percent, even as inflation and population are expected to increase. 

Where does the projected increase in education funding go? To private schools, of course.

Alberta Teachers’ Association President Jason Schilling said, “We are concerned that budget documents show $27 million less in expenditures on instruction in Budget 2021, while private schools see an increase of $20 million in funding. Next year public education will continue to experience cost pressures as enrollment is expected to grow again, new curriculum will be piloted and COVID will still be impacting classrooms, but we’re not sure the funding will be there to support these challenges.”

Post-secondary education

The budget will devastate post-secondary education, delivering an $82 million cut on top of the deep reductions in the previous budget. Even more sinister, the provincial government plans to impose “a performance based funding model” on all post-secondary institutions that receive funding. This move directly threatens independent scholarship, long-term research or any kind of education that is not technical job training.

Municipalities

The budget promises municipalities $1.2 billion in funding through the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI), which is directed towards local infrastructure like roadways and bridges, water and wastewater systems, public transit and recreation and sports facilities. The UCP claims this funding is $200 million more than last year and will protect the economy from job losses during the pandemic.

However, following this one-time funding injection, the total funding to municipalities will drop by 44 percent, and municipalities across the province will share just $485 million for 2022 and 2023. The single year increase combined with cuts thereafter means that no long-term infrastructure improvements can be planned. This effectively off-loading significant service cuts or tax increases, or both, onto municipalities. 

Economic stagnation

The UCP’s economic projections continue to be based on passively hoping that oil prices and oil production will go up. The budget makes only the paltriest sums available for the smallest scale research and development by small business. The government’s response to US President Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline is a combination of pretending it didn’t happen and considering spending even more money on taking it to court.

This narrow economic vision, rooted in support for oil monopolies, is related to the UCP’s attack on the public sector. As Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan said, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that while Kenney wants to cut $1.3 billion from public-sector wages, his failed Keystone XL Pipeline boondoggle will cost Alberta about $1.3 billion, on top of the failed corporate tax costing us billions without creating a single job. Public sector workers can be forgiven if they think that the Kenney government is making them pay for his failed corporate-welfare experiments.”

The budget is the latest indication – in a very long line – that working people have nothing to gain from the Kenney government. “Think of anything that might make life better for working people in the long run or help them immediately in the pandemic-recession crisis gripping Alberta,” said provincial Communist Party leader Naomi Rankin, “and you can be confident the budget released February 25 will do the opposite.”

Alberta workers must mobilize to defeat this budget and the United Conservatives.

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Haitian people insist: “Moïse has to go!”

Adrien Welsh

According to the Constitution of Haiti, President Jovenel Moise’s term finished on February 7. But Moise, in a way that reminds many Haitians of the Duvalier dictatorship, is hanging onto his title and pretending he can remain in power another year. By doing so, he not only flouts the constitutionthat was won through mass struggles that drove out ‘Baby Doc’ but is arousing fear among many Haitians that he will impose a new anti-democratic constitution.

This threat to democracyled the labour movement to organize a nationwide general strike on February 1-2 demanding that Moïse step down on February 7, as stipulated in the constitution. Not only did Moïse not step down that day, but he arrested 23 people including a Supreme Court judge under the pretext of an attempted coup d’état. In reality he is the one carrying out a coup.

Massive demonstrations have erupted throughout the country, demanding that Moïse step down and that elections be called as soon as possible. Literally all popular sectors are involved, except the corrupt few who benefit from Moïse’s rule, and the mobilizations are standing strong despite brutal repression including National Police attacks usingtear gas and rubber and live ammunition.

The Haitian police receive significant financing and training fromCanada, including from municipal police forces and the RCMP. These Canadian police forces claim to be there to improve safety and security, yet the number of crimes keeps increasing.

Moïse’s attack against the people is not limited to this episode. His track record shows a clear tendency to use democracy only when it suits his own purposes – and those of imperialism in the region. Before his presidencyhad even started, allegations of electoral fraud during the 2015 elections forced him to call new ones a year later. The second election was deemed to be acceptable and Moïse was re-elected, but his legitimacy is highly compromised. Adding to this is the fact the there has been no functioning parliament for over a year, with the president ruling by decree.

The protests that are shaking the country now are linked to ones that erupted in 2019 as a consequence of the massive corruption scandal that entangled Moïse and his circle. This involved$4 billion dollars, which represents a little more than 50 percent of the country’s GDP, that was fraudulently taken from a loan given to Haiti by Venezuela’s PetroCaribe. This money was intended to be used for public interest projects which have never seen the light of the day.

Haiti is often described as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere andthe people live with this level of corruption on a daily basis. Haitians from the diaspora encounter this as well – last month, Quebec media reported that one of the president’s wealthy allies bought a mansion in Laval for over $4 million.

Since the coup d’état against democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Canada, (along with France and other imperialist powers) has been blatantly complicit in the economic, social and democratic attacks againstHaiti. Through its participation in the Core Group, Canada is one of the main countries preventing the Haitian people from freely choosing their path of development. The Canadian government works hand in hand with other imperialist powers to impose a puppet regime that will allow them to interfere in sovereign matters, loot resources and occupy the country with impunity. Lackeys like Moïse are also useful allies for Canada and the Lima Group to support potential further sanctions against Venezuela. This helps explain why Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, speaking with his Haitian counterpart just days after the January 7 deadline, effectively recognized Moïse’s government despite the demand by all democratic forces of the country, including judiciary institutions, for him to step down.

Canada has a track record of collaborating with and providing open support to pro-imperialist dictatorships, coups d’état and invasions in the region and throughout the world. There is a double standard by which Canada seems to have no problem supporting a government with no legitimacy that flouts democratic and human rights in Haiti, while it spreads lies about Venezuela and itsdemocratically elected president Nicolas Maduro.

This contradiction is two sides of one same coin. For imperialist powers, including Canada, there is no such thing as human rights or democracy. There are only capitalist profits to safeguard. When a country like Venezuela adopts a Constitution that prevents imperialist powers from ruling, it has to be overthrown by all means. When a puppet like Moïse obeys orders from Washington, it has to stay in place at all costs.

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The K-shaped recovery – Kapitalist and Kolonialist

Editorial

For months now, politicians and economists have been speaking of a “K-shaped” recovery from the pandemic-related economic crisis. They often describe it as “different parts of the economy recovering at different rates, times or magnitudes.” It’s a neutral description, pushing the idea that there the economy is merrily guided by its own eternal dynamics – cleverly adapting to even the most difficult circumstances with nary (or very rarely) a significant impact by human action.

Government policy? Nah, that doesn’t have a place in the free market!

Except that it does.

There is, of course, a logic to capitalism and its internal contradictions drive it toward ever deeper crises. This publication and all of its predecessors were founded specifically to promote the need for socialist transformation, in order to build a society freed from those contradictions.

But this doesn’t mean we should lose sight of the importance of pushing for government policies that, even in capitalism, commit to putting people’s needs before corporate greed. Engaging in such a struggle is key for both winning meaningful immediate reforms and opening more people’s eyes to the limits of capitalism and the need for socialism.

A news story from the end of February, which flew well under most people’s radar, is a good case in point. The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) issued a statement saying that compensation to First Nation families for the federal government's racist child welfare system will cost $15 billion. The reference is to a longstanding government policy that has deliberately underfunded First Nations child welfare for years. Despite repeated calls for justice from Indigenous peoples and their allies, the Trudeau government continues to fight a 2016 Human Rights Tribunal ruling that called for an end to the racist funding practices and for compensation to affected individuals and families.

The next day, the PBO estimated that the government's new warship procurement will be $17 billion over budget. This purchase was already the largest military procurement in Canadian history and will cost nearly $80 billion.The warships are being built by Irving Corporation, which is privately owned by one of Canada's richest families. The wealth of family head Arthur Irving alone has more than doubled to $7.6 billion during the pandemic.

Peace and progressive organizations across the country have called on the government to cut military spending, to help fund people's needs and climate justice. Canning the warship program seems to be an obvious way to pay for First Nations child welfare. But Trudeau and Co. have dug in, clearly saying that 115,000 First Nation children will continue to endure woefully inadequate child services, in order to pay Irving Corporation billions of dollars for warships.

And that brings us back to the K – shaped recovery. The Canadian government’s colonialist and capitalist policies ensure that huge corporations like Irving will ride the wave of the letter K’s upper arm, soaring to new heights of wealth and power, while Indigenous people (and workers, women, 2S/LGBTiQ and gender oppressed folks, youth and students, Black and racialized people, the environment…) will be sent hurtling down the lower arm towards poverty and insecurity.

A militant mobilization that unites working people around a radical program can block these colonialist and corporate approaches, win progressive reforms and open the door to more radical change. After all, K also stands for Knockout Punch.

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