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Focus On the Nation
Once More on the Harper Cabinet Shuffle Labour - January 21, 2010 Don Currie, Editor, Focus on Socialism Workers are going to be pressured by the federal government and corporate bosses for years to come to defer wage demands, work longer hours and pay higher taxes to pay down a war induced federal structural deficit. In spite of government denials, cuts to social spending are a certainty after the March 4th 2010 federal budget is tabled. Cuts will be hidden in baffle gab but they will occur. The media is trivializing the Harper Cabinet shuffle. On March 4th the Harper Government will present MP’s, locked out from their jobs by the Prime ministerial prorogation with an austerity budget . The Harper plan to stimulate the economy is a failure for the people. A huge deficit has been wrung up on behalf of banks and big investors and now the government is planning to dump that burden on the backs of working people. The Harper-Flaherty-Day March 4th austerity budget will be cunningly designed to justify $19 billion in annual social program cuts over the next few years, to wipe out a $56 billion structural deficit resulting from handouts to private banks, the private auto sector and exempt these parasites from paying back a penny of the public handouts they have received. The Harper Austerity Budget will cut social programs while maintaining rising expenditures of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan , and the ½ trillion dollar Canada First Defence Strategy. That is the significance of Stockwell Day taking over Treasury. With Day in charge, Canadian workers are in for a big pay cut from combined losses in social spending in health, welfare and seniors programs. After March 4th, Day can be relied upon to facilitate the further privatization of health services. Wage freezes on federal government employees are coming. Federal transfer payments to the provinces will be frozen. Provinces will be ordered to make do and download rising costs to cash strapped municipalities already desperately short of funds to operate the public school system and provide basic services. Without federal strings attached, provincial regimes will continue to close schools and use federal funds to pay off Olympic Games bondholders and fund such boondoggles as the Atlantic and Pacific Gateway projects. |
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The Way I See It! The Liberal Party Thinkers Conference, Montreal March 27, 28th 2010, was convened on the false premise that capitalism in Canada between today and 2017, the 150 Anniversary of Confederation, is still capable of progressive development. Nothing could be more remote from the truth. The G7 imperialist states, within which Canada is tightly enmeshed, will continue to lurch from one major crisis to another dragging the Canadian people into more chaos in the years ahead. Integration of these leading capitalist states neither assures strength nor unity. The more rigid the interdependence of the G7 becomes, the less these states are able to avoid being impacted by the collapse or crisis of one or another of their number. That would seem to be axiomatic to everyone except the Liberal and Conservative Parties, both of which promote an even tighter integration of Canada in the G7.
Ontario Communists Oppose Tory Private Member's Motion!
Equating Criticism of Israel with Hate Speech The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) is unequivocally opposed to the Private Members’ motion titled “Israeli Apartheid Week” moved by Tory MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill), and passed “unanimously” by about 30 MPPs present in the Ontario Legislature last Thursday February 25th.
Kevin Page Wallops Flaherty – With the Truth! Workers are going to be pressured by the federal government and corporate bosses for years to come to defer wage demands, work longer hours and pay higher taxes to pay down a war induced federal structural deficit. In spite of government denials, cuts to social spending are a certainty after the March 4th 2010 federal budget is tabled. Cuts will be hidden in baffle gab but they will occur. It is becoming clearer everyday why Harper prorogued Parliament. The economy is in dire straits and the government doesn’t want to answer for its pro-corporate policies. The January 13, 2010 Report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Kevin Page estimates that the Harper Conservatives have burdened Canadians workers with a huge structural deficit well into 2013. (Structural means it is permanent). The debt is largely due to government transfers of public money to the banks to prop up a sagging stock market during the global financial crisis, to pay for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and the half-a-trillion dollar Canada First Defence Strategy. The CBC reported that Page estimated in October 2008 that the war would had cost taxpayers $18 billion by 2011. All of the opposition parties including the NDP avoid talking about the war as a major factor in budget deficits. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty cheerily predicted a year ago that the government in 2008 would post a structural surplus of $13.8 billion compared to the PBO’s more realistic $3.2 structural surplus prediction. The latest PBO study shows that both were wrong and from an essentially balanced position in 2008 the country is headed for a structural deficit of $18.9 billion by 2013-14. That is on top of the statement of the government last September that the country was wallowing in a $59 billion fiscal deficit that would take ten years to discharge providing there was an estimated annual growth of 2.5 %.
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An
Open Letter to Alex Atamanenko You and I have spoken from the same platform and marched together in the same demonstrations in the cause of ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because of your public stance as an NDP MP for peace, your work in defence of the family farm and organized labour, your stance on environmental issues, on women’s rights, against racism and many other worthy causes of economic and social justice, my late wife Sylvia and I publicly supported your candidature and election.
The anti-people minority government of Steven Harper today outlined their dark and ominous vision for the Canadian people. Playing to his narrow and reactionary support base, Harper sketched his government’s plans for a continued assault on organized labour and the working people of Canada. The Throne Speech to the 3rd session of the 40th Parliament of Canada is a continuation the Harper doctrine which began in 2004 with the rise of the united right-wing in Canada.
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