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Talking About Wage Earners Acting For Big Business
CPS Election Analysis 2008 - Week 3
Don Currie – Chair CPS, September 14, 2008
Big business has anointed the Harper Conservatives as their first choice on October 14th. The Dion Liberals are a second best. The corporate bosses believe they have another “win-win’ as the profit system slides into global recession.
Not everyone is fooled. The leaders of organized labour from coast to coast are warning members not to vote Conservative. Organized labour is right. Harper is the wrong choice for workers. Harper doesn’t have a hidden agenda he has an unfinished anti-labour agenda.
Big business needs Harper in power to make workers pay for the US recession overtaking North America. The wealthy vote Conservative because they want a government that protects investment income as the economy tanks. They want a government in power that puts their economic interests first.
The Harper Conservatives are the party big business relies on to “get tough” with labour, freeze wages, deregulate and privatize government programs that serve the common good. They rely on Harper to continue to cut taxes on corporate profits. The Harper Conservatives are the party of corporate entitlement.
There is no reason for any worker to vote Conservative. The Harper Conservatives have turned their backs on all labour. What the Harper Government permitted to happen to auto and manufacturing sector workers in Ontario and Quebec will happen to energy sector workers in Alberta. Harper is the friend of the oil companies not the oil workers.
As winter approaches many working class families confront job loss and falling purchasing power. Gas and home heating costs are going up. There is an inflationary rise in the cost of food, rents and mortgages. A Harper government supports Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s low royalty rates, tax write offs and deferrals for oil investors. Harper permits the oil and gas industry to manipulate investment, production and marketing to keep energy profits up.
Harper will continue to promote the sell-out of Canada’s strategic energy reserves to the USA and along with it our country’s economic independence.
Harper is a bad economic manager. He is a slave to neo-con market theories. He is opposed to government programs that protect worker’s budgets from inflation. His government squandered large federal surpluses on a US-NATO foreign war while underfunding health care, child care and pensions. Our cities and public transit are starved for funds and Harper shifts billions of worker’s taxes to the military. Rural Canada is forgotten.
Harper has a separate view of Canadian democracy. Overwhelmingly Canadians have declared their support for the public health care system. Harper permits creeping privatization. Harper enforces anti-terrorism laws that challenge the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
A majority of Canadians want Canada out of the war in Afghanistan. The Manley Report, a Liberal-Conservative deal, says Canadians are wrong. They assert Canadians have a “moral obligation” to keep our armed forces in Afghanistan until 2011 and beyond. The Manley Report sets decisions at NATO in Brussels above the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa.
Harper agrees. Canadians must die in a war started by an American President, to prop up Afghan war lords, to protect a Central Asian gas pipeline for global investors. There is nothing moral about it.
Harper must be defeated before he and his neo-con policies completely wreck Canada.
Harper is the wrong choice for labour.
Left turn Canada! |