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Statement – Canadians for Peace and Socialism:
Organized Labour and a Liberal-NDP-Bloc Coalition Government
November 29, 2008
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
A Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois to oust the Harper Conservatives may be taking shape. The Conservative Government is maneuvering desperately to remain in power. A non-confidence motion may happen next week.
Organized labour and the non-sectarian left must support the ousting of the Harper Conservatives. No progress for working people can occur with the Conservatives in power. Failure to defeat Prime Minister Harper and administer a rebuff to his reactionary anti-labour pro-war government may mean months of inaction and the opportunity for the extreme right to regroup before another election is called. Any corporate backroom deals to keep the Conservatives in power must be exposed and rejected.
A Parliamentary crisis resulting from the collapse of the capitalist economy must be seen for what it is, a moment of opportunity for labour and the popular movements to move into action and influence events and press demands for peace and democratic economic renewal.
Regardless of what happens next week, there must be no going back to Conservative-corporate rule. A new type of people’s economic and political democracy is urgently required and must be fought for even as events unfold.
The Conservative politics of exclusion, cronyism, insider backroom corporate dealing, coddling the banks all on behalf of big oil has proven to be a disaster for the country and must be condemned and ended.
Real democracy means that every MP is called upon to respect the will of a majority of Canadians that reject the Harper Conservatives. A majority are calling for the full resources of the state to be used first to protect working people from a Dirty Thirties depression. The Harper Conservative plan to ban strikes, freeze wages, deny women workers pay equity and restrict electoral democracy must be condemned and swept aside.
The Canadian Labour Congress, (CLC) the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN), the Quebec Federation of Labour (QFL) and all provincial and local affiliates are called upon to immediately proclaim with one voice a minimum economic program that any new government must enact to merit the support of the working people.
In the first place Parliament must act to rescue the EI program from general revenue, replenish it and make it available to all unemployed workers for the full duration of unemployment.
The peace movement must move into action to demand any new government accelerate plans to withdraw from Afghanistan and divert the wasteful war budget to economic renewal at home.
Farmers must seize the opportunity to defeat the Conservative plan to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board.
The taxpayers must demand the $100 billion given to the banks by the Harper Conservatives be returned to the people and used for public investment and economic renewal.
Next week will be an extraordinary turning point in Parliamentary politics. The utmost vigilance and the most resolute action is required by organized labour, the farmers, the peace, democratic and sovereignty movements to ensure Parliament acts for the people and challenges the dominance of corporate power over the economic affairs of the country.
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