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A New Year Greeting from Canadians for Peace and Socialism!
For a New Government of Labour, Peace and Economic Renewal!
January 1, 2009
Don Currie, Chair, CPS
2009 can mark the beginning of the end of a long bleak period of war and economic decline and the start of a new period of peace and economic renewal for Canada.
The first necessary step towards a better future for the country is the defeat of the Harper Conservative minority government.
A majority of Canadians reject the divisive, sanctimonious and autocratic far right politics of Prime Minister Harper and his government. A majority of Canadians have consistently voted against the Harper Conservatives and their corporate fiscal, monetary and socially extremist policies. Prime Minister Harper has failed to gain the trust of a majority of Canadians.
A new type of governance is required. There is a deep desire among Canadians for a new kind of progressive, inclusive, democratic politics of the majority. Canada urgently needs a reordering of the Parliamentary agenda that places the interests of working people first.
Canada urgently needs a government that recognizes that everything is at hand to avoid a depression and build a new economic future for all without costly wars, without the extremes of wealth and privilege, unemployment and poverty, the spoliation of the environment and the waste of our natural resources.
A majority of Liberal, NDP and Bloc MPs have recognized the popular desire for change and under pressure from their constituents, have signed an agreement to form a coalition government for a defined period of time around a minimum set of modest economic reforms that begin to combat the threat of depression. The Greens have given the coalition government its support. A Canada-wide movement has arisen in support of a coalition government as a step towards something better.
The thought of a coalition majority government, supported by organized labour, the peace movement, the environmental movement with the support of the Greens and other minority parties has caused panic and alarm in the political establishment with close ties to big business.
An expensive and well orchestrated right wing propaganda media campaign to discredit the desire of the popular majority for a change of government without a costly election is underway.
Some of the Liberal signatories to the coalition accord are wavering. They believe they can go-it-alone and capture the popular discontent with the Harper Conservatives and ride to power in the next federal election. They are dead wrong. A betrayal of the coalition accord will completely discredit the Liberals and pave the way for another Harper Conservative victory.
The inescapable facts are that peace and economic renewal in 2009 is not possible with Bay Street insiders and appointed establishment elitists determining economic and political policy for the whole country. Their influence needs to exposed and challenged.
A new type of politics is required that places the interests of peace, wage earners, pensioners, people on fixed income, the homeless and the poor, at the top of the political and economic agenda of Parliament.
Left support for a coalition government of social democrats and liberals is given in the full awareness of its limitations for progressive advance. The coalition merits support for what it is, not for what it isn’t. The Coalition is a Parliamentary alternative to the far right, the most dangerous enemy of peace, democracy, and a defense of the progressive legislation that remains after years of neo-liberal dismantling. The Coalition has a limited program that if implemented would open up a discussion about a more advanced program of economic renewal benefiting the people.
The coalition is a step, born out of real politics and a real balance of political forces, having a finite life and limited goals. It is an expression of the need for wider democracy, for a challenge to Ottawa insider politics, to the need to shake the establishment grip on the media and to open Parliament to the influence of the majority.
2009 will be the year when more illusions will be shed by millions of Canadians as the economic crisis deepens, as unemployment grows, as hardship spreads. Canadians will confront the need to think and act in a new way. This is the challenge of the New Year, and the left must be part of it.
Left Turn Canada! |