The Way I See It!

January 17, 2011

Don Currie, Editor Focus on Socialism

Fight Don’t Beg!

Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe Are Wrong!

Canadians Need an Election!

Defeat the Conservative Minority Harper Big Business Government Now!

The NDP and the Bloc are being enticed by Prime Minister Harper to consider propping  up his big business government  in exchange for some crumbs in Finance Minister Flaherty’s next federal budget expected sometime after the opening of Parliament  on January 31^st 2011. Flaherty says he is ready to oblige.[1]

The Bloc wants a $2 billion adjustment payment to Quebec for harmonizing the GST and the sales tax in 1992.[2] Jack Layton wants some relief to Canadians on home heating fuel cost and increases to CPP and the Guaranteed Income Supplement payments. [3]

If they get these meager concessions Layton and Duceppe are prepared to look the other way as Harper and Flaherty continue with their big business agenda:

Here is what Layton and Duceppe will be supporting if Harper gets a reprieve:

• Harper’s corporate tax cuts

• Continuation of the war in Afghanistan

• A one half trillion defense budget and $16 billion purchase of 65 F35 jet fighters to be integrated into US-NATO plans for future wars

• Harper’s plan to participate in the next  NATO war probably in Africa

• Harper’s support for Israel’s flouting of UN resolutions and world-wide condemnation of building Israeli settlements  on stolen Palestinian land

• Harpers deal on a Security Perimeter around Canada that gives the US military oversight of Canadian territory

• Harper’s plan to turn the Arctic into an zone of conflict instead of a zone of peace

• Harper’s sabotage of a real genuine climate change plan

• Harper’s plan to conclude a  free trade deal with the EU just like NAFTA, just like the free trade deal with the right wing fanatics in  Columbia.

• Harper’s ham handed harmful anti-China policy

• Harper’s policy of underfunding social programs

• Harper’s skin flint treatment of the unemployed

• Flaherty’s about face on expanding the CPP and handing a pension plan gift to private insurance companies

• Harpers  ‘For Sale” sign on Canada’s industries and natural resources

• Harper’s destruction of the ACEL and its sell off to foreign interests

• Harper’s policy making university education affordable for the rich and out of reach of working class  families

• Harper’s  opposition to pay equity for women workers

• Harper’s 19^th Century attitude to government responsibility for universal child care.

• Harper’s plan to punish  Canada Post employees by forcing them to work longer hours for less

• Harper’s  support for US investors reneging on a Steelworkers Pension Plan

• Harper’s continuing inaction as the Canadian manufacturing sector contracts. (Watch for the big auto makers begging for loan forgiveness if Harper is re-elected.) You heard it here first.

• Harper’s undermining of Parliamentary democracy  as a Conservative Senate majority and crooked and corrupt lobbyists thwart the will of Parliament

• Harper’s behind the scenes wheeling and dealing  with the most right wing forces in Quebec to defeat the Bloc

• And most ironical of all – to give Harper more time to scuttle all of the NDP Parliamentary agenda some of which is in the best interests of Canadians

There is nothing in the Harper record now in the past or going forward that merits the support of the NDP and Bloc. Stop such talk now and get on with the job of defeating this worst of all governments.

What more needs to be said? Harper can’t be trusted!

After sticking the people of Canada with the biggest deficit in our history to pay for a US-NATO war, to set aside a $200 billion reserve fund to prop up the banks during the recession, to nickel and dime the unemployed,  to float a stimulus package that went straight to Conservative constituencies, (come to Nelson BC and see Harper’s rock pile a stretch a three lane highway to nowhere) … and now after running up a huge bill to save the big investor classes, Prime Minister Harper now brazenly claims he must  now reduce the deficit. As Karl Marx said in his day, the only thing the capitalists share with the workers is the national debt.

It is just not on for Layton and Duceppe to cut deals with such a Prime Minister and then to insult our intelligence by declaring that it is in our best interests. No it isn’t. Propping up Harper is in the interests of monopoly capital and no other interest.[4]

Harper is playing the opposition like a fiddle.

With the NDP and Bloc politically compromised by such a dirty deal, the way will be cleared for the  Conservatives and Liberals to dominate the next federal election campaign and assure their corporate bosses  that once again, one or the other of the parties of the profit system will continue to run the Canadian economy in the interests big capital, big oil and big militarism. They will limit their competition to which party can manage the economy in the best interests of high finance.

Jack Layton told a meeting in Sudbury that the NDP is ready for an election but would rather get things done. That means he believes an honourable deal can be concluded with a disreputable  Prime Minister.  When has that ever happened? Has Harper had an epiphany and can now be trusted?

If Jack Layton really wants to get things done he will call upon the Canadian people to support his party’s pledge to defeat Harper at the earliest opportunity and go to the people with a genuine program of peace and peaceful planned  economic development of country that puts the interests of working Canadians first and puts monopoly under control..

To get things done – Canadians need to get rid of the minority Conservative right-wing big business government before they drag our country into a deeper mess than it already is in.

Layton and Duceppe are deceiving themselves and the Canadian people if they believe that Prime Minister Harper can be trusted to keep his word.

Prime Minister Harper has made no secret of his intention to cut the deficit. Cutting the deficit and at the same time lowering corporate taxes seems to make common sense to Layton and Duceppe otherwise why would they even consider keeping such a Prime Minister in power?

We don’t know what medication the NDP and Bloc backroom have  been taking…but propping up Harper is the result.

Layton and Duceppe need to listen to the Canadian and Quebec people who are tired of political maneuvering!

 It is better to fight for something you want and not get it and fight another day, than to fall on your knees and get something you don’t want and never stand up again…

Left Turn Canada!