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NDP hands a victory to
Campbell in British Columbia
A
lackluster, rather conservative campaign by the provincial New
Democrats handed Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell a third consecutive
majority government in the May 12 British Columbia election. The result
was close to the one in 2005, except that voter turnout plunged from 62
per cent to only about 50 per cent this time.
The
Liberals won 49 of the 85 seats in the B.C. Legislature, with 46 per
cent of the votes cast. The NDP took 36 seats and 42 per cent support,
and the Green Party won zero seats despite attracting eight per cent of
the votes. In the second B.C. referendum on electoral reform, the
complicated and undemocratic proposal for a Single Transferable Vote
(STV) system was defeated by an overwhelming 61 per cent.
Unfortunately, this may sideline the effort to win proportional
representation for a long time to come.
Instead
of fighting for socialist solutions to the economic crisis, the NDP,
led by Carole James, posed as tough on crime and taxes, and took its
distance from the labour movement in the west
coast province. This cleared the path for Campbell's right-wing Liberals, an
amalgam of staunchly conservative big business forces in B.C., to
defend their cutbacks and their anti-labour,
anti-aboriginal record—even their regressive, fake green, carbon tax.
Labour and the NDP converged visibly only on the demand
for a $10/hour minimum wage, and that issue was soft-pedalled. The NDP opposed STV, and like the
Liberals, advocated the electoral status quo. Campbell had a quiet, rather
easy-going time, in contrast to life on the usually volatile BC
campaign trail, thanks to the NDP and labour
tops who stifled militancy.
James
led the BCNDP to a significant recovery from the 2001 election when it
was reduced to only two seats, then winning 33 in 2005. But a decade of
right-wing drift, so clearly out of step with social needs in the
current economic depression, took a serious toll on the NDP.
The
disastrous result, which weighs heavily on working people all across
the country, underscores the need for a thorough re-examination of the
course of the labour-based party.
May Day in Toronto
Scores
of people crowded into the Free Times Cafe on Saturday, May 1, for the
23rd annual Toronto Socialist Action May Day celebration. The politics,
the music, the diversity of the gathering fittingly fulfilled the theme
"Solidarity Against the Crisis".
As
the world descends deeper into economic depression, defiant slogans
urged an alternative to labour concessions:
Nationalize the auto giants, the big banks and the big oil/gas
companies under workers' control! Create jobs for all through public
ownership, democratic planning and a shorter work week without loss of
pay or benefits. Convert industry, transportation, and homes to green
energy efficiency. Fund health care, education and the arts, not
imperialist wars of occupation. Hands off human rights and migrant labour. For a workers' government. No to any NDP
coalition with capitalist parties.
Speakers
included Jorge Soberon, Consul General of
Cuba in Toronto; John Clarke, Organizer, Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty; Anitta Satkunarajah,
NGO relations co-ordinator, CanadianHART, Tamil community; Nchamah
Miller of the Communist Party of Colombia; Ali Mallah,
vice president of the Canadian Arab Federation, member of CUPE, and
V.P. (Alternate) of CL; Niraj Joshi of the
Toronto Haiti Action Committee; and Barry Weisleder,
Socialist Action federal secretary. The event was chaired by Elizabeth Byce, federal Treasurer, NDP Socialist Caucus, and
retired member of the Toronto Local, Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
Wonderful
world-class singers and musicians entertained the crowd. The performers
included: Jon Brooks, 2008 Porcupine Winner ‘Mac Beattie Award’, 2007
Canadian Folk Music Award Nominee ‘Best Songwriter’; Marianne Girard,
roots/alternative country singer-song writer who debuted selections from
her new CD 'Pirate Days'; Bill Heffernan, activist, teacher and song
smith; Glen Hornblast, folk singer on the
social justice scene; and Smokey Dymny, an
IWW rebel troubadour.
High food prices push world
to the brink
Food
riots, millions of starving refugees fleeing war zones, and devastating
droughts are pushing the world towards chaos. At a time of global
economic crisis, the world’s poor have been hit with a triple whammy.
While jobs have disappeared and commodity prices have crashed, food
prices have continued to spike.
“For
the first time in human history one out of every six people on the
planet is going to bed hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the $5 billion
annual United Nations World Food Program.
“Over
the past five years when food prices were going up, national [food]
purchase budgets were not. That drew down the stocks, and they became
dangerously low around the world.”
Combined
with job losses, shrinking family incomes, trade deficits, and plunging
remittances sent to the poor from relatives abroad, increasingly
unaffordable food prices are taking the world to the tipping point of
what is sustainable, said the Rome-based Sheeran
to the Toronto Star during a visit to Ottawa in early May.
Whatever
happened to the capitalist “green revolution” that was supposed to
transform third-world agriculture 40 years ago? Clearly, it takes more
than a limited application of fertilizer and machines to overcome huge
concentrations of land ownership, to defeat the power of transnational
corporations that dominate world commerce, promote expensive
genetically modified seeds, and engage in “free trade” surplus
commodity dumping practices.
Just
ask the debt-wracked, despairing farmers of India, where 1000 a month commit
suicide—over 200,000 since 1997, according to the National Crime
Records Bureau in India.
Bankruptcies skyrocket in
Canada
Bankruptcies
in Canada soared by over 50 per cent in March from a year earlier as
the rising unemployment rate left more people unable to pay their
bills, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy
Canada. Although business bankruptcies declined, the skyrocketing
personal declarations of insolvency, 10,578 across the country in March
alone, produced a staggering overall increase. In Ontario the rate jumped 60 per
cent, but the biggest year-over-year rises came from the western
provinces, with Alberta's nearly doubling and British Columbia's up by 78.4 per cent.
In
March the jobless rate rose to 8 per cent, officially, its highest
level in seven years. But when discouraged workers, those waiting for a
recall to work, and the involuntarily part-time are included, the real
rate of unemployment across Canada is closer to 12 per cent.
A
2008 report on the financial state of Canadian households, sponsored by
the Vanier Institute of the Family, warned that 'the current recession'
would be disastrous for debt-ridden consumers. It blamed financial
institutions, retailers, and governments for encouraging Canadians 'to
live beyond their means'. As for the profit system with its toxic
cyclical crises, its growing income inequality, and the super-rich who
run it all, the Institute had nothing to say.
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