Jew World Order

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Note: Removing Stephen Harper was only the first step. To achieve the change that Canadians voted for is going to require building a movement to constantly pressure Justin Trudeau. He needs a people’s counterbalance to the elites and corporate interests who dominate the Liberal Party. No time for a honeymoo, time to start pressuring Trudeau immediately to live up to his promises and even more importantly, to push him on issues where he is wrong.

Below is the reaction of the Political Director of the Council of Canadians to yesterday’s election in Canada. The Council is a Canadian social action organization working for “clean water, fair trade, green energy, public health care, and a vibrant democracy.” They seek to hold Canadian “governments and corporations accountable.”

Their approach, to applaud the removal of Stephen Harper, but to immediately get to work holding the Liberal Party accountable, is the right path. The Council of Canadians is not alone, in Rabble.ca, Karl Nerenberg writes that Justin Trudeau “made many, many promises during this campaign, possibly more than his father made in his five election campaigns combined” and goes on to examine 16 of them.

Harper sent Canada off in the wrong direction on many issues so there is a lot to correct. As Derrick O’Keefe wrote in his initial reaction to the election: “there’s plenty of Harperism still to be undone. C-51. TPP. A grotesque foreign policy. Climate action obstruction. The Dauphin [Trudeau] literally promised nothing on climate; he will apparently go to Paris in 40 days to present Harper’s emissions numbers at the pivotal international climate summit.”

Trudeau made a lot of promises that he needs to be held to. In addition, the Liberal Party has not been strong on putting in place fair trade that puts people and planet before profits rather than corporate trade agreements like the TPP. They are going to have to be pushed to take a strong look at the TPP and stop it when they realize it does not serve the Canadian economy, people or their environment. Canada is being criss-crossed with oil and gas pipelines that need to be reviewed and reconsidered. A government cannot be serious about confronting climate change while still building carbon energy infrastructure. There is a lot of work ahead for Canadians and we are pleased to see the Council of Canadians moving forward on pushing Trudeau.

Derrick O’Keefe points out an contradiction between Trudeau’s energy police which favors oil and gas and his promise for new relations with First Nation’s Peoples: “Trudeau said tonight in his victory speech that he will usher in a new era of nation to nation relations with Indigenous peoples. Good. But it’s completely incompatible with the way he sold himself as Big Oil’s back-up plan. This to me looks like the central contradiction of the new government.”

These are just some of the shortcomings people see in the Trudeau campaign. On Ricochet, Luke Savage writes: “In many parts of the country last night, environmentalists, trade unionists, and social justice crusaders were unseated in favour of corporate lawyers and insurance brokers.” Savage writes that the Liberal Party does not challenge the power structure, but re-enforces it. He makes arguments that many of us make about the Democratic Party in the United States. He urges more, and to get more will require a mass movement that changes the Canadian power structure:

“Achieving social progress requires more than just a perpetual return to the traditional, professionalized politics that leaves one in seven of us in poverty, tolerates people having to sleep on the streets, and allows thousands of children to wake up hungry and badly housed every single day in one of the richest societies in the world.

“We have to demand better. And plenty of us believe and hope that, one day, we will.”

As in the United States, building a mass movement that challenges the two dominant parties and the big business power structure they represent is the essential ingredient for achieving social justice. This is a challenge in Canada when the Liberals are in power, just as when the Democrats are in power in th US, druojajay founder of the Media Co-op writes: “It’s going to be a major uphill battle to get substantial progressive change out of this government. The Liberals are masters of cooptation, and will divide movements at every turn where the Conservatives united them.” 

We hope that Canada is not blinded by Trudeaumania and instead recognizes it still has a lot of work to do to achieve economic, racial and environmental justice. Ridding the nation of Harper was only a first step.

KZ

Time to Work Even Harder to Get the Change that Canadians Voted For

More than a year ago the Council of Canadians set twin objectives for this federal election: to get out the vote and to defeat the Harper government. Both were accomplished last night. More than 17.5 million people, about 68 per cent of all eligible voters, cast a ballot in this election. That’s a dramatic increase of almost 3 million voters from the 14.8 million people, or 61.4 per cent of eligible voters, who voted in May 2011. And last night not only was Stephen Harper defeated as prime minister, he resigned as leader of the Conservative Party. We celebrate both of these accomplishments.

We had felt though that the best likely outcome of this election would be a minority government. And if we had a system of proportional representation that would have been the outcome last night. Under that system, the Liberals would have won a minority government of about 133 seats (rather than a majority with 184 seats), the NDP 67 seats and the Greens 12 seats. We could have had a stable minority government through a multi-party coalition or accord. Instead, the Liberals won 54 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons with just 39.5 per cent of the vote. We believe this is wrong.

While we welcome Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau’s election night speech that focused on hope, inclusion and the end of the politics of division and fear evident under the Harper government, we are deeply concerned by his party’s support for ‘free trade’ agreements like the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). And with about 40 days until the critical United Nations COP 21 climate talks begin in Paris, the Liberals have only pledged “real climate change solutions” rather than more concretely an end to export pipelines and no new approvals for the tar sands.

We are also disappointed that the Liberal commitment is only to ensure “that fracking is consistently meeting the most stringent environmental assessments and reviews”, rather than to ban or implement a moratorium on this harmful practice. Nor did we see the Liberals promise the $4.7 billion needed to ensure that Indigenous peoples enjoy the right to water and sanitation through upgraded infrastructure in their communities. And we are very concerned that the new prime minister appears to see the private sector or public-private partnerships (P3) as a ‘solution’ to the water crisis for First Nations.

We also will have to see what the Liberal pledge to “negotiate a new Health Accord with provinces and territories, including a long-term agreement on funding” truly means. If the new prime minister continues to support ‘free trade’ agreements that include longer patents for pharmaceutical corporations, as is the case with CETA and TPP, and doesn’t explicitly commit to public solutions and oppose privatization, then we will have a real challenge ahead of us.

That all said, there could be some opportunities to move forward on these issues, much more so than would have been the case under another five years of Stephen Harper.

The prime minister-elect has promised to “negotiate a new Health Accord with provinces and territories, including a long-term agreement on funding.” We will mobilize in the lead-up to that conference to demand a 10-year accord annual 6 per cent increase in health care transfer payments to the provinces, at least 25 per cent federal funding of provincial health care costs, a prohibition on user fees and privatization, and a commitment to public solutions. We also believe that his promised “credible environmental assessments” that “respect the rights of those most affected, such as Indigenous communities” should mean that the National Energy Board process for the Trans Mountain and Energy East pipelines should begin from the start again.

We also look forward to participating in the “proper review and oversight” and “stringent environmental assessments” of fracking. We will be there to advocate for the full restoration of the protections to the Navigable Waters Protection Act as promised by the Liberals in their platform. The new prime minister has also promised “a full and open public debate” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to “defend Canadian interests during the TPP’s ratification process – which includes defending supply management, our auto sector, and Canadian manufacturers across the country.” We hope to be a leading voice in that fight.

There is also a long check-list of Liberal promises made during this election, including:

• to “immediately launch a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada”
• to enact all the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations
• to fully restore the Interim Federal Health Program that provides health care to refugees
• to ban oil tanker traffic off the British Columbia coast which would effectively kill the Northern Gateway pipeline project
• to protect the Great Lakes
• to “repeal the anti-democratic elements in Stephen Harper’s Fair Elections Act”
• to “restore the voter identification card as an acceptable form of identification”
• to “give Elections Canada the resources it needs to investigate voter fraud and vote suppression”
• to “encourage more Canadians to vote, by removing restrictions on the ways in which the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada can communicate with voters”
• to “restore the independence of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, so that they are accountable to Parliament and not the government of the day”
• to fund the federal portion of the construction of ‘Freedom Road’ for the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation
• to resettle no fewer than 25,000 Syrians by January 1, 2016
• to scrap Harper’s plan to increase the eligibility age for Old Age Security to 67 by 2023 from the current 65
• to repeal Harper’s Employment Insurance reforms
• to ensure that foreign workers have a realistic prospect of citizenship
• to end the practice of omnibus bills
• to end the Canadian Revenue Agency’s harassment of charitable organizations
• to stop Harper’s plan to end door-to-door mail delivery
• to repeal the problematic elements of C-51
• to re-open the Kitsilano Coast Guard base
• to end the combat mission in Iraq
• to repeal the anti-union legislation C-377 and C-525

We will have to work hard to ensure that these measures are fully implemented in a meaningful way and that they were not just empty promises.

And given the current electoral system gave the prime minister a majority government with seats disproportionate to the popular vote, we will be on the watch for the electoral reform legislation – that must focus on changing our system from first-past-the-post to proportional representation – that the prime minister has promised by April 2017.

We should rightly celebrate the defeat of Stephen Harper, a significantly increased voter turnout, and an election apparently relatively free of the voter suppression evident in the last federal election, but we will have to campaign even harder now to ensure that the 70 per cent of Canadians who said “it was the time for change” in Ottawa this election, get the change they deserve.