Socialist Action/Ligue pour L'Action Socialiste

Jamaicans seek change, elect opposition PNP

2012-01-15T18:43:00.003-05:00

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica—Car horns blared, orange flags waved, and campaign reggae jingles pulsated. Youthful political celebrants blew vuvuzelas from roving car caravans on the evening of Dec. 29, continuing well past sunrise across this Caribbean island nation.

A snap election called by the governing Jamaica Labour Party catapulted the opposition People's National Party into government after a five-year hiatus. In terms of seats in the House of Representatives, it was a landslide, 41-22 for the PNP. In terms of votes, it was a three per cent shift from the very close 2007 results. This time the PNP won 53 per cent, the JLP 47 per cent. Political pundits were equally surprised by the relatively large margin of victory, and by the record low 52 per cent turnout.

Still reeling from the effects of the global economic crisis, the vast majority of Jamaicans are deeply troubled by the skyrocketing cost of living, chronic unemployment, and especially dismal prospects for young people, school graduates included. In this election, deep cynicism competed with a desperate hunger for change.

Now don't mind the political labels. The JLP is not a labour party, not even vaguely pro-labour. It is a right-wing business party. And the PNP, notwithstanding its formal affiliation to the Socialist International, long ago abandoned its social democratic pretensions in favour of catering to the whims of foreign capital. The difference between the parties is more superficial than substantial, more akin to what distinguishes Canadian Liberals from Conservatives, or American Democrats from Republicans. In policy terms, precious little; in fundamental social class terms, zip.

Still the “comrades” of the PNP, led by Jamaica's first female Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, raised the expectations of workers, women, and youths. Promises to refrain from slashing public-sector jobs, and to invest in national economic development, set the PNP apart from the JLP.

The “Labourites,” under new leader Andrew Holness, bragged about a decline in the crime rate and, after three years of shrinkage, marginal growth in the GNP under their tutelage. Both parties pledged to slash the country's odious debt (over $18 billion U.S., equalling 130 per cent of GDP) and to abide by International Monetary Fund loan conditions—which means exactly what it means in Greece, only worse.

Business groups rushed to express their “confidence” that the PNP government-elect will do what big business deems necessary. Congratulations poured forth from the President of the Jamaica Exporters' Association, Vitus Evans; from the Jamaica Manufacturers' Association, Brian Pengelley; and from the President of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, Milton Samuda. Samuda praised Simpson Miller's “strength of character” and anticipated working “with the government, especially on the growth agenda to ensure that the climate is created for growth.” It seems unlikely that the agenda he has in mind would include an increase in the minimum wage, which now is equivalent to about $10 U.S. a day, or $1.25 an hour.

Despite some delays and slow voting in some areas, the election was devoid of major mishaps. Invited international observers gave it their stamp of approval. Unlike Jamaican elections in the 1970s and ’80s, this one was virtually violence-free.

The JLP calculated that it shouldn't wait to the end of its mandate in 2012. A series of corruption scandals prompted the resignation of several government officials in 2011, including Bruce Golding, then the prime minister. The party had been out of power for 18 years before winning a majority in 2007.

Golding quit after initially rejecting an American demand that his government arrest and extradite an indicted drug dealer, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, straining diplomatic relations with Washington. In 2010, the government finally sent hundreds of police and soldiers to search for Coke in his gang’s territory — which Golding represented in parliament. The raid led to more than 70 deaths in Kingston, the capital.

In October, the Jamaica Labour Party selected Andrew Holness to succeed Golding. Holness, 39, became the country’s youngest prime minister. The party hoped to weather the storms of corruption and economic misery with a fresh face who had been untouched by scandal while he served as education minister.

But expensive JLP television ads did not only obsess about the personality of Holness. They viciously attacked Simpson Miller with a noxious brew of sexism and disparagement of her working-class origins, implying that the 66-year-old political veteran is not sufficiently educated or competent to govern. The ads backfired big time.

The question now is what will Simpson Miller and the PNP do in the face of (officially) 13 per cent unemployment and over 16 per cent of the population living below the poverty line? Indeed, to grasp the real levels of joblessness and want, double those figures.

Over the past dozen-plus years, while spending part of each winter in Jamaica, I've befriended a number of activists in the National Workers' Union, a major Jamaican labour central. This past week some expressed their views to me. A current “delegate” (local president) of an NWU bargaining unit told me he's elated by the PNP win, confident that unemployment will not spike. Another acquaintance, a former union “delegate,” shrugged his shoulders, saying “they're both the same.”

What about other parties? The “free enterprise” National Democratic Movement has served as a farm team for the JLP. Golding briefly led the NDM. The policies of the Marcus Garvey People's Political Party are a mystery. Neither the NDM or the MGPPP were able to garner 0.01 per cent of the votes cast. And sadly, the unions remain staunchly “non-partisan,” although the NWU leans towards the PNP, and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union brass favour the JLP.

The small Stalinist-led Workers' Party of Jamaica, which supported the PNP in its leftist phase until the PNP caved in to IMF pressure, never offered a revolutionary option. The WPJ dissolved in 1992. Its former leader, Trevor Munroe, was appointed to the Jamaican Senate by the PNP. Today, a party run by, and for, the working class remains tragically absent.

At her swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 5, in front of an adoring crowd of thousands, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller called for “national unity,” but waxed a bit to the left. She pledged to tackle poverty and underdevelopment. She said that in a global crisis like the present one, government must take the initiative. But how to square that with a request to the IMF for a more favourable repayment schedule, while shunning the very cuts that IMF conditionalities stubbornly demand?

Simpson Miller added a dash of ginger and a sprinkle of nutmeg. She promised to break ties with the British monarchy and make Jamaica a republic, with its own president. Such a move would, no doubt, stimulate national pride. But it would not put food on the table for the multitude of sufferers. Without socialism, national liberation remains only a tantalizing dream.

So, we are left mainly with questions. When the PNP fails to deliver justice to its working-class electorate, will they hold the party accountable? Will Jamaican workers initiate a fight against the capitalist austerity drive that may lead to a break with capitalist politics, and foster the launch of an independent workers' and farmers' political alternative? Only time, and unfortunately, much more experience with hardship will tell the tale.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder, and first appeared in the January 2012 print edition of Socialist Action newspaper.

Attawapiskat: Native people suffer while corporations mine riches

2012-01-15T18:42:00.003-05:00

It has been called Haiti at minus 40 degrees celsius. Attawapiskat, an isolated Cree First Nations community located near James Bay in northern Ontario, is enduring a severe housing crisis that is just the latest in a series of tragedies that have affected the health and well-being of its residents.

With a current population of just under 2000 people, Attawapiskat was established as a settlement of permanent buildings in the 1960s. In 1979, a diesel spill contaminated the soil near the community’s elementary school. The students suffered bad health effects and the school was ultimately condemned in 2000, displacing the students to portables, where they continue to learn today.

In the last five years, Attawapiskat has suffered through flooding, a power outage that forced the evacuation of the local hospital (because it had no backup generators) and a sewage spill that dumped waste into eight homes housing 90 people.

Meanwhile, since 2008, DeBeers Canada is mining diamonds at a site just 90 kilometers west of Attawapiskat. The contrast between the extraction of such wealth, utilizing the most modern facilities, alongside such deprivation led Attawapiskat residents to travel to Toronto in 2009 to confront DeBeers. They argued that the company had not lived up to its agreement to provide employment opportunities and building materials to the community.

The current crisis results from the growing number of residents, including babies and young children, living in tents or wooden shacks with no electricity, running water or toilets. With winter temperatures routinely dropping well below minus 20 degrees Celsius, heat is provided by improvised (and potentially dangerous) wood-burning stoves. Many of those lucky enough to live in houses have to deal with mould and overcrowding.

The NDP has been at the forefront of the response to this situation. Local NDP MP Charlie Angus spoke out about Attawapiskat’s challenges well before the present crisis. He recently twice visited the community, the second time in the company of NDP Interim Leader Nycole Turmel. (The NDP’s late Leader, Jack Layton, who visited in 2007, described the conditions he saw as “abominable.”)

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on the other hand, initially reacted by blaming the leadership of the Attawapiskat First Nation, stating that the crisis was “unacceptable” in light of the funds provided by the federal government to the band. This led to the appointment of a private-sector consultant to manage the reserve’s finances, at a cost of $1300 per day, to be billed to the First Nation.

The situation in Attawapiskat is a reminder to Canadians that many of our First Nations’ brothers and sisters on reserves live in Third World conditions, inside one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Centuries of cultural genocide and indifference have left many First Nations communities struggling with alcoholism and solvent abuse, suicide epidemics, gang violence, substandard housing, contaminated water, unemployment, and abject poverty. This must end.

Socialists demand an immediate, robust and well-funded response to the housing crisis in Attawapiskat, along with a long-term, concerted, federal effort at resolving the dire conditions in which Canada’s First Nations continue to subsist. We demand that the mineral and other wealth of aboriginal lands be transferred out of the hands of multinational corporations and into the control of the First Nations’ communities on those lands.

> The article above was written by Eric Kupka.

Mounties spied on aboriginal protesters

2012-01-15T18:41:00.003-05:00

When it comes to native housing, health, and education needs, Ottawa provides funding through an eye-dropper and at a snail’s pace. But where it concerns meeting the perceived “security” needs of capital and the state, the authorities act swiftly, generously, and without much regard for civil liberties.

In early 2007 the Canadian federal government created a vast surveillance network to monitor protests by aboriginal groups aimed at “critical infrastructure” like highways, railways, and pipelines, according to RCMP documents obtained through access to information requests.

An RCMP slide show, produced in the spring of 2009, reveals that its “intelligence unit” reported weekly to about 450 police, government and unnamed “industry partners” in the energy and private sectors. A Mountie spokesperson told the Toronto Star that the Aboriginal JIG (joint intelligence group) was dismantled, but “we cannot confirm that RCMP divisions are not performing Aboriginal JIG activities under another name of program.”

An annual Strategic Intelligence Report from June 2009 indicates that the spying focused at the time on 18 “communities of concern” in five provinces. These included First Nations in Ontario such as Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), Ardoch, Grassy Narrows, Six Nations and Tyendinaga, which carried out road and railway blockades and opposed mining and logging on their lands.

The JIG presented itself as a “central repository” of information about First Nations protests, assisted by an “extensive network of contacts throughout Canada and internationally,” and an undisclosed number of spies in the field acting as its “eyes and ears.” No price tag was specified for this “extensive” surveillance apparatus.

An RCMP submission to the Canadian Intelligence Security Service (CSIS) in April 2007 states: “There is a growing concern among high-level government officials and the policing community about the potential for unrest in aboriginal communities, and an increasing sense of militancy among certain segments of the aboriginal population.”

True enough. One example is the KI First Nation, in northern Ontario, which in 2008 prevented the establishment of a platinum mine by Platinex on their traditional territory. The Liberal Ontario government bought out the Platinex claim for $5 million—a sum that would cover the cost of building more than 20 modern houses in a remote northern aboriginal community.

In its sales pitch to the private sector, the RCMP slide show promotes the notion that the aboriginal intelligence unit can “alleviate some of your workload as we can help identify trends and issues that may impact more than one community.”

Now, can you imagine a federal police service that would gather information on, and arrest corporate violators of aboriginal treaty rights and land claims? Can you imagine the cops doing that, instead of spying on, harassing and jailing First Nations’ activists who defend their communities? In capitalist Canada?

No, neither can I.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Ottawa ignores Kyoto

2012-01-15T18:40:00.003-05:00

A previous Liberal government cynically entered into it, and systematically violated it. The present Conservative government thumbed its nose at it from the start, and unceremoniously quit the treaty on Dec. 12. Despite its abject weaknesses, including low targets and unenforcability, the Kyoto Protocol still signifies the need to address escalating carbon emissions, climate change, and the dire threat they pose to civilization.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries spent two weeks in Durban, South Africa trying to reach an agreement on a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012.

The original treaty was a concession to the mobilizing power of the global environmental movement. Its limitations reflect the class nature of that movement, its failure to collectively articulate a socialist agenda—the prerequisite to democratic control and economic planning in harmony with nature.

The Harper Conservatives seem not to be troubled that their unilateral exit of Kyoto violates domestic law. The Kyoto Implementation Act, adopted by Parliament in June 2007, remains on the books. It was not rescinded. The latest Tory decision was not even debated. The law still requires Canada’s environment commissioner, Scott Vaughan, to inform Parliament annually of the government’s progress in meeting its targets under the climate accord. That is bound to be a bitter pill the government will want to ditch a.s.a.p.

After six years of Conservative rule and $9 billion budgeted to curb green house gases Canada’s output remains very high. Even if Prime Minister Harper keeps his promise to cut emissions by 2020 in lock step with the U.S., by 17 per cent from 2005 levels, Canada will continue to generate some 600 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. That is the same as in 1990, the Kyoto benchmark year.

Skepticism about the pledges made at the United Nations conference in Durban is no excuse for inaction at home. The United States, China, and India, the world’s biggest carbon spewers, pledged to negotiate a common binding agreement in the next few years. Even if they do, it won’t have much impact until 2020, which means another wasted decade in the drive to cap the rise in Earth’s temperature to a barely tolerable 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era, instead of a disastrous 3.5 degrees.

But at least those governments acknowledge the problem and set themselves a target. Ottawa, on the other hand, closes its eyes and sticks its head into the dirty oil sands, failing even to provide tax incentives for renewable energy, or measures to curb coal-fired electricity, and car and truck emissions.

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was certainly justified in denouncing Tory Environment Minister Peter Kent when Kent blamed an NDP MP for not attending the Durban conference. It was Kent who had barred opposition MPs from the Canadian delegation to Durban.

So, Trudeau was right to call Kent “a piece of shit.” But the same can be said for the whole Canadian establishment, from the hypocritical eco-posturers to the climate change deniers. The world is in a soggy mess, and time is running out, not only on capitalism but on the human species.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Will 2012 be year for Labour fightback?

2012-01-15T18:39:00.003-05:00

The big business Conference Board of Canada predicts that 2012 will be a year of major labour-management strife across the Canadian state.

In a report released in early December, the Board points to Toronto, where the right-wing administration of Mayor Rob Ford has been waging a war on workers to cut costs, and to privatize city services. The report also noted that the Toronto District School Board is set to negotiate a new collective agreement with teachers in 2012 “on a course of bargaining that is unlikely to be resolved peacefully.”

In 2011, Canada Post workers staged rotating strikes, got locked out by management, and were ordered back to work by the federal government, which imposed a wage rate lower than management’s last offer. The threat of legislation kept Air Canada workers from striking, despite workers voting twice to reject management’s position.

According to McMaster University labour relations Professor Charlotte Yates, governments aren’t just trying to keep deficits in check; they are cutting for political reasons. Unions, per se, are the target. They believe they can succeed at this time knowing that the bosses are permitted to cut jobs without any real challenge from the working class, including its unionized sections. When postal workers challenged the Stephen Harper Conservative government agenda, the labour movement across the country failed to back them up with job action. The NDP filibuster in the House of Commons made many workers feel good, but it did not threaten to deter the government’s course of action.

The Conference Board is now worried that the potential for strikes in the public sector will be greater in 2012 because those workers gave concessions at the outset of the recession/depression in 2008. Rank-and-file frustration is rising. The average public sector raise will be 1.5 per cent in 2012—below the predicted inflation rate of 2 per cent. In contrast, private sector workers will earn an average raise of 2.3 per cent. Overall, workers’ wages have been falling or stagnant for over 30 years.

Health care workers in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba will be negotiating new collective agreements in 2012, as will employees at the Canada Revenue Agency.

By alerting its well-heeled members to potential labour conflict, and by countering the arguments that unions make (for example, that government revenues are down due to corporate tax cuts and concessions to the rich), the Conference Board is helping to get the Canadian capitalist class ready for the big fight ahead. But what is the labour leadership doing to get workers ready for this fight?

The Ontario Federation of Labour, at its November biennial convention in Toronto, promised to expose the one-sided class war being waged by bosses and their governments. But OFL leaders have no plan to challenge the rulers’ agenda with mass action in the streets and work places.

There is talk about a possible merger of the Canadian Auto Workers Union and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ Union. A democratically conducted merger would be good. Much better than a raid, which too often is the resort of shrinking unions. But a merger is no substitute for organizing the unorganized, much less for an anti-concessions strategy.

Can workers fight back? Transit workers in York Region, north of Toronto, show that we can. Those employees of private bus companies that pay $7 an hour less than what Toronto transit workers earn, are in the third month of a strike for a wage and benefits catch-up. Their weekly mass pickets and bus occupations are attracting tremendous attention and inspiring considerable hope in broad sections of the working class.

They show the way forward—to a coordinated labour struggle against the bosses’ “austerity” agenda.

If 2012 is to be the year for a labour fight back, now is the time to start talking up the idea of a general strike. Nothing less than escalating, mass job actions are needed to stop the attacks on jobs, public services, and workers’ rights. And that’s what we need to win nationalization of the banks and big business under workers’ democratic control—to lay the basis for an economy that serves the majority.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

U.S.-Canada treaty escalates attack on civil liberties

2012-01-15T18:38:00.003-05:00

The Dec. 7 border agreement between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama requires Canada to adopt more U.S.-style security measures, and to share more information on Canadians with American state authorities. This is contrary to the interests of working people in both countries.

Obama has agreed to ask the U.S. Congress for money to speed up truck and business traffic across the border. The funding may or may not be forthcoming. In any case, the price is too high. Heightened security means a stepped up war on civil liberties. Talk of security is a distraction from the capitalist system’s real economic malaise. It’s an excuse for more spending on police and the military, and less money to meet pressing human needs, like health care, education and housing.

So, what exactly is at risk in the latest deal? It’s not “privacy” in the abstract. Remember the U.S. no-fly list? Under the deal, Ottawa has effectively agreed to adopt it. This is the list that famously targeted, among others, the late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. It has already barred some innocent Canadians from air travel within their own country because their planned flight paths briefly crossed the U.S. The agreement to develop common “decision processes” for air screening can only lead to more folks being stranded.

Since the deal was announced, attention has focused on a new scheme for border exit controls. But bigger dangers lie elsewhere. For instance, the agreement commits the two countries to engage in more “informal information sharing.” Canada also agrees to change its laws, if necessary, to “provide the widest measure of (intelligence) cooperation possible.”

Maher Arar knows first-hand about such intelligence cooperation. He is the Canadian citizen who was arrested by U.S. officials during a New York stopover and sent to Syria to be tortured. As a royal commission later found, Arar’s ordeal was caused by exactly the kind of informal and wide-ranging intelligence cooperation that the new deal envisions.

Since 9/11, U.S. governments, regardless their political stripe, have hurt civil liberties. Washington spies on the most mundane habits of its people, including which library books they read. In at least one case, it carried out the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen. Its agents are no longer permitted to torture people on their own. But even Obama has refused to renounce the practice of so-called extraordinary rendition—sending suspected terrorists to third countries to be tortured.

The U.S. maintains a prison camp at Guantanamo Bay that, in the tepid language of a 2010 Supreme Court judgment, has engaged in the “improper treatment” of detainees, including a Canadian, Omar Khadr, captured by U.S forces in Afghanistan at age 15.

Sweden learned about the dangers of allowing American agents to operate on its soil. In December 2001, the Swedish government decided to deport two Egyptian refugee claimants whose asylum applications were refused. The Swedish Security Police accepted a U.S. offer to provide the plane to carry out the deportation.

When the Swedish officials handed over the deportees, after having searched them according to Swedish procedure, the Americans proceeded to cut off the two men’s clothes, dress them in jump suits and hoods, medicate them, and bundle them on board. They were transported to Egypt, where they were allegedly subjected to torture.

In a 2005 report, the Swedish ombudsman concluded that Swedish officials mishandled the case. They had allowed the American officials to operate on Swedish soil in a manner contrary to Swedish custom and possibly in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhumane and degrading treatment.

U.S. law and practices violate Canadian laws and norms. More to the point, the new border agreement threatens to diminish individual liberties already under attack. In the name of universal human rights, and working-class internationalism, the deal must be undone.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Save the Canadian Wheat Board

2011-12-11T18:23:00.006-05:00

On October 18th, Prime Minister Harper introduced legislation to dismantle the 68 year old, farmer-controlled Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). With a Conservative majority in Parliament, it is expected the Bill will become law before Christmas. Legislation to come into effect August 2012 would allow a farmer to sell directly to grain handling companies. With no 'single desk selling', the farmers will have no collective capital base or access to grain handling facilities.

The CWB Act requires that farmers must vote in favour before major changes can be made to the CWB. The government is ignoring that law, and the 37,000 western grain farmers (62 per cent overall) who voted in a mail-in plebiscite this summer to retain CWB control over the marketing of grain.

Allen Oberg, chair of the CWB's farmer-controlled board of directors, spoke at a November 15 demonstration in Ottawa: "We are here because we cannot sit idly by while this government sacrifices farmers' interests to those of giant American grain corporations. We cannot stand and watch farmers' democratic rights be steamrolled. This should be a farmer's decision - not one that is made in Ottawa."

CWB is spearheading a “Stop the Steam Roller” media campaign. Close to 30,000 Canadians sent letters to the federal government in just over a week demanding the CWB control be saved. Court challenges are underway. The labour-based New Democratic Party, the Official Opposition in Parliament, as well as the NDP provincial government of Manitoba, have denounced the federal government's anti-democratic move.

Once the bill becomes law, grain handlers such as Viterra, Cargill and the Winnipeg-based Richardson International Ltd will be allowed to immediately sign forward contracts with farmers for their 2012 grain harvests. Other transnationals, such as U.S.-based firms Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland, are expected to expand into Canada. Only the very largest farmers will be able to negotiate effectively with the conglomerates, to the detriment of family farms and rural communities.

Canada is the world's top exporter of spring wheat, durum and malting barley. This legislation will represent a major shift of power from western Canadian grain farmers to transnational agri-food conglomerates.

It is no surprise that major food processors, and their right wing think-tank economists, see the CWB defeat as an opportunity to demand of the government that the historic rights of Canadian poultry, egg and dairy farmers be dismantled, or be fundamentally weakened. The 'supply managed' sectors have legal authority to control import levels, plan production and collectively bargain prices for their products. Free-trade advocates claim these farm protection measures must be dismantled for Canada to participate in multi-country trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks.

The CWB should be defended by all who believe in food sovereignty, collective bargaining and democratic process. Solidarity of all working people with western Canadian farmers is critical at this time.

Capitalist governments are attacking the historical, institutionalized gains of farmers and the working class as a solution to the rulers' economic crisis. Only a worker-farmer alliance can 'stop the steamroller' and fundamentally change society in the interest of the majority.

> The article above was written by Tom Baker.

Ottawa eyes role in Syria conflict

2011-12-11T18:22:00.004-05:00

Flush from its part in NATO's bloody intervention in Libya to impose a pro-western government there, Canada's Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Ottawa will not rule out military action in Syria. Speaking to the International Security Forum in Halifax on November 20, MacKay postured as the defender of democratic forces suffering repression at the hands of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad.

But taken together with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird's bellicose threat to take “necessary action” against Iran, amid media speculation about a possible pre-emptive Israeli-American strike at Iran's nuclear power facilities, MacKay's words help to form a different picture.

It is the picture of expanding imperial intervention -- designed to blunt and re-shape uprisings across the Arab world. It is the image of western powers seeking geo-political control over the world's foremost oil patch.

The business media call it “sabre-rattling”. But such noises have led to bombing and military occupation. In 1999, CF-18s flew 684 combat sorties against Yugoslav forces, roughly 10 per cent of the NATO effort to make the Balkans safe for the restoration of private enterprise. More recently, in Libya, Ottawa flew 942 of NATO's 9,600 strike missions, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. Between those forays was the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, where over 900 Canadian soldiers continue to occupy, to kill, and to die.

Canada will keep war-ships in the Mediterranean Sea until the end of 2012, MacKay said. It deployed the frigate HMCS Vancouver as part of NATO's Libya intervention. After early 2012, HMCS Charlottetown will continue so-called 'anti-terrorism' duties.

Certainly, former and present dictators, like Gadaffi and Assad, committed high crimes against workers and farmers, women and youths. But those dictators were in the good books of the western powers when they imprisoned leftists and smashed unions, as are Washington and Ottawa's current allies ruling Saudi Arabia.

But imperialism is always on the prowl for more compliant regimes – ones that would be eager to dismantle state enterprises and public services; ones that would happily sign 'free trade' agreements with the vultures of Wall Street, Bay Street and the City of London.

The task of deposing dictators is the task of the people suffering under them. The job of working people and progressive folks living in the rich countries is to stay the hand of foreign intervention, to disarm the war makers, and to demonstrate solidarity with those who fight for freedom and social justice. The famous advice of Karl Marx to the English working class on the Irish question bears repeating: No nation that oppresses another can itself be free.

It is a message that must be driven home in the unions and the labour-based New Democratic Party to avoid another debacle, as when NDP MP s voted in 2011 to support the bombing of Libya. The Syrian and Iranian test cases are coming soon. Canada, hands off!

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Tory 'Reforms' Target Refugees

2011-12-11T18:17:00.007-05:00

Refugees will increasingly be victimized by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s majority federal government, thanks to Bill C-4, the Conservatives’ new immigration reform bill.

The bill empowers the government to label certain refugees “designated foreign nationals”, whenever it believes that it will be difficult to establish their identity, or that their arrival in Canada might be connected in some way to a criminal or terrorist enterprise. This label carries a heavy burden: “designated foreign nationals” must be imprisoned for at least one year upon arrival in Canada and, even if they succeed in obtaining refugee protection, they must wait at least five more years before applying for permanent residency.

The bill resurrects a previous immigration bill that the Conservatives drafted in 2010, as a panicky response to the arrival of two boat loads of Tamil civil war refugees from Sri Lanka. That bill, which was introduced when Harper still led a minority government, was never passed due to the opposition of all other parties.

Bill C-4 is condemned by leading human rights and immigration advocacy groups, including Amnesty International and the Canadian Council for Refugees. The Canadian Bar Association has called the reforms “a harsh and dramatic shift in policy” that violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and conflict with Canada’s obligations under international refugee and human rights conventions.

Inside Parliament, the bill has been vigorously opposed by the labour-based Official Opposition New Democratic Party. Toronto MP Olivia Chow highlighted the true human cost of the bill with the example of a Haitian mother and child fleeing poverty and devastation in their homeland without identification: they would both face a year of incarceration, followed by five years during which they could not bring other relatives to join them. Ms. Chow’s inclusion of a child in her example was deliberate, since, as she explained, imprisonment has been shown to have particularly harsh psychological and emotional effects on children.

Another NDP MP, Mylène Freeman (Argenteuil-Papineau-Mirabel, in Montreal), summarized the basic unfairness of Canada’s refugee system, which will only worsen with Harper’s proposed reforms: “Canada does not jail children unless they are seeking asylum. We do not jail people for years when they have never been charged with a crime, unless they are seeking asylum. We do not jail people without providing access to legal counsel, unless they are seeking asylum. We do not categorically bar prisoners from seeking bail, unless of course they are seeking asylum. We do no jail the traumatized victims of political conflict, abuse, and poverty, unless they are seeking asylum.”

Socialists demand an immediate withdrawal of Bill C-4 and an end to Harper’s attacks on the rights of refugees.

UPDATE: Harper’s criminal justice reform bill, discussed in the September edition of Socialist Action, (and which shares Bill C-4’s emphasis on incarceration), has drawn condemnation from two more eminent voices in Canada: the former Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Roy McMurtry, and the Canadian Bar Association.

> The article above was written by Eric Kupka.

The Future of the Occupy Movement

2011-12-11T18:16:00.001-05:00

On November 23 police enforced an Ontario Superior Court order to Occupy Toronto to vacate St. James Park, a few blocks from Canada's corporate financial hub. Occupy camps around the world, from Oakland, California, to London, England, from New York to Vancouver, are also under seige. Whether re-locating, or clinging to home turf, the physical encampments inspired a mass movement against social inequality and injustice. They put proponents of the dysfunctional capitalist system on the defensive.

Whatever happens next, the challenge is clear: Spread this movement from the parks and city squares to the sites of social production, distribution and exchange.

On November 13, I spoke to a rally at Occupy Toronto on this theme:

“I've been asked to describe how the work of Socialist Action relates to the Occupy movement, and how we can grow and develop our work together.

“The first order of business is: congratulations! Congratulations to everyone who initiated the Occupy movement. From Tahrir Square in Cairo, to our sisters and brothers in Athens, and in Wisconsin. From Wall Street to London to Madrid to Toronto. What began with the Arab Spring, and spread like wild fire to over 1400 cities worldwide, cannot be extinguished. It is the voice of the voiceless. It is the cry of unemployed youth. It is the cry of dispossessed aboriginal peoples. It is a beacon of hope for the victims of ethnic cleansing, women's oppression, class exploitation and environmental plunder. No matter what the clowns at City Hall may do, Occupation is here to stay. Dismantle it in one place, and it will sprout again, like a sea of dandelions.

“That's because Occupy expresses a seismic shift. It is the shift from ignorance and complacency, to awareness and action. It points not only to gross economic inequality and injustice. It points not only to the greed and malfeasance of the ruling 1 per cent. It points to the need to rid this planet of capitalism -- the toxic system responsible for the social ills that ail humanity.

“Socialist Action is proud to have been part of this movement from the beginning. Our comrades in the U.S., in New York, in Hartford, Conn., in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in Minneapolis, in Phoenix, in Oakland, and many other cities are participants and advocates. Have a look at our newspaper, Socialist Action, and see how we work to win support in the labour movement, and to defend Occupy against police repression.

“That's what we must do here: Defend the Occupy movement. Defend it from bozo politicians, from police repression, from the commercial media which inflates the complaints of a few petty bourgeois restaurateurs into a social calamity -- the only apparent solution for which is the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. We say: Hands off Occupy Toronto. It is the best thing that's happened to this park and to this city in a long time.

“That brings us to a bigger challenge: how to extend the Occupy movement to the factories and offices, to the mines and mills, to the stores and schools, to work places and to communities across this city and across this country. We can draw a lesson from Quebec where, this past week, over 200,000 students shut down schools and occupied the streets to oppose tuition increases and to demand free, quality, public post-secondary education. We can take encouragement from the Orange Wave (NDP surge) last Spring that marginalized the discredited Liberal Party in its wake. We are inspired by environmental activists whose actions forced US President Obama to delay construction of the Keystone XE pipeline.

“These events underline a compelling truth: Occupy is a powerful symbol, a resilient rallying point. It has changed the channel. It has ignited a conversation of millions. But to win, to truly win human liberation and save civilization from the ravages of the profit system, we need to shut capitalism down. We need to re-boot production on a green, democratic basis, and build a cooperative commonwealth.

“That's what we in SA mean by socialism, a democratic cooperative commonwealth, where production is wholly owned and controlled by working people, where the military is reduced to a rescue and disaster relief corps, where the 1% are expropriated, and where the state is transformed into the servant of the 99%. That's what socialism will look like.

“What stands in our way? If it was just the 1 per cent, it would be easy, and it would have been done long ago. Standing in the way of economic democracy is a gigantic apparatus of minority rule. The cops, the courts, the bought-and-paid-for media, religious institutions, the managerial elite, and the capitalist political parties. How can we clear a path to majority rule? The same way we defend and spread the Occupy movement. We tell the truth, we build alliances, and we fight the forces that stand in the way of liberation.

“Before the workers' and popular movements can go forward, we need to remove the obstacles within. I refer to the labour, NGO and NDP bureaucracies. Donations of food, tents and port-a-potties are good. But they are no substitute for organized resistence to labour concessions in the work place. They are no substitute for a battle over the lack of democracy in many unions and the NDP. Rather than walk away from the problem, we need to dig in and fight for socialist policies and democracy from the bottom up.

“That's what Socialist Action does. We build support for Occupy Toronto, and we organize a fighting opposition to labour mis-leaders who go along with cutbacks, with privatization, with layoffs in the public service (such as advocated by the Drummond commission at Queen's Park). We argue for a General Strike to stop the cuts. We oppose government contracts to build jet fighters and war ships, to construct pipelines for dirty oil, and to invest in nuclear energy. We demand a steeply progressive tax on big wealth, on inheritance, and on corporate profits – not just an end to recent corporate tax cuts, not just abolition of the HST, not just a Robin Hood tax, or a Tobin Tax. We demand public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy under workers' and community control.

“We don't think that we, or any individual or small group can accomplish this alone. For that reason Socialist Action devotes most of our efforts to building coalitions, alliances, broad unity in action. That is why we play a leading role in the NDP Socialist Caucus, a broad alliance of anti-capitalist party members who seek to win the 4.5 million NDP voters to a Workers' Agenda. That is why SA plays a leading role in the Workers' Solidarity and Union Democracy Coalition, which is now fighting layoffs, and opposing OPSEU leaders' threat to quit the Ontario Federation of Labour. That is why SA initiated the October 15 Coalition of 11 organizations that marked the 10th anniversary of the imperialist war and occupation of Afghanistan with a rally and march that concluded right here, in St. James Park. That is why we sponsor educational conferences, concerts to raise money for workers on strike, an annual May Day celebration, and Rebel Films, which attracted close to 500 people to the latest Rebel Film series at OISE.

“We don't have all the answers. But we do know this: To win in the face of corporate state power requires a revolutionary perspective. It requires a conscious mass base in the working class. The revolutionary battle for hearts and minds takes place in the existing mass working class organizations. That is where we are fighting to build solidarity, to build the Occupy movement, to spread it to unions, to the NDP, to work places and communities, and to put an end to the cancer of capitalist minority rule.

“We are with you 100%. We invite you to work with us, to join SA and Youth for Socialist Action. Together we will win, much sooner than later.”

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

NDP Leader race crowded, on the right

2011-11-19T13:33:00.002-05:00

Montreal MP Thomas Mulcair, a former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister who takes pride in his role in early 'free trade' negotiations, brings a decidedly pro-capitalist, anti-Quebec self-determination perspective to the New Democratic Party leadership race. When Mulcair announced his candidacy, he had the backing of 15 MPs, soon likely 30, but few supporters outside of the ranks of strongly pro-federalist Quebecers.

British Columbia MP Nathan Cullen, another leadership contender, advocates a “non-compete agreement” with the Liberal and Green parties. While the stated aim is to unite anti-Conservative votes in the next federal election, such a move, welcomed by the pro-Liberal media as a step towards merger, would destroy the NDP as a party independent of the business class. It would drown generations of working class social gains.

Ottawa MP Paul Dewar promises that as NDP leader he would give city governments more say – even a seat at federal-provincial ministers' meetings. Dewar, until recently the NDP foreign affairs critic in Parliament, defended the bombing of Libya by Canadian Forces. He supports the Canada-U.N. occupation of Haiti, opposed the Canadian Boat to Gaza, and rejects boycott, sanctions and divestment aimed at the Zionist apartheid state.

Northern Quebec MP Romeo Saganash, a Cree lawyer and regional leader, has yet to detail his policy positions since joining the leadership race in September. Nova Scotia MP Robert Chisholm will soon toss his hat into the ring. Fellow Nova Scotian Martin Singh, a pharmacist and businessman, extols the virtues of entrepreneurship.

On October 28, Toronto MP and former Canadian Auto Workers Union negotiator Peggy Nash declared her candidacy. Her platform, in the words of Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom, “is straight-up NDP orthodoxy”; “address social inequality... and boost corporate taxes to pay for it.” The only positive point of differentiation is Nash's praise for the Occupy movement.

That brings us to the never-elected-to-public-office Brian Topp -- touted as the front-runner. He enjoys the backing of the Steelworkers' Union and party icons Ed Broadbent and Roy Romanow. Lately, Topp called for higher taxes on corporate profits and big income earners.

But Topp is a very unlikely candidate of the left. He rescued the party establishment from ann embarrassing defeat at the federal NDP convention in Vancouver in June when he moved to refer back to the executive its proposal to delete the word “socialist” from the party constitution preamble. Post-convention, the preamble disappeared from the federal party web site – a devious move typical of the backroom politics associated with Topp and company.

Sadly, leftist B.C. MPs Libby Davies and Peter Julian opted out of the race. Bizarrely, Davies later endorsed Topp, the man who as federal campaign director presided over the party's steady shift to the right.

The dearth of meaningful choices for NDP Leader poses a serious challenge to the NDP and to the anti-capitalist left: either raise the tens of thousands of dollars needed to run a socialist candidate for Leader, or find other ways to fight for a Workers' Agenda in the only mass, labour-based political party in North America.

The global “Occupy” movement, and a whole generation of concerned environmentalists, plus millions of victims of war and capitalist economic crisis cry out for a socialist alternative. It must be generated inside the mainstream of the workers' movement, where it matters most.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

OPSEU threatens to split OFL

2011-11-19T13:32:00.000-05:00

The last thing the labour movement needs at this time is division. Yet this is exactly what is happening due to a dispute between officers of the Ontario Federation of Labour, including OFL President Sid Ryan, and some affiliated unions including the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and its President, Warren 'Smokey' Thomas.

The dispute may result in the withdrawal of Canada's largest provincial public service union, the 125,000 strong OPSEU, from the one million member OFL. The OPSEU Executive Board decided to suspend payment of its dues to the OFL and to recommend that the union vote at its April 2012 convention to disaffiliate. Reasons given for this split include faults in the OFL Constitution which undermine fair representation in the labour body, along with claims that it is difficult to negotiate internal issues with Sid Ryan. Ryan was acclaimed to the OFL top job in Fall 2009.

Non-payment of dues has already led to OPSEU being denied delegation status to the November 21-25 OFL convention. The decision to withhold dues was made minus any consultation with the OPSEU membership. That contravenes the union's constitution which states that OPSEU is responsible for paying its dues to labour bodies to which it is affiliated, and that any decision to disaffiliate can be made only at an OPSEU convention.
OPSEU's withdrawal from the house of labour in Ontario will result in serious damage to the labour movement, which is already under fierce attack by the employers and the state. Working class solidarity and unity in action is now urgently needed. Sadly, instead of proposing a programme for militant action, bureaucrats are dissing one another.

However, opposition to the split is emerging. Socialists and other labour activists in OPSEU are campaigning against the unprincipled decision by OPSEU's EBMs. The Greater Toronto Area Council, which encompasses dozens of OPSEU locals in Toronto, passed a motion on October 19 asking the Executive Board to rescind its decision, and to resume paying dues to the OFL. GTAC also asks that OPSEU's President immediately meet with Sid Ryan to resolve the issues in dispute. Activists know that this bureaucratic spat is occurring at a very bad time, and that our leadership should not descend to the level of personal attacks, even character assassination, in dealing with disputes amongst affiliates. It is a poisonous distraction from the bosses' drive to squeeze workers' wages, benefits and pensions. Workers deserve much better than this from our labour leadership.

> The article above was written by Julius Arscott.

Toronto marches demand 'Canada Out of Afghanistan', Stop the cuts at City Hall

2011-11-19T13:27:00.002-05:00

Despite high winds and cold showers, scores of anti-war activists in Toronto took to the streets on Saturday, October 15 to demand an end to the ten-year-long war of occupation in Afghanistan.



A coalition of eleven organizations united behind the slogan "Canada Out of Afghanistan Now!"

The protest began with a rally of about 70 people at the corner of Yonge Street and Dundas at 1 p.m. Earlier, Dundas Square 'security' personnel and Toronto police tried to shoo away the first arrivals, but organizers stood our ground, distributed event flyers, and provided a platform for representatives of the sponsoring groups.

Magdalena Diaz chaired the rally, and introduced the speakers, including: Nicolas Lopez of Barrio Nuevo, Azeem of the Canada South Asian Solidarity Association, Tom Reid of the International Bolshevik Tendency, Steve Da Silva of the International League of People's Struggle - Canada, Elizabeth Byce for the NDP Socialist Caucus, Ming and Chanda for the Proletarian Revolutionary Action Committee, Barry Weisleder, Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste federal secretary, and Joe Lombardo, co-chair of the United National Anti-War Coalition in the United States.

Participants then literally took to the street, travelling down a car traffic lane south-bound on Yonge Street -- until police directed the parade onto the sidewalk. By the time the march reached King Street, and proceeded eastward to St. James Park, where over 2,000 people gathered for the Occupy Toronto encampment, over 150 people had joined the anti-war action. Chants of "Money for Jobs, Not for War", "Money for Schools, Not for War", along with the main slogan, echoed through the downtown intersections.

In the park, hundreds welcomed the marchers and joined an impromptu speak-out featuring Coalition leaders. Dozens of observers stepped forward to buy buttons bearing the slogan "Canada Out of Afghanistan" and "Capitalism Fouls Things Up".

The October 15 anti-war protest was a somewhat bold, and certainly worthwhile initiative. It was undertaken by the sponsoring organizations chiefly because the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War and the Canadian Peace Alliance declined to do so, despite being asked repeatedly over a five week period.

It is no mean feat for a range of ideologically and ethnically diverse bodies to cooperate openly and respectfully, and to carry out a modest but successful action of the Toronto October 15 type, with most of the organizing taking place in the short span of one week. The experience augurs well for future such endeavors.

One week later, over 1,500 supporters of Occupy Toronto marched to City Hall under grey skies. On Saturday, October 22 the parade made its way along King St., Bay St., to City Hall Square, and following speeches, returned to St. James Park, just east of the financial headquarters of Canadian capitalism. A number of social justice movements, and half a dozen leftist groups, carried signs and banners. They were joined by scores of union activists. The core of the march consisted of the 200 or so denizens of the park encampment, and hundreds of regular visitors to the Occupy Toronto site.

Socialist Action was very visible throughout the afternoon, with members carrying the banner bearing the slogan "Nationalize the banks, steel and auto, Under workers' control!" We sold over 50 copies of SA newspaper, and distributed hundreds of leaflets featuring announcements about upcoming Rebel Films, the YSA, the CREDO public forum on October 29, and a statement by the Greek radical left denouncing the bosses' austerity drive there.

Dozens of people walked in the SA contingent, and chanted with us "Cutbacks? No thanks. Nationalize the banks!", "Money for schools, not for war", and "Hey, hey, ho, ho, (mayor) Rob Ford's got to go".

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Quality of Life Declining – says study

2011-11-19T13:26:00.002-05:00

Workers in Canada are over-stressed and under-rewarded in the capitalist pressure cooker we call every day life.

There is greater productivity, but growing inequality and less personal enjoyment, according to the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. The CIW, a 12-year study based at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, measures how people, communities, the environment and democracy are faring – not just the economy.

The report shows that while Canada's Gross Domestic Product increased by 31 per cent from 1994-2008, the CIW rose just 11 per cent. The wealthiest 20 per cent of people received most of the benefits of that growth, while the gap separating the bottom 20 per cent grew larger.

The discrepancy between GDP and CIW growth “tells us emphatically that we have not been making the right investment in our people and in our communities,” the report says. “And we have not been doing it for a long time. It is time public policy focused more on the quality of our lives”.

The report claims that the quality of life actually decreased over the period measured – in the environment, leisure and culture, and time use. In health, there have been modest gains.

Roy Romanow, former NDP Premier of Saskatchewan and current chair of the CIW, said most Canadians are “running so fast, and basically standing still, that we do not have the opportunity to enjoy things that really matter in life.”

The GDP does not measure the welfare of society. For instance, spending on tobacco, war, on cleaning up man-made disasters, building prisons – hardly examples of human progress – all cause GDP to rise. Meanwhile, caring for an ailing relative, unpaid housework, volunteer work – all social positives – don't show up in GDP.

It is important to add that growth without workers' democratic control only adds to the super-abundance of alienation and waste. The solution to this supposed quandary is production designed to meet human needs, not private profit – an economic democracy, otherwise known as socialism.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Proposed Mega-Quarry to face tougher review

2011-11-19T13:25:00.000-05:00

A month before facing voters in the October 6 Ontario provincial election, the governing Liberals decided to require a more stringent approval process for a controversial proposal to dig a massive quarry in a sensitive environmental area near Toronto.

As reported in the July 2011 edition of Socialist Action, the proposed 2,300 acre aggregate quarry in Melancthon, Ontario was originally slated for the relatively lax approval process of the Ministry of Natural Resources. This soft-gloves treatment sparked widespread criticism and protests. Ultimately the government relented. It announced on September 1 that the project would be subjected to a comprehensive environmental assessment under the province’s environment protection legislation – a process that could take months or years.

However, this development does not mean that the quarry project has been scrapped. In fact, the project’s proponent, the U.S. hedge fund-backed Highland Companies, has been aggressively buying up farmland and cutting down vegetation. According to "Melancthon quarry unites diverse communities", an article by Meg Borthwick, posted on www.rabble.ca on September 23, this has the convenient effect of deterring protected bird species from nesting on the proposed site and potentially stalling the project.

Activists and the local community continue to galvanize opposition to the quarry. The “Foodstock” festival, presented by the Canadian Chefs' Congress on October 16, drew 28,000 people, including such notables as the musical group Barenaked Ladies and renowned chef Jamie Kennedy. They attended a festival of food, music and speeches to generate support and raise funds for the campaign against the quarry project.

Socialists demand a thorough and transparent environmental assessment of the proposed Melancthon quarry, with full input from the local community, environmental groups and First Nations' peoples. We stand with all Ontarians who will be impacted, and those who have already been affected.

> The article above was written by Eric Kupka.

Recession with a Vengeance

2011-11-19T13:23:00.002-05:00

As voters troop to the polls in six provincial and territorial elections across Canada in October and November, they do so in the shadow of another global economic melt down.

Stocks are falling, markets are contracting and credit is seizing up. Many economists and politicians are already declaring the onset of a recession. Distractions from reality, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper's 'law and order' parliamentary agenda (see article below), are coupled with elite demands for more sacrifice by the working class.

But this begs a few questions.

Did the 'Great Recession' of 2008 ever really end? When did the downturn that wiped out trillions in wealth, destroyed millions of jobs, and plunged millions of people into abject poverty, turn around?

What happened during the so-called economic 'recovery'?

Well, the rich got bailed out. The income gap widened. Young people bore the brunt of rising unemployment, and still do.

In Canada, the banks (through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) and the auto giants got hundreds of millions of dollars in government relief. Big capital benefited from billions in corporate tax cuts, which contributed mightily to the public debt that is so often cited as the reason for cutbacks. This is the story, from the feds on down to each city hall.

In the USA, $2 trillion in tax money went to Wall Street bailouts. For their greed and malfeasance, the rich actually got rewarded. Business CEOs now pay themselves 325 times the compensation of their shop floor or office cubicle wage slaves. That ratio was closer to 25 to 1 in the 1960s -- no thanks to Mad Men.

The gap between rich and poor in Canada has widened markedly. The top 1 per cent of income earners accounts for almost 40 per cent of total national income. In the 1950s and 1960s that figure was a mere 8 per cent. Today, up to 4.4 million Canadians live in poverty.

The official jobless rate, at 7.3 per cent, remains higher than the 6 per cent of October 2008 when the Great Recession began. According to Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate among people 24 and younger is 17.2 per cent. That's up 0.3 per cent from the previous summer, and more than 3 per cent higher than it was in 2008.

Canadian household debt, which fueled the illusory 'recovery', is at near record levels, as the income of working people, including white collar professionals, has continued its 30 year stagnation.

In the downtown corporate towers, business profits have soared. But capital investment is down. That's because billions of dollars are sitting in reserve, or moving to low-wage countries where the conditions for plunder are 'more promising'.

Recession is a grim reminder of how capitalism operates, and a warning as well: If working people don't take back the wealth created by our labour, the wealthy will only continue to take it out of our hides -- to make us pay for the crisis of their system. Now that's something to think about on the way to the polls.

> The article above was by Barry Weisleder.

Tory Crime Bill Wants to Lock 'em Up

2011-11-19T13:22:00.003-05:00

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper kicked off his first Conservative-majority Parliament on September 19 by introducing changes to the criminal justice system that seek to put more people in prison and keep them there longer.

The Tory crime bill imposes mandatory minimum sentences and restricts the availability of house arrest, thus depriving judges of discretion in such matters. These measures are not aimed only at serious offences: a person caught with as little as six marijuana plants would now face at least six months in jail.

The bill also downgrades almost all factors for consideration in the correctional and parole process, including the special needs of First Nations. This risks increasing the First Nations' incarceration rate, which is already scandalous at 17 percent of the overall prison population. Aboriginal peoples make up less than 3 percent of adult Canadians.

Behind this regressive law-and-order crackdown by Harper is the uncontested fact that crime rates have been falling steadily in Canada for the past twenty years. This has led to much criticism of the reform bill, including by many in the mainstream media. The Globe and Mail mockingly called it the “Prison is the Answer to Everything” bill. The Toronto Star denigrated it as “a classic of misplaced priorities, a wholesale assault on a problem that doesn’t exist” that will cost billions. Star columnist Carol Goar warns that Harper’s adoption of U.S.-style crime policies will lead to a “disproportionate increase in the number of poor, non-white people behind bars.”

The Conservatives tried to pass many of the same provisions in previous parliamentary sessions, when they ruled as a minority government. However, they were blocked by the opposition parties, including the labour-based New Democratic Party.

Now back with a majority, the Conservatives warn that this bill is “just the beginning.” As we witness the highly controversial execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, and the recent hunger strikes by prisoners in California, we shudder to think what else Stephen Harper has in mind.

Socialists demand that the Conservative crime bill be withdrawn, and that the government focus its efforts on crime prevention rather than fear-mongering and punishment. We demand that special attention be given to young persons, women and aboriginals who are involved in the criminal justice system. Education and good jobs, not punishment for being poor, should be at the center of society's agenda.

> The article above was written by Eric Kupca.

Will Socialist Caucus Run a Candidate for Leader?

2011-11-19T13:21:00.002-05:00

NDP socialists are looking for a left wing alternative to Brian Topp, the back room strategist who announced his candidacy for the federal party leadership. In June, at the NDP federal convention in Vancouver, Topp expressed his support for the still-born Liberal-NDP coalition that took shape two winters ago. NDP leftists strongly reject coalition or merger with the business-backed Liberal Party.

Romeo Saganash, the Cree leader and MP from northern Quebec, declared his candidacy in mid-September. He didn't outline his platform, but his candidacy may already have had the salutory effect of crippling the leadership bid of Thomas Mulcair, a Montreal area MP who jumped from the Quebec Liberal Party cabinet to the NDP in 2006.

Sadly, leftist Vancouver East MP Libby Davies has ruled out a run for the job.

The NDP Socialist Caucus, the cross-country, organized left wing of the labour-based New Democratic Party, will host a conference on November 26 in Toronto to decide its position on the federal NDP leadership race.

The Socialist Caucus, which played a significant role in preventing removal of the term “socialist” from the party constitution at the June 2011 federal convention in Vancouver, is concerned that putative candidates for leader, like Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, advocate a merger of the NDP with the big business-backed Liberal Party, and seek to steer the NDP on a policy course further to the right.

The SC opposes suggestions that the party weaken its ties to the union movement. Socialists seek to increase and strengthen the labour character of the party, and to win it to the fight for a Workers' Agenda -- counter to the corporate agenda, and against the mounting anti-worker 'austerity' measures being imposed at all levels.

At the November 26 SC conference, members may decide to run a candidate for Leader, or to support one of the candidates already running for the post.

SC policy resolutions, publications, forums, and candidates for party executive positions at the Federal NDP convention (March 23-24 in Toronto) and at the Ontario NDP convention (April 12-15, 2012) will also be on the agenda at the November 26 SC gathering.

For more information, please telephone: 416 – 535-8779 e-mail: info@ndpsocialists.ca
Visit the web site: www.ndpsocialists.ca

> The article above was written by Julius Arscott.

Ontario NDP brass violate party democracy

2011-11-19T13:17:00.002-05:00

On Thursday, September 1, Barry Weisleder, chairperson of the NDP Socialist Caucus, won the nomination to be the NDP candidate in Thornhill constituency, just north of Toronto. Two days later Darlene Lawson, the Ontario NDP provincial secretary, 'rescinded' the democratic nomination, which occurred at the best-attended meeting of that NDP riding association in decades.

What was the excuse for the punitive action? Lawson said it was an article by Weisleder mildly critical of the party platform and leadership written weeks before he sought the nomination. It was nearly a month before Lawson gave his bid for the candidacy her stamp of approval at a meeting held in her office on August 10. The only thing that changed between August 10 and September 3 is that Weisleder won the Thornhill nomination.

Unfortunately, this attack on party democracy is not an isolated incident. It is being challenged. Heading up this effort is the Campaign to Restore Democracy in the Ontario NDP (CREDO NDP). There are many ways you can help.

How to respond to the attack on party democracy?
1. Vigorously oppose the multiple attacks on party democracy being waged by Ontario NDP officials. Urge all New Democrats to protest the removal of the democratically elected candidate in Thornhill, Ontario. NDP and union members, indeed everyone concerned about democracy in the workers' movement, should send e-mail messages, letters, faxes, and make telephone calls of protest to Darlene Lawson at 101 Richmond St. E., and to the office of Ontario Leader Andrea Horwath at Queen's Park.

Telephone: 416-591-5455, ext. 2245 fax: 416-599-4820 E-mail: dlawson@on.ndp.ca

2. Endorse and join CREDO. The NDP Socialist Caucus, along with many friends and allies, is launching the Campaign to Restore Democracy in the Ontario NDP (CREDO NDP) as a broad, common front. The purpose of the Campaign is to hold Ontario NDP officials accountable for rescinding the democratic NDP nomination in Thornhill, and to expose and reverse the attack on party democracy occurring on all levels. After the October 6 Ontario election, this effort will be launched publicly. It has already reached hundreds of New Democrats through direct personal and inter net contact.

The party bureaucracy's decision to rescind Barry Weisleder's nomination follows the ugly incident in Toronto's Etobicoke North constituency. There, on August 17, NDP officials did not allow Diana Andrews (a Black, lesbian, elementary school teacher) to run for the NDP nomination, ostensibly because she is involved in a conflict with her union leadership.

It also follows the bureaucratic overturn of the elections held at the Ontario New Democratic Youth convention in Fall 2010 by party officials, and the cancellation of the constitutionally mandated ONDP convention that should have occurred in Spring 2011.

Before that, the Ontario party Leader ordered NDP MPP Michael Prue not to speak at an open hearing on the issue of public funding for Catholic schools. The hearing, attended by over one hundred New Democrats on March 12, 2010 at OISE U of Toronto, was organized by the NDP Socialist Caucus and was held when the party was openly reviewing its position on the question and seeking public in-put.

Most recently, the Preamble to the federal NDP Constitution, which still includes the word “socialist” after a bitter, highly publicized struggle at the federal convention, has disappeared entirely from the federal party web site.

3. CREDO invites New Democrats to spread the word about this campaign for accountability and party democracy via e-mail, phone calls, web sites, and Facebook. It invites everyone to attend an open public meeting, at a time and place to be announced, featuring a panel of activists who will speak to the incidents mentioned above. For the latest news, contact: info@ndpsociaists.ca

4. NDP members will exercise the right to appeal the party brass decision to rescind the Thornhill nomination, and continue to seek accountability and justice in this matter at the next Ontario NDP Provincial Council meeting on November 19, 2011 – indeed, all the way to the April 12-15, 2012 Ontario NDP Convention.

> The article above was written by Elizabeth Byce.

Ontario: On October 6, Vote NDP!

2011-09-20T20:29:00.000-04:00

Tax cuts for the rich. Service cuts and fee hikes for the rest of us. That's how the bosses make workers pay for the capitalist crisis around the world. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, is no exception. And if the governing provincial Liberals, or the official opposition Progressive Conservatives, have their way, the austerity drive against workers and the poor will intensify. But the rulers have reason to fear that their plans may be derailed by a wave of votes for the labour-based New Democratic Party on October 6, similar to the orange surge seen in the May 2 federal election. The task of every class conscious worker is to make that happen, for there is much at stake.

Once the prosperous industrial heartland, Ontario is now a have-not province in terms of transfer payments. Unemployment is above the cross-country official average of 7.2 per cent. Ontario's poverty rate is up 17 per cent since the Dalton McGuinty-led Liberals were re-elected in 2007 on a pledge to reduce it. Nearly 1.7 million Ontarians are living in poverty, including almost 400,000 children, according to StatsCan data. In 1995 the Conservative Mike Harris government cut welfare by 21.6 per cent. Since the Liberals were elected in 2003 they perpetuated the decline in welfare and disability rates, which are now 55 per cent below where they'd be otherwise. McGuinty froze the minimum wage in 2011 and slashed the Special Diet supplement to the ailing poor.

Tuition fees are the second highest in Canada, with annual increases between 4.5 and 8 per cent. University graduates carry a debt load of nearly $25,000, according to the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario.

Ontario's Liberal Finance Minister Dwight Duncan declared a two-year wage freeze on public service workers. He threatens to cut 1900 full-time public service jobs (including water inspectors, and workers who help the disabled live at home) by April 2012. Meanwhile, Premier McGuinty forces Ontarians to pay a permanent health care premium and a Harmonized Sales Tax. The HST costs the average family an additional $792 annually. In August, British Columbia voters rejected and cancelled their HST in a referendum.

Queen's Park starves municipalities and chokes funding to public transit, as it pours billions of dollars into the lethal, wasteful nuclear power industry. Schools are under-funded; recreation centres and libraries face closure; roads and bridges are disintegrating under the ever-growing weight of traffic congestion. And what do the business elite and their hired political hacks say? They say we can't afford any better.

The truth is, we can do better. How? By reversing the corporate tax cuts and putting Ontario back to work. The provincial budget deficit of $14 billion, and the $235 billion accumulated debt is largely the result of Tory corporate tax cuts in the mid-1990s and early 2000s of $18 billion per year. In each of the last two years, the McGuinty Liberals cut corporate taxes more than $2.4 billion.

What effect did that have? It didn't increase fixed capital spending by business. The rich pocketed the savings, while public budgets and public services were squeezed.

What's the difference between the Liberals and the Tories on this front? McGuinty promises to restrain growth below 2 per cent, whereas PC leader Tim Hudack threatens to reduce spending by 2 per cent, while further cutting taxes on the rich. The Green Party would reduce the deficit even faster, without saying how. In any case, one thing is certain: the capitalist parties will declare, after the election, that the situation is much worse than predicted. Their unwavering aim is to make workers pay (both for the manufactured fiscal crisis, and for the endemic capitalist overproduction crisis).

Hudack, a Mike Harris henchman, rubs salt into the social wounds by demanding more prisons, longer sentences, and forced labour for convicts. He courts the anti-choice-on- abortion lunatic fringe, and he pushes for much more privatization and de-regulation. Hudack is a neo-liberal in a hurry. He's the flip side of the big business coin. Heads they win. Tails we lose. Many people are tired of this political farce they call a 'choice', reinforced by a regressive, non-proportional electoral system.

The NDP, led by Andrea Horwath, pledges to stop the corporate tax giveaways, to remove the HST from hydro and home heating, to freeze transit fares, cut emergency room wait times in half, end ambulance fees, cap government CEO salaries, stop burning coal and phase out nuclear in favour of green energy alternatives.

Although these policies fall short of what is needed to meet human needs -- public ownership of the big economy, under workers' control, to realize eco-socialist solutions – a vote for the NDP is a vote for a workers' party. It opens the door for working people, as a class, to have a say in the political direction of society. The striving of the powerless to give voice to their demands, through their own class organizations, is not diminished by the loss of Jack Layton; it is rather reinforced in ways which may resound through the ONDP.

In sum, the real choices are these. The Tories will stab you in the back with a straight face. The Liberals will do it with a smile. The alternative in Ontario on October 6 is an NDP government, which workers should press to implement socialist policies.

Jack Layton 1950-2011

2011-09-20T20:28:00.002-04:00

The death of NDP federal Leader Jack Layton evoked an immense outpouring of sadness and solidarity across the Canadian state. The popularity of Layton, who led his party to unprecedented electoral success on May 2 despite his apparent illness, prompted Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper to declare an official state funeral to honour the NDP leader. Normally, such honours are bestowed only on deceased prime ministers and cabinet ministers.

Thousands of working people passed by Jack Layton's coffin in Parliament in Ottawa, and again at Toronto City Hall. They lined the streets for the funeral procession to a packed Roy Thomson Hall on August 27. Thousands more stood outside the famous concert venue in a nearby square, before giant screens on which the eulogies and musical tributes were projected.

Layton's last written public testament is hailed as a social democratic 'manifesto'. (It can be viewed at www.ndp.ca). Although its content is suffused with general sentiments about love and hopefulness, its strongly partisan stand for the NDP does put it at odds with the views of some union and NDP officials who favour a merger with the Liberal Party. The leadership race to replace Layton is virtually underway. The NDP Socialist Caucus, which will host a conference on November 26 in Toronto to decide its position on the leadership and policy questions, issued the following statement on August 24:

“Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, fought valiantly, but lost his second battle with cancer early on August 22 in Toronto. His passing, at age 61, is a cause of great sadness for all working people and the population at large, a tremendous blow to his family, to whom we send heartfelt condolences, and to the labour-based NDP to which Jack devoted his political life.

“Layton's optimism, energy and passion defined his approach to issues of great social importance. He was a tireless advocate for more and better social housing, a combatant against violence that victimizes women, and against the scourge of AIDs. Layton promoted environmental protection, the rights of cities, and he heeded the call of the anti-war movement to demand 'Canada out of Afghanistan now'.

“While his policies often didn't go as far as we wished, Layton earned the respect of socialists by campaigning steadfastly to form an NDP government – which he came closer to accomplishing than any of his predecessors. His last major speech in Parliament, as Leader of the Opposition following the 'orange surge' on May 2, was a stirring defence of postal workers against the draconian back to work legislation imposed by the Harper Conservatives. Layton won Quebec, not only with his charm and charisma, but by affirming Quebec's right to decide its future, sans the strictures of the undemocratic Clarity Act.

“The best tribute we can pay to Jack is to win the struggles to which he was committed.”

CAAT support staff Strike Back

2011-09-20T20:27:00.000-04:00

Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology support staff, represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union, went on strike on September 1 to defend full time jobs and to challenge the threat of a two-tier system for benefits. Both kinds of management attacks have dire implications for all public sector workers.

Management's concession demands would further isolate and impoverish young workers who make up a large proportion of the 8000 strong OPSEU CAAT-S (College Support) members who work in 24 colleges across the province. Their sick leave would be limited to ten days a year, with no carry-over or accumulation of unused days. The workers are in collective bargaining with the province and now operate under legislation which allows the employer to use scab labour for the first time. Intimidation and coercion are being used against workers already suffering from the biggest economic recession in recent memory.

The Chair of the CAAT Support Bargaining Team, Rod Bemister, reported on the OPSEU web site: "This round of bargaining is not about us getting ahead; it is about us staying even. It’s about holding onto the job security, benefits and pay that others before us fought to get. It’s about keeping good jobs, not just for right now, but for the future. We care too much for our students and the future of Ontario to allow the workforce to be filled with jobs that are part time, insecure, and low paying."

Members across the province gave the bargaining team a 77 per cent strike mandate. Clearly, those workers were prepared to back their demands with action. They did not flinch in the face of management's obstinacy. Socialists, campaigning in support of the college workers, say: End corporate tax breaks, tax the rich, defend full-time jobs, and demand equal pay and benefits for equal work!

> The article above was written by Julius Arscott.

Canadians live in a sea of debt

2011-09-20T20:26:00.001-04:00

Nearly three-quarters of Canadian households carry some debt, according to a Harris-Decima survey done for the CIBC.

Over four in ten households find their debt interferes with achieving financial goals such as saving for retirement or paying for children's education. Those in the 35-to-44 age bracket are the most indebted, with nearly 90 per cent carrying some form of loan.

Two Tier Healthcare at GMC

2011-09-20T20:25:00.000-04:00

Many retired employees of GM of Canada (GMC) attended meetings held in early August about the proposed settlement between them and GM of Canada on the future of retiree health care benefits. The settlement will put in place the Health Care Trust (HCT) agreed to in the 2009 contract negotiations. The administrators of the HCT will oversee and allocate these retired workers' health care benefits.

The retirees listened with concern as they were told that with the funding GM is providing to the HCT benefits would be cut to between 77% and 84% of their current level if the fund is to be sustained indefinitely. Failing that, the fund will eventually run out of money -- meaning all health care benefits will end. At the time of this writing it remains to be seen what benefits will be cut and to what extent.

A principal justification cited for establishing the HCT is that it will sustain health care benefits if GM goes bankrupt. But the creation of the HCT makes it even more unlikely that will ever happen. GM of Canada President Kevin Williams made this rather obvious earlier this year when he stated that the HCT will reduce Canadian labour costs by over $16.00 an hour. This revelation explains why GM has repeatedly told the CAW that future investments in Canada are contingent upon the HCT being finalized. It also showed once again how GM has successfully used its control over investment decisions to extract endless contract concessions from an acquiescent CAW.

The immediate effects of the finalization of the HCT will not just involve big new cuts to retiree health care benefits. The most significant effect will be the establishment of two tier health care benefits at GM of Canada. Active workers will not endure the cuts that will come with the HCT, meaning their health care benefits will remain as they are, while retiree health care benefits get sharply reduced. This two tier arrangement is especially devastating for retirees because they need their healthcare benefits more than active workers. It is also morally indefensible because GM retirees fought the contract battles that got the health care benefits all GM workers enjoy.

The consequences do not end there. Retired GMC workers will be hit by these new cuts just as they are experiencing steadily declining real incomes due to the loss of cost of living adjustments on their pensions and due to the health care benefit concessions negotiated in 2008 and 2009. Increasing financial hardship will go hand in hand with the indignity of having health care benefits very inferior to those active workers get.

The finalization of the HCT is also bad news for the continually shrinking active workforce at GM. With the HCT they have another reason to put off retirement for as long as they can because retirement will mean living with less than it did before. GM workers who ``retire`` will become even more inclined than they already are to get a new job to compensate for their steadily declining retirement incomes.

Another thing must be understood. Two tier health care benefits at GMC mark yet another break from pattern agreements in the Canadian auto industry. There will be no two tier health care benefits at Chrysler of Canada because the HCT there is much better funded. Nor will there be two tier health care benefits at Ford of Canada because there is no HCT there. So GM of Canada retirees are on their own in this regard. They need to mobilize for the 2012 contract negotiations to compel their leadership to negotiate gains elsewhere - sufficient to make up for the big cuts they are about to endure. Active workers at GMC should be in full support of them.

> The article above was written by Bruce Allen, Vice-President of CAW Local 199 (writing in a personal capacity).

OPSEU mobilizes OPS members with ‘Pink Slip Day’

2011-07-30T16:46:00.003-04:00

The attack on public sector workers in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, is in full swing. On July 14, 274 Ontario Public Service Employees' Union (OPSEU) members received notice that they will be 'surplused'. This is the largest wave of layoffs since the dark days of former Tory Premier Mike Harris. The Ontario Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty declared that 1,900 full time jobs will be cut from the Ontario Public Service (OPS) by March 31, 2012.

Public service workers are pawns in a political game. We are victims of the business-led austerity drive in Canada, spurred by the global capitalist crisis that erupted with the economic crash in 2008. Activists in OPSEU, the largest provincial public sector union in Canada, asked OPS members to wear pink on July 14. ‘Pink Slip Day’ was designed to raise solidarity and to show the bosses that we are organizing.

Local 532, which includes workers at the Ministry of the Environment, took it one step further by conducting an information picket at the busy Yonge and St. Clair corridor in Toronto. We distributed hundreds of leaflets describing the effects of cuts to public services. Union members and the general public responded well to the information.

Ontarions overwhelmingly support strong public services. But the pink slips delivered to members resulted in the elimination of the Drinking Water Lead Inspection Programme. The government cut front-line water inspectors who test municipal drinking water systems.

The cuts also impact some of the most vulnerable people in our society. For example, the Ministry of Community and Social Services will stop delivering Special Services At Home by March 31, 2012. This program supports adults with developmental disabilities who, upon leaving the school system, wish to continue to live in the community, usually with their family.

Labour activists should begin to plan actions to mobilize our members and stop the austerity measures. Only mass action by workers can defeat the austerity drive. A huge rally in front of the Ontario Legislature at Queens Park would be a good next step. Members of other unions should be invited to participate. Further actions should include walk outs and/or extended lunch breaks in the workplace.

At regional OPSEU gatherings we often hear rank and file members say “We need leadership”. Then we hear union officials say “Tell us what to do”. It's time to break this vicious circle and plan to take some concrete, broad protest actions now.

Get Well, Jack

Supporters of Socialist Action, like New Democrats and working people across Canada and Quebec, were very saddened to learn on July 25 that federal party Leader Jack Layton faces a new battle against cancer, which has forced him to take a temporary leave from his position. We wish Jack a full and speedy recovery. We look forward to working with him again soon, and for many years to come.

> The article above was written by Julius Arscott, Vice President, OPSEU Local 532.

Get with the Program, Andrea

2011-07-30T16:45:00.001-04:00

When voters in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, go to the polls on October 6, will they reward the party with the 'coolest' leader, or the one with the best policies?

Andrea Horwath, Leader of the labour-based New Democratic Party of Ontario, seems to be aiming at 'cool', sadly at the expense of feminism. To deflect media criticism that she is keeping much of the NDP election platform under wraps, Horwath quipped “I'm a woman – I know you don't give it up all at once.” Later, she pledged to “balance the budget on high heels”.

Many women are not amused. In any case, mildly sexist jokes are no substitute for a Workers' Agenda. Neither is a platform that emphasizes “Making life affordable” and “Live within our means”. Instead of aspartame to make the capitalist medicine go down, working people crave an alternative. Socialist policies are that alternative.

In the first place, survival is the issue, not just 'affordability'. The lack of secure, decent-paying jobs, the mounting debt weighing down workers, the growing scourge of homelessness and disease, against a backdrop of environmental degradation and wars of occupation, show that measures against capitalist power and privilege are sorely needed.

Capital and the rich should pay for the crises their system creates. The Ontario NDP should campaign to eliminate the HST, not just remove it from hydro and home heating. Freezing prices at the gas pump and at the transit fare box would be commendable, but should be part of a plan to nationalize Big Oil and Gas. That way mega-profits from the resource sector could be invested in green energy alternatives and adequate funding for mass public transportation.

Job creation is a top priority. It will not come primarily from concessions to small business. It will come from government action to create, or operate existing industries democratically and in the public interest. Corporate tax giveaways should be reversed, not just halted. U.S. Steel in Hamilton should be nationalized under workers' and community control. The same should be done to bad bosses and runaway employers like IQT Solutions in Oshawa.

Health care, including drugs and eye care, should be exclusively public and non-profit. So should education. It ought to be free through university, with no public funding for private or religious schools. Universally accessible, quality education can be financed by a re-vamped, steeply graduated tax system that targets high incomes, speculators, corporate profits, and huge inheritances.

In view of deepening food, debt and ecological crises (featuring rampant floods, wild fires, drought, nuclear fall-out), now is the time to conscript big wealth for system change. 'Balancing the budget' on the backs of workers, farmers, women, youths and seniors is not what's needed. Greece is our inspiration, not for its austerity measures, but for its workers fighting back. This fight is continuing across Europe, North Africa, Latin America and beyond.

Capping CEO salaries and halting the use of consultants at Queen's Park, as the NDP demands, would be good mini-steps. But the party should be talking about slashing CEO salaries and democratizing crown corporations and government ministries. While calling for a full, public, union-led enquiry into all aspects of the June 2010 G20 Summit planning and policing, we demand a radical reduction of expenditures on policing, on weapons and surveillance equipment. Stop state litigation against indigenous peoples, unions, women's organizations striving for justice in the work place, and climate justice seekers.

It is wonderful that Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP are campaigning to form a government. We may benefit from the 'orange wave' still rippling from the May 2 federal election tsunami. But because opinion polls show that the October 6 vote could produce a minority Conservative government, it is critical that the NDP pledge now that it will not enter into a coalition government with the Liberals, nor with any capitalist party.

The NDP, as Ontario's official opposition, or in government, should fight for a Workers' Agenda, for eco-socialist measures, to make Capital pay for its crisis and for the needed environmental clean-up. It should fight to make quality education and health care a right for all Ontarions. Our task is not to make capitalism work better for the rich, but to establish a democratic socialist alternative in the interests of the vast majority.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Gay Left Resurgence

2011-07-30T16:44:00.001-04:00

Events in Greater Toronto Area (GTA) queer communities over the last year strongly suggest a resurgence in grassroots struggles and campaigns. Taking inspiration from the history of the earlier gay liberation movement, there is increasing resistance to the assimilationist and opportunist direction of the (largely self-appointed) LGBT 'leadership'.

Resistance surfaced spectacularly during the run-up to Pride week (2010) last year, when Pride Toronto (PT) abjectly caved in to pro-Zionist attacks on the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in the annual Pride March. Initially, Pride bureaucrats tried to impose a process where signs and slogans would be vetted in advance.

This stance produced a storm of protest, including a large community meeting of around 400 which founded the Pride Coalition for Free Speech. This first attempt at censorship was discarded. But on May 26, citing attacks on city Pride funding by right wing media and politicians, PT held a press conference to announce that any reference to 'Israeli Apartheid' would be banned. Outside the PT office, 150 protesters organized by QuAIA loudly demonstrated. It was an impressive turnout on short notice, on a weekday. Following the demonstration, many present and past honorees of Pride publicly declined or returned their awards. PT eventually rescinded its decision. Large contingents from both QuAIA and the free speech coalition marched in the parade.

Following Pride 2010, PT set up a 'community consultation' process to deflect growing criticism of its bureaucratic and high-handed practices. True to form, the process was transparently skewed so that the result would not be too embarrassing. So much so that Queer Ontario (QO) decided to boycott the process, present its own recommendations and seek to meet directly with the PT board.

This year, QuAIA decided not to march, to avoid giving city hall reactionaries and pro-Zionists a pretext to cut Pride funding (and presumably, in the event that funding was cut, to blunt any smear campaign that it was all their fault.) QuAIA didn't march, but did unfurl a large banner from the top of the Wellesley St. subway station: “Support Palestinian Queers/Boycott Israeli Tourism.” This act enraged right wing and homophobic city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, as did anti-apartheid signs and pro-Palestinian chants in the Dyke March the previous day. The Dyke procession is a separate event from the Pride Parade, organized by women independently. Given to clownish and demagogic stunts, Mammoliti videotaped the Dyke March, allegedly to collect 'evidence' to support his fund-cutting campaign!

More significantly, the previous weekend saw the first STONEWALL march, attended by at least 1000 participants. (See article in previous SA.) For years people fed up with the increasingly corporatised and bureaucratic official Pride had talked about creating an alternative event, more community-oriented and in the spirit of the original Stonewall rebellion. Since PT had vacated that weekend to move Pride to the first weekend in July, organizers seized the opportunity, drawing impressive numbers of younger people, women, transgendered people and minorities.

The most encouraging trend has been the growth and development of Queer Ontario. (Although centered in Toronto, it is a province-wide organization, and steps are planned to provide for more involvement by members across Ontario.) QO is the successor organization to the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario (CLGRO), which for 35 years waged a principled and militant struggle for queer rights, one of the major highlights being the amendment of the Ontario Human Rights Code in 1986 to include sexual orientation.

Thanks to membership growth, especially the addition of new and younger activists, QO has been able to move toward holding more public events and being more directly involved in immediate issues. One of the most important of those is support for Catholic high-school students in their struggle against the church hierarchy (and the Ministry of Education's refusal to enforce its own policies) and in favour of the right to form Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in schools. QO has been actively engaged in support of free speech at Pride and the push for community control. On August 28, 2011, the fortieth anniversary of the first gay demonstration on Parliament Hill, QO is organizing an updated repeat rally in Ottawa under the slogan “We (Still) Demand” (the original demonstration's theme was “We Demand”.)

Queer Ontario to date has been, and is, everything operations like Pride Toronto are not -- democratic, inclusive, independent, and with a liberationist perspective. Its independence is illustrated by its insistence on holding accountable the Ontario Liberal government's Ministry of Education for refusal to enforce its own policies on GSAs, where others argue for the bankrupt 'lesser-evil' politics of taking a soft line on the Liberals lest the more right wing Conservatives win the next election. QO offers the kind of leadership needed to spark a renewal of queer liberation.

> The article above was written by John Wilson.

Ontario Mega-Quarry arouses opposition

2011-07-30T16:42:00.001-04:00

An application to dig the largest quarry in Canadian history (and the second largest in North America) in prime agricultural land near Toronto has aroused widespread opposition.

According to rabble.ca, the quarry would stretch over 2,300 acres and dip 200 feet below the water table – making it deeper than Niagara Falls. Located at the headwaters of important river systems in Melancthon, Ontario, the proposed gravel “mega-quarry” would pump out 600 million litres of water every day, raising important concerns about its effects on the local water supply.

The operation would also see 150 loaded trucks leave the quarry every hour to travel down local roads. This would inevitably create dust, noise and safety problems for local residents.

One would think that such an unprecedented project would attract rigorous government scrutiny. However, that is not the case. Rather than proceeding through a full-scale environmental assessment under the auspices of the Ontario Ministry of Environment, the application is currently being reviewed under the laxer and less environmentally-focused standards of the Ministry of Natural Resources. This is an easier process for the project owner, The Highland Companies, and the U.S. hedge fund behind it, but one that will fail to fully consider the effects of the quarry on the people and natural life to be forced to live with it.

In response, the local community is mobilizing, and has drawn attention to the quarry in high places. The Leader of the labour-based Ontario New Democratic Party, Andrea Horwarth, plus the Council of Canadians and a host of local politicians have condemned the project. The famed David Suzuki Foundation expressed serious concerns. Grassroots organizing included a five-day march from the provincial legislature in Toronto to Melancthon by 200 concerned citizens. It began, appropriately, on April 22, Earth Day 2011.

Socialists propose an immediate cancellation of the mega-quarry approval process, and urge all concerned Ontarians to add their voice in opposition to this environmentally, economically and socially destructive project.

> The article above was written by Eric Kupka.

NDP ranks reject turn to right

2011-07-07T20:46:00.003-04:00

What began as a tightly orchestrated tribute to Leader Jack Layton and his electoral machine turned into a battleground over socialist policies and principles. In the end, officials of the labour-based New Democratic Party failed to convince a majority of the 1572 delegates to the June 17-19 NDP Federal Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia to approve a shift to the right.

Led by the high-profile Socialist Caucus (S.C.), NDP leftists stopped cold a bid by the establishment to “sanitize” the party constitution by removing a reference to “democratic socialist principles” from its preamble.

What’s in a phrase? Since the NDP embraced capitalism following its founding 50 years ago, does it matter? Evidently, it does. The labour-based party remains a lightning rod for working-class protest, independent of the business class, and against the dysfunctional system.

In the key debate, MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre) referred to socialism as “an anchor” weighing down the party. He urged delegates to take an ax to the socialist link. But Martin was rebuked by the ovation for the counter-argument that “socialism is a rocket.” Crisis-wracked capitalism is what deserves our scorn, say many NDP and union members across the country.

“NDP to stay socialist for now” proclaimed a Toronto Star headline on June 20. Though putting a strain on poetic licence, these words do capture the sentiment of the party grassroots.

Feeding off post-May 2 election euphoria, NDP officials did their level best to make the convention a leadership love-in. They tried hard to clamp down on serious policy debate, and to marginalize controversy. However, they did not entirely succeed:

Socialist Caucus motions on public ownership of industry, party democracy, Libya, Palestine, NATO, Quebec national rights, tar sands oil, cannabis and free college education filled the resolutions book. They were valuable resources, cited in many debates. Nearly 40 per cent of the delegates present for the opening plenary backed an S.C.-initiated motion to add one hour to the time allocated for policy discussion. Despite claims by party apparatchiks that such an addition was simply not possible, time was added nonetheless due to late starts and technical glitches.

Faced with the prospect that the bid to remove socialism from the preamble would fail, NDP federal president-elect Brian Topp performed a face-saving maneuver. He moved to refer the anti-socialist amendment to the federal executive for further review and to conduct a membership-wide discussion. By a 3-2 margin delegates approved the referral, including the Quebec section that felt left out of the issue.

If a broad discussion is pursued, which is doubtful, it will keep the spotlight on “socialism” until the 2013 federal convention. Like the defeat suffered by the ruling faction when it tried to change the party name to ‘Democratic Party’ in 2009 in Halifax, this latest setback will give the establishment pause to reflect.

Also on Sunday morning, 464 of 1100 delegates present voted, in principle, to exclude any talk of merger with the big business-backed Liberal Party. As a Fightback group supporter put it, “We will have a choice to make—are we going to be Liberals and stand against the workers because it’s easier for us as leadership, or are we going to stand with the people?”

While the convention majority leaned towards “tactical flexibility,” pro-merger sentiment was quite isolated. Merger was dismissed even by visiting former Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. Brian Topps’ party president acceptance speech was booed when he revealed a longing for coalition, and confessed his sadness that Stephane Dion failed to become Prime Minister in 2009. Ensuing chants of “No Coalition! No Coalition!” nearly drowned his words.

On Friday morning delegates at the foreign policy priorities panel succeeded in moving the Canadian Boat to Gaza resolution from very low on the list up to #2 position. But minutes before we could vote on approval of the content of the resolution, party officials herded 30 to 40 MPs and staff into the room to vote it down. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the tops as the aid flotilla remained the hottest topic in the corridors.

The Vancouver safe injection InSite clinic won convention approval, but only after a motion to suspend the rules to ensure debate on it Sunday morning. The chair ruled the motion out of order, but was over-ruled by convention vote, following a bitter challenge.

Convention unanimously adopted an emergency resolution to support the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, including a commitment that “Canada’s New Democrats will do everything within their power to prevent any attempts by the Conservative Government to restrict Postal Workers’ rights ... to free collective bargaining, such as back to work legislation or otherwise limiting the right to strike, to organize or to participate in a union.”

Many delegates wondered whether this would include NDP support for defiance of back to work legislation. (In late June, following an NDP filibuster, the Conservative majority in Parliament passed odious back to work legislation that sends most issues in dispute to an appointed arbitrator for “final offer selection,” but sets wages lower than what postal management offered.)

In many ways VanCon 2011 was a watershed event. It demonstrated a greater than usual diversity for an NDP federal convention. In addition to being 50 per cent female, the gathering was more francophone, more Black, brown, aboriginal and Asian than ever. Youth had a high profile. Proceedings and ceremonial functions were conducted from the front podium in French and English in nearly equal measure.

The new Quebec MPs displayed poise, competence and skill, putting the lie to widespread media ridicule of the “inexperienced” young, francophone, and female NDP MPs elected on May 2.

Although a tepid welcome greeted Canadian Labour Congress President Ken Georgetti, it was due mainly to his milquetoast reputation. Delegates confirmed and celebrated NDP ties to labour. The CLC co-founded the New Party with the CCF in 1961. The convention official magazine was filled with ads from the United Steel Workers’ Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, Public Service Alliance, Canadian Auto Workers’ Union, International Association of Machinists, Canadian Union of Public Employees, National Union of Public and General Employees, Service Employees’ International Union, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers’ Union, Canadian Office and Professional Employees, International Association of Firefighters, NABET, IATSE, as well as the CLC and provincial federations of labour. All of these organizations had voting delegates on the floor, many of whom spoke at the mikes.

Policies adopted at VanCon 2011 hewed close to the pro-capitalist doctrine of the NDP leadership: Regulation instead of nationalization. Cap-in-trade instead of eco-socialist conversion. Trust in NATO, rather than bring the troops home now and break with militarism.

Convention chairpersons repeatedly ruled out of order motions of referral to inject socialist content into resolutions. S.C. resolutions were relegated by the brass to the bottom of each topic list. MPs and party staff stacked the mikes to filibuster, just to ensure there’d be no time to debate radical policies coming from the grassroots.

To forestall debates on Libya, Gaza and NATO, the foreign policy panel moved up two resolutions on military and RCMP veterans’ affairs, plus “motherhood” motions on accessible medicines and conflict minerals. To the dismay of many, party icon Stephen Lewis gave a rhapsodic introduction to the foreign policy selections, during which he bestowed his blessing on the murderous NATO bombing of Libya, purportedly as an antidote to alleged mass rapes attributed to forces of the Ghadaffi regime.

Top-down-endorsed resolutions on jobs, poverty, mining, water, trade, taxation and other important issues steered away from any notion of democratic economic planning and fundamental re-distribution of wealth and power in today’s increasingly polarized class society.

But this did not prevent many lively exchanges, especially at the CON mikes. There, leftist delegates hammered the establishment and scored loud ovations. That is how hundreds on the floor showed their support for clear calls to curtail, not just freeze, escalating university fees; to eliminate, not just reduce, regressive sales taxes; and to praise, not criticize, the rebellious former Senate page Brigette DePape who urges Canadians to “Stop Harper.”

Many delegates expressed frustration and anger at efforts by party controllers to silence new voices and to prevent open discussion of controversial issues, like NDP endorsement of the NATO war on Libya, including its recent three month extension by House of Commons vote.

Delegates, alternates and observers looking for radical solutions to our economic and environmental problems found a bit of a void. Generational change, the departure, or co-optation of former NDP dissidents, and regional re-alignments (especially the inflow of scores of activists from Quebec) made for a situation of discontinuity and flux on the left. The Socialist Caucus only began to fill that void. High visibility on the convention floor, and even higher public visibility via the mass media before, during and after the convention, propelled it into prominence.

Interviews with this writer, and frequent references to the S.C. appeared in the print media (Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun), on radio (CBC’s “The Current”), and on television (CBC, GlobalTV, CTV, SunMedia TV, CHCH-TV, C-PAC). Internet coverage, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter postings multiplied the attention to the S.C. beyond estimation.

Hundreds of thousands of people across the Canadian state, and beyond, learned of the existence of the Socialist Caucus, learned that there is an organized left wing in the only mass, labour-based political party in North America, and saw that a militant openly-socialist force fights to advance a Workers’ Agenda there.

Socialist Caucus open forums, held during meal breaks, attracted over 100 delegates. Over 60 attended the panel discussion “Solidarity with Palestine and the Boycott of Israeli Apartheid”, featuring Karen DeVito, a Vancouver participant on Tahrir, the Canadian boat in the flotilla to Gaza; Hanna Kawas, chair of the Canada-Palestine Association; and Tom Baker, an S.C. steering committee member and delegate from Hamilton Centre NDP. Due to scheduling conflicts, fewer turned out for the session “What Does Quebec Want?”, with MP Philip Toone (Gaspesie), plus this writer, and for the forum “Unions Challenge Harper’s Agenda”, with Vancouver CUPW militant Mike Palecek, and OPSEU Local 532 Vice President Julius Arscott, who is also a Danforth NDP delegate, and S.C. steering committee member.

All the panel discussions were lively and fruitful. At the session on unions, another Quebec MP stepped forward to declare his adherence to the S.C. On the convention floor, dozens of delegates signed up to join the NDP socialists, including a Manitoba NDP government cabinet minister. Delegates snapped up over 1000 copies of a special 28-page edition of the S.C. magazine Turn Left. S.C. supporters collected over $225 in donations, forum collections and “S.C. Manifesto” sales.

Partisans of Socialist Action sold over 200 ‘Stop Harper’ buttons, over 120 copies of SA newspaper, and dozens of Marxist books and booklets, including a new one published in French and in English just in time for the convention, titled “Quebec, Acadia and Aboriginal Peoples: The National Question in the Canadian State,” by Robbie Mahood. S.A. buttons, press and literature sales generated over $430 during the weekend, which included sales at a public forum jointly sponsored by S.A. and the group Socialist Solidarity in Vancouver on the Saturday evening.

Over 60 delegates sought sign-up sheets on the convention floor, or at the open forums, and joined the Socialist Caucus. In the Vancouver area alone, 23 NDPers signed up, signalling the basis for a new and vibrant S.C. branch on the west coast. Requests from across the country for participation in the S.C. continue to arrive at the web site: www.ndpsocialists.ca.

Jack Layton’s leadership was strongly endorsed in a secret ballot by 97.9 per cent. In terms of contentious issues, Layton deftly remained aloof, leaving the nasty work to his point men Brian Topp and Brad Lavigne. Clearly, his team is firmly in control of the party apparatus. But it was unable to move the party political goal posts to the right.

The NDP left is very much alive. It is beginning to organize itself on a class-struggle basis to confront the challenges posed by the capitalist system in crisis.

The key points for consolidating the gains of May 2 certainly remain: Resist the Tory attack on workers, unions, jobs and pensions. Stand up for Quebec and aboriginal rights. Mobilize to end the wars of occupation and plunder. Harper’s mandate is paper thin. He can be defeated, but only if we act now, rather than wait four years to do it.

> The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Toronto: Stonewall is reborn

2011-07-07T20:44:00.001-04:00

At least 1000 people gathered in Queen’s Park June 26 to participate in the first Stonewall march to commemorate the 42nd anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City, which were a jump-off point for the gay liberation movement. This date had been opportunistically vacated by Pride Toronto, which moved Pride Day to the first weekend in July in search of greater numbers and (you guessed it) more money. The mood was festive and celebratory. There was lots of glitter, no corporate sponsorship, no permit, and no cops were requested although there were a few around. And, since everybody knew why we were there, there were no speeches.

At the beginning of the march to the 519 Church St. Community Centre, Van Bon Bon led with the chant, “An Army of Lovers Will Never be Defeated.” There were many hand-made signs echoing this.

Well-known singer Faith Nolan performed from a truck at the front of the march. She commented: “This is how Pride started. This is the real Pride. The parade is so corporate. We don’t own it. Now if the profits went to the community, that would be different, but it doesn’t.” Adriana Alarcon, another organizer, declared, “This is my Pride. This is all I need. What an amazing day.”

Leanne Iskander and other young members of Catholic Schools for GSAs (gay-straight alliances) were there in numbers and enthusiasm. Many carried homemade florescent signs, including “Catholic Schools Need GSAs.” Other signs included “Stop Ford Cuts” (referring to Toronto’s reactionary mayor), “Support the Poor, Eat a Conservative,” and Queer Ontario’s “Our Pride Includes QuAIA (Queers Against Israeli Apartheid) and TNT! Men.” There were other signs in support of QuAIA as well.

Singing, dancing, and chanting included a reference to the G20 police rampage a year ago, “Whose Streets?, Our Streets!”. The march ended at the 519 Community Centre. There, and in surrounding Cawthra Park, a grassroots event took place, “Back To Our Roots, Breaking New Ground,” sponsored by Blackness Yes!, Ontario Rainbow Alliance For The Deaf, Ill Nana, Colour Me Dragg, Fruitloopz, Black CAP, Pride Coalition for Free Speech and Proud of Toronto. Queer Ontario and Blackness Yes! hosted a free buffet lunch, which was more than covered by donations.

For years, in reaction to the bureaucratic and corporatized official Pride, there has been talk of organizing an alternative event that reflects Pride’s real political roots. This event lays a solid basis for future years and the re-emergence of an independent, militant queer liberationist current. (All quotes thanks to XTRA magazine.)

> The article above was written by John Wilson.

Capitalism

2011-07-07T20:22:00.002-04:00

Le socialisme est une fusée!

2011-07-07T20:21:00.001-04:00

Lors du débat majeur à Vancouver sur les «principes socialistes démocratiques», auxquels il est fait référence dans la Constitution du Nouveau Parti Démocratique fédéral, le député Pat Martin (Winnipeg-Centre) a dénoncé le socialisme comme une «ancre» ralentissant le parti. Il a demandé que le lien soit rompu avec «une grande hache».

L'orateur suivant fût le président du Caucus Socialiste du NPD, Barry Weisleder, qui a répondu à Martin et à l'aile droite du parti comme suit (version légèrement modifiée):

«Le socialisme n'est pas une ancre. C'est une fusée! Vous pouvez enlever le mot socialisme du préambule, mais vous ne pouvez pas enlever le socialisme du NPD.

À bien des égards, ce débat est particulier. La congrès de Halifax en 2009 avait donné le mandat de réviser le préambule de la Constitution. Alors, combien de temps a t-il fallu pour formuler cette proposition d'amendement? Pourquoi la nouvelle formulation a t-elle circulé seulement à la veille de ce congrès?

Pourquoi «social-démocrate» est-elle une expression plus moderne que «socialiste», étant donné que les deux termes coexistaient au XIXe siècle?

Le NPD fait partie de l'Internationale Socialiste. Est-ce que cela signifie que le NPD va quitter l'IS si le «socialisme» reste dans le nom?

Est-ce vraiment un mouvement vers le modernisme, ou est-ce plutôt la modération d'un message dilué?

Et regardons le moment choisi. Nous vivons dans la plus grave crise capitaliste mondiale depuis les années 1930. Les gens qui travaillent sont endettés à un niveau sans précédent. Il y a une crise alimentaire, une crise environnementale, plusieurs guerres de pillage et d'occupation au nom du profit. Et maintenant, quelques génies veulent retirer le socialisme de la Constitution? Que dirait Tommy Douglas? Non, Non, Non, mille fois non!

Aucun changement de formulation ne peut effacer les racines socialistes et les origines ouvrières du CCF-NPD. Alors quelle est la fonction d'un tel changement proposé?

Elle est double. Elle met une distance entre le parti d'aujourd'hui et les générations d'activistes du mouvement ouvrier et socialiste qui ont combattu les briseurs de grève sur les lignes de piquetage, ont été arrêté, ont versé leur sang dans les batailles pour la justice sociale, l'assurance-maladie, la démocratie et la paix. Le changement enverrait également un signal à la classe dirigeante canadienne. Il dirait que vous pouvez faire confiance au NPD de ne pas mettre en danger le capitalisme canadien, de ne pas contester le système en tant que tel. Oh, les médias d'affaires appelleraient encore le NPD «socialiste», quoiqu’on fasse. Mais les dirigeants du parti pourraient désavouer publiquement le terme. Pire, ce changement priverait les jeunes d'une éducation socialiste dans les réalités de la lutte des classes.

Soeurs et frères, ce n'est pas le temps de diluer nos principes. Ce n'est pas le temps d'envoyer un mauvais signal aux jeunes rebelles et à des millions d'électeurs mécontents.

Gardons le socialisme dans la Constitution, et nous allons le mettre en pratique, non seulement au Parlement, mais sur les lignes de piquetage, dans les lieux de travail, et dans la rue.

C'est le capitalisme qui a dépassé son utilité.

L'avenir appartient au socialisme démocratique.

Gardons le drapeau rouge bien en vue.

Délégués, nous allons rejeter cette motion massivement! "

(Dans un geste pour sauver la face, l'amendement a été renvoyé à l'exécutif fédéral pour un examen ultérieur et une discussion des membres à travers le pays. Ce fût une victoire pour la gauche – et une discussion que nous accueillons chaleureusement)

Adhérez au Caucus Socialiste du NPD. Luttez pour un ordre du jour des travailleurs et des travailleuses. Lisez et faites circuler Turn Left. Faites une contribution financière régulière pour soutenir notre travail.

Téléphone: 416-535-8879.

Visitez le site web SC: www.ndpsocialists.ca E-mail: barryaw@rogers.com

La base du NPD rejette le tournant à droite

2011-07-07T20:19:00.004-04:00

par Barry Weisleder

Ce qui avait commencé comme un hommage bien orchestré au chef Jack Layton et sa machine électorale, s’est transformé en un champ de bataille au sujet des politiques et des principes socialistes.

Au bout du compte, les responsables du Nouveau Parti Démocratique basé sur les syndicats n’ont pas réussi à convaincre la majorité de 1572 délégué-es au congrès fédéral du NPD à Vancouver en Colombie-Britannique du 17 au 19 juin d’approuver un glissement vers la droite.

Dirigée par le très en vue Caucus Socialiste, la gauche du NPD a arrêté net une tentative par la direction d’«assainir» la constitution du parti en supprimant la référence à des «principes socialistes démocratiques» de son préambule.

Qu'est-ce que c’est en une phrase? Depuis que le NPD a embrassé le capitalisme après sa fondation il y a 50 ans, est-ce que c’est important? Evidemment ce l’est. Le parti basé sur les syndicats demeure un paratonnerre pour les protestations de la classe ouvrière, indépendant de la classe capitaliste et contre le système dysfonctionnel. Il suffit d'écouter le député Pat Martin (Winnipeg-Centre). Lors du débat crucial, il a fait référence au socialisme comme «une ancre» accablant le parti. Il a exhorté les délégués à mettre la hache dans le lien socialiste. Mais Martin a été réprimandé par l'ovation pour le contre-argument que «le socialisme est une fusée» (voir l’article ci-dessous). Le capitalisme en crise est ce qui mérite notre mépris, disent de nombreux militants néo-démocrates et syndicaux à travers le pays.

«Le NPD reste socialiste pour l'instant», proclamait une manchette du Toronto Star le 20 juin. Bien qu’étant exprimés dans un sens poétique, ces mots saisissent le sentiment de la base du parti.

Nourrissant un sentiment d’euphorie après les élections du 2 mai, les responsables du NPD ont fait tout leur possible pour que le congrès devienne un love-in pour la direction. Ils ont travaillé fort pour réprimer tout débat politique sérieux et pour marginaliser la controverse. Cependant, ils n'ont pas entièrement réussi:

* Les motions du Caucus Socialiste sur la propriété publique de l’industrie, la démocratie du parti, la Libye, la Palestine, l'OTAN, les droits nationaux du Québec, le pétrole des sables bitumineux, le cannabis et l'enseignement gratuit dans les collèges ont rempli le cahier des résolutions. Elles ont été de précieuses ressources, citées dans de nombreux débats.

• Près de 40 pour cent des délégués présents pour la séance plénière d'ouverture ont soutenu une motion initiée par le CS pour ajouter une heure au temps alloué pour la discussion politique. Malgré les déclarations des apparatchiks du parti qu'un tel ajout n'était tout simplement pas possible, le temps a été ajouté néanmoins en raison de retard et de pépins techniques.

• Face à la perspective que la tentative d'enlever le socialisme du préambule échouerait, le Président élu du NPD fédéral, Brian Topp, a effectué une manoeuvre pour sauver la face. Il a fait en sorte de renvoyer l'amendement anti-socialiste à l'exécutif fédéral pour un examen ultérieur et pour mener une discussion parmi l’ensemble des membres. Par une marge de 3 contre 2 les délégués ont approuvé le renvoi, y compris la section Québec qui se sentait exclue de la question. Si une large discussion est poursuivie, ce qui est douteux, elle gardera les projecteurs braqués sur le «socialisme» jusqu'au congrès fédéral de 2013. Tout comme la défaite subie par la faction dirigeante quand elle a essayé de changer le nom du parti pour le «Parti démocrate» en 2009 à Halifax, ce dernier revers donnera une pause à la direction pour réfléchir.

• Également le dimanche matin, 464 des 1100 délégués présents ont voté, en principe, d'exclure toute idée de fusion avec le Parti Libéral soutenu par la grande entreprise. Comme un partisan du groupe La Riposte l'a dit, «Nous aurons un choix à faire – est-ce que nous allons avec les Libéraux et nous mettre ainsi contre les travailleurs et les travailleuses parce que c’est plus facile pour nous en tant que direction, ou bien allons-nous soutenir le peuple?» Alors que la majorité du congrès pencha vers la «flexibilité tactique», le sentiment pro-fusion était assez isolé. La fusion a été rejetée, même par l'ancien chef libéral Stéphane Dion qui était de passage. Le discours prononcé par le président du parti Brian Topp a été hué quand il a révélé un profond désir pour une coalition, et a avoué sa tristesse que Stéphane Dion ait échoué à devenir Premier Ministre en 2009. Des cris de «Pas de coalition! Pas de coalition!» suivirent et ont presque enterré ses paroles.

• Le vendredi matin les délégués au comité de priorités pour la politique étrangère ont réussi à déplacer la résolution du Bateau canadien pour Gaza de très bas sur la liste à la position # 2. Mais quelques minutes avant que l’on puisse voter sur l'approbation du contenu de la résolution, les dirigeants du parti ont rassemblés 30 à 40 députés ainsi que des membres du personnel dans la salle pour voter contre. Ce fut une victoire à la Pyrrhus pour la direction parce que la flottille d'aide est restée le sujet le plus chaud dans les couloirs.

• La clinique InSite de Vancouver pour des injections sécuritaires a gagné l'approbation du congrès, mais seulement après une motion de suspension des règles pour garantir le débat à ce sujet le dimanche matin. Le président a déclaré la motion irrecevable, mais a été renversé par un vote du congrès, suite à une contestation amère.

• Le congrès a adopté à l'unanimité une résolution d'urgence pour soutenir le Syndicat des travailleurs et des travailleuses des postes, y compris un engagement que «les néo-démocrates du Canada feront tout en leur pouvoir pour empêcher toute tentative par le gouvernement conservateur de restreindre les droits des travailleurs et des travailleuses des postes ... à la libre négociation collective, comme la loi pour le retour au travail ou autrement en limitant le droit de grève, de s’organiser ou de participer à un syndicat». De nombreux délégués ont demandé si cela inclurait l'appui du NPD pour le défi de la loi pour le retour au travail. (À la fin de juin, suite à une obstruction parlementaire du NPD, la majorité conservatrice au Parlement a adopté une odieuse loi pour le retour au travail qui renvoie la plupart des questions en litige à un arbitre nommé pour la «sélection de l’offre finale», mais qui fixe des salaires inférieurs à ceux que la direction des postes avait offert.)

À bien des égards le congrès de Vancouver 2011 a été un événement décisif. Il a démontré une plus grande diversité que d'habitude pour un congrès du NPD fédéral. En plus d'y avoir 50 pour cent de femmes, le rassemblement a compté davantage de francophones, de noirs, de bruns, d’autochtones et d’asiatiques que jamais auparavant. Les jeunes ont eu une grande visibilité. Les procédures et les fonctions protocolaires ont été menées sur le podium en français et en anglais dans une mesure presque égale.

Les nouveaux députés québécois ont affiché assurance, compétence et habileté, rejetant le mensonge généralisé par les médias pour ridiculiser les députés «inexpérimentés», jeunes, francophones et féminins élu-es le 2 mai.

Même si un accueil tiède fût réservé au président du Congrès du Travail du Canada, Ken Georgetti, c’était principalement du à sa réputation de mauviette. Les délégués ont confirmé et célébré les liens du NPD avec les syndicats. Le CTC a co-fondé le Nouveau Parti avec le CCF en 1961. La revue officielle du congrès a été remplie de publicités du Syndicat uni des métallurgistes, des Travailleurs unis de l’alimentation et du commerce, de l’Alliance de la Fonction publique, des Travailleurs canadiens de l'automobile, de l'Association internationale des machinistes, du Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique, du Syndicat national des employées et employés généraux, du Syndicat international des employés des services, du Syndicat des communications, de l’énergie et des travailleurs des pâtes et papier, de l'Association internationale des pompiers, de l’IATSE, tout comme du CTC et des fédérations provinciales des travailleurs et des travailleuses. Toutes ces organisations ont élu des délégués sur le plancher, dont beaucoup ont parlé au micro.

Les politiques adoptées au congrès de Vancouver 2011 tranchaient avec la doctrine pro-capitaliste de la direction du NPD: règlementation au lieu de nationalisation. Taxe de plafonnement et d’échange au lieu de la transformation écosocialiste. La confiance dans l'OTAN plutôt que de ramener les troupes au pays maintenant et de rompre avec le militarisme.

Les présidents du congrès ont rejeté à maintes reprises des motions de renvoi pour injecter du contenu socialiste dans les résolutions. Les résolutions du SC ont été relégués par la bureaucratie en bas de chaque liste de sujet. Les députés et le personnel du parti ont accaparé les micros pour faire de l’ obstruction, juste pour s'assurer qu'il n'y aurait pas de temps pour débattre des politiques radicales en provenance de la base.

Pour empêcher les débats sur la Libye, la bande de Gaza et l'OTAN, le comité de la politique étrangère a déplacé deux résolutions sur les affaires des anciens combattants militaires et de la GRC, ainsi qu’une motion sur la «maternité» pour des médicaments accessibles et une autre sur les conflits de minerais. À la consternation de beaucoup, l’icône du parti Stephen Lewis, a donné une introduction dithyrambique aux choix de politique étrangère, au cours de laquelle il a accordé sa bénédiction aux bombardements meurtriers de l'OTAN sur la Libye, prétendument comme un antidote aux viols collectifs présumés attribués aux forces du régime de Kadhafi.

Les résolutions hiérachisées et approuvées sur l'emploi, la pauvreté, l'exploitation minière, l'eau, le commerce, la fiscalité et autres questions importantes sont très éloignées de toute notion de planification économique démocratique et de la redistribution fondamentale des richesses et du pouvoir dans la société de classe qui est de plus en plus polarisée aujourd’hui.

Mais cela n'a pas empêché de nombreux échanges animés, plus particulièrement aux micros du congrès. Là, les délégués de gauche ont martelé la direction et ont reçus de fortes ovations. C'est ainsi que des centaines de personnes sur le plancher ont montré leur soutien pour des appels clairs à réduire, et non seulement geler, la hausse croissantes des frais de scolarité universitaires; à éliminer, et non seulement réduire, les taxes de vente régressives et à louanger au lieu de critiquer l'ancienne page rebelle du Sénat Brigette DePape qui exhorte les Canadien-nes à «Arrêter Harper».

De nombreux délégués ont exprimé leur frustration et leur colère au sujet des efforts par les contrôleurs du parti pour faire taire les nouvelles voix et pour empêcher la libre discussion des questions controversées, comme l’endossement du NPD de la guerre de l'OTAN contre la Libye, y compris sa récente prolongation de trois mois par le vote de la Chambre des Communes.

Les délégués, suppléants et observateurs qui cherchent des solutions radicales aux problèmes économiques et environnementaux qui rongent de plus en plus la vie quotidienne ont trouvé un certain vide. Les changement générationnels, le départ ou la cooptation d’anciens dissidents du NPD ainsi que des réalignements régionaux (surtout l'afflux d’un grand nombre d’activistes du Québec) ont crée une situation de discontinuité et de changements perpétuels dans la gauche.

Le Caucus Socialiste a seulement commencé à remplir ce vide. Une grande visibilité sur le plancher du congrès, et même une plus grande visibilité publique via les médias avant, pendant et après le congrès, l'ont propulsé vers une certaine importance.

Des entrevues avec l’auteur de cet article, et des références fréquentes au CS ont paru dans la presse écrite des médias (Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post, le Vancouver Sun), à la radio (CBC The Current) et à la télévision (SRC, GlobalTV, CTV, SunMedia TV, CHCH-TV, C-PAC). La couverture sur Internet, les entrées sur YouTube, les affichages sur Facebook et Twitter ont multiplié l'attention sur le CS au-delà de toute évaluation. Littéralement, des centaines de milliers de personnes à travers l'État canadien, et au-delà, ont appris l'existence du Caucus Socialiste, ont appris qu'il y a une aile gauche organisée dans le seul parti politique de masse basé sur les syndicats en Amérique du Nord, et ont vu qu'une force militante ouvertement socialiste lutte à l’intérieur pour faire avancer un ordre du jour des travailleurs et des travailleuses.

Le Caucus Socialiste a ouvert des forums, qui se sont tenus pendant les pauses repas et ont attiré plus de 100 délégués. Plus de 60 personnes ont assisté à la table ronde «Solidarité avec la Palestine et le boycott de l'apartheid israélien», mettant en vedette Karen DeVito, un participant de Vancouver sur le «Tahrir», le prochain Bateau canadien pour Gaza; Hanna Kawas, présidente de l'Association Canada-Palestine, et Tom Baker, un membre du comité directeur du CS et délégué de Hamilton-Centre pour le NPD. En raison de conflits d'horaire, moins de gens se sont déplacés pour la session «Que veut le Québec ?», avec le député Philip Toone (Gaspésie) ainsi que l’auteur de cet article, et pour le forum «Le défi des syndicats à l’ordre du jour de Stephen Harper», avec Mike Palecek un militant du STTP à Vancouver, et Julius Arscott le vice-président du local 532 du SEFPO, qui est également un délégué du NPD à Danforth et un membre du comité directeur du CS.

Tous les débats furent animés et fructueux. Lors de la session sur les syndicats, un autre député du Québec s'avança pour déclarer son adhésion au SC sur le plancher du congrès, des dizaines de délégués ont signé pour se joindre aux socialistes du NPD, incluant un ministre du cabinet gouvernemental du NPD au Manitoba.

Les délégués ont mis la main sur plus d'un millier d'exemplaires d'une édition spéciale de 28 pages du journal du CS Turn Left (Virons à gauche). Les partisans du CS ont recueilli plus de 225 $ en dons, collectes durant les forums et ventes du Manifeste du CS.

Les partisans de Socialist Action/Ligue pour l’Action Socialiste ont vendu plus de 200 macarons «Arrêtons Harper», plus de 120 exemplaires du journal de SA, et des dizaines de livres et de brochures marxistes, y compris une nouvelle brochure publiée en français et en anglais juste à temps pour le congrès, intitulée «Le Québec, les Acadiens et les peuples autochtones: la question nationale dans l'État canadien» par Robbie Mahood. Les ventes de macarons de SA/LAS, de journaux et de documentation ont généré plus de 430 $ au cours de la fin de semaine, qui incluaient des ventes lors d’un forum public organisé conjointement par SA/LAS et le groupe Socialist Solidarity de Vancouver le samedi soir.

Malgré l'annulation de dernière minute des tables d'affichage pour la plupart des groupes qui les ont demandé (les organisateurs ont invoqué le manque d'espace), plus de soixante délégués ont essayé d’obtenir des feuilles d'inscription sur le plancher du congrès, ou à des forums publics, et ont adhéré au Caucus Socialiste. Dans la région de Vancouver seulement, 23 néo-démocrates ont signé, marquant ainsi la fondation d'une nouvelle et dynamique section du CS sur la côte ouest. Des demandes de partout au pays pour participer au CS continuent d'arriver sur le site web: www.ndpsocialists.ca

Le leadership de Jack Layton a été fermement endossé lors d'un scrutin secret par 97,9 pour cent des membres. En ce qui concerne les questions controversées, M. Layton est habilement resté à l'écart, laissant la sale besogne à ses bras droit Brian Topp et Brad Lavigne. De toute évidence, son équipe est bien en contrôle de l'appareil du parti. Mais elle fût incapable de faire bouger la ligne politique du parti vers la droite.

La gauche du NPD est très vivante. Elle commence à s'organiser sur une base de lutte des classes pour relever les défis posés par le système capitaliste en crise.

Les points cruciaux pour la consolidation des acquis du 2 mai resteront certainement les suivants:

Résistons aux attaques des conservateurs contre les travailleurs et les travailleuses, les syndicats, les emplois et les pensions. Appuyons les droits du Québec et des autochtones. Mobilisons-nous pour mettre fin aux guerres d'occupation et au pillage.

Le mandat de M. Harper est mince comme du papier. Il peut être vaincu, mais seulement si nous agissons maintenant, plutôt que d'attendre quatre ans pour le faire.

Socialism is a Rocket!

2011-07-07T20:11:00.009-04:00

In the major debate at Vancouver on 'democratic socialist principles', referenced in the Federal New Democratic Party Constitution, MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre) denounced socialism as an “anchor” holding the party back. He demanded that the link to it be severed with “a broad ax”.

The next speaker was NDP Socialist Caucus chairperson Barry Weisleder, who answered Martin and the party right wing as follows (slightly edited):

“Socialism is not an anchor. It's a rocket! You can take the word socialism out of the preamble, but you can't take socialism out of the N.D.P.

In many ways, this is a peculiar debate. The Halifax convention in 2009 mandated a review of the Constitution preamble. So, how long did it take to formulate this proposed amendment? Why was the new wording circulated only on the eve of this convention?

How is “social democratic” a more modern expression than “socialist” given that the two terms co-existed in the nineteenth century?

The NDP belongs to the Socialist International. Does that mean the NDP will quit the S.I. if 'socialism' remains in the name?

Is this motion really about modernism, or is it really about moderation of a diluted message?

And look at the timing. We are living in the most severe global capitalist crisis since the 1930s. Working people are in debt to an unprecedented extent. There's a food crisis, an environmental crisis, several wars of plunder and occupation in the name of profit. And now some genius wants to take socialism out of the Constitution? What would Tommy Douglas say? No, No, No, a thousand times No!

No change of wording can erase the socialist roots and the working class origins of the CCF-NDP. So then, what is the function of such a proposed change?

It is two-fold. It puts a distance between today's party and the generations of labour and socialist movement activists who fought scabs on picket lines, got arrested, shed blood in the battles for social justice, medicare, democracy and peace. The change would also send a signal to the Canadian establishment. It would say you can trust the NDP not to rock the boat of Canadian capitalism, not to challenge the system per se. Oh, the business media would still call the NDP “socialist” no matter what. But party leaders could publicly disavow the term. Worse, it would deprive the youth of a socialist education in the realities of the class struggle.

Sisters and brothers, now is not the time to dilute our principles. Now is not the time to send the wrong signal to young rebels and to millions of disaffected voters.

Let's keep socialism in the Constitution, and let's put it into practice, not only in Parliament, but on the picket lines, in the work place, and on the streets.

It is capitalism that has out-lived its usefulness.

The future belongs to democratic socialism.

Let's keep the red flag flying.

Delegates, let's defeat this motion massively!”

(In a face-saving move, the amendment was referred back to the federal executive for further review, and for a cross-country membership discussion. This was a victory for the left -- and a discussion we heartily welcome.)

Join the NDP Socialist Caucus. Fight for a Workers' Agenda. Read and circulate Turn Left. Make a regular financial contribute to support our work. Phone: 416–535-8879. Visit the SC web site: www.ndpsocialists.ca E-mail: barryaw@rogers.com

Defeat Harper Tories in the Parliament of the Streets

2011-05-30T11:12:00.001-04:00

Good or bad? May 2 catapulted the NDP into second place, Official Opposition, bearing historic gains. Good. But the total seat tally enabled the Conservatives to eke out a parliamentary majority. That's bad. So what's the conclusion? Are we in a four-year holding pattern, doomed to witness the slow train wreck of a century of social benefits? Not if we choose to resist.

Actually, those afflicted with a case of post-election blues should take heart. The workers' movement across the Canadian state has rarely had a better opportunity to seize the time, stop the bleeding, and take charge of the situation. Consider the following:

1. The Harper majority is an artificial product of an undemocratic electoral system. Winning only 39.5% of the votes cast, less than one-quarter of the total electorate, Harper has no mandate to carry out his vicious anti-labour agenda. While his appointment of three defeated Conservative candidates to the Senate shows his undiminished arrogance, Harper is a paper tiger. He can be stopped. Clearly, it will take mass labour economic and political action, starting with active support for the postal workers' struggle against concessions. But the main point remains: the Tory agenda can be paralyzed.

2. The May 2 federal election put to rest 'strategic voting', bourgeois coalition building, and all talk of NDP-Liberal merger. Those examples of blatant class collabortion, which only confuse the issue and divide working people, are off the table for four years, and hopefully forever. But the NDP 'government in waiting' must prove that it is up to the task of governing in the interests of the working class, small farmers, oppressed nationalities, women, youths and seniors.

3. Spectacular NDP gains in Quebec are very significant, but very fragile. Quebec nationalist expectations are high. They are echoed by youthful voices among the 59 NDP Quebec MP s. Positive NDP pledges to make French the language of work in federally regulated industries inside Quebec, and to respect a future vote for sovereignty, fueled expectations. Thus, NDP Leader Jack Layton is riding a bull. He may tame it, or it may buck him. Still, the new political situation has erected a bridge between the workers' movements in both nations. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers' collective bargaing struggle may be the bellweather of Pan-Canadian workers' unity against the Canadian capitalist class and their anti-labour agenda.

4. We can replace Labour's retreat of the past 30 years with mass resistance today to the corporate agenda. Objective conditions for a turnaround are ripe. The main obstacle to the resistance we need is the pro-capitalist leadership of our unions and the NDP. At the top of both organizations is the same group of privileged bureaucrats. They've been rowing the boat mostly in one direction – backwards -- for over a quarter century. To change course the right wing brass must be removed. For that to happen, for any hope of a change of direction, we need to step up the building of a class struggle opposition inside the unions and the NDP. From a little acorn grows a mighty oak tree.

5. A class struggle opposition is based on a clear programme and a firm set of principles reflecting the concrete needs of the vast majority of the population. The NDP Socialist Caucus, founded in 1997, with over 500 supporters across the country, is based on the Manifesto for a Socialist Canada. It is elaborated and amplified by all the resolutions adopted at its annual conferences over the past 14 years. The SC commitment to fight for public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, under workers' and community democratic control, to facilitate the transformation towards green energy efficiency in all areas, from industry and home heating to mass transportation, is a powerful example.

The programme of the Workers' Solidarity and Union Democracy Coalition, founded in 1991, and re-launched in 2005, provides another good example. It stands for the following: 1. Resist labour concessions and social cutbacks. 2. Support struggles for union democracy, to make unions more accessible, accountable, transparent and participatory. 3. Take back our unions and turn them into fighting organizations. 4. Rely on our own strength, and renew or create our own organizations, from the bottom up, to fight for the interests of working people and against corporate profit and power.

The operating principles to which both Workers' Solidarity and the NDP Socialist Caucus are committed are basically those of the historic Paris Commune of 1871, the first workers' government in world history: direct democracy, proportional representation of all currents of opinion, the right of rank and file members to recall and replace elected officials, and the rule that office holders are to be paid no more than those whom they represent.

Not everyone belongs to a union, nor is everyone able to join or organize a union. But all, regardless of citizenship or status, can join the union-based NDP and can support the fight of the Socialist Caucus to turn the NDP sharply to the left. What matters is the process, the struggle itself, not to what degree the party turns left. Most ordinary working people who join the labour-based party do not sign up just to become cheerleaders for the Leader. We join the NDP for the same reason we join unions – to advance our class interests. Without labour, the NDP would not exist. Therefore the party belongs to the working class, not to Thomas Mulcair or Jack Layton, not to Brad Lavigne, not to the Lewis family. The NDP belongs to its dues-payers, to its affiliated unions, to its 100,000 members, to its 4.5 million voters. We simply demand that the NDP serve the interests of its vast social base, not the system of exploitation and oppression that serves a tiny corporate elite. It is the struggle within our unions and within the union-based NDP that will decide the shape of the fight against capitalist austerity and war. The current struggle will decide the overall relationship of class forces.

This is a point to emphasize to our friends across the independent left: It's time to take a stand, to retire academic abstractions, and to surpass small sideline campaigns. The road to influence the 4.5 million NDP voters lies through struggle against the pro-capitalist labour and NDP leaders in whom millions have illusions. Our task is not to prop up the existing leadership, but to challenge it, especially inside the mass organizations of the working class. Only those mass organizations have the capacity to educate and mobilize millions. We should strive to win those organizations to mass action against the rulers' attacks and to socialist policies that can give shape to an alternative to the unfolding economic and environmental disaster that is global capitalism.

May 2 ushered in a new situation, brimming with new opportunities that warm the heart of every working person. While the Canadian Labour Congress tops say 'wait four years to replace the government', while they amalgamate labour councils to make them even more remote from local unionists, we need not be bound to their prescriptions. When Jack Layton says he wants to be “more about proposition than opposition”, we need not swallow that pill. The task of socialists, radicals and worker militants is to unite behind the postal workers, to support Quebecois and aboriginal demands for national liberation, to demand money for jobs, for green energy conversion, not for jails, jets and imperial wars of occupation.

Together, we can prove that the most right wing government in Canadian history is a paper tiger. We can show that it can be blown away by a strong wave of class struggle. Let's force the labour leadership to lead the fight, or get the heck out of the way. This entails the construction of a militant, well-organized left wing in the unions and the NDP. The time is now. Join us.

The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Socialism 2011 Highlights Solutions to “Their Crisis”

2011-05-30T11:11:00.000-04:00

On the first sunny long weekend in May, over sixty people gathered at the University of Toronto to say No to the global capitalist agenda of austerity and environmental plunder. The occasion was the ninth annual Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste international educational conference. Like the three previous such gatherings, this one was co-sponsored by the Socialist Unity League (LUS) of Mexico and Socialist Action-USA.

Under the theme “Their Crisis, Our Solutions”, speakers from Quebec, English Canada, the aboriginal rights movement, Mexico and the United States addressed the big issues facing humanity on a world scale. They hailed the democratic uprisings across North Africa to the Persian Gulf, embodied in the Great Arab Awakening that continues to shake the rule of Washington and its NATO allies.

Speakers reported on the fight to defend civil liberties, which are under attack by politicians looking for racial scapegoats in the midst of economic crisis. They told how we can achieve climate justice in the face of corporate power and greed.

Union activists Ajamu Nangwaya, Bruce Allen and this writer exposed what's wrong with the labour movement. I stressed the opportunity to take advantage of the NDP breakthrough on May 2 to build a class struggle left wing to chart a new course for labour. Presenters explained the origins of sexism, the need for an independent women's liberation movement today, and articulated socialist solutions for the ongoing global 'Great Recession'. Outstanding talks (which we hope to publish) by SA-USA leaders Jeff Mackler, Christine Gauvreau and Dan Piper, on the world economy, feminism and ecological issues, received high praise.

Two talks by LUS-Mexico leader Jaime Gonzalez were a high-tech highlight of the conference. He addressed the gathering live, via the inter net communications tool Webex. On Friday night Gonzalez talked about the so-called 'crime war' in Mexico, and on Saturday morning about global warming and pollution issues after the 2010 Cancun climate conference, including the still unfolding Japanese nuclear meltdown disaster.

The Sunday morning session on “Aboriginal and Quebecois aspirations – National liberation in the Canadian state”, featuring Roger Obonsawin, President of the Aboriginal Peoples' Council of Toronto, SA/LAS leader Robbie Mahood, and Marc Bonhomme of Quebec Solidaire, prompted participants to reflect on the results of the May 2 federal election. The NDP breakthrough in Quebec and the election of prominent native leaders there may facilitate a new unity of workers and oppressed nations that can stop the Harper Conservative agenda through mass action in the Parliament of the streets.

Brisk sales at the SA literature display netted $140 for books and pamphlets. SA newspaper gained four year-long subscriptions. Folks snapped up over $130 in raffle tickets. Two lucky participants each won a bottle of Cuban rum donated by the Cuban Consulate in Toronto.

Thanks to videographer Daniel Libby, co-producer of the reknowned film “Toronto G20 Exposed”, the proceedings of three conference sessions will be posted on the inter net.

Proceedings ended with everyone rising to their feet to sing a rousing rendition of “The Internationale”.

Following the conclusion of the public conference, SA/LAS convened its annual federal convention. It voted to welcome new members in Montreal and Toronto, a new supporter in Toronto, and adopted a plan of action for the year ahead. Immediate tasks centre on the fight for socialist policies, and to promote Quebec and aboriginal rights at the June 17-19 NDP federal convention in Vancouver.

A sign of great things to come was the formal launch of Youth for Socialist Action, headed by youth members of SA/LAS. The new youth group adopted a constitution and a 10 point platform. It will publish a handbook and establish campus clubs at Ryerson U and other schools. The foundation of the YSA capped a wonderful weekend of education, political decision-making, friendly socializing over food and drinks, and a broadening of personal horizons. With all of that comes a renewed and enhanced resolve to create a better world.

The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Lubicon Cree rally opposition to pipeline spills, violation of native land rights

2011-05-30T11:10:00.000-04:00

28,000 barrels of crude oil spilled into wetlands in the traditional territory of Lubicon Cree in northern Alberta on April 29. It was the second largest oil spill in Alberta history and the largest in more than 30 years.

After the spill, the school in the nearby Lubicon community of Little Buffalo was closed indefinitely because children and teachers were experiencing headaches and nausea. A week later the Alberta Minister of the Environment acknowledged that the province had still not conducted tests for possible ground water contamination.

The spill is exacerbated by dozens of wildfires burning across Alberta, including the well-publicized one at Slave Lake. Little Buffalo, and now the oil spill site itself, are located near these dangerous, uncontrolled fires. On May 15, Plains Midstream Canada, owner of the Rainbow Pipeline, suspended clean up efforts because of the fires. Residents of Little Buffalo and Marten Lake evacuated the area.

On May 23 over 150 people jammed into a small art gallery in Toronto's downtown west end to learn about the Lubicon's decades-long struggle for recognition and protection of their human rights.

Women Cree elders and Amnesty International representatives told the crowd that since the early 1980s the Lubicon have suffered widespread health problems associated with poverty, environmental degradation and cultural erosion. These problems include high rates of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis; disproportionate numbers of miscarriages, stillbirth and other maternal health concerns; and high youth suicide.

Although Little Buffalo has no running water and no sanitation system, it is estimated that the province’s share of oil and gas wealth taken from Lubicon lands exceeds $14 billion.

The Lubicon Cree have never entered into a treaty with the Government of Canada, nor have they ceded their rights to their lands and resources through any legal agreement. Nonetheless, since 1979, more than 2,600 oil and gas wells have been drilled, and some tar sands extraction projects put on Lubicon territory. More than 2,300 kilometers of oil and gas pipelines cross their traditional lands. From 1983 to 1997, between one and eight leaks or ruptures per year for every 1000 km of pipeline occur in the province, according to an Alberta government study.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee condemned the treatment of the Lubicon Cree in 1990, and again in 2006 and 2007, as have other U.N. bodies. In 2010 the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples wrote that there should be no further development on Lubicon land unless the Lubicon people give their consent.

Speakers at the Toronto meeting urged people to fax or e-mail the federal and Alberta governments to demand an independent assessment and ongoing monitoring of the health and environmental impacts of the oil spill.

More meetings and fund raising activities will be held across Canada to demand justice for the Lubicon Cree. For the latest information, visit: www.amnesty.ca/lubicon

The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Postal Workers ready to use 95% strike mandate

2011-05-30T11:09:00.000-04:00

As we go to press, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) suspended its latest strike deadline of May 26 so that collective bargaining can continue. By law, the union is required to give a 72-hour strike notice. The Union submitted a global offer to the employer on May 22 in a bid to narrow differences and reach a settlement. Management continues to take a hard line, egged on by conservative organizations like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and is seeking major concessions.

Postal workers know much is at stake, and seem to be ready to take on a belligerent corporation and a right wing Conservative government with a new parliamentary majority.

“We hope the sky-high strike vote and the record turnout of our members will put pressure on Canada Post to negotiate,” said Canadian Union of Postal Workers' National President Denis Lemelin in a statement released April 18 on the union's web site.

He was referring to the inspiring 94.5 per cent vote in favour of going on strike, if necessary, to obtain a good collective agreement.

CUPW's 48,000 members know the issues well. That was evident in the unprecedented participation in the strike vote.

Management wants to create a two-tier system. Workers now earn about $25 an hour, and Canada Post has proposed $18 an hour for new employees, Lemelin told the Toronto Star. “Canada Post wants to create a cheap labour force, where they have lower wages, less holidays, some benefits, and pension changes.”

Management wants to weaken job security and end the banking of sick days in favour of a short-term disability program. Its wage proposal is below the rate of inflation, so it amounts to a wage cut for everyone.

The results of the vote show that postal workers will not accept these rollbacks. In this respect, CUPW is setting a powerful example for the entire labour movement.

Canada Post is about to celebrate its 16^th consecutive year of profits. The corporation also plans to make huge productivity gains through modernization. Postal workers deserve to share in the benefits.

If it comes to a strike, postal workers pledge to deliver pension and social assistance cheques, voluntarily and without interruption. No other mail or parcels will move.

As for the duration, members of Canada's most militant, democratic union are fond of saying: “The longer the picket line, the shorter the strike.”

The article above was written by Elizabeth Byce.

Photos From Socialism 2011

2011-05-30T11:07:00.000-04:00

Toronto rallies against war and the Rob Ford agenda

2011-05-29T19:17:00.001-04:00

For the first time in about three years, protest against the wars of occupation hit the streets of Toronto, in solidarity with the actions initiated by the United National Anti-war Committee (UNAC) in the USA on April 9. Opposition to NATO bombing of Libya was quite visible, but the dominant theme of the action sponsored by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War was 'Canada out of Afghanistan', and 'Fund human needs not war.'

Over 300 people rallied on University Avenue from noon to 1 p.m., across from the U.S. Consulate, and then walked to Dundas Square to join a much larger Ontario Federation of Labour-sponsored rally in-progress. Unions and their community allies gathered there to protest anti-labour policies, public service cutbacks and the privatization agenda of Toronto's new right wing mayor Rob Ford.

After 2 p.m. up to 10,000 people, carrying hundreds of picket signs and dozens of union banners, paraded down busy Yonge Street, and west along Queen St., to rally at Toronto City Hall Square.

While the anti-war contingent was a small component of the demonstration, its message was welcomed enthusiastically by participants and by the throngs of downtown shoppers.

Socialist Action members and supporters carried SA and YSA banners in the march, and collected over $160 from the sale of newspapers and buttons. The SA badges 'Canada Out of Afghanistan Now', 'Capitalism Fouls Things Up, Eco-Socialism or Extinction', and 'Workers' Solidarity - In Unity there is Strength' accounted for the lion's share of sales. Members distributed hundreds of leaflets publicizing Rebel Films, the SA May Day Celebration and the Socialism 2011 Conference, as well as the SA call for a critical vote for the NDP at the May 2 federal election.

Overall, the Canadian Peace Alliance and Quebec's Collectif Echec a la Guerre coordinated anti-war rallies in more than a dozen cities and towns. Actions were held in Comox, Vancouver, Grand Forks and Castlegar in British Columbia, in Edmonton and Calgary in Alberta, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa in Ontario, in Montreal, Quebec, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Hopefully, in the months ahead, there will be better publicized, dedicated anti-war actions in Toronto, as part of a coordinated cross-country effort. UNAC has set October 15 as the next date for protests across the USA, which would be a fine plan for the Canadian and Quebecois movements to adopt too.

Do corporate tax cuts produce jobs?

2011-05-29T19:17:00.000-04:00

A succession of Liberal and Conservative governments claimed that cuts to corporate taxes are the surest way to increase capital spending and job creation.

So, what happened?

While corporate cash flow rose, capital investment as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) showed a long term decline, according to a study released by the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives.

Governments slashed the combined corporate federal-provincial tax rate from 50 per cent in the 1980s to 29.5 per cent in 2010. Before tax reforms in 1987, fixed capital spending stood at 12.7 per cent of GDP. Since then, investment actually fell to 11.7 per cent of GDP.

Thus, not only is there no proof that lower corporate taxes stimulate more investments, leading to more good jobs, it appears that the opposite is the case.

So, where did the 'excess' money go? Apparently, it went into the pockets of rich shareholders and CEOs.

What's next? During the federal election campaign the Conservative Party promised to further reduce the federal tax rate to 15 per cent in 2012. The Liberal Party, which dropped the business levy from 28 to 21 per cent between 2000 and 2004, now propose to restore the rate back to 18 per cent.

The New Democratic Party said it would keep the combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate below the U.S. federal rate, which is 35 per cent for companies with profits above $18.4 million. The question is: to what extent is the NDP brass prepared to alienate its social base just to keep its implacable enemies on Bay Street at bay?

Postal Workers deliver 95% strike mandate

2011-05-29T19:16:00.000-04:00

“We hope the sky-high strike vote and the record turnout of our members will put pressure on Canada Post to negotiate,” said Canadian Union of Postal Workers' National President Denis Lemelin in a statement released April 18 on the union's web site.

He was referring to the inspiring 94.5 per cent vote in favour of going on strike if necessary to obtain a good collective agreement.

CUPW members know they are in a serious fight. Management wants to pay new employees 30 per cent less. It wants to reduce their benefits, weaken their job security and sick leave, and eliminate many other past gains.

The results of the vote show that postal workers will not accept these rollbacks. In this respect, they are setting a powerful example for the entire labour movement.

Noteworthy is the fact that Canada Post is about to celebrate its 16^th consecutive year of profits. The corporation also plans to make huge productivity gains through modernization. Postal workers deserve to share in the benefits.

Negotiations continue, with the aid of a government-appointed conciliator. If an agreement is not reached, CUPW has the right to strike as of midnight May 24.

Profit System Fuels World Food Crisis

2011-05-29T19:15:00.000-04:00

Globally, more than 935 million people go hungry every day. The dramatic rise in food prices adds millions monthly to the starving mass. It precipitated the 'Arab Awakening' from Tunisia to Egypt. It sparked food riots in Bangladesh, and now confronts Afghanistan with a 50 per cent shortfall in funding for food operations.

Food prices soared 36 per cent over the past year, according to the World Bank.

Why? Severe weather and crop diseases certainly took their toll.

But other causes are man-made (even if you think climate change is not). Market speculation and the diverting of farm land to biofuels are two of the causes, and they are no freaks of nature. They are the products of capitalist greed.

Corn, cassava, canola and sugar are increasingly used to make ethanol to power cars and trucks.

“Global maize prices rose about 73 per cent in the six months after June 2010,” said the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Team. Forty per cent of the U.S. corn crop now goes into ethanol.

Using food to make fuel is profitable for business, but as a substitute for oil, it's like flipping humanity from the frying pan into the fire -- with no reduction of the impact of carbon-burning on nature.

Since world population is predicted to top 9 billion by 2050, the urgency of increasing food production cannot be overstated. At the same time, the hypocrisy of the capitalist rulers should never be underestimated. In 2008, leaders of the G20 countries pledged $22 billion over three years to help poor countries increase food production. According to the World Bank fund set up to administer this money, only $400 million has so far been received.

How long will the starving wait? How long can capitalism get away with murder?

Build on Historic Gains for NDP

2011-05-29T19:14:00.000-04:00

Voters in Canada made history on May 2 when they catapulted the labour-based New Democratic Party into Official Opposition status. Relegated to distant third place is the former main party of business rule, the Liberal Party. Its leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own Toronto seat and resigned as party leader. And despite a mere 1.8 per cent increase in its share of the vote, the autocratic right wing Stephen Harper Conservatives gained a majority of seats.

The election produced a fundamental re-alignment of forces that dashed any thoughts of parliamentary coalition. Voters tossed aside class collaborationist 'strategic voting' schemes. The new left-right polarization makes the NDP a government in waiting, with the onus on the party to show that it represents real change for working people.

Perennially in fourth place, New Democrats soar into the new Parliament in second spot with 102 seats, backed by 31 per cent of the votes cast. The Conservatives captured 167 seats and 39.5 per cent of the votes. (In the 308 seat House of Commons, 155 is a majority.)

The Liberals suffered a crushing defeat, winning only 34 seats (down from 77 MP s in 2008, and 103 in 2006) and 18.9 per cent of the votes. The bourgeois nationalist Bloc Quebecois nearly disappeared. It held onto 4 seats (a steep nose dive from 49). Its leader Gilles Duceppe, lost in his riding too and promptly resigned. The capitalist Green Party won its first and only seat, for Leader Elizabeth May in British Columbia, despite attracting over 4 per cent of the ballots across the country. Such distortions argue forcefully for replacement of the archaic, Westminster-style, first-past-the-post system, by a system of direct proportional representation.

This result, flawed as it is, still expresses a seismic shift. Stunning gains achieved by the labour-based NDP, nearly doubling its share of the vote, more than tripling its seat total to an historic high, gives the federal NDP Official Opposition status for the first time in history. It comes fifty years after the birth of the party, which is the product of the partnership of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress.

In terms of class politics, the NDP electoral breakthrough places an obstacle in the path of the capitalist austerity drive. The 'orange wave' raises working class expectations for better times in a situation marked by growing economic polarization amidst crumbling physical and social infrastructures. But the realization of those expectations depends on class struggles outside Parliament, with which the NDP can and should be totally identified and involved.

Conservative pundits hail the Tory pick up of 24 seats, aided by a small up-tick in the polls, in contrast to the collapse of the Liberals and the BQ, as a major advance that landed a majority government on their third try in five years. On this basis, Harper's party (an amalgam of the former hard-right wing Reform Party and the reactionary remnants of the destroyed Progressive Conservative Party) claims a strong mandate for more jails, jets and austerity. The claim, however, is entirely overblown. It can be smashed if challenged on the streets and in the work place. The most right wing government in Canadian history can be shown to be a paper tiger by a strong wave of class struggle, if only the labour leadership will offer a lead.

So, why the sudden shift? After a sleepy start, the campaign ignited around the TV party leaders' debates in English and in French. Popular revulsion over the status quo, combined with broad discontent over Tory bullying and Liberal re-cycled promises, passed the breaking point. Cynical attempts to target 'ethnic' voters, demonize the opposition, and obscure critical issues produced uneven effects. Months of vicious political attack ads by the two main capitalist parties frayed loyalties in both camps, while annoying many non-partisans. 'Vote mobs' organized by social media savvy youths set out to stimulate participation. They rallied thousands of youths to the idea of political change, injecting an element of excitement into the process. Turnout for the election was 61.4 per cent, up from the historic low of 58.8 per cent in 2008.

But the biggest change factor, arguably, was popular disgust with frozen wages, shrinking pensions, shrivelling social benefits, and the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of full-time jobs. While the rich got richer from tax cuts and obscene CEO bonuses, and by pillaging the treasures of nature, the rest of us did a slow burn, watching as our living standards sank.

At the same time, the NDP should be credited for positive moves. Leader Jack Layton, unlike his predecessors, campaigned openly to form a government, not just to win 'a few more seats'. He fought to reverse gigantic Tory and Liberal give-ways to big business. He promised that greater revenues from the rich would pay for better health care, pension improvements and post-secondary education access. The NDP tax plank (despite its limitations) resonated so well with the population that the Liberals nearly copied it.

But Layton's most adept move was to tap the leftist sentiments of the Quebec electorate. French-speaking Quebecois, particularly workers, have a collective consciousness shaped by national oppression and a keen aversion to the strictures of the Canadian state. For once, the English-Canada-based NDP took this into account.

After years of dithering and policy reversals, Layton asserted that he would repeal the undemocratic Clarity Act, recognize a declaration of Quebec independence after a sovereignty referendum win, and support asymmetrical federalism. That means Quebec would be treated as a nation, and not just as another province in Confederation. It includes a guarantee that Quebec will have no less than a quarter of the seats in Parliament after re-distribution.

The NDP Leader committed to ensure that French would be the working language in federally-regulated industries in Quebec, such as railways and banks. Layton pledged to fight for rules that would require future judges appointed to the Supreme Court to be fluent in French. He promised to support efforts to plug the loop hole that allows English private school students in Quebec to skirt Language Law 101 and, after a couple of years, transfer to an English-language publicly funded school.

While it is wrong to read massive NDP gains in Quebec as signaling the end of the sovereignty movement, they do reflect a disconnection by pro-independence Quebecois from the strategy and economic policies of the capitalist Parti Quebecois and the Bloc. The shift may presage big gains by the leftist, pro-sovereignty Quebec Solidaire at the next provincial vote.

In the meantime, a majority of the NDP Parliamentary Caucus, 59 of 102 MP s, consist of francophone Quebecois. One is 19 years old, another is a former communist candidate, and the majority are strong Quebec nationalists completely unfamiliar to the federal party apparatus. Jack Layton may, or may not succeed in taming this corral of young tigers.

As is often the case, in the commercial media personalities trump political content. Media fixation on the alleged assets and foibles of politicians usually benefits the bourgeois parties. This time it backfired. Many comedians make a good living ridiculing Stephen Harper as a heartless, humourless martinet, and by portraying Michael Ignatieff as a vampire-like opportunist on temporary leave from a teaching gig at Harvard U. Jack Layton, a prostate cancer survivor who walked through the election campaign with the aid of a cane due to recent hip surgery, emerged as a sincere, honest, likeable guy who “won't give up until the job is done.” Nonetheless, this superficial media approach to politics can bite, as well as feed proponents of social progress.

Equally dangerous is the tendency to exaggerate the evils of the Conservatives to try to justify a 'strategic' vote for the Liberals, or to promote the formation of a bourgeois coalition government. While these ploys failed to take root, the NDP brass is its own worst enemy in this regard.

When Jack Layton told the CBC's Peter Mansbridge that the main difference between the NDP and the Liberal Party is that the Liberals didn't keep their promises and the NDP is more trustworthy, he was wrong. The difference is actually quite profound. The corporate elite simply do not back the NDP. It's no accident. For them the issue is class, embodied in the NDP connection to the labour movement in English Canada.

Layton's comment was a sad admission of the illusions harboured by the current leadership of the party. Moreover, it underscores the task we face as workers, poor people, students, seniors and youth. That task is to replace the Liberal-look-alike policies of the NDP with socialist policies to meet the needs of the vast majority.

From the start, the NDP Leader issued excuses to forestall the implementation of NDP policies. Investment in rapid transit, social housing and urban infrastructure would be contingent on anticipated revenue from a new cap-and-trade carbon tax (a bad environmental policy in any case). The proposed doubling of Canada Pension Plan benefits, and the much-touted promise to train new doctors would be dependent on the 'cooperation of the provinces'.

Instead, Layton should insist on taxing the rich, cutting the military, and transforming eco-harmful private monopolies into publicly-owned, green industries run democratically under workers' and community control. The place to start is with Big Oil, auto, mining and the banks. Use their billions to meet the needs of millions.

Clearly, the right has made gains by moving to the right. The left, to make gains, must move to the left. Not just in words, but in deeds.

That means challenging the pro-capitalist direction of the labour and NDP leadership. It means opposing any talk of NDP merger with the Liberal Party, or any coalition for government with a capitalist party. In a bourgeois coalition the NDP would have to carry the can for war abroad and austerity at home. A merger with the Liberals would further dilute the NDP programme. Instead we need an NDP government committed to socialist policies. That's what many of the thousands of new members who are likely to stream into the newly buoyant labour party will seek.

Historic gains for the NDP make it time now to step up the fight for a Workers' Agenda and a Workers' Government. On the crest of rising hopes and expectations, the socialist left can organize to gain a bigger-than-ever hearing for a class struggle programme inside the unions and the NDP. Don't make excuses. Make waves. Join the NDP Socialist Caucus and fight for socialist policies at the NDP federal convention in Vancouver, June 17-19.

The article above was written by Barry Weisleder.

Mark Your Calendar!

2011-04-24T14:58:00.001-04:00

Toronto’s 25^th Annual Toronto Socialist May Day Celebration

Their Crisis, Our Solutions

Speakers:

-Jorge Soberon Consul General of Cuba in Toronto
-Nancy Pridham Vice-President, Region 5, Ontario Public Service Employees' Union
-John Clarke organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
-Khaled Mouammar President of the Canadian Arab Federation.
-B.C. Holmes representing the Toronto Haiti Action Committee
-Barry Weisleder Federal Secretary, Socialist Action, and substitute teachers' organizer

-M.C.: Elizabeth Byce, federal Treasurer, NDP Socialist Caucus, and retired member of the Toronto Local, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Celebrate with entertainers: Jon Brooks, 2010 Winner Kerrville (Texas) New Folk Contest, 2009 Canadian Folk Music Award Nominee 'Best Songwriter', 2009 Winner NPR's Mountain Stage NewSong Contest (Canada); Marianne Girard, roots/alternative country singer-song writer, 2009 Canadian Folk Music Award Nominee 'Best vocalist', with acclaimed new CD “Pirate Days”; Robert Priest, poet, playwright, songwriter and singer; Simms & Maya, singing originals, international folk songs, and performing some theatre; Glen Hornblast, folk singer on the social justice scene.

Enjoy delicious food from the menu and drinks from the bar. For details, call the Free Times Café at 416-967-1078.

At the event there will also be a literature and CDs display, a raffle (with prizes to include Cuban rum, wonderful books, posters and more) and many surprises.

Sunday, May 1, 2011 7 p.m.
Free Times Cafe, 320 College St., (2 blocks west of Spadina) Toronto, Ontario

Admission: $10 waged, $5 non-waged or PWYC
E-mail: barryaw@rogers.com Phone: (416) 535-8779

sponsored by Socialist Action (Fourth Internationalists in the Canadian state)
Event endorsed by: Toronto Local - Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Toronto Haiti Action Committee, NDP Socialist Caucus, National Council of Latin American and Caribbean Women in Canada - Latin@s , Youth for Socialist Action, Toronto Forum on Cuba, Free the Cuban Five Cultural Committee, and the Workers' Solidarity and Union Democracy Coalition.

_______________________________________

Socialism 2011: Their Crisis, Our Solutions
an International Educational Conference May 19, 20, 21, 22, 2011
at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, U of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West
co-sponsored by: Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste – Canadian state, Socialist Action – USA, and the Socialist Unity League (Liga Unidad Socialista) – Mexico

Thursday, May 19
5:30 p.m. registration opens
7 p.m. End the Occupations! Permanent War or Permanent Revolution
Christine Gauvreau, leading member of SA-USA, United National Anti-war Committee, and Connecticut United for Peace; and Khaled Mouammar, President of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Friday, May 20
5:30 p.m. registration, literature sale
7 p.m. Civil Liberties Under Attack – Fight Back!
Barbara Jackman, renowned Canadian lawyer who led the successful fights to lift the border entry ban on George Galloway, and to free tortured Muslim Canadians; Jeff Mackler, National Secretary, SA-USA, coordinator of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal campaign, of the Free Lynne Stewart campaign, and a leading opponent of the FBI raids against anti-war activists; plus Jaime Gonzalez, Organization Secretary of the LUS-Mexico.

Saturday, May 21
10 a.m. After Cancun, the Fight for Climate Justice
Terisa Turner, participant in the Cochabamba (Bolivia) Conference, and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at U of Guelph; Jaime Gonzalez Organization Secretary of the LUS-Mexico; and Dan Piper, a member of SA-USA National Committee.

12 noon Lunch break

1 p.m. What's Wrong with our Workers' Movement?
Barry Weisleder, Federal Secretary, SA/LAS Canada, and organizer of Toronto Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus; Bruce Allen, V.P. of CAW Local 199 and V.P. of Niagara District Labour Council; Ajamu Nangwaya, member of CUPE 3907 and former V.P. of CUPE Ontario.

4 p.m. Origins of Sexism and the fight for Women's Liberation Today
Christine Gauvreau, leading member of SA-USA, based in Connecticutt; and Cheri MacDonald, veteran socialist-feminist and campaigner for Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics.

6 p.m. Supper break

7 p.m. Marx was Right: Capitalism doesn't work. Deepen the Global Resistance!
Jeff Mackler, National Secretary SA – USA, based in San Francisco; with supplementary remarks by Tom Baker, SA/LAS Canada.

Sunday, May 22

11 a.m. Aboriginal and Quebecois aspirations – National liberation in the Canadian state
Roger Obonsawin, President of the Aboriginal Peoples Council of Toronto, a veteran campaigner for aboriginal treaty rights; and Dr. Robbie Mahood, Montreal, SA-LAS, and past election candidate for Quebec Solidaire.

1 p.m. Lunch break, with film “Toronto G20 Exposed”

2 p.m. Closed session for SA members and invited guests. SA/LAS Convention.

4 p.m. Founding Convention of Youth for Socialist Action.

Tickets: $20 in advance for weekend; $30 at door for wkend; $5 per session (or PWYC) For more information: 416 – 535-8779 barryaw@rogers.com

No coalition with Liberals. Fight for socialist policies! Vote NDP on May 2!

2011-04-03T19:46:00.000-04:00

by Barry Weisleder

The defeat in the House of Commons of the most hated federal government in a long time triggered the fourth election campaign in seven years. Voters across the Canadian state go to the polls on May 2 to choose their pill for the continuing economic maladies. With unemployment at nearly 8 per cent officially (double that figure if one includes discouraged workers and the chronically underemployed), with each person on average $100,000 in debt, with homeless shelters and food banks strained to the breaking point, voters have much to ponder.

The Stephen Harper-led minority government Conservatives, mired in election financing and deceit scandals, booted from office for being found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to disclose the cost of their corporate tax cuts, and their plans for new prisons and stealth combat jets, are asking for a majority. Harper began his campaign in full attack mode, hyping the threat of “a coalition of free-spending opposition parties". He portrayed his agenda of social cutbacks, war spending, and gifts to the rich and powerful as “staying the course” -- this in the midst of a dismal economic 'recovery'.

The Liberals under Michael Ignatieff donned populist vestments. While skewering Harper's (twice) undemocratic suspension of Parliament, Ignatieff championed support for more child care spaces, and for more aid to students burdened with rising tuitions. He claims to be for stronger public pensions and health care. His hope is that the electorate will forget, or at least forgive the Liberal sponsorship scandal, the severe social cuts of Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin in the 1990s, and Liberal decisions to send the Canadian military and police to Afghanistan and Haiti.

Gilles Duceppe's Bloc Quebecois advanced its demands for more federal transfer payments to Quebec, downplayed the Bloc's commitment to bourgeois sovereignty, and put a 'progressive' veneer on its pro-system perspective.

The Green Party's Elizabeth May concentrated on trying to win a first seat for the party. Her policies would force working people pay for the mess created by capitalism, with a regressive carbon tax, and measures that favour 'greening' of the private sector. Notwithstanding her platform, exclusion of May from the TV leaders' debate, which is posed again, would be outrageous.

Jack Layton and the labour-based New Democratic Party thus had a golden opportunity to offer a refreshing and radical alternative. But Layton started off with the totally uninspiring slogan “take the strain off your family budget, make everyday essentials less expensive”.

It is commendable that Layton wants to help seniors, extend the ecoEnergy Retrofit programme for homeowners, remove the federal sales tax on home heating bills, and put an 8 per cent cap on the interest that can be charged by credit card firms. But this is comparatively light work. The timidity of these proposals reveals something else -- that the labour party brass is unwilling to reverse the huge tax concessions to big business of the past twenty years; that it lacks the courage to challenge the agenda of capitalist austerity. The NDP campaign shies away even from proposing to dismantle the country's war budget and end Ottawa's participation in US/NATO aggression. Sadly, this is reflected in Layton's decision to back the western intervention into Libya (see article below).

Given the failed state of globalized capitalism, the need for an alternative is evident. Instead of 'strained family budgets', the NDP should decry the one-sided class war being waged from the top down. It should stress the need to fight back with bold socialist measures, instead of paltry reforms. Workers who vote NDP in their millions have the power to shake up their party, toss away its Liberal-look-alike policies, and make the NDP fight for society's vast majority, the working class and the poor. Direct involvement in the NDP campaign now is critically important to that end.

Participation in a coalition government would be a dead end for labour and the left. Nonetheless, coalition is perfectly legal in Canada and common around the world. Harper's attempt to demonize the notion of coalition government is a crude attempt at self-preservation by exploiting political ignorance and anti-Quebec chauvinism (although the BQ has never actually been proposed as a coalition partner by any party). The fuss he's made over a possible Liberal-NDP coalition is doubly hypocritical because Harper proposed an alliance of Conservatives, New Democrats and the Bloc as an alternative to the faltering Paul Martin Liberal minority government in 2004.

Socialists oppose coalition for a radically different reason. Coalition with the Liberals, or with any capitalist party, would seriously undermine the tenuous organizational independence of the NDP as a party of the labour movement and working people. As a partner in a Liberal government, the NDP would have to carry the can for austerity and corporate bail-outs at home, and for imperial wars of occupation abroad.

The central issue today is neither the morality nor the behaviour of the Tories (repugnant as they are). It is the continuing capitalist crisis and the assault on working people. The answer is to make Capital pay for the crisis it created. If the goal is a just and sustainable society, it only makes sense to institute a steep tax on wealth, to reverse the corporate bail-outs, and to democratize the economy.

Instead of trying in vain to tame an irrational system, it is time to break the logic of the capitalist business cycle, to get off the tread mill of endemic waste and oppression. It is time to put an end to profit from war and environmental destruction. It is time to dump the whole G20 agenda overboard.

To that end, Socialist Action advocates a number of concrete measures, policies in the interest of working people and the vast majority of NDP voters, which the NDP should be pushed to advance:

Put people, and the preservation of nature, before profits. Nationalize the banks, mining companies, Big Oil and Big Auto. Create jobs through public investment, public ownership, democratic planning and workers' control. Convert industry, transportation, and homes to green energy efficiency. Rapidly phase-out nuclear power and tar sands development. Repair our disintegrating roads, bridges, railways and port facilities. Make Employment Insurance more generous and accessible. Raise the minimum wage to $17/hour. Shorten the work week to 30 hours without loss of pay or benefits. Double the benefits in the Canada Pension Plan and Guaranteed Income Supplement. Abolish student debt. Make all education free. Fund health care and the arts. No corporate bail-out. Open the company books. Steeply tax corporations, speculators, and the rich. Abolish the HST. Uphold aboriginal land claims and local self-governance. Abolish the Senate and institute direct Proportional Representation in Parliament. Stop the deportations, full rights for migrant workers. Impose boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid. End the occupation of Afghanistan and Haiti. Hands off Libya. Reduce the Canadian military to a disaster-relief and rescue force. Get Canada out of NATO now!

Capitalists complain about low productivity. It's a lie, and a diversion. It is also a delusion to think that economic expansion will fix everything, that there is a market solution to the recurring crises of capitalism. There is no market solution. The capitalist market created the problem. Only a social revolution can solve it. Only by taking control of the major means of production, only by instituting broadly participatory, democratic planning, only by effecting a rapid green conversion to meet human needs, fully in tune with nature, does humanity have a hope of survival.

That means challenging the pro-capitalist direction of the labour and NDP leadership. It means fighting for an NDP government committed to socialist policies. It means opposing an NDP coalition with the Liberal Party or with any capitalist party. It means fighting for a Workers' Agenda and a Workers' Government, and organizing to win that programme inside the unions and the NDP. It means fighting for freedom for oppressed nations, for eco-socialism, feminism and LGBT liberation.

None of that is possible without a leadership committed to doing it. Indispensable is the building of a revolutionary party to campaign for fundamental change, everywhere and everyday. Central to that is the forging of a new leadership of the working class and oppressed nations that can win. It cannot be done without you.

So, please don't wait for the next economic crash, or for the next environmental catastrophe. Isn't the situation dire enough? Rebellion is in the air, from Egypt to Wisconsin, from Venezuela to Palestine. Join Socialist Action. Together we can make the world a place fit for humanity.

The tragedy of NDP support for NATO bombing of Libya

2011-04-03T19:44:00.001-04:00

by Barry Weisleder

The NDP Socialist Caucus federal conference held on March 17at U of Toronto declared its opposition to the imperialist intervention into Libya (the bombing and rocket attacks to impose a 'no-fly zone', and impose 'regime change'). The SC will campaign across the country for the anti-intervention position reflected in the resolution below, leading up to and at the NDP federal convention, June 17-19 in Vancouver.

NATO Hands off Libya!

Whereas the mass uprising of the people of Libya that began on February 15, 2011 which seeks to
oust dictator Muammar Gadaffi and end his police state, is part of the wave of popular democratic
revolt sweeping the Arab world;

And whereas Gadaffi for the past decade has cooperated with Washington and NATO, been
compliant with the U.S.-led wars of occupation, while privately pocketing billions of dollars of oil revenue,

And whereas Washington and its NATO allies seek to control Libya's future, and can use the
claim to providing 'humanitarian aid', including a 'no fly zone' that would be accompanied by
extensive bombing and inevitably massive civilian casualties, to launch an armed invasion of the country,

Therefore Be It Resolved that the federal NDP actively campaign against any U.S. or NATO
intervention in Libya, against the proposed 'no fly zone', and demand the withdrawal of Canadian
war ships from Libyan waters, and demand an end to Canadian firms selling/exporting military
equipment, munitions and supplies to the region.

And Be It Further Resolved that the NDP actively encourage the opening of Libya's borders with
Tunisia and Egypt so that partisans of the Arab democratic revolt can come to the aid of the
Libyan insurgency, and that the NDP organize solidarity with the movement of the Libyan and
Arab peoples for democracy and self-determination.

Sadly, NDP MPs joined the business class parties in Parliament in support of the western military intervention in Libya, which now is conducted by NATO, under the command of Canadian Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard. The lessons of history seem to be lost on Leader Jack Layton and his NDP Caucus.

For generations, the Canadian state has been consistently on the side of Israel, and against Egypt and the Arab countries. That includes during the Israeli wars against Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Ottawa has condoned (sometimes with mild criticism) Israeli atrocities committed repeatedly in Gaza and the West Bank, the construction of the Apartheid wall, the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian homes and farms, and the threats to bomb Iran.

Whether Conservative or Liberal, the federal government has overseen, promoted and facilitated Canadian military exports to 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Those countries included Mubarak's Egypt, Gadaffi's Libya and Netanyahu's Israel. Between 1990 and 2006, the value of these exports of weapons, munitions, armoured vehicles, jets, helicopters, drones, surveillance equipment and more, was about $1.8 Billion. This has greatly profited Canadian manufacturers like Advantech, Airboss, Astra International, Canadian Airmotive, CEL Aerospace, DEW Engineering, Field Aviation Co. Ltd., (just to name a few from the first six letters of the alphabet), and the omnipresent SNC Lavalin (which is presently building a super-prison in Libya).

Of course that magnitude of trade is dwarfed by the U.S. military aid programme to Egypt. According to the New York Times on March 13, “the aid programme which has given the Egyptian military roughly $40 Billion since the program's inception as part of the 1979 Camp David accord signed by Israel and Egypt has supported a military bureaucracy prone to insider dealing and corruption.” Professor Christopher Davidson, an expert on Egypt at Durham University in England, is quoted as saying, “the generals, the Supreme Military Council, is a de facto, separate government with an economy in its own right.” Those are the generals who are drawing up a new constitution and planning elections for September.

Returning to the question of the role of the Canadian state: Is Ottawa's record in Egypt and the Middle East the exception, or the rule for the world as a whole?

Look at Canada's participation in so-called 'peacekeeping missions', such as in Congo in 1960 when U.N. forces isolated revolutionary nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, facilitating his murder by a right wing, pro-colonialist, pro-mining, secessionist movement. It fits the pattern. As did Canada's 'peacekeeper' role on the Golan Heights, in Cyprus, in Somalia, in Yugoslavia, in Haiti, and for the past decade in Afghanistan. The latter was initially touted as a 'peacekeeping' alternative to participation in the U.S.-led second invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Meanwhile, Canadian warships ply the waters of the Persian Gulf in support of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and in support of the US embargo and its military threats against Iran. Now the HMCS Charlottetown is anchored in waters off the coast of Libya, in support of a bombing campaign involving Canadian CF18s, in the name of a 'no fly zone'. It is a prelude to an armed occupation by US/NATO forces (or their control of the rebel regime by other means), which is why socialists oppose it.

The truth is that 'Canadian peacekeeping' is a myth, from start to present. It is political camouflage for imperialist intervention. Increasingly, Canadian state officials speak openly in favour of military intervention. They couch it in terms of 'the duty to protect' innocent civilians.

In opposing imperialist intervention, and the diplomatic charade that usually accompanies it, socialists do not argue for an isolationist policy. Indeed, our policy can be summarized in this way: Injustice knows no boundaries. Solidarity knows no borders. But solidarity starts with opposition to our own capitalist rulers, including their interventions for power, plunder and profit abroad.

This brings us to the NDP, the only mass labour-based political party in North America.

Has the NDP leadership consistently opposed imperialist intervention, the arms industry, and militarism? Certainly, that approach would correspond to the interests of its 100,000 members, its 300,000 labour union affiliated members, and its 2.4 million mainly working class voters.

Sadly, the opposite is the case. It took years for the Canadian movement against the war in Vietnam to win the federal NDP to an 'Out Now' position, to get the party to adopt a policy expressed in the slogan 'NATO, NORAD, ICC, End Canadian Complicity'. It took years to convince the party at convention to adopt 'Canada Out of Afghanistan Now'. The NDP Socialist Caucus and allies finally succeeded in achieving this at the federal NDP convention in Quebec City, September 2006.

We have yet to win 'Canada Out of Haiti', mainly for lack of a democratic opportunity to debate the issue at convention. Of course, we are not about to give up trying.

In terms of Afghanistan, there are still occasional political relapses at the top. NDP MPs will sometimes say 'Canadian forces can play a role as trainers or infrastructure builders in Afghanistan – even though that would mean supporting the corrupt, U.S.-imposed Karzai regime. Canadian Forces would still be engaged in combat 'outside the wire', since insurgents do not, as a rule, recognize military 'training' or 'building' by an occupying power as friendly activity. Sometimes NDP MPs, including the Leader, speak wistfully about 'redeployment' of Canadian Forces to Darfur, or to elsewhere in Africa where oil or gold or other valuable commodities cannot be harvested due to obstruction by pesky nationalists who want to control their own resources.

That brings us to the current wave of uprisings across the Arab world, including Egypt. In early January, when the Tunisian masses launched their revolt, after a young man protested the spike in food prices by burning himself to death, the federal NDP issued a statement. It supports the Tunisian people. It says Canada is well positioned to use diplomacy (Really? Remember the election for U.N. Security Council? Ottawa was punished for its pro-Zionist policies, views shared by most NDP leaders). It says 'stop attacks on civilians'. BUT what about demanding that then-dictator Ben Ali step down?

On January 28, NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Paul Dewar released a statement on Egypt. It expresses hope that democratic aspirations will be peacefully realized. It urges Canada to use its diplomatic influence with Egyptian authorities (then including Hosni Mubarak) to lift the emergency law; to release detainees. It says it is time for political reforms; to review election laws, ...with the input of civil society; and calls for a “fair economy, an end to corruption, for transparent representative government.” BUT what about demanding what millions of Egyptians demanded: Mubarak out! (The NDP was practically the last party to publicly support that demand.)

On February 11, Jack Layton issued a statement: New Democrats admire peaceful protesters' courage and discipline; Mubarak's resignation has opened the door to meaningful change; and urges the government of Canada to use diplomatic means to ensure the process is legitimate and acceptable to the Egyptian people. BUT what about pledging support for the demands of Egyptian workers? Their unions ask that all the companies and resources Mubarak privatized be now returned to public ownership under democratic control. Democracy is about the economy too, not just about parliament.

On February 22, an NDP statement on Libya expresses concern for protesters and condemns the regime's use of deadly force against civilians. BUT instead of urging support for the insurgents, including that they be armed to defend themselves against Gadaffi's hired guns, the NDP urged the UN Security Council to establish a no-fly zone in Libya's airspace. That requires, as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates openly stated, extensive bombing of Libya by U.S. and allied forces. In our view, that leads, as in Iraq, to an eventual armed invasion to protect ... the people (?), the oil wells (!), all no doubt to be placed under the protective shield of protective entities, like Xe (former Blackwater) Corp.

So, the more things change, the more they remain the same. NDP leaders are caught in a life-long contradiction. Their interests as capitalist politicians (the pursuit of fame, fortune, good media bytes) conflict with the interests of the millions of workers who look to the party for social justice, equality, human rights, peace, environmental sustainability ... in other words, for socialism.

The Socialist Caucus is dedicated to shining a light on that contradiction, to winning the fight for socialist policies, and to challenging the cancerous global system known as capitalism. In short, the SC strives to replace capitalism with a global cooperative commonwealth. That starts with opposing the war makers at home.
The uprisings in Egypt, and across the Arab world, show that the days of imperial rule, of capitalist rule are numbered. A new day is dawning. NDP members want to be part of that awakening.

Just say No to Canada Post demands

2011-04-03T19:43:00.000-04:00

by Elizabeth Byce

A strong strike mandate is a good antidote to the breath-taking concessions now demanded by the Canada Post Corporation (CPC). That is the message of leaders of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) to their 54,000 members.

The latest postal strike occurred in 1997. Collective agreements signed in 2000, 2003 and 2007 contained roll backs to severance entitlements, utilization of sick leave benefits, and included introduction of 'team incentives' that undermine solidarity.

Now, it appears, the union is drawing the line -- which may become a mass picket line this summer -- and none too soon.

Management demands include the following: the elimination of thousands of jobs (by reduction of the internal full-time staffing ratio to 72% from 78%, reducing full-time positions at wickets, elimination of both wash-up periods, and the introduction of new mechanized equipment), slashing the pay of new hires by nearly 30 per cent, the reduction of vacation leave, a new 'cost sharing formula' for retirees that would require employees retiring after December 31, 2011 to pay 100% of the premiums of the Extended Health Care Plan instead of 25%, limiting the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) to instances when inflation increases by 8 per cent or more, the 'adjustment' of injury-on-duty pay from 100% down to 75%, and no pay for short term illness (absences of less than seven days).

For the last 15 years CPC has made a profit -- an achievement beyond its mandate, accomplished on the backs of postal workers and by eroding service to the public. The Union's demands at the negotiating table include that the profits should be put back into Canada Post to improve service to everyone and to improve working conditions and wages of the workers that provide the services.

CUPW is negotiating to improve service at corporate retail counters, to increase the door mail delivery, and to introduce postal banks in communities that currently have post offices but no banking institutions.

Canada Post has not only tried to impose roll backs on its workers, but also on all Canadians with the introduction of 'community mail boxes', reductiuction of post offices, service disruptions due to inadequate staffing, introduction of automation which removes a letter carrier's ability to ensure accuracy of delivery, reduction of street letter boxes, and so on.

So a lot is at stake in this round of collective bargaining. CUPW can revitalize itself by mobilizing its members and supporters, and return to its proud heritage of class struggle. It can return to the exemplary role it played as a militant, democratic union in the 1960s through the 1990s. CUPW can show the whole labour movement how to stand up to concession demands, as the bosses everywhere try to make workers pay for the global capitalist crisis. The fight back starts with a strong strike mandate.

(Elizabeth Byce is a retired postal worker, a former 30 year activist in the Toronto Local of CUPW.)

Dudley Laws, 1934-2011, leading Toronto anti-racist fighter

2011-04-03T19:42:00.001-04:00

by Norman 'Otis' Richmond, radio broadcaster for 25 years, Black community activist

Dudley Laws was known as a fear-free activist who would stand up to police brutality when many of us were too afraid to step up to the plate.

Laws joined the ancestors on March 24th after battling kidney disease. The Jamaican born Laws had stared death in the face many times. It is amazing the he lived 76 years. I always said "Dudley was like a cat, He had nine lives." He was born in St. Thomas Parish, Jamaica on May 7, 1934 to Ezekiel and Agatha Laws, and was a brother to three siblings. A welder and mechanic by trade, he worked at Standard Engineering Works until he emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1955 and became involved in defending the Caribbean community. In 1965, he relocated to Toronto, Canada, where he worked as a welder and taxi driver.

Laws was most known for founding the Black Action Defence Committee in 1988 following the Toronto police shooting of Lester Donaldson. He was once the head of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a Marcus Garvey-inspired organization. Under his leadership its name was changed to the Universal African Improvement Association. He was deeply concerned with the education of youth and helped many young people, including my son.

Laws became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s as a critic of the then Metro Toronto Police Force, due to a number of young black men being shot by police constables, as well as leveling other allegations of racist practices against the police. He has also been prominent as an advocate for immigrants and refugees, and worked as an immigration consultant in the 1990s. He was able to travel to Cuba and spoke highly of what he saw in that society.

Socialism 2011: Their Crisis, Our Solutions

2011-03-27T15:35:00.001-04:00

Socialism 2011: Their Crisis, Our Solutions

An International Educational Conference May 19, 20, 21, 22, 2011
at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, U of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West
co-sponsored by: Socialist Action / Ligue pour l'Action socialiste – Canadian state, Socialist Action – USA, and the Socialist Unity League (Liga Unidad Socialista) – Mexico

Thursday, May 19

5:30 p.m. registration opens

7 p.m. End the Occupations! Permanent War or Permanent Revolution
Christine Gauvreau, leading member of SA-USA, United National Anti-war Committee, and Connecticut United for Peace; and Khaled Mouammar, President of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Friday, May 20

5:30 p.m. registration, literature sale

7 p.m. Civil Liberties Under Attack – Fight Back!
Barbara Jackman, renowned Canadian lawyer who led the successful fights to lift the border entry ban on George Galloway, and to free tortured Muslim Canadians; Jeff Mackler, National Secretary, SA-USA, coordinator of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal campaign, of the Free Lynne Stewart campaign, and a leading opponent of the FBI raids against anti-war activists; plus Jaime Gonzalez, Organization Secretary of the LUS-Mexico.

Saturday, May 21

10 a.m. After Cancun, the Fight for Climate Justice
Terisa Turner, participant in the Cochabamba (Bolivia) Conference, and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at U of Guelph; Jaime Gonzalez Organization Secretary of the LUS-Mexico; and Dan Piper, a member of the SA-USA National Committee.

12 noon Lunch break

1 p.m. What's Wrong with our Workers' Movement?
Barry Weisleder, Federal Secretary, SA/LAS Canada, and organizer of Toronto Substitute Teachers' Action Caucus; Bruce Allen, V.P. of CAW Local 199 and V.P. of Niagara District Labour Council; Ajamu Nangwaya, member of CUPE 3907 and former V.P. of CUPE Ontario.

4 p.m. Origins of Sexism and the fight for Women's Liberation Today
Christine Gauvreau, leading member of SA-USA, based in Connecticutt; and Cheri MacDonald, veteran socialist-feminist and campaigner for Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics.

6 p.m. Supper break

7 p.m. Marx was Right: Capitalism doesn't work. Deepen the Global Resistance!
Jeff Mackler, National Secretary SA – USA, based in San Francisco; with supplementary remarks by Tom Baker, SA/LAS Canada.

Sunday, May 22

11 a.m. Aboriginal and Quebecois aspirations – National liberation in the Canadian state
Roger Obonsawin, President of the Aboriginal Peoples Council of Toronto, a veteran campaigner for aboriginal treaty rights; and Dr. Robbie Mahood, Montreal, SA-LAS, and past election candidate for Quebec Solidaire.

1 p.m. Lunch break, with film “Toronto G20 Exposed”

2 p.m. Closed session for SA members and invited guests. SA/LAS Convention.

4 p.m. Founding Convention of Youth for Socialist Action.

Tickets: $20 in advance for weekend; $30 at door for wkend; $5 per session (or PWYC)
For more information: www.socialistaction-canada.blogspot.com 416 – 535-8779 barryaw@rogers.com

Imperialism, War and 'National Security'

2011-02-03T20:47:00.001-05:00

Three books in review

by Barry Weisleder

'“Is there anybody who thinks we ought to leave Afghanistan?” the president asked. Everyone in the room was quiet. They looked at him. No one said anything. “Okay,” he said, “now that we've dispensed with that, let's get on.”'

One hundred and eighty-six into its 441 pages, the political framework of “Obama's Wars” by Bob Woodward (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2010) is clearly delimited.         There is no questioning of the 'right' of the United States of America to intervene in the affairs of countries and nations the world over. There is no elaboration on the admission that important energy resources are at stake. The vast and valuable mineral reserves of Afghanistan, its potential as a convenient corridor for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, and the array of Canadian, U.S. and other transnational mining and energy companies lining up for territorial concessions, do not merit even a footnote.     Concerning imperialism as an economic system, which the ideology of 'national security' dutifully serves, the book is mute.

But as a booster of the dominant ideology, like its namesake hero,“Obama's Wars” is effusive. America is presented as the repository of world civilization and democracy, and its 'resilient' response to the 9-11 attacks at home is to wage wars abroad. How Obama squares that with his pre-election end-the-wars pledge, and how he takes on the vested military establishment, is Woodward's literary spin. It is the stuff of his latest 'instant-history'.

Along the way the reader is treated to a sweeping survey of the personalities and tactical conflicts at the summits of capitalist political and military power. One is offered an intimate portrait of the young president who strives to master 'the game'. As a Who's Who guide to D.C., this crisply written, very readable book is a useful reference. But that's about it.

Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning associate editor at the Washington Post, has gained a reputation as gossipmonger to the governing elite. From his keyboard (or that of his much-praised, but little-credited chief researcher/writer Josh Boak), a rogues gallery of war criminals comes to life. Their interactions in Congressional hearing rooms, Pentagon offices, White House corridors, and the hallowed Situation Room appear to drive all that happens in the world. And, for what it's worth, Woodward's characters are more articulate and voluble than their counterparts on the TV drama 24.

Within a shared imperial framework, Vice-President Joe Biden ('avoid the shame of another Vietnam defeat') confronts gung-ho interventionist Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel calls the war “political flypaper”. An ominous review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy by Bruce Riedel, ex-CIA analyst, delivers a political hot potato: the central problem is Pakistan. Obama muses about taking civic measures to “reduce the appeal of violent extremism to young Muslims”.

However, “This sounded alarm bells for Gates, Mullen, Petraeus and McChrystal”, the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Navy Admiral, U.S. Military Commander, and U.S. Army General, respectively. A debate about 'counter-terrorism' versus 'counter-insurgency' ensued. The former course is remote-controlled and weapons intensive; the latter requires an extensive, endless occupation, to the tune of one soldier or police per 50 residents. Given the stratospheric rate of attrition from the Afghan Forces (over 25 per cent a year) such a ratio is surreal, short of a permanent U.S.-NATO occupation force of 500,000 plus.

Woodward uses his superior access to powerful people and his uncanny ability to acquire purloined classified documents and coveted private notes of participants, to reconstruct a chronology of debates, disputes and decisions made within the ruling circles. These he employs to illuminate a number of false dilemmas: Is the aim to defeat, or to disrupt the Taliban? Should the 'surge' be comprised of 30,000 or 40,000 additional U.S. troops? To what extent should the lethal drone attacks on insurgent forces in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) be escalated at the risk of further de-stabilizing the U.S. client regime in Islamabad?

It's ten overlapping wars in one, says a circumspect Army Lieutenant Douglas Lute. There's the NATO war (with a Canadian General in command), the CIA covert paramilitary war, and distinct wars being conducted by Green Berets and Joint Special Operations Command each tracking 'high value' targets. The training and equipment commands have their own operations. The Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Directorate for Security are also fighting separate wars.

So much money expended, yet so little popular support exists for the occupation, which (not surprisingly) is seen as foreign, and cruelly indifferent to massive Afghan casualties. This increasingly casts the austere, reactionary Taliban, most active in the mainly Pashtun eastern provinces, as well as other insurgent forces in a positive light. Woodward, who toured Helmand province with General James L. Jones, admits that without American billions, bombs, and economic conscripts on the ground, President Hamid Karzai would not even be mayor of a Kabul cul de sac.

Jones, Obama's national security adviser, put the Afghanistan war in a political context. “If we don't succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.” Shorn of their fig leaf, the nakedness of the malefactors of global injustice would be more visible. Should we be worried?

Life can be hard on publishers. WikiLeaks stole the thunder of 'Obama's Wars' by revealing Washington's contempt for its allies/puppets in the region, and by exposing Obama's order for a dramatic increase in the bombings of Pakistan's untamed north-west.

At home, Obama's hand-picked cabinet of militarists want 'more boots on the ground'. As Petraeus and others kept agitating for further escalation, ignoring study after study of the deepening quagmire, the president took the unusual step of writing a six-page plan that defined goals and set limits. He fired McChrystal for disparaging its author. But no matter how lawyerly well-written, no president's scheme can arrest the dynamic of imperialist intervention.

Fraught with terminal contradictions, Obama's exit strategy resembles the plot line of a George Orwell novel. It starts with a military surge, and is tied to a shrinking social base dominated by some of the most corrupt, undemocratic politicians on Earth. Washington's surge specialist, the 'hero of Bagdad', General Petraeus, confides “This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives.”

As in Vietnam, the reality is that there is no voluntary exit strategy for the U.S. in Afghanistan, nor in Iraq and Pakistan for that matter. The smoke and mirrors of politically embedded, award-winning journalists can buy only so much time for imperial ambition.

The inconvenient fact that 60 per cent of Americans polled, plus 80 per cent of Canadians, and untold majorities of peoples worldwide demand total withdrawal now of foreign military forces from the Middle East and South Asia is of no concern to the imperialist rulers – at least not until those popular majorities are mobilized in such a way as to threaten the profits and power of the classes that rule.

Barack Obama made his bed with the bourgeoisie long ago. The cerebral former community organizer pushes trillions of depreciating U.S. dollars to Wall Street and the Pentagon, while starving human needs. That, apparently, is the price of 'greatness' in the decadent capitalist game. 'Change you can believe in', from within the system, it turns out, is no change at all. From Palestine to Pakistan, these are truly now Obama's wars.

But it doesn't end there. Civil liberties, more precisely the basic rights of the working class majority of society, are another casualty of the wars abroad. Fortunately, there are some recently published books that do address this crucial human dimension.

One well worth reading is “Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror” by Kerry Pither (Viking Canada, Toronto, 2008, 460 pages). It relates, with the narrative drive of a thriller, the harrowing experiences of four Canadian Muslim men who were intercepted abroad and sent by U.S. officials to Syria and/or Egypt for interrogation and torture, with full RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service collaboration. Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Maher Arar, and Muayyed Nureddin were eventually released without charge, after unspeakable sufferings, and only due to persistent public campaigning by their families, their lawyers and allied social movements.

Possession of a tourist map, a knowledge of electronics or of aviation, or simply being Arab or Muslim is enough for state authorities, keen to justify 'security' expenditures, to implicate innocent persons in terrorism. But behind the zealous cops, spies and torturers are the policies and interests of capital – the fountain of divide and rule tactics in the pursuit of war for profit.

Although “Dark Days” misses the forest for the trees, overlooks the system served by the lies, hubris and malfeasance it lays bare, the book rescues the humanity of some of the system's victims. And it reminds us, in the words of Ahmad El Maati, that “Since 9/11, so many others have just disappeared, or are still in prisons, with no right to ask questions.”

National security, which is really about the security of capital from its critics, has been a tool of conformism long before post 9/11 trauma. “The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation” by Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile (UBCPress, Vancouver, 2010, 554 pages) provides a very well-researched history of the movements for gay/lesbian equality from the 1950s through the 1990s. The book vividly connects Canadian state discrimination against homosexuals, the spying on and interrogation of activists, and the disruption of grass roots human rights campaigns, directly to the imperatives of capitalist rule.
Heterosexism, like sexism, racism and today's top-down fostered Islamophobia, is a long-standing divide and rule prejudice. It is particularly useful to the state in the event of war, that is, all too often. The ongoing nature of the attack on democratic and human rights (from the incarceration or imposition of ultra-restrictive living conditions on Muslim and Tamil refugees in Canada, to the widespread violation of civil liberties by police in connection with the G20 Summit in Toronto last June, to the latest FBI raids on anti-war activists across the USA) makes it crucial that the process of 'forgetting' the historical roots of state repression, and the struggle against it, be confronted and overcome.

Despite much self-conscious, arch-academic phraseology, Kinsman and Gentile make a compelling case, masterfully summarized in the last chapter, that capitalist globalization and the “expanding national security state” go hand in hand. Gay or straight, religious or secular, regardless of colour, sex, language or ethnicity, working people will find freedom sooner when we come to see 'national security', like patriotism, as the common refuge of many a monied scoundrel.

University: Suffering from Elitism Déjà Vu

2011-02-03T20:46:00.000-05:00

by Tyler Mackinnon

The first year university student is typically bright and energetic, ready to embrace a whole new world of ideas that allegedly can be grasped only by the cream of the intellectual crop. The student worked for months, pulling up high school grades, working on countless essays and tests, still recovering from a lack of sleep endured last May and June.

But all that work finally paid off. At last s/he is a true scholar. Then comes the tuition bill. The colour literally drains from the eyes. All emotion is sucked dry at a glimpse of the absurd price.

University fees are pushing working-class scholars out of their deserved class room seats and into the service industry faster than you can say delta-hyde.

According to a report by the Canadian Federation of Students, the share of university operating budgets funded by students' tuition fees more than doubled between 1985 and 2005, rising from 14% to 30%. This, plus unprecedented levels of student debt, have been a growing concern for working class students for the past twenty years, despite the popular student movement slogan “education is a right, not a privilege”.

The CFS report shows that student debt skyrocketed between 1999 and 2004, going from $21,177 to over $28,000 -- an increase of more than 33% in just five years. Even the once reliable government assistance programs and scholarships, which were introduced supposedly to give struggling students support while they pursue post-secondary education, take months to deliver. And when funds are finally released, the amount is barely enough to get a student through the first term. Whatever doesn’t go towards tuition, gets spent on text books, transportation and basic living conditions. This trend is frustrating students to the breaking point.
Researchers also state that financial issues are the most commonly cited barrier for students trying to get into post-secondary learning. Speaking from experience I can honestly say that OSAP will cause more sleep loss and stress than any exam ever will!

If something is not done soon about this issue, university will revert to the conditions of the industrial revolution. Only the rich will be educated; the poor will be denied. That ought to keep the latter from 'getting dangerous ideas in their heads'. If government can afford to fight an unjust and unwinnable war, then it can afford to provide access to free education to every man, woman and child. Education is a RIGHT, not a privilege. Let's make it so. Drop fees! Tax the corporations!

April 9 protest set for Toronto

2011-02-03T20:45:00.000-05:00

by Julius Arscott

The call for mass anti-war actions on April 9, issued by the U.S.-based United National Anti-war Committee (UNAC), has been heard and answered in Canada. A January 14 membership meeting of the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War responded with a Yes. It is proceeding to organize an outdoor rally, and numbers permitting, a street march in that city.

Members, supporters and friends of Socialist Action started in September to lobby the Toronto coalition in favour of a broad demonstration to demand 'Canada Out of NATO, NATO Out of Afghanistan Now!' The TCSW is an affiliate of the Canadian Peace Alliance. The CPA endorsed the UNAC actions slated for the U.S. east and west coasts on Saturday, April 9.

A show of international solidarity with UNAC, and with other participating organizations, including in other countries as well, in opposition to the imperialist wars of occupation in the Middle East, is now posed.

Several Socialist Action members from Toronto and Montreal attended the UNAC conference, along with 800 peace and social justice activists on July 23-25, 2010 in Albany, New York. It was the largest U.S. gathering of its kind in over a decade. It enjoyed the backing of thirty-one national organizations. With the assistance of the Albany-based Sanctuary Media, 17,000 more people witnessed the conference and many of its 30-plus workshops via video-streaming.

The conference took many important decisions, culminating in the major effort now underway to gather the broadest range of endorsements for the April 9 bi-coastal mobilizations set for New York and San Francisco. The convergance of major forces of the U.S. anti-war movement presents a challenge to the anti-war movement in Toronto, and across the Canadian state.

In the wake of the revelations by WikiLeaks of the sheer ugliness and hopelessness of the Afghan military quagmire, with anger mounting over the money earmarked for the purchase of new fighter aircraft, leaks about war crimes condoned by Canadian military officials, and following the three year extension of Canadian Forces' intervention in Afghanistan by Prime Minister Steven Harper without even a debate in the House of Commons, opposition to the war is cresting.

Many Canadians want to take to the streets, but for the past three years occasions for united mass action have been few. The CPA and TCSW have waged many important campaigns and actions in that time, such as organizing a cross-country speaking tour by former Afghan female MP Malalai Joya, by protesting at a Toronto appearance by former British PM Tony Blair on November 26, and particularly by conducting the highly successful George Galloway tours. The former British MP attracted international media coverage to the issue of the Zionist seige of Gaza, to the just struggle for Palestinian freedom, and to the popular legal triumph over the Canadian government's initial bar to Galloway entering Canada. Anti-war coalition leaders seem convinced that now is the time to take the next step.

The call to action in Spring 2011 provides an opportunity to unite in the streets all opponents of Ottawa's war policies, priorities and actions. This is the occasion to invite and involve labour unions, the labour-based New Democratic Party, and all social movements that want to put human needs first. Now is the time to build support for the April 9 demonstration in Toronto, and to explore the prospects for similar actions all across the Canadian state.

For more information about the Canadian Peace Alliance, call 416 – 588-5555, e-mail: cpa@web.ca or write to: 427 Bloor Street West, Box 13, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1X7.

Will NDP and Labour rise to the challenges of 2011?

2011-01-06T20:39:00.000-05:00

Beyond North America, labour is on the march and the left is finding its voice again. Well into the third year of the global economic crisis, growing opposition to capitalist policies is fueled by layoffs, social cutbacks, rising school fees, currency wars, environmental catastrophes, attacks on civil liberties and festering imperial military interventions.

So why do the accumulating conditions for a radical resurgence seem to spell trepidation and crisis for the labour-based New Democratic Party and for unions in Canada? Could it be that the labour leadership has been driving in reverse gear for so long that they find it difficult to stop, and shift into forward?

The problems are numerous. Many are self-inflicted. Instead of fighting the bosses, some union leaders are fighting one another. Conflicts over raiding (in the Canadian Labour Congress) and bids to undermine top elected officers (in the Ontario Federation of Labour) testify to that.

Instead of mobilizing the rank and file to reverse corporate bail-outs and tax gifts to the rich, union leaders tend to rely on weak ad campaigns, legalistic initiatives and token rallies. Instead of bolstering labour's political independence, the tops play footsie (or cohabit) with Liberals. Instead of deepening workers' democracy, the brass clamp down on the left, and treat the NDP membership like a milch cow rather than as a source of new ideas and energy.

This helps to explain the public cynicism that surrounds labour and its political arm in English Canada. It reveals why the party cannot translate its opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and its resistence to the attack on pensions, welfare and public services, into significant growth at the polls.

The likelihood of a federal election in Spring 2011 should be good news for the NDP. Party debts are paid and many of its candidates are already in the field. But the NDP vote in three federal by-elections on November 29 sank like a stone; it even lost its long-held seat in Winnipeg North.

Even more inauspicious was the municipal election disaster in Toronto where a voter revolt against the lethal combination of service cuts and tax hikes turfed the Liberal/NDP regime at City Hall in favour of a right wing populist mayor and allied anti-labour councillors.

As in west coast British Columbia, the Ontario NDP failed to channel popular opposition to a heightened Harmonized Sales Tax, which could have been done by demanding its abolition and its replacement by major tax hikes on the rich. Proposing paltry exceptions to the regressive tax, and steering clear of a radical critique of the bourgeois tax system, has allowed right wing populists to run wild with the issue, especially in B.C.

Dissatisfaction with BC NDP Leader Carol James within her own provincial legislative caucus forced her to resign from the top job. Her anemic response to the sales tax hike, which was a broken promise that forced Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell to quit in November, was only the tip of the political iceberg. James' refusal to campaign in 2009 for reversal of Liberal provincial cutbacks, and her ongoing attempts to distance the NDP from its traditional labour base, while appealing to the business elite, which remains firmly aligned with the BC Liberals, proved to be her undoing as NDP leader.

This turn of events shows the potential to win the party ranks to the fight for a pro-labour, socialist agenda – a fight that can succeed only if it is actively waged.

In the meantime, the NDP is flailing away, still identified with the late-2008 aborted federal coalition with the Liberal Party, and still smarting from the split in the NDP parliamentary caucus over the federal gun registry. The social democratic leadership is so perplexed that Leader Jack Layton may even summon his MPs to vote for the next Conservative federal budget just to avoid precipitating a Spring election.

Internally, morale is low, reflected in stagnant membership figures. The undemocratic move last March by the Ontario NDP executive to postpone the party's provincial convention by nearly two years likewise does not inspire confidence. Neither does the decision by the senior party executive to imposed a “re-vote” that overturned the win by leftists at the Ontario New Democratic Youth Convention (see article in Dec. 2010 S.A.)

The disorientation, confusion, even crisis in sections of the NDP reflect also the state of the labour movement, and vice-versa. At the BC Federation of Labour Convention, held Nov. 29 - Dec. 3, there was little word about the schism among the NDP tops. But division within the labour brass was evident when most of the CUPE delegation walked away for an entire session. This left the BC Government Employees' Union in the hall even though the latter will be outside the Fed in January due to the imminent expulsion of the federal public service umbrella, the National Union of Public and General Employees, over non-payment of dues to the CLC. That is NUPGE's response to a dispute over raiding of its affiliates by other unions in three western provinces.

On the positive side of the ledger, the BC Fed adopted a sharp critique of the global corporate agenda. But it did so without mapping out a mass action response to it. At the same time it voted to end its practice of hosting annual Fed conventions in favour of holding them only once every two years -- a prescription for a less responsive, less accountable, and less democratic union federation.

It is the last thing workers want, highlighting the urgent need for a class struggle opposition in the unions and the NDP to mine the deep reserves of working class solidarity, to sweep aside the mis-leaders of our class, and to fight for a Workers' Agenda against the employers' relentless austerity drive. -Barry Weisleder

Stock Market Pension Plan is a Tory Scam

2011-01-06T20:38:00.002-05:00

The latest brutal assault on the social wage is Ottawa's reversal on the Canada Pension Plan. Instead of enhancing the CPP, which federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised to do when he met with his provincial counterparts in Prince Edward Island last summer, the Tories are pushing a private sector scheme.

Leaning heavily on the capitalist economic crisis as a convenient crutch, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said “Now is not the time for CPP premium increases.” Does Harper appreciate the cruel irony of asking impecunious pensioners to invest in the stock market which had three meltdowns in 15 years (1997, 2002 and 2008)?

The CPP, which provides a guaranteed benefit to all seniors, should be increased immediately. Why? Because...

It is impossible to live on a basic pension of $11,200 a year.
Sixty per cent of workers have no workplace pension.
One-third of Canadians between the ages of 24 and 64 have no personal retirement savings.
Only one in four taxpayers put any money into a Registered Retirement Savings Plan in 2008. After 25 years of stagnant or declining wages, it is hardly surprising how difficult it is for people to save on their own.
1.6 million Canadian seniors today live in poverty, with incomes below $16,000 a year.

Presently, the Canadian Labour Congress is campaigning for a doubling of Canada and Quebec Pension Plan benefits, to be phased in by small premium increases over seven years. The resulting $22,400 annual pension income would be an improvement, but still woefully inadequate, especially seven years from now, and beyond.

The CPP, which hasn't been expanded since its inception 45 years ago, should be tripled, and the main burden of the contribution increase should be borne by big business and the rich. Yes, the class that has gained the most from two decades of corporate tax cuts, and that appropriated more than 30 per cent of the extra income generated during the so-called boom years (according to Linda McQuaig and Neil Brook's recent book “The Trouble with Billionaires”), should pay for this and other pressing social needs.

Naturally, any increase in CPP benefits is opposed by the banks, financial institutions and insurance companies which have profited enormously by selling RRSPs.

Enter the Conservative federal government, and their political cousins in the province of Alberta. They propose a new Pooled Registered Pension Plan – a voluntary scheme to be administered by the financial industry. Small and large firms could use this to offer private pensions to their employees, who would pay into it, but get a pension based only on market performance. It would spread a growing disease, the focus of a bitter labour struggle at Vale Inco, and now at Stelco, in which management seeks to replace “defined benefits” with “defined contributions”. The latter embodies the possibility of little or no pension for the entrapped workers.

Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan, who was among two dozen protesters who occupied Finance Minister Flaherty's office in Whitby, Ontario on December 19, called the Tory scheme “a gimmick to get the issue of pensions off the front pages.” Ryan was all too kind.

Actually, it is a wretched scam designed to rip off the working class and further subsidize financial Capital. It is a case of kicking workers while we're down.

The appropriate answer to the conniving Tories, and to the more subtle but equally venal Liberals, is for workers to stand up and fight back. General strikes from Portugal to Greece, powerful and unifying actions scarcely reported in the North American media, show the way to defend pensions and other threatened social gains. -Barry Weisleder

Too much 'sentiment', not enough story

2011-01-06T20:38:00.001-05:00

The surprise winner of the 2010 Giller Prize for best English-Canadian fiction, “The Sentimentalists” by Johanna Skibsrud (Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto, 2010, 218 pages) is both an artistic and political disappointment. The judges went a little overboard with their laudable encouragement of the young poet-turned-novelist. They are apparently willing to overlook tortuous sentence structure, a painful over-indulgence in bracketed subordinate clauses, and dense lyricism that suffocates an interesting story-line. Frequent bursts of creative metaphoric prose do not rescue Skibsrud's stumbling transition to the novel form.

“The Sentimentalists” could have channelled the intense public interest in war crimes, post-traumatic stress disorder and wikileaks. It is a tale told by the daughter of a Vietnam war veteran. Her dad, haunted by the horror of an actual massacre by U.S. Marines of a village of Vietnamese peasants in 1967, leaves his North Dakota trailer and moves to a small Ontario town.

There the vet lives with the father of his soldier buddy, who died mysteriously, possibly the victim of an attempted cover-up. The daughter has issues too – a failed romantic relationship, estrangement from her frequently-absent, alcoholic father – but the more she learns about the horrors that contorted their lives, the more she concludes that the past is irretrievably subjective and ultimately unknowable.

This novel is a missed opportunity. It could have dramatized a compelling history that has contemporary resonance. It could have situated it in today's big picture of power, profit and the system's multi-million victims. Connecting past and present wars of imperial intervention, and linking the toxic fogs that they propagate, alas, is a job for another writer. -Barry Weisleder

Harper sticks it to the anti-war majority

2010-12-07T19:02:00.002-05:00

by Barry Weisleder

In a bruising blow to government credibility and bourgeois decorum, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority Conservative regime extended the 'mission' of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan by three years, without even the formality of a debate and vote in the House of Commons. Only a formality it evidently would have been, since the Official Opposition Liberal Party has been pushing for an extension of the imperialist occupation since Liberal External Affairs Critic (and ex-NDP Ontario Premier) Bob Rae returned from his summer visit to Kabul and Kandahar singing the praises of the military's civilizing influence abroad. (This was confirmed on November 30 when Liberal MPs voted with the governing Conservatives 209-81 to defeat a Bloc Quebecois motion, supported by New Democrat MPs, that expressed opposition to the war extension.)

Violation of the decision by Parliament in 2008 to withdraw all Canadian troops by the end of 2011 was widely predicted. The extension is now cynically presented in the guise of a non-combat "training mission" slated to end in 2014. Then, supposedly, the Afghan army and police will be able to fend for themselves against the insurgency. This is 'Vietnamization' by any other name.

Everyone knows that 'training' occurs in the field of combat, not just in a classroom 'behind the wire'. The mocking change of rubric will not stem the flow of Canadian casualties, already encompassing over 1,600 mangled bodies and minds, and 152 lives snuffed out by a combination of road-side explosives, snipers and suicide bombers that operate on all sides of the 'wire' – to say nothing of the continuing toll on Afghans, tens of thousands of whom have perished in the conflict.

In a country consumed by war since 1979, training in the arts of armed combat is not lacking. The problem of the Afghan army and police, and those whom they target for recruitment, is that they don't want to fight for a corrupt government propped up by foreigners. According to NATO documents, the military alliance believes it has to train 23 recruits for every 10 soldiers that stay with the Afghan National Army. Every year 20 per cent of the army and 25 per cent of the Afghan National Civil Order Police quit. Private security forces scoop up some trained soldiers. Some die in combat. Many defect to the Taliban or to other insurgent groups, which not only pay better than the $165(U.S.) a month NATO issues to enlistees, but offer the opportunity of fighting for the home side.

What would happen in a post-occupation Afghanistan? As brave Afghan ex-MP and outspoken feminist Malalai Joya told audiences in an October speaking tour across Canada, once the NATO armies of occupation leave, the Afghan people will be able to concentrate on fighting one enemy rather than two.

A reduced Canadian contingent of 950 soldiers for the 'training mission', down from the present 2,500 combatants, will still cost $500 million a year for their supply and upkeep. Another $200 million will go toward "development work" and transition costs. Close to $20 billion has already been spent or committed by Ottawa to the intervention. (What has Washington to show for spending $350 billion there so far?)

According to the latest Harris-Decima poll, 60 per cent of Canadians surveyed are opposed to any Canadian military presence in Afghanistan. Other polls show 80 per cent opposed to the latest extension of the 'mission'.

Both the labour-based New Democratic Party and the nationalist Bloc Quebecois in Parliament have demanded withdrawal of Canadian Forces by June 2011. The NDP leadership had to be dragged towards that position by leftist and anti-war activists in the party. The shift occurred was confirmed at the September 2006 NDP federal convention in Quebec City where the NDP Socialist Caucus played a prominent role in pushing leader Jack Layton beyond an 'out of Kandahar' stance to an 'out of Afghanistan now' policy. Still, vestiges of liberal 'peacekeeping' illusions in the army and state continue to crop up in the statements of NDP officials. They commonly relapse into talk of 'redeployment' of troops to Africa, Haiti and other conflict zones.

Indeed, the Toronto Star stressed in a November 17 editorial, "the Commons never demanded a wholesale military exit when it 'capped' the Kandahar mission. It called for the redeployment of Canadian Forces troops out of Kandahar by December 2011" and "emphasized the need to train and equip Afghan forces." The Star, a staunchly pro-Liberal Party paper, says "the new mission is true to that call". The NDP leadership, which played sotto voce at the time, now bears a portion of the blame for the rulers being able to camouflage their latest military gambit.

Autumn was a tough season for the Harper Tories: losing their bid for a U.N. Security Council seat to Portugal, losing a military air force base in the United Arab Emirates, and having to suffer two popular speaking tours across Canada by former British MP George Galloway who Canadian Border Security illegally barred from entering the country in 2009. Their latest bludgeon, extending an aggressive military presence abroad without even a public discussion, is all too reminiscent of Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament, twice. Recall, that was done in part to avoid accountability for Canadian Forces' complicity with the torture of prisoners of war in Afghanistan.

The government's sanctimonious invocations to 'support our troops' and 'make sure their sacrifice is not in vain' seem to shatter on contact with the reality of how veterans are treated. Thousands live in physical and mental misery, forced to battle Ottawa for adequate funding for medicine and shelter. The New Veterans' Charter introduced by the Conservative government in 2006 replaced lifetime pensions to injured vets with a poor combination of lump sum payments and income support. This doesn't sit well with the Tory base. Nor is the rest of the population impressed with the lack of 'progress' on democracy, clean government, women's rights or finding Osama Bin Laden, the oft-touted initial aims of the intervention.

Concerning what the war is really about, the major commercial media rarely, if ever, mentions that Afghanistan is a potential energy supply corridor and a treasure trove of enormous mineral wealth. If NATO negotiates a modus vivendi with Taliban and associated forces to prolong the western occupation, those will be the reasons, none of which are humanitarian.

The November 20 NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal confirmed plans to stay in Afghanistan for decades to come. The challenge facing the anti-war movement is to mobilize the anti-war, anti-occupation majority into the streets. It is not enough to decry the Emperor's nudity. Mass protest action is needed on a Pan-Canadian and global level to withdraw the troops and trainers, to end the occupation now. The Canadian Peace Alliance should take up the call of the U.S.-based United National Anti-War Committee for protest rallies and demonstrations on April 9, 2011. An international Day of Action against the imperialist war makers and war alliances should be a top priority.