09) TELL LIBERALS TO SCRAP ANTI-COMMUNIST MEMORIAL

By Johan Boyden, Central Organizer, Communist Party of Canada

    Visiting picturesque Ottawa a few weeks ago for a meeting with Elections Canada, I found a city still breathing a sigh of relief. Locals described a certain air of solace inside the beehive of tens of thousands of federal employees. The Harper Conservatives had shifted labour relations with the public sector towards a neoliberal orthodoxy that at times felt like the Spanish Inquisition. This year, almost 20,000 layoffs of government employees had been expected in Ottawa.

    A host of issues are still buzzing around, like flies over Harper’s garbage, such as Bill C-51 (which the Liberals want to “amend”), and democratic reform (specifically “a special parliamentary committee to consult on electoral reform, including preferential ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting and online voting”).

    In coming issues of People’s Voice, we will write about a wide range of issues which urgently require big policy changes under the new government. But swift action is needed to put the “Victims of Communism Memorial” into the dustbin of history.

    Everyone apparently now agrees that this monument planned for Ottawa was ugly, expensive, poorly thought-out and imposed on the city, and “ideological”. The new Minister of Heritage, Melanie Joly, has vowed to make consultations, and letters can be addressed to the Minister care of Parliament Hill. Some are already coming. “There appears to be an assumption that the majority of Canadians are in favour of the monument, and just want it in a less wildly inappropriate location,” Oxfam activist Cathleen Kneen wrote Joly, adding that actually “it is time to can the idea altogether.”

    Exactly. Now is the time to send that message, in the form of resolutions and letters from across the country.        

(The above article is from the December 1-31, 2015, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)