(The following article is from the October 1-15, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
"There was no discussion - there wasn't even a question - about Ontario's historic referendum on MMP", said provincial Communist Party leader Elizabeth Rowley after the "major parties" debate on Sept. 20.
"It gave voters a measure of just how important democratic electoral reform is to these parties," she said. "It's certainly consistent with the decision by these parties, and the networks, to only allow the Tories, Liberals and NDP leaders to be heard, shutting out six other registered political parties, including the Greens, who have candidates in every riding, and the Communist Party, which has elected to the Legislature twice. Giving the public access to other political voices and different ideas - which is what MMP is all about - isn't in the cards so long as the Big Business parties run the show and write the rules."
"The debate would have been sharper had the Greens, Communists, and others been included", said Rowley. "Policy ideas that never came up would have been on the table, including MMP, and the call for a single, secular school system, which the Communist Party has advocated since its inception, and which the Green Party is effectively advocating in this campaign."
Commenting on the debate, Rowley said John Tory was attacking the Liberals for carrying on with policies initiated by the Harris government. She pointed to the fractured education funding formula, balanced budget legislation that has lead to ER crises and long waits for beds and services in hospitals, supervision over School Boards refusing to make more staff and program cuts, and deep cuts to municipal services, including the Monday closings of community centres and libraries in Toronto. She also stressed that the crisis in manufacturing has become acute with the loss of 141,000 jobs in Ontario since McGuinty took office. Wages and living standards have plunged.
"McGuinty was elected to reverse the Harris agenda; instead he
delivered more of it, and that's why the Liberals can't get over 40% in the polls. The Liberals are going to pay the price for this. But John Tory's relentless attack on McGuinty was intended to convince voters that he is a real fighter for working people, opposed to the anti-people policies delivered by both Harris and McGuinty. In fact, the Tories' policies are anti-social and extreme. Casting his policy of funding religious schools in Ontario as a `principle' about `inclusion' is just the kind of double talk Tory hopes will swing a few votes his way - enough to elect a Tory minority on October 10th."
In light of this, Rowley noted, Howard Hampton's repeated comment that Tory is not `scary' or `ugly' was very surprising. In fact the Tory agenda is ugly, the more so since it is largely hidden, and the visible part caters to fundamentalism. She warned that the NDP leadership has made a serious error in focusing their fire solely on the Liberals, when the Tories are even more dangerous to working people today. Right wing populism and demagogy, mixed with religion and fundamentalism is a dangerous concoction.
"The polls and the debate showed that Ontarians can expect to see a minority government, with the NDP likely holding the balance of power," Rowley noted. "If the scenario is like 1985, the Tories could be benched if the Liberals and NDP combine to govern on a reform platform. The alternative - propping up a Tory government - should be rejected out of hand, starting now."
A big vote for MMP in the referendum, she concluded, would open the door to new progressive voices and ideas in the Legislature, making it a lot harder to pass over democracy.