07) UNITED TO DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES

 

People's Voice Editorial

 

            The Call to Action by the recent Peoples' Social Forum in Ottawa includes these words: "it is more necessary than ever to work together to counter the current federal Government and the dominant elites' savage attacks to our collective and individual rights, our jobs, our pensions, our public services, our environment, to immigrants, the poor, people of colour and, ultimately, to our future and that of future generations."

 

            This Call is very timely. The new government of Quebec is launching a major austerity blitz, and working people are already resisting, including municipal workers in Montreal fighting to defend their hard‑won pensions. On the west coast, Christy Clark's Liberal government is sabotaging the public education system with the aim of encouraging parents and students to switch to taxpayer-funded private schools, but parents, students and teachers are rallying together in huge numbers. In Ontario, newly re‑elected Premier Wynne campaigned on a budget that promised an across-the-board public wage freeze, privatization of public services, and the sell‑off of public assets. Wynne didn't talk much about her neoliberal agenda, allowing Tim Hudak's Tories to corner the market on far‑right ideas, but the emerging labour/community coalition in Ontario has a big job to stop this assault. Everywhere, governments keep slashing taxes on the rich and the corporations, drying up revenue that could be used to improve and expand desperately needed public services.

 

            The ideological poison behind this attack is the concept that as "consumers" we should pay as private individuals for health care, education, or pensions. That view is deliberately promoted to undermine decades of social gains achieved by working people in the wake of the Great Depression. Similar collective action is desperately needed today, to stop the right‑wing steamroller, and to win the struggle for a better future. The fight to defend public services is a great place to start building a united, powerful resistance.

 

(The above article is from the September 16-30, 2014, 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.)