03) COMMUNIST PARTY LAUNCHES FEDERAL ELECTION PLANS

Special to PV

            The Communist Party of Canada has initiated plans for a larger and more visible presence in the federal election which must be held sometime between this spring and  the scheduled date of Monday, October 19.

            With this timeline looming, the CPC’s Central Committee held a special on-line one day meeting on February 1, devoted to election planning. CC members took part from locations coast to coast, discussing the party’s outlook on the current political situation, the CPC election platform, and organizational preparations.

            The CC meeting was opened by party leader Miguel Figueroa, who noted that the Tories appear to be retreating from an early election, primarily due to economic upheavals: the fall of the Canadian dollar, dropping world oil prices, rising consumer prices, and mass layoffs. Figueroa warned that the Tories will try to bring in a balanced budget, through more cutbacks of federal employees and other anti-working class measures. He predicted that PM Harper will shift the focus to his party’s pro-war and pro-imperialist foreign policy, around Canada’s role in the war in Iraq, hawkish positions over the Ukraine crisis, and support for Israel’s expansionism. Harper will also beat the drums for Bill C-51, the so-called “anti-terror” law which allows for preventive arrests without charges, expanded powers for CSIS, and other profoundly undemocratic changes.

            The Tories will claim that they are for a “strong Canada”, while stepping up personal attack on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, and using electoral loopholes to massively outspend the opposition parties. New voter suppression tactics are expected such as changes which allow the major parties to harass voters at the polls by challenging their ID credentials.

            Meanwhile, he said, the Liberals will urge “strategic voting” to stop another Tory majority, hoping to win back votes which went NDP in 2011. For its part, the NDP will try to outflank the Liberals on the left (for example Thomas Mulcair’s call for a national child care program), while still aiming to appear as a “responsible” party ready to take the reins of government. 

            Figueroa said the Communist campaign will present the Party's perspectives and priorities as widely as possible to working people.

            “Our first objective,” he said, “will be to help defeat the Harper Conservatives - the most aggressive and authoritarian big business party - and to help create the best possible conditions to carry forward the mass struggle after the election... The second objective is to advance our own platform as strongly as possible in the ridings where we are running, and to build support for a socialist alternative, and gain new members for the Party and the YCL.”

            The CC members had a wide-ranging discussion of a preliminary draft of an election statement reflecting Figueroa’s introduction.

            That statement notes that while the past nine years have seen widespread resistance, the Harper Conservatives continue to “chop and privatize vital social programs and services, lower the real wages of working people, and gut labour’s right to free collective bargaining. Their drive to export raw materials is destroying the environment and trampling on Aboriginal sovereignty, while creating huge profits for the oil and resource corporations. They have attacked civil rights, democracy and equality. And they have driven Canada’s foreign policy further toward militarism, aggression and war.”

            The Communist Party will urge working people to dump the Tories, and to launch a longer-term, extra-parliamentary fight, including mass social mobilizations which can begin to have an electoral impact. The CPC calls for a powerful and broad People’s Coalition of the working class and its allies outside of Parliament, as the way to shift power from the banks and transnational corporations, and start moving Canada in a new direction. 

            The draft election statement notes that today’s global crisis “is not really about government policies – it is about capitalism itself. It is time that capitalism and exploitation was replaced with a new system – socialism, a society based on full democracy, human equality, and environmental sustainability, in which the resources and economic wealth are owned and controlled by the working people, not by corporate bosses. “

            Voting Communist, the statement says, sends “a strong and clear message that another Canada – and a better world – is necessary, urgent and worth fighting for.”

            From that discussion, the CC meeting moved into an extensive review of a draft election platform, covering a wide range of policy proposals to create jobs, expand democracy and social equality rights, protect the environment, and move towards an independent foreign policy of peace and disarmament. The election statement and platform will be on the agenda for a full in-person CC meeting later this spring, or by another conference call in the event of a snap election.

            In the meantime, organizational work has begun to nominate 20-25 Communist candidates in key ridings across the country. The Party’s new Central Organizer, Johan Boyden, presented an overview of these preparations, including recent efforts to identify candidates and ridings, and to begin collection of signatures for nominations. Among other rules, Elections Canada requires at least 100 valid nomination signatures in each riding, plus a $1000 refundable deposit. These requirements pose a significant challenge for a small political party, but the CPC has been up to the task every time that Parliament adds new hurdles and barriers to the participation of smaller parties.

            For more information on the Communist campaign, including how you can help to nominate CPC candidates, please contact the party’s central office at 416-469-2446, or email <info@cpc-pcc-ca>.

(The above article is from the February 15-28, 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.)