10) MANITOBA COMMUNISTS CAMPAIGN FOR PEOPLE'S AGENDA
By Darrell Rankin, leader of the Communist Party of Canada ‑ Manitoba)
The Communist Party is pushing for a People's Agenda in Manitoba's October 4 election, a platform that represents real change from the record of past provincial governments, including the NDP.
The Communist Party is warning that the election of a Conservative majority would mean even more reactionary measures for working people and the needy, such as ignoring Aboriginal views on development and privatizing Manitoba Hydro and auto insurance.
The NDP government has turned off supporters by cutting public service wages and corporate taxes, by ending a tuition freeze, by supporting the war in Afghanistan ‑ most importantly ‑ by failing to halt growing poverty and the decline in better‑paying jobs.
If the NDP vote drops because of this anti‑working class record, the Conservatives will form the next government. Comments at Winnipeg Labour Council meetings show there is a large lack of enthusiasm for the NDP campaign.
Real change is needed now to fix huge, festering social problems such as housing and growing poverty. Winnipeg's food banks now feed 29,500 children a month (up from 5,500 in 1997), so the Communist Party is calling for universal, free hot breakfasts and lunches in all Manitoba schools.
We are urging a massive program to build quality, public housing that would create good‑paying jobs, 4,000 homes per year, and erase the failures of the private housing market.
The Communist Party's People's Agenda is a broad platform that deals with the real issues, such as jobs, education, creating a just society and saving the environment. The platform calls for raising social assistance rates above the poverty line, and the creation of thousands more good‑paying jobs with a 32 hour work week with no loss in pay.
Manitoba has not yet recovered from the loss of 12,000 manufacturing jobs in 2008, a rate higher than in Ontario. As a result youth unemployment is a real crisis. For many years, Manitoba has had the highest drop‑out rates in Canada, showing education must be a higher priority.
The Communist Party's stance on Aboriginal peoples is a prominent part of our campaign, and most candidates are Aboriginal. Injustice towards Aboriginal peoples is a key reason why Manitoba is a low‑wage province. Racism, sexism and other discriminations are all dangerous, divisive weapons of capitalism against workers.
Most importantly, the Communist Party's political message in the campaign connects the need for socialism with capitalism's global crisis. The capitalist class that built the railways and colonized Western Canada has no thought today other than to bail out the billionaires and spend billions more on the military.
The People's Agenda is a beginning sketch of a future socialist society. It is the best beginning.
(The above article is from the September 16-31, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist 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.)