DM

Block the CETA deal!

 Posted on September 24, 2014
Sep 242014
 

Every government and advocates of “Free Trade Agreements” have dangled the illusion of jobs and prosperity. These have never materialized. Indeed the opposite is true. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished through NAFTA, and experts predict at least another 50,000 jobs will be lost through CETA, the latest and most dangerous of these agreements.

Shrouded in secrecy, the Harper Conservative government, the European Union, and major trans‑national corporations recently concluded the final round of negotiations for the largest free‑trade agreement in Canada’s history since NAFTA. Although there have been setbacks in the German Parliament over the dispute mechanism, the Harper government are still pushing for a signing, at least in principle, in September 2014. CETA would take effect after it has been ratified by the EU member states, and also by the federal and provincial governments of Canada. This makes the fightback agenda very urgent; just as the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investments) was defeated, blocking CETA is still possible, through a strategy of mass mobilizations and by making this sellout a key issue in next year’s federal election. Continue reading »

Canada out of Iraq: No new imperialist intervention

 Posted on September 24, 2014
Sep 242014
 

The Communist Party of Canada opposes the renewal of imperialism’s war in Iraq, under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State (IS), and calls for Canada’s immediate and complete withdrawal from the US‑led military intervention.

The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect is being fed to the people of Canada in order to justify a new war in Iraq. In this narrative, intervention is promoted as necessary to save the people of Iraq and Syria from IS terrorism.

But this argument obscures the fact that the main and most immediate threat to peace and to the people of the Middle East is from imperialism. It was the United States, together with its allies in NATO and Israel, who spearheaded the invasion of Iraq in 1990, and who carried out the murderous sanctions through the decade of the 1990s, and who again invaded and occupied the country from 2003 on. It is the imperialist states who have waged a terrorist war against the people of Syria, in which 100,000 people have died and millions displaced. It is imperialism that has supported Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the apartheid policies against the Palestinian people, and Israel’s repeated military strikes against Gaza. Continue reading »

Salute to B.C. teachers – the fight continues

 Posted on September 19, 2014
Sep 192014
 

The teachers of British Columbia deserve a huge vote of appreciation for standing on the picket lines to defend public education and collective bargaining rights. The Communist Party of BC salutes their determination to resist the attacks and provocations of the Liberal government, and to win the support of parents, students, and all who value public education. This courageous struggle goes all the way back to the first Liberal term in office, and the budget slashing and union‑bashing launched by Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark. We pledge to continue our solidarity with teachers and all education workers in this fight, which has now entered a new stage following the ratification of a new six‑year collective agreement. The teachers will go back to classrooms with justifiable pride that unlike the government, they made the interests of students their priority in this dispute.

After months of government threats and bullying, the final negotiated settlement was reached thanks to the solidarity of community groups, parents and students, and by the financial and moral support and of trade unions across the country and even internationally. Having made huge sacrifices, many teachers were understandably reluctant to accept a deal which leaves them with just 7.25% pay increases over a period of eight years, and with only minor gains on the crucial issues of class size and composition. Continue reading »

Labour must lead escalating fightback in solidarity with BC Teachers

 Posted on September 4, 2014
Sep 042014
 

British Columbians are dismayed and increasingly angry that public schools across the province are closed as the 2014-15 academic year begins, with no end in sight to the labour dispute imposed on students and teachers by Christy Clark’s Liberal government. The Communist Party of BC stands in solidarity with the BC Teachers’ Federation in their courageous struggle for a fair collective agreement, the right to negotiate class size and composition, and a funding formula which reverses many years of cutbacks, layoffs and school closures across the province.

Over the summer, many remained hopeful that the government would eventually back down from its refusal to engage in real collective bargaining, and find a way to reach an agreement with the BC Teachers Federation by Labour Day. Now, it is clear to both critics and supporters that the Premier’s long-range goal is to use this dispute in order to gut the public education system across the province
and to smash the BCTF. Continue reading »

Communist Party launches outreach and recruitment campaign

 Posted on September 1, 2014
Sep 012014
 

Right across Canada, people are challenging the abuses of capitalism and asking serious questions about how to move forward to a better world.  Recent years have seen huge popular struggles:  protests against corporate trade sellouts, the Idle No More movement for indigenous sovereignty, the Quebec student strike, mobilizations against fracking and tar sands exports, labour resistance against attacks by bosses and governments, struggles for gender equality and against racism and homophobia, opposition to Canada’s role in imperialist war-making, and much more.

This Labour Day the Communist Party, which has a proud record in many historic struggles against exploitation and oppression, is launching a campaign to reach out to all those who want to build a stronger fightback.  We urge you to join the party that fights for the working class and all those who want to unite in action for a socialist future!

Please visit our recruitment campaign site here.

 

Labour Day 2014: A new mood to resist!

 Posted on August 31, 2014
Aug 312014
 

There is a new mood in the Canadian labour movement – the mood to resist. This was the propellant at the May CLC Convention, where incumbent president Ken Georgetti was narrowly defeated, and a groundswell replaced the inertia of rest with the demand for action. The winner, Hassan Yussuff, was successful after adopting the action program of Hassan Husseini and the “Take Back the CLC” movement which captured the discontent that has been maturing for years. The defeat of Georgetti, moving Hassan Yussuff to the helm, the re-election of Barb Byers and Marie Clark Walker, and adding prominent CUPW activist Donald Lafleur, was the delegate mandate for militant action.

In Ontario, following the dormancy of the Samuelson years, the OFL under the leadership of Sid Ryan displayed concretely what can be accomplished if labour takes the bull by the horns and implements independent political action. There is no doubt that the decisive defeat of the Hudak Tories in the Ontario election was due in large part to the campaigning and mobilization of the labour movement. This was not just a defeat for a political candidate, but for the reactionary agenda of the “Right‑to‑work” pro-corporate movement. The blow struck by Ontario labour will weaken the whole anti‑labour agenda. Nevertheless labour is under siege across the country. From the BC teachers to Québec municipal workers to the Nova Scotia nurses, the pattern is the same. The corporate sponsored attack on social programs, pensions, education and Medicare is an assault on those who provide and defend those programs. Labour must not rest to relish success. The Ontario fightback should be a game plan for a major defeat of the federal Tories in 2015. Continue reading »

TFWP “reforms” leave cheap labour strategy intact

 Posted on July 15, 2014
Jul 152014
 

After a series of revelations about abuses of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the Harper Conservatives have announced so-called “sweeping changes”. Their political aim is to prevent this scandal from becoming a major issue in the 2015 federal election, without reversing the cheap labour strategy demanded by big capital.

Canada needs policies to put people’s needs ahead of corporate greed. Instead, the Harper government uses temporary foreign workers as part of the drive against job and income security for working people. This includes the expanding use of casualized, temporary, non-union workers, paid minimum wages and without benefits. The drive to reduce labour costs and attain a flexible work force is creating a brutal system of modern capitalist slavery, a system which generates, and feeds off, a huge pool of working poor. Continue reading »

Stop Israel’s massacre of the Palestinian people!

 Posted on July 15, 2014
Jul 152014
 

Communist Party calls for immediate end to airstrikes, for Baird to resign

The Communist Party of Canada condemns the murderous bombardment of Palestine by the Israeli Air Force, and calls for this aggression to end immediately. Israel’s attacks have already killed hundreds of people and left several thousand wounded and displaced. The Communist Party reiterates its support for the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation in their territories, and for their legitimate struggle for an independent Palestinian state.

Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, has once again taken a shameful position in this crisis, stating support for Israel’s attacks and criticizing the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights after she called for an immediate ceasefire and raised questions about the legality of Israel’s airstrikes. These comments are part of the effort by Baird and the Harper government to reduce Canada’s foreign policy to uncritical support for Israel, cloaking its aggressiveness in the language of “self-defense” and “anti-terrorism.” Continue reading »

Communist Party condemns Harper’s new prostitution law

 Posted on July 2, 2014
Jul 022014
 

In response to the Supreme Court’s December 2013 ruling in the Bedford case, which struck down several key Criminal Code provisions regarding prostitution, the Harper Conservatives have introduced Bill C‑36, the “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act “.

The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Canada condemns Bill C‑36, which gives police forces sweeping new powers, and creates Criminal Code provisions to make it more difficult and dangerous for those who sell sexual services to carry out their activities. While the government claims it wants to assist women to leave prostitution, the legislation allocates a pittance of $20 million over five years for this purpose, at a time when governments are slashing spending and support for social programs. The Communist Party restates our longstanding demands for fundamental social reforms which would offer the best possible options to help those who wish to leave the sex trade, especially massive job creation programs, higher wages, free post‑secondary education, affordable housing, free universal child care, and mental health supports, drug treatment and harm reduction programs for those facing addictions. The federal government should be taking decisive action to combat poverty, discrimination, racism and other factors which push people into the sex trade; instead, the Harper Tories are cynically using this important issue as a wedge tactic to seek votes in the next federal election. We therefore demand that this legislation be withdrawn immediately.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

 

Communist Party welcomes Tsilhqot’in land title victory

 Posted on June 27, 2014
Jun 272014
 

The Communist Party of Canada welcomes yesterday’s historic Supreme Court of Canada ruling, which upheld the Tsilhqot’in people’s title over their traditional territories.

This 25-year legal case arose from an attempt to conduct commercial logging on Tsilhqot’in lands without consent from the First Nation, which is among many in British Columbia which never ceded ownership of their territories since the arrival of the European colonisers. In fact, the Tsilhqot’in courageously maintained their rights since the beginnings of the occupation, despite the murder of six of their chiefs by the British colonizers in 1864. We salute the Tsilhqot’in for their generations of struggle and resistance, in the face of enormous obstacles.

As the Supreme Court recognized, the principles in this case have very wide implications for the recognition and affirmation of Aboriginal rights across Canada. Continue reading »

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