CANDIDATES| PLATFORM | EVENTS | CONTACT
On Tuesday, September 10 Vote Communist!
Manitoba can’t afford Tory austerity. The Pallister government has spent the last 3 years slashing social programs and public services under cover of reducing deficits. But the cuts to hospitals and healthcare – including the decision to nix close to $1 billion in healthcare infrastructure – show that the Tories’ real goal was privatization – not deficit reduction. And now the people of Manitoba are suffering the consequences of reduced access to hospitals and healthcare that will cost lives.
Working people will die from these cuts, while the rich will buy front-of-the-line access to healthcare in the US.
What the Tories have done to healthcare, they intend to do to public auto insurance. Secret government documents show the Pallister government is planning to privatize Autopac and invite the biggest insurance companies in Canada to chow down on auto insurance rates that will double in no time. That’s the reality in provinces without public auto insurance.
What do the Tories have in mind for education in Manitoba? Pallister’s Ontario buddy, Premier Doug Ford, has launched a vicious attack on both public and post-secondary education, resulting in massive cuts, closures, and layoffs, bigger classes, and the scrapping of the only French-language University in Canada outside Quebec.
Pallister has also lined up with Ford and Tory Premiers across the country to downplay the climate crisis and the urgent need to sharply reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel use across the country. This is inexcusable and will lead to irreversible climate change. Manitoba can’t afford another 4 years of Pallister and the Tories.
Pallister has legislated wage cuts for Manitoba workers, and kept the minimum wage at $11.35 (and lower) while governments in BC, Alberta and Ontario agreed to $15 minimums before newly-elected Tory governments reversed the hikes.
Austerity has resulted in widespread social misery, unemployment, precarious work, and deep cuts to real wages and living standards, while cutting off access to education, apprenticeships, and good jobs for youth. Women, Indigenous People, racialized people and immigrants have all been victimized by this government’s vicious policies. Meanwhile the corporations and the wealthy have done very well indeed with increased corporate profits and personal wealth.
Today more than ever it’s time for fundamental change that will put people’s needs before corporate greed. Fundamental change that will curb corporate power, strengthen democracy and the power of the labour and people’s movements, and open the door to socialism.
The Communist Party and its candidates are committed to fight for A People’s Agenda for Manitoba, and to win wide support for the policies below. The best outcome in this election is a new government with new policies committed to meeting the needs of Manitobans. The election of Communists to the Legislature will help strengthen that fight.
Working people can count on the Communist Party to continue to fight for working people, inside and outside the Legislature, now and after the election. On this centenary of the Winnipeg General Strike, working people must unite and move onto the offensive to secure their rights and standards. Another world is possible, urgent, and worth fighting for!
OUR CANDIDATES
OUR PLATFORM
Create Jobs and Raise Wages and Living Standards
- Raise the minimum wage to $20
- Legislate a 32 hour work week with 40 hours pay
- Ban overtime and end part-time, contract, and precarious work with full employment policies
- Introduce a guaranteed livable annual income
- Fight to raise (CPP/OAS) pensions, and full pensions at age 60
- Green retrofit of schools, hospitals and public buildings and infrastructure
- Expand public services and reverse privatization
- Expand value added manufacturing and secondary industry
- Build agricultural implement appliance industries
- Enact plant closure legislation with teeth
- Scrap Free Trade deals that close plants and bankrupt farmers
- Strengthen labour legislation on health and safety: enact ‘kill a worker, go to jail’ laws
- Fight to make EI universally accessible, at 90% of previous earnings, for the full duration of unemployment
- Guarantee the right to strike, organize and picket
Protect the Family Farm
- Curb the power of agri-business and protect and expand supply management in agriculture
- Cap the costs of farm inputs, including machinery, seed and feed, etc
- Restore the Canadian Wheat Board and single-desk grain sales; restore the Crow rate, reduce rail freight rates, and protect and expand marketing boards
- Raise farm incomes and make bank foreclosures illegal
- Legislate stronger labour and minimum wage laws for farm workers
- Ban GMO and ‘terminator’ seeds; shift to environmentally sustainable methods of food production
- Set price controls on food staples for Northern and Indigenous communities
- Increase food safety inspections and ensure Canada’s food sovereignty
Climate Justice
- Sharply reduce fossil fuel use and carbon emissions now, and eliminate altogether by 2050
- Legislate to compel corporate compliance, including jail terms and public take-over
- Develop renewable energy sources: solar, wind, thermal, hydro-electric, etc, in a publicly owned and democratically controlled energy sector, and an east-west power grid
- Fight to close tarsands and guarantee workers’ jobs in renewable energy & value added manufacturing
- Cancel all pipeline projects based on expansion of tarsands extraction, and end fracking
Make Housing a Right, Not a Privilege
- Build 25,000 units of affordable social housing for rent and for sale
- Roll back rents and legislate real rent control
- Create and expand municipal land banks
- Require landlords to provide heat and air conditioning
- Recognize the rights of tenants to organize
- No eviction or utility cut-off due to strikes or layoffs
No Privatization: Expand Public Services and Social Programs
- Reverse Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) that are a windfall for banks and developers; a disaster for the public
- Restore provincial funding and transfers for public services and social programs cut by previous governments; reverse provincial download of services and funding
- Fund services for youth, including amateur sports, recreation and culture
- Expand municipal transit systems, and make public transit free and accessible
- Create a Crown corporation to provide accessible, affordable and frequent public transit between rural communities and across the province
- Restore MTS as a Crown corporation under public democratic control, with low-cost service to residential users. Expand fibre optic network across the province, and establish a 5G network for Manitoba
- Keep Manitoba Hydro public, and keep rates low
- Put police under civilian control, including the power to look into police assaults, murders, and other wrong-doing
- Hands Off AUTOPAC – No Privatization!
A New Financial Deal for Cities
- Adequately fund municipalities with statutory transfer payments, or give them wealth-taxing powers to tax corporations and the wealthy
- Return 50% of road-user and gas taxes to municipalities
- Fight to recognize municipalities and school boards in the Constitution
Defend and Expand Medicare
- Enforce the Canada Health Act and stop privatization of healthcare NOW
- Stop hospital closures. Build the regional hospital in Portage La Prairie now
- Restore and expand federal/provincial funding for hospitals and healthcare
- Reverse the privatization of Medivac
- Recognize that the opiate and amphetamine crisis is a health issue: focus on treatment and prevention of deaths
- Fight to expand Medicare to include pharmacare, dental and vision care, long-term care, and mental health care
Enact Universal, Quality, Public Childcare
- Enact a provincial system of universally accessible, free, quality public childcare
- Require ECE certification for all childcare workers and raise childcare workers’ wages now
Make Education Free and Universally Accessible
- Fund public and post-secondary education
- Eliminate tuition fees for students in publicly funded colleges and universities
- Eliminate corporate intrusions into courses and curricula
- Expand liberal arts, labour, Indigenous, and women’s and gender studies
- Ban hate speech & protect free speech on campus
- Ban military recruitment on all campuses
- End public financing of private & religious schools
Recognize the Right to National Self-Determination
- Fight for a new, equal and voluntary partnership in a new Constitution, based on the right of Quebec, Indigenous Nations, Acadians and English-speaking Canada to self-determination, up to and including the right to secession
- Early and just settlement of Indigenous land claims
- Immediate action to implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
- Stop the seizure of Indigenous children into ‘care’ and enable Indigenous Nations to independently administer Indigenous child and family services.
- Immediate action and funding to improve living conditions, infrastructure, housing, education, healthcare, social services, and other urgent needs, including protection of language and culture of Indigenous Peoples on and off reserve
- Guarantee the rights of Franco-Manitobans and Indigenous Peoples to public and post-secondary education and to government services in French and Indigenous languages, wherever numbers warrant
- Stop the construction or use of pipelines through Manitoba carrying bitumen or other substances dangerous to the environment and to Indigenous Peoples
Women’s Rights and Gender Equality
- Enact equal pay for work of equal value across the public and private sector
- Legislate reproductive choice, and universal access to abortion across the province in free-standing clinics
- Build a provincial system of universally accessible, affordable, quality public childcare
- Stop the attacks on the equality rights of 2SLGBTQis and Trans persons
- Fight racism and discrimination
Tax the Corporations, and the Rich
- Restore a progressive tax system based on ability to pay
- Double the corporate tax rate and raise taxes on the wealthy
- Collect unpaid and deferred corporate taxes and close tax loopholes
- Eliminate taxes on incomes under $40,000
- Introduce a wealth and inheritance tax on estates over $1 million
- Restore the capital tax and increase the capital gains tax to 100% of the gain
- Enact capital controls to prevent capital flight
- Axe the provincial sales tax and the HST
- Take education off the property tax and cut property taxes by 50%
Make Every Vote Count
- Enact mixed member proportional representation to make every vote count
Fight for Justice and Solidarity
- Implement BDS demands in all Manitoban public institutions
- Stop the import of Israeli products into Manitoba
- Stop the export of Manitoba products to Israel
OUR EVENTS
Sunday, August 11th
Marx in the Parks Picnic
You can’t have a revolution without songs.
An afternoon of sun, music, refreshments and socialist politics including some words from representatives of the CP.
MUSIC by
FOWLER: Blending Erika Fowler‘s gorgeous vocals, acoustic guitar and indie-folk melodies with elements of synth pop and indie rock
ANDES DEL SUR: Grupo Andes del Sur are enaged, active musicians firmly in the Nueva canción canon.
1:30PM at Joe Zuken Heritage Park [140 Meade Street North]
Two blocks east of Main on the corner of Sutherland Avenue and Maple Street North
[FACEBOOK EVENT]
Wednesday, July 31st
Political Mixer
Join the Penner-Bethune Club of the Communist Party of Canada for an informal evening of politics and talk. Come meet some of our candidates for the upcoming provincial election, discuss the current political climate in Manitoba and Canada, and talk about a socialist future!
This will be an informal gathering: a chance to meet old and new comrades and friends. Refreshments provided.
7PM @ Workers Organizing Resource Centre [432B Ellice Avenue], Winnipeg, Manitoba
[Facebook Event]
