August 9th, 2015
The Communist Party of Canada’s election platform includes: full employment and higher wages; tax the “one percent”, not the needy; expand social programs; a massive housing program; protect labour rights; nationalize energy, natural resources, and the banks; withdraw from NATO; cut carbon emissions; scrap “security state” laws; justice for Aboriginal peoples; full gender equality.
Read our full election platform here.
Winning this progressive alternative starts with dumping the Conservatives. Stephen Harper’s pro-war, pro-corporate austerity agenda has been a disaster for Canada’s sovereignty, and especially for workers, Aboriginal peoples, women, youth and students, pensioners, new immigrants and temporary migrant workers, and for racialized communities.
The Tories have chopped and privatized vital social programs and services, slashed real wages, and gutted labour’s right to free collective bargaining. Their drive to export raw materials – while highly profitable for the oil and resource giants – is destroying our environment and trampling on Aboriginal sovereignty. They have attacked civil rights, democracy and equality. And they have driven Canada’s foreign policy to militarism, aggression and war.
At the same time, the annual profits of the big banks and largest corporations have ballooned up to $250 billion. This is a direct result of a vicious corporate offensive, designed to drive down wages and living standards and transfer social and natural wealth to the super-rich.
Working people want real change. The Liberals say they offer ‘change’, but on key issues like economic policy, militarism, health care and social programs, they support the same pro-war, big business agenda. Voting Liberal would be like hopping from the fire back into the frying pan.
Mulcair’s NDP has abandoned many policies supported by the labour and people’s movements. Instead, the NDP presents itself as better administrators of capitalism ‘with a human face’, including continued participation in NATO aggression, support for corporate “free trade” deals like NAFTA and CETA, and acceptance of the primacy of ‘market forces’ – the continued domination of the large national and transnational corporations.
While the Greens have raised some useful ideas around the environment and democracy, they too refuse to discuss any serious alternative to global capitalism. For voters in Quebec, the Bloc Québécois is not a better alternative. Because it can not and does not seek to take power at the federal level, it has been historically an objective ally of the Conservatives. The Bloc’s real program is that of the Parti Québécois and, in reality, it is the PQ’s federal wing. Working people have suffered from PQ policies including strong support of free trade agreements, exploitation of oil and shale gas, as well as neoliberal austerity programmes.
This election takes place in a period of deepening recession, wars, climate change, rising fascist threats, mass unemployment, attacks on civil and democratic rights, and austerity. It’s time for real, fundamental change, time to elect Communists!
We need truly left and progressive voices in Parliament to defend the interests of working people, the cause of peace and social justice, and the protection of our environment.
As a wealthy country, Canada can support such an ambitious alternative, by nationalizing energy, natural resources, and the banks and insurance companies, by cutting military spending, and with progressive taxation to make the corporations and the wealthy pay.
The Communist Party fights for such a genuinely new course, and we invite you to consider our Peoples’ Alternative Platform.
This election alone cannot solve the huge challenges facing our country. A longer-term fight is required, especially mass social mobilizations which can begin to build a powerful and broad People’s Coalition of the working class and its allies outside of Parliament. Such a Coalition could have a huge electoral impact and begin to achieve real gains. This is the way to shift power to working people, and start moving Canada in a new direction!
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For Socialism
Everywhere, the income/wealth gap between the vast majority of working people and a handful of the super-rich continues to widen. Today, the top 1% own and control 50% of the entire wealth of our planet, while billions go hungry. Racism and intolerance are spreading, and the threat of fascism is rearing its ugly head.
This global crisis is not only 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.
Such a change is possible.
Voting Communist sends a clear message that another Canada – and a better world – is necessary, urgent and worth fighting for. The aim of the Communist Party is a socialist Canada. We welcome everyone who shares our vision. Vote Communist, and join us in the struggle for a better future!