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Northern Lights is a monthly ezine, as well as a column that appears in Socialist Action newspaper, from Socialist Action/Ligue pour L'Action socialiste. For an archive of Northern Lights postings, and other articles and statements, check out our News & Views page.
Liberals' parting gesture: tax cuts to the rich
Prior to their defeat in the House of Commons on November 28,
the Liberal minority government provided a sneak preview of its
election campaign.
The centre piece is tax cuts. Media editorialists aptly
called it `stealing the Tories' thunder'. It made Bay Street very
happy. But for Main Street another story was required, and so it was
happily spun.
Just as the three federal opposition parties were combining
forces to impel a mid-winter vote, the Liberals issued billions of
dollars in promises to aboriginal people, students, job training,
immigration settlement, the military, and foreign trade promotion.
This supposed display of largesse (cynically involving some recycled
promises) is in aid of a rather obvious effort to divert attention
from the infamous `sponsorship scandal', and more importantly, to
obscure 12 years of government social cuts and austerity enforced by
then-Finance Minister, now Prime Minister Paul Martin.
Back to the tax cuts: the impact on individuals will be negligible,
ranging from about $120 for a very low income taxpayer, to
about $360 for a high-income taxpayer. Pooled together, the tax cut
amounts to $30 billion -- which would be better spent, for example, on
hospital diagnostic equipment, upgrading universities and early
childhood education, properly funding public transit or building more
social housing. Had the government chosen to tax the rich and giant
corporations (can you imagine?), even more social good would be
possible -- including free dental care for children, free university
tuition, a national drug plan, extensive leave programmes for new
parents and comprehensive home-care services, such as already exist in
Scandinavian countries.
The federal Liberals, however, are headed in the exact opposite
direction. Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's November 23 economic
statement restored the $2.6 billion in corporate tax cuts removed by
the NDP amendments to the June 2005 Liberal budget.
Goodale also announced tax cuts on dividends in 2006. A bigger tax
credit would leave about 18 per cent more after-tax income in the
hands of shareholders in the highest tax bracket, and to those
folks who hold their investments outside of a retirement savings or
pension plan. Bay Street showed its appreciation. The share prices
of major financial stocks jumped 2.5 per cent following Goodale's
gift.
So, during this extraordinary eight week long election campaign, Paul
Martin will trumpet his tax cuts and his claims of Canada's
`prosperity', hoping voters will not be mindful of growing
poverty, inequality, racism, job insecurity, environmental ills and
precarious public services. Martin's Liberals will also posture
duplicitously as humanitarians on the world scene, while actually
beefing up Canada's role as an imperialist power. Ottawa is engaged
in military occupation in Afghanistan, brutal policing and preparing
sham elections in Haiti, patrolling the Persian Gulf with war ships,
training colonial troops in Jordan, integrating into security plans
for U.S.-run fortress North America, and supplying munitions to its
imperialist and neo-colonial allies.
Sadly, the Liberals may get away with duplicity - for want of
a principled, tough working class alternative. The Conservatives are
more openly reactionary than the Liberals, and the labour-based New
Democratic Party, led by Jack Layton, continues to ride the one-trick
pony of `defend medicare', while talking softly on issues of
capitalist economic injustice (the oil price rip-off, for example) and
on foreign policy (acquiescing to the military build up).
According to a November 22-24 EKOS opinion poll, the Liberals
have the support of 38.7 per cent of voters, the Conservatives 29.4
per cent, and the NDP is down 4 points to 16.9 per cent. The only
faintly positive spot in the current political outlook is the
continuing strength of the bourgeois nationalist Bloc Quebecois. Its
support is well over 55% in Quebec and thus it is poised to sweep
there, which will likely deny the Liberals a federal majority, while
preserving for the NDP some leverage in the next Parliament.
In the 308-seat House of Commons, the Liberals now hold 133
seats, the Tories have 98, the Bloc 53, the NDP 18. There are four
independents and two vacant seats.
Children of Immigrants, Minorities are Mired in Poverty
Almost one in two recent immigrant children, 40 per cent of
urban aboriginals and 33 per cent of children of colour live in
poverty, compared to the cross-Canada rate of 18 per cent, says the
annual Report Card on Child Poverty in Canada by the coalition
Campaign 2000.
"Here in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with
the lowest (official) unemployment rate in 30 years, it seems an irony
that so many children still live in poverty," said Laurel Rothman,
national coordinator of Campaign 2000 ? an organization formed a
decade earlier when Parliament set the goal of abolishing child
poverty by the year 2000.
"All of these groups are growing - the aboriginal population
is growing, and our national immigration policy is to increase the
number of immigrants ? but at the most basic levels of food and
housing and income, these groups are being marginalized."
The report calls for increasing the amount of social
assistance, raising Ontario's minimum wage to $10 an hour, and
boosting the maximum federal child tax benefit to $4,900 a year from
its current $3, 240 per child.
1.2 million Canadian children live in poverty, almost one in
six children. Of 26 developed countries, Canada ranks 19th for the
percentage of children who live below the poverty line. Canada comes
ahead of the United States, but behind most of Europe, Japan and
Australia. Denmark ranks best.
41 per cent of poor children use food banks. 48 per cent of
all poor children live in families where parents are employed
year-round, but their salaries are low.
In a separate report by the Ontario Association of Food Banks,
the number of users has risen by 21.5 per cent overall since 2001. In
Ontario alone, 338,563 people visited a food bank in March 2005; about
170,000 of them were from the Greater Toronto Area - a jump of 11.7
per cent from the previous year - and 14.5 per cent of those who
visited food banks were employed.
Liberals Cut Food Supplement for Poor
The Ontario Liberal Government of Dalton McGuinty has gutted
the Special Diet Policy under which the Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty (OCAP) was able to get millions of dollars of extra benefits
into the hands of poor people. At the beginning of 2005, while
engaged in a campaign to raise welfare rates by the 40% that has been
lost in real value since 1995, OCAP decided to take an initiative to
win maximum access to the food supplement. This provided up to $250 a
month for people on assistance if recommended by a medical provider.
"Dozens of clinics were organized and an information campaign
in poor communities boosted awareness of the supplement," reports OCAP
organizer John Clarke.
"As a result, a $40 million increase in government spending on
this item took place in 2005. In a bid to restore hunger and ensure
that welfare rates are low enough to drive people into the most
exploitive jobs on offer, the Liberals have now massively eroded the
Supplement. Where a provider concluded that someone needed a food
allowance to protect their health and prevent nutritional deficiency,
now it is necessary to diagnose one of a series of specific medical
conditions. Most of these illnesses are awarded monthly amounts that
are terribly low. Heart disease, liver failure and bone degeneration
are each worth only $10 a month!
"The Liberals have moved to destroy the Supplement as a tool
for fighting hunger and protecting the health of poor people.
Thousands are affected and poor communities are outraged. OCAP will
now mount a determined campaign to win back the benefit and win a 40%
rise in the rates. McGuinty will face a mobilization of poor people
and their allies that will constitute an unprecedented challenge to
his regime."
On November 26, over 600 people responded to OCAP's call with
an angry rally at Toronto City Hall Square, followed by a march to
Liberal Minister of Community and Social Services Sandra Pupatello's
luxury condominium at Sutton Place, a stone's throw from the Ontario
Legislature.
Embarrassed BC pols put pay raise on hold
Only days after the government of British Columbia threatened
leaders of the BC teachers union with fines and jail time for leading
a strike demanding modest wage increases, the same government
introduced legislation granting the elected members of the provincial
legislature a 15% pay rise over the next three years. The legislation
was drafted in close collaboration with the opposition New Democratic
Party and was announced on November 16.
To borrow a crude phrase, it seems that the shit rapidly hit
the fan. Soon the NDP announced it had withdrawn its support for the
raise.
The pay rise cause is not helped by the government's acknowledgement
that following its decision in 2002 to abolish the office of the BC
Children's Commissioner, at an annual saving of $4 million,
investigations into the deaths of 718 children going back to
1997 were shelved. Following the abolition of the Children's
Commissioner office, the government promised that the investigatory
role would be assumed by the BC Coroner's Office. That never happened.
The office of the Children's Commissioner was established in 1997 by
the NDP government of Premier Glen Clark. Its mandate was to
investigate every child death and any other condition pertaining to
the care and welfare of children.
Michael Ignatieff confronted by Haiti activists
On the eve of declaring that he will run as a Liberal candidate in
the upcoming federal election (in Toronto's Etobicoke Lakeshore),
Michael Ignatieff, 58 year old academician, author and linguist, met
his match in Vancouver on November 24. The esteemed professor
of "human rights", touted as a future Liberal Party leader,
brought his message of compassionate imperialism to an audience of
200. Ignatieff is one of the intellectual architects of the policy of
"Responsibility to Protect" that the Canadian government promotes at
the United Nations and implements in the streets of Port au Prince
(Haiti) and Kandahar (Afghanistan).
Roger Annis reports: "In his lecture, Ignatieff outlined his
views on the history of Canada and the direction it is taking in the
21st century. He presented a view of a country whose history since
World War 2 is fundamentally driven by policies of compassion and of
inclusion, first of its founding peoples, then of the many peoples who
have immigrated here.
"Members of Haiti Solidarity BC were on hand to challenge his
interpretation of Canadian history, his support to the Iraq war and to
the coup in Haiti, and the "R2P" doctrine. Our comments were
hard-hitting and drew nods of approval from many in the audience.
"Many of those attending desperately wanted to believe Ignatieff's
message that Canada could become a junior empire-builder
while still keeping its mythical attachment to "human rights" and
"peacekeeping". But the more the discussion period wore on, the more
he revealed his reactionary and neo-colonial ideology. He repeated all
the lies used by the Bush/Blair coalition to justify the Iraq war ?
the alleged presence of the "capacity to make and use weapons of mass
destruction", repression of the Kurdish people by the Saddam Hussein
government, etc. He spent a month in Kurdistan in 1992, he told us,
and all the friends he made there are pleased as punch with the
occupation. It would be a terrible thing if the U.S. were to withdraw
from Iraq because it would result in civil war and the coming to power
of a government of terrorists.
"In reply to one of our comments, he said the situation in
Haiti was "disastrous", but did not state why or who caused this. On
several occasions, he explained his fierce opposition to Quebec
nationalism and its right to self-determination. He called Quebec
nationalism a "moral tyranny".
"Through all this, the hopes of many in the audience (for) a
new, shining knight of liberalism were dashed. In keeping with the
sinking mood of the audience, Ignatieff abruptly ended the discussion
period, 90 minutes after he began the lecture. At the end of the
meeting, we handed out information, including the "Questions About
Haiti" background flyer, and an announcement of our public meeting
with Jean Saint-Vil and Anthony Fenton. Most audience members took the
information, and several warmly thanked us for our participation."
OFL targets P3s, Calls for 'Day of Action', Backs Venezuela
A priority for the Ontario Federation of Labour and its
700,000 affiliated union members for the next two years is opposition
to government sponsored "public-private-partnerships". P3s are a
back-door means by which governments privatize public hospitals,
electricity, water, child care and municipal services.
Over 900 delegates attended the 8th Biennial Convention of the
OFL, held November 21-25 in Toronto, and approved an `action plan'
that consists mostly of lobbying politicians and holding internal
conferences on issues such as pensions, equality in the work place,
health care and apprenticeship programmes.
Under delegates' pressure from the floor, the OFL Executive
incorporated into its `action plan' a commitment to "organize a
one-day province-wide community/work place Day of Action on a weekday
date in 2006" to protest the erosion of social programmes and the
privatization of public services.
Will the OFL do it? Skepticism reigns as the OFL has not
mounted a province-wide action of any kind since 1998.
But grassroots desire for change and for action was reflected
in two evening public forums organized by the Workers' Solidarity and
Union Democracy Coalition at the site of the OFL gathering. The first
panel discussion was titled "Stop Concessions, Restore Union
Democracy", and the second "Resisting War, Occupation and
Imperialism". Over two dozen delegates and observers attended these
events and signed up to join Workers' Solidarity, which plans to hold
a conference in 2006.
On the second day of convention, delegates unanimously
approved the following resolution, submitted by CUPE Local 225:
WHEREAS an insufficient income and an insufficient budget for food
will lead to malnutrition and long-term debilitating health effects;
WHEREAS social assistance recipients in Ontario have only received
a 3% increase since 1995, or $535 for a single person on GWA/OW; and
WHEREAS anti-poverty groups across the province have fought back by
organizing recipients to apply for the $250 special diet supplement,
holding clinics which have enabled thousands to access this
entitlement;
BE IT RESOLVED that the OFL demand that the McGuinty government:
1. Rescind directives denying people who have already received the
special diet supplement to continue receiving it;
2. Rescind directives making the special diet supplement less accessible to applicants; and
3. Extend a $250 increase to all social assistance recipients
immediately.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED
4. That the OFL encourages affiliates to support local groups
involved in the special diet campaign.
Solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela got a
boost later in the week when delegates approved a resolution submitted
by the Hamilton and District Labour Council "that the (OFL) officially
endorse and support the "Hands off Venezuela" campaign and make a
financial contribution."
During the week-long OFL gathering, supporters of Socialist
Action sold over 80 copies of the monthly newspaper, along with a
number of radical books and pamphlets.
