by Tom Price
Canada’s voters woke up Jan. 24 with a new, Conservative Party government and many wondered, "What have we done?"
The day before, Canadian voters went to the polls and elected a minority government headed by the Conservative Party—with only 36.3 percent of the popular vote. As leader of the Conservatives, Stephen Harper became Prime Minister (PM) when his party won the most seats.
The former government, headed by the Liberal Party, won only 30 percent of the popular vote and 103 seats. It suffered from several scandals and the lack-luster leadership of Paul Martin, whose family owns Canada Steamship Lines. The new Democratic Party scored 17.5 percent of the vote while other minority parties split the rest. The NDP also gained 11 more seats in Parliament, and they now have 29.
For two-thirds of the voters who didn’t vote for Harper, his new government represents policies they explicitly reject. Harper has advocated an expansion of the military, growth in size and powers of Canada’s intelligence services, bans on gay marriage and withdrawal from the Kyoto global warming treaty. He has also advocated greater participation in U.S. foreign policy blunders. Canada took over the leadership of allied forces in the south of Afghanistan March 1 under arrangements worked out by the previous government.
ILWU Canada President Tom Dufresne cautioned against panic as Harper only has 124 seats in Canada’s 308-seat Parliament.
"His election will set us back, but the fact that he has a minority in Parliament should keep him in check," Dufresne said. "They have a few things they want to concentrate on, and attacking the Labour Code does not seem to be at the top of their agenda. They mainly want to get reelected."
The labor movement will hold the line on any Conservative Party attempts to "Americanize" health care, Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labor Congress, the nation’s federation of unions, told The Dispatcher. Business in Canada benefits greatly from not having to pay basic health care.
"Why would anybody in their right mind want to give up what has been acknowledged in the auto industry as a $1,500 per car advantage in costs just because of our public Canadian medical system?" Georgetti said. "Why give that productive advantage up for the sake of some experiment that has no basis in fact? That’s the competitive advantage for business. The social argument is that Canadians get medical treatment on the basis of need, not how much they can pay for a hospital room."
The labor movement will also have to fight off Harper’s tax cut proposal. It would reduce the national sales tax slightly while slashing taxes paid mainly by the rich, such as taxes on capital gains and stock dividends. But Canada has been there before.
"Recent corporate tax cuts have in fact only put more money in the cash reserves of these corporations. They’re not investing in machinery and technology that would make us competitive globally," Georgetti said. "We have to stimulate business in the right way, and giving them more money when they don’t use it productively is not good stimulation. We understand what incentives are and how they work. But giving oil companies more tax breaks doesn’t stimulate anything."
The last corporate tax cuts under the Liberal government saved Canadian business about $270 billion.Those same companies have $258 billion in cash or cash reserves on hand, Georgetti said.
"They haven’t invested a nickel of the money they saved in taxes," Georgetti added. "Give them a tax break on machinery and technology that aids productivity, and then they would have to do it because that would be the only place they’d get the tax cuts. Or we tax the profits."
But Harper’s dark conservative clouds contain a silver lining for the labor-backed New Democratic Party. The NDP made big gains, based in part on the Canadian Labour Congress’ "Better Choice" election campaign, an effort to make labor issues popular with Canadian voters and, through that popularity, pressure politicians to address them.
Better Choice distributed more than a million leaflets at work sites and its web site received hundreds of thousands of hits. Workers were asked to consider the candidates based on their positions on six key issues:
• Health Care—who will put you and your family ahead of corporate profits?
• Pensions—who will make sure employers pay you the pension you earned?
• Pay Equity—who will make economic equality for women a priority?
• Decent Wages and Benefits—who will protect Canadian jobs and wages?
• Education and Training—who will expand access to affordable education and training?
• Workers’ Rights—who will stand for rights in the workplace?
The CLC, representing 3 million workers, found success with this strategy. It wasn’t only the NDP and some Liberals who picked up on labor’s message and, looking for an electoral advantage, echoed it.
"We tracked all the federal parties on how much they used our slogans and arguments," Georgetti said. "I met with the PM on March 6 and reminded him how often he used our slogans and arguments. He actually acknowledged it. His polling picked up the same sentiments in the voters."
The Better Choice campaign strategy will have to be mobilized again as Canada’s labor movement makes its plans for a new offensive.
"We’re looking for pension protection legislation, because companies in Canada are able to go bankrupt under something like the U.S. Chapter 11 [where companies can stay in business and dump pensions, health care and even union contracts] and roll back benefits," said Dufresne. "We’re looking at child care, proper funding of Medicare and protection of the Canada Pension Plan, which is analogous to U.S. Social Security."
