[A-List] Fw: 2006 federal election: An Assessment from the Communist Party

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Since Chris didn't post this, I leave it here uncommented. I don't agree 
with the whole thing, but it's decent.


Dear friends,
Below please find a preliminary political assessment of
the January 23rd federal election issued by the Central
Executive Committee of the Communist Party. We trust
you will find this of some interest.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all
of our members, friends and supporters who contributed
in one way or another to our campaign - as candidates,
campaign volunteers, and/or as financial donors. Your
contributions were invaluable in helping to make our
campaign successful in reaching hundreds of thousands
of working people across the country, despite our
limited resources and media exposure.

We look forward to working with all of you in the future
in our common efforts to block the attack from the Right,
to defend or social programs, rights and living conditions,
and move politics back to the left in this country.

Best regards,

Miguel Figueroa,
Central Executive Committee,
Communist Party of Canada

********************
[The Central Executive of the Communist Party
of Canada issued the following preliminary
statement on the outcome of the federal election
on January 24, 2006.]

No majority, but dangers lie ahead

Stephen Harper and his right-wing party managed to
fashion gains at the polls on Jan. 23 mostly at the
expense of the Liberals, winning 124 (of 3080 seats
in Parliament.

Even though the Tories fell far short of the outright
victory they had sought, there should be no
underestimation of the harm that could result under
a Harper minority government. The challenge now
for the labour, peace, equity and social justice
movements will be to strengthen mass
extra-parliamentary resistance to prevent the Tories
from implementing their reactionary agenda, and to
bring down the government at the earliest opportunity.

The Conservatives' tightly-scripted and heavily-financed
  campaign focused almost entirely on whipping up public
anger at the ruling Liberals over the sponsorship scandal,
while presenting themselves as the only alternative for
"change" in government. They cynically misrepresented
their positions on Medicare, education, Canada-US
relations and many other issues to obscure and conceal
their reactionary, pro-war agenda. For the most part,
they managed to gag their more imprudent, red-neck
backbenchers from spewing racist, anti-women, and
Christian fundamentalist diatribes.

The Tories' deceptive strategy was aided and abetted
by the corporate-controlled media, which often
behaved more like cheerleaders than journalists. This
reflected the strong desire of most sections of
monopoly finance capital in Canada to replace with
discredited Liberals with a Conservative majority.

In the final analysis, however, this strategy failed to
deceive most voters, who remained justifiably wary
of Tories' hidden agenda. The Conservatives took
only 36.5% of the popular vote (23.5% of registered
voters), a clear repudiation of Mr. Harper's' claim
on election night that his party had received a clear
mandate from the Canadian people. Even though
the balance of forces on Parliament Hill has tilted
to the right, the election results did not signal any
rightward shift in the thinking of most electors.

The Harper Tories will have to manoeuvre carefully
to avoid a political show-down that could bring
about an early defeat in a non-confidence vote, but
this does not mean they will abandon their
right-wing program. As our Party said during the
campaign: "the election of Stephen Harper and the
Conservatives would be a major setback for the
working class in Canada ... Even a minority Tory
government would move quickly to accelerate the
dismantling and privatization of the health care
system and other social programs and services.
They would speed up economic integration and
structural `harmonization' with the U.S., and tie
Canada even closer to Washington's aggressive
imperialist drive global domination."

It is highly unlikely that Harper will be able to
secure a comprehensive agreement  with any of
the three opposition parties to achieve a stable
governing majority. Instead, the Conservatives
will likely move to implement their program in
a piecemeal fashion, gaining support from
various sections of the 'opposition' for different
planks in their reactionary legislative agenda.
For instance, they may count on some Liberal
Party support for their plans to significantly
increase military spending, and for accelerating
"deep integration" initiatives with U.S.
imperialism. They may cut a deal with the Bloc
Québecois to weaken federal powers by
transferring or "downloading" federal services
and tax points to the provinces, so long as this
satisfies the BQ's objective of gaining more
powers for Quebec.

Harper's pledge to effectively scuttle plans for
a universal, publicly financed childcare program
(replaced by a taxable allowance of $100 per
month), and lingering Tory threats to reopen
Parliamentary debate on reproductive rights,
same-sex marriage and other social and equality
issues are deeply disturbing, especially for
women. There will be even fewer women MPs
in the new House to defend women's rights and
interests, a stinging indictment of the current
electoral system, and another argument in
favour of some form of proportional
representation, under which the participation
and election of women would surely increase.

The Tories can also inflict great damage in such
areas as government infrastructure, judicial and
Senate appointments, and on "state security",
foreign and defence policy issues, which require
neither federal-provincial nor Parliamentary
approval.

Jack Layton and the NDP come out of this election
with some gains in popular vote, and a 29-seat
caucus, a gain of 10 seats. These advances have
raised expectations in the labour and social
movements that the NDP is better situated within
Parliament to fight the expected onslaught from
the Harper Tories. But there is growing concern
about whether the NDP leadership is prepared to
play such a combative role, given its opportunist
shift during the campaign on a number of key
issues: its rather feeble opposition to the
proliferation of private health clinics - the
material basis for the transformation to
two-tiered healthcare; its promise to freeze
rather than increase taxes on corporations and
the wealthy; its support of the chauvinist
Clarity Act, the main aim of which is to deny
Quebec's right to self-determination; and its
pandering to the right  populist campaign to
"get tough" on gun violence and youth crime.

The Greens gained some votes in this election,
but the lack of proportional representation again
kept them out of Parliament.

The Communist Party's own electoral campaign
registered a modest improvement in the average
vote among our 21 candidates, despite the
highly polarized character of the election and
the backward, undemocratic first-past-the-post
electoral system.

The campaign raised the visibility of the Party
through increased coverage in the media, at
all-candidates meetings, and on thousands of
doorsteps. It is particularly significant that our
party website received almost 100,000 visits
(more than 4.2 million hits) during the
campaign. Many more working and
progressive-minded people, especially youth,
are interested and attracted to our policies and
socialist perspective.

The overall political situation coming out of this
election will be marked by a great deal of
volatility, with significant dangers from the Right.
The labour and people's movements will be
challenged more than ever to mobilize outside of
Parliament to oppose right-wing efforts to gut
Medicare, education, pensions an other social
programs and services, to attack labour and
democratic rights, and to align Canada even more
closely with U.S. imperialism. The first
opportunity to hit the streets against this agenda
comes on March 18, when anti-war
demonstrations take place in many Canadian cities
and towns as part of a global day of peace action.

The Communist Party and its members will be
called upon to redouble our efforts to build the
broadest possible resistance to the
Tory/corporate agenda, to blunt and defeat its
offensive, and send the Tories packing.

----------------------------------------------
Communist Party of Canada
Central Committee, CPC
290A Danforth Ave.
Toronto, Ont
M4K 1N6
Phone (416) 469-2446
FAX (416) 469-4063
E-mail  info at cpc-pcc.ca
Web www.communist-party.ca

===========================================

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-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
    --Bertholt Brecht.