http://www.niagaraadvance.ca/2014/06/10/column-communist-party-offers-new-solutions?fb_action_ids=10100454206702969&fb_action_types=og.recommends
Provincial election
COLUMN: Communist party offers new solutions
EDITOR'S NOTE: Saleh Waziruddin, the Communist Party candidate for St. Catharines, was not part of the online candidates’ debate organized by the Standard recently. For that reason, we offer his column today.
SALEH WAZIRUDDIN
Communist Party
The job creation solutions offered by other parties, which amount to giveaways to corporations through tax cuts/grants/lower costs, won’t work because companies don’t invest when the economy is down.
They haven’t been creating jobs, despite the lowest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world (don’t take my word for it, this is according to the Ontario government). They are instead pulling equipment out of plants unless workers give up pensions and take 50% pay cuts.
The first step to addressing the problem is to hold onto the jobs we have through plant closure legislation. The province should take over profitable plants that owners want to shut down only because of the rat race to the bottom they’ve created.
The Communist Party is the only party offering this solution.
Because we keep throwing public money at corporations without any result (even the Bank of Canada governor scolded them for sitting on profits without investing it), we’re forced to make do with not enough when it comes to public services like hospitals, schools and social assistance.
Recently, a 77-year-old man was discharged from the St Catharines hospital in the middle of a blizzard before his friends could come to pick him up, and the mayor of Wainfleet’s son had to wait 36 hours to get his broken leg treated. The hospital says it has to prioritize, but it would have more to prioritize with if we funded public services based on needs and not what’s left over.
For a start, we should restore all the hospital beds, staff and services cut in the Harris years instead of closing more local services.
We need to at least double the social assistance rates to catch up with earlier freezes while waiting for jobs that haven’t been coming. We are slowly starving those conscripted into poverty.
We could fund this through taking back corporate tax cuts, which would still be lower than the U.S.
Some are afraid to vote Communist because they think it’s wasting their vote. But voting for the “lesser evil” leads to having to choose between two increasingly bad “evils.”
In Alberta, we had the spectacle of NDPers urging a Conservative vote to block the Wild Rose party. We can avoid this nightmare by using our vote to send a message. Voting Communist is not just a vote, it’s a declaration of an emancipation on the way.
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