Who will stand up for Canada? For much of this century the Canadian political landscape has been dominated by Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments. For the past 30 years leading up to the early nineties, both parties have led Canada down the road of recurring deficits and huge debt loads, while at the same time arrogantly thumbing their noses at the Canadian public and were silent to their concerns. Liberal Pierre Trudeau shoved the National Energy Program down the throats of Albertans, while his PC counterpart Brian Mulroney rammed Free Trade and then the Goods and Services Tax through Parliament to outcries of a nation. The Reform Party was essentially created as a populist party dedicated to the making the federal government more accountable to individual Canadians and giving them a greater voice in the political landscape. The formation of the Canadian Alliance drove a stake into the heart of many Western Canadians who voted for it's precursor the Reform Party. Now merging with Ontario provincial Tories, the new party's leadership race has attracted the likes of Tom Long, a former Mulroney backroom boy. His evasion of any question regarding his financial backing only solidifies speculation that he is Bay Street's choice for leader.
If these allegations are true, then the Reform movement is truly dead and we will see a return to PC politics of the Mulroney government. I personally, did not agree with much of the Reform platform, but their dedication to responsible and accountable government that all Canadians have a say in I do agree with. Now, their party has been hijacked but those who want to make government responsible and accountable again to corporations. Instead of empowering individual Canadians, I feel the Canadian Alliance will kowtow to the agenda of Bay Street and leave Canadians to the mercy of the market.
It is exactly this philosophy that will lead to the destruction of everything Canada has been built on. Our universal health care and education is in serious jeopardy and in need of serious reform, but the conservative mind set of the CA would only be to dismantle those programs. Lower taxes and shrink government is their mantra. They believe that lowering taxes and open up are the be all and end all of solutions to making Canada better and more competitive in the world market.
The right consistently compares Canada to the United States and talk of marginal tax rates 30% lower in the USA, and glorify the US position in the global economy. What they tend to ignore is that 40 million Americans are without any health insurance and a good portion of their after-tax income is devoted to health care. Many bankruptcies are due to health costs wiping out family finances. The ever increasing wealth gap and rampant crime rates in the US are rarely mentioned. There is much talk of the brain drain and that we are losing are best and brightest to the US. The fact is with the market size of the US, Canada will likely never be at parity with US and no matter how low our taxes are, those who choose to leave for 'greener pastures' will continue to do so. However, I do not believe that most Canadians would either want to move to the United States or want our great nation to be more like our neighbours to the South for any reason.
The question remains then who will stand up for Canadians? The Liberals have proved to the nation that: a) they cannot keep their promises (free trade and the GST) and b) cannot be trusted to spend our money wisely. The NDP want to burden Canada with higher taxes, while the Canadian Alliance wants to cut taxes and destroy social programs. None of these parties are aware of the dangers of NAFTA and the WTO. The only true alternative that will represent individual Canadians is the Canadian Action Party.
The Canadian Action Party has real, workable solutions for a new, stronger Canada. Our country was built on strong social programs and this is part of what makes Canada one of the best places to live in the world. We believe in preserving and enhancing or social programs while at the same time reducing the tax burden on Canadians and paying down our huge debt. CAP would restore funding to programs such as universal health care and post-secondary education that were gutted by unnecessary cuts in the name deficit fighting. How? This can be achieved through monetary reform. For more information please read About Money by CAP Leader, Paul Hellyer. We would return to the same monetary system started in 1939, that helped Canada through the Second World War and brought unprecedented prosperity for the next 35 years.
Another major tenet of our party is the protection of our sovereignty from multinational corporations. We believe in the solemn right of the nation-state to protect the rights and interests of its citizens from the influence of unelected mega-corporations. The ultimate result of corporatism is not more competition, but about concentrating wealth and the creation of monopolies and oligopolies. CAP is dedicated to the abrogation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization. These agreements are not much about trade between nations than they are about paralyzing governments and subjugating nation-states to the will of corporate interests and investments. Globalization if left to proceed without regulation, it will lead to the worst form of unchecked capitalism that has not been seen in a hundred years.
Finally, the Canadian Action Party is dedicated to electoral reform via such ideas as proportional representation, free-votes, recall, and citizen initiatives, to make government more accountable and individual Canadians more empowered.
The next election will indeed decide the course of Canada for the new millennium. As Paul Hellyer has stated so succinctly, "... in the next election, you will have 2 choices... You can vote for your party or you can vote for your country..." The Canadian Action Party is the only choice for Canada.
No comments:
Post a Comment