CPS 2011 Federal Election Analysis May 2011

8/6/2019 CPS 2011 Federal Election Analysis May 2011

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/cps-2011-federal-election-analysis-may-2011 1/15

1st session of the 41st Canadian Parliament will

convene June 2nd

2011

Four Years of Struggle Ahead! It Will Take A Fight to Win!

Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism

May 22, 2011

www.FocusOnSocialism.ca



www.FocusOnSocialism.ca 1st Session of 41st Parilment of 15

The election of a right‐wing Conservative government with majority parliamentary legislative

power presents new and serious difficulties for the working people of Canada. A right wing

Conservative majority in Parliament threatens all of the social gains of wage and salary

earners, the self‐employed, small business and farmers, the urban middle strata and all

Canadians who must work to live. Majority parliamentary power in the hands of right‐wing

Conservatism has immeasurably enlarged the threat to peace, people’s democracy and

Canadian independence.

The main preoccupation of the right wing Harper Conservative majority for the next four

years will be to commit all of the resources of the state to the entrenchment of militarism,

austerity for the people and deeper US‐Canada economic integration as Canada’s future.

Nothing in such a state monopoly policy is for the working people. The Conservative vision

for Canada must be rejected and defeated.

The euphoric reception and speech by NDP leader Jack Layton at the recently concluded

Canadian Labour Congress Convention, where Layton optimistically alluded to a social

democratic government in four years glosses over the depth of struggle that will be required

to defeat the right‐wing Conservatives to make that vision a reality.1 Moreover, the people

of Canada have not concluded that a left of centre social democratic vision of the country to

ameliorate capitalisms worst features is the one they will ultimately choose. It would be a

serious mistake for NDP strategists to make that assumption based on the recent election

outcome.

Right Wing Conservatism in the 21st Century

The majority of the Canadian electorate rejected right wing Conservatism but was not able

to prevent it from assuming power. The right wing Conservative majority in Parliament

should not be underestimated. It is not a business as usual “Tory” government. The Harper

Conservatives are not and have never been “Tories” in the classic sense. That appellation is

wrong, belonging to another era, and trivializes and glosses over the reactionary essence of

what Harper and his cohorts represent today.

Harper is no more a Tory than Sarkozi and Berlusconi and Obama are republicans or

Cameron, Merkel or Kan are parliamentarians. G7 leaders of the developed imperialist states

are part of the round table of NATO, IMF imperialist enforcers of the interests of

1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XYJJXlQN6g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XYJJXlQN6g






international finance capital. Prime Minister Harper is now securely seated at that table for

four years and committed to its world view.

The Harper Government is the government of capitalism at the state monopoly stage of its

development when the imperialist ambitions of Canadian finance capital in the 21st century

are openly proclaimed and dominate domestic politics. That reality requires of the

communist and progressive left to consciously break with bourgeois rhetoric and adopt the

correct language to expose the reality of 21st century state monopoly capitalism to the

Canadian working class, organized labour and democratic forces of Canada.

21st Century State Monopoly Capitalism Is Imperialism

Prime

Minister

Harper’s

right‐

wing

Conservative

government

acts

for

finance

capital;

the

merged power of the state with the banks, industrial corporations, the energy sector and

the militarists, and a small elite investor class immersed in global and domestic market

speculation that is permeated with imperialist ambition. The Conservative government will

place the profit interest of this elite group at the top of its parliamentary agenda for the

next four years. That is a far cry from the rock ribbed small c conservatism that many

Canadians believed they were voting for. Small c conservative voters have been duped and

cruelly betrayed by the big business Harper government.

The Harper Conservative majority is poised to deal ruthlessly with labour and the hopes of

the Canadian people for peace. From the outset of the opening of Parliament the left

democratic forces inside and outside Parliament are called upon to recognize without

illusion just what it is that the people now confront with a right wing Conservative

government in power. The parliamentary opposition if it is serious is called upon on behalf

of the people to send the same message. Prime Minister Harper and his right wing big

business war agenda is in for a fight.

The left democratic and peace forces are called upon to act independently of the media

hype and parliamentary parlor games beloved of pundits and academia and get down to the

serious

business

of

organizing

a

united

anti‐

Conservative

front

of

political

forces

to

ensure

the Canadian people see this government for what it really is, right wing reaction all along

the line, and send it packing.

The Significance of Mass Electoral Break with the Main Parties of the Profit System




A majority of Canadian electors, in their own way and out of their own experience, saw

through the fog of lies and disinformation spread by Conservative compliant media hacks

and voted for something better and more progressive as they saw it. The popular judgment

of the democratic electoral majority is a political process, in motion and development that

no single party can take credit for and merits the utmost attention and respect and

encouragement by the conscious and responsible left. The NDP would be making a critical

error if it took this electoral support for granted.

The election of 105 NDP MP’s is a significant counter ‐weight to the Conservative majority.

The political importance of that outcome requires careful study and must not be trivialized.

The fact is that 4,508,474 Canadians, inspired by the working people of Quebec voted for

the social democrats, many breaking for the first time with the two major parties of the

profit system, the Liberals and Conservatives. The Liberals receiving 2.7 million votes mainly

from the urban middle strata suffered the consequences of its arrogant go‐it‐alone policy.

Those who voted Liberal supporting its opposition to spending billions on fighter jets, its

condemnation of Prime Minister Harper’s unilateral suspension of parliamentary democracy

and opposition to tax cuts for corporations, must demand that the remaining Liberals

honour and adhere to those positions in opposition.

The combined parliamentary opposition bears a heavy responsibility to confront and resist

the right‐wing Harper Conservative Government’s plan to shred public universal health care,

gut the civil service and move ahead with deep Canada‐US economic and security

integration.2

The majority of Canadians who must labour to live, wage earners and farmers, the self

employed and small business, the majority who voted for the NDP, the Liberals, the Bloc and

the Greens have a right to expect that every non‐Conservative MP will act responsibly.

Collaboration by the NDP‐Liberal‐Bloc‐Green opposition with a right‐wing big business

government pledged to carry forward deficit reduction on the backs of the people is not an

option. Collaboration with right‐wing Conservatism on this or that separate issue will be a

betrayal of the interests of the 60% of Canadians who voted for peace, jobs and real people’s

economic democracy.

Dividing the opposition and smothering extra‐parliamentary labour action is just what the

right‐wing Conservatives are counting on. Post‐election complacency and inter ‐opposition

2http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24839http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24839

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24839http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24839







rivalry will help Prime Minister Harper consolidate power and move rapidly to implement the

main planks of his big business agenda. He must not be given a moments respite by the

people’s majority.

For a New Type of Mass Political Action!

The organized labour movement and the militant democratic left must resist all calls to limit

its political role to passive support for the NDP parliamentary caucus. The NDP caucus needs

time to consolidate and get to work, and that must include not repeating past mistakes of

taking its support base for granted. That means to accept the reality that the right wing

Conservatives cannot be curbed and defeated by parliamentary politics alone. The NDP

backroom strategists must be told in no certain terms that they are no smarter and more

clever than the people of Canada who voted for them.

The clever strategists must be told plainly that only a people’s movement led by labour and

its allies can create the necessary dynamic outside and inside parliament to defeat the right

wing agenda and advance the cause of the working people. NDP back room strategists

demanding a mute and compliant mass base must be told that is not the new politics

Canadians need. Mobilizing mass pubic pressure on parliament is now the key ingredient

necessary to defend the interests of the working people.

Together left progressives, worker and farmer unionists, peace activists, environmentalists,

advocates for the rights of women, pensioners, immigrant workers, the unemployed, the

homeless and the poor, all people engaged in the struggle to earn a living, can be the

decisive factor to thwart and defeat the corporate agenda of the Harper Government and in

the process make life better for our families and our country. The NDP cannot do it alone.

That task is daunting but not impossible. The continuation of separate issue politics is past.

Unity in action around common goals is now the overriding necessity.

For a New 21st Century People’s Democracy

The federal election has propelled the matter of people’s democracy to the fore. The

Conservative win was the result of a long process of crude right wing degrading of

parliamentary democracy in collusion with a corrupted mass media. The importing to

Canada of US election style bribery, smear, corruption and dirty tricks, has aroused the

indignation of thoughtful Canadians and was a factor in many voting against both the

conservatives and the liberals and their crude strategists.




The issue of restoring democracy to Canadian politics has become a politically motivating

factor for many Canadians and part of a movement for progressive electoral reform and

change that deserves support.

Power without a People’s Mandate Is Not Democracy!

The right wing Harper Conservative government takes power with 167 Parliamentary seats

out of a possible 308 having received 23% of the 23,971,740 registered electors and 40% of

the 14,720,580 Canadians who actually turned out to vote. The NDP becomes the official

opposition with 105 seats and 18% and 30.6% respectively. The Liberals were reduced to 34

seats with 11.6% and 18.9% respectively. The Greens took one seat and the Bloc Quebecois

was reduced to 4 seats taking .037% and 6% respectively. Over 9 million eligible voters didn’t

vote in the 41st federal election.3

Sixty percent of the electorate, the majority voted for opposition parties garnering a total of

141 seats and 40% of the electorate voted for the Conservatives and garnered 167 seats. That

is the reality of capitalist‐style democracy in Canada today. That must change. The

movement for proportional representation is the logical, predictable reaction to an

undemocratic electoral system corrupted by money and bribery and deception. It deserves

support.

Federal election outcomes are increasingly the handiwork of amoral professionals that

package and sell parties and candidates like commodities. The affects of that corruption will

stamp right wing politics for the next four years as the Conservative mandate unfolds and as

has happened so many times in the past will rise to the surface and explode in scandal. It

will be up to the people to intervene in the sordid process and demand transparency and

strengthen the resolve of the opposition not to sink to the level of conservative mendacity.

The People are the Only Guarantor of Democracy

In spite of the corrupting influence of money politics in the federal election, the majority of

the Canadian electorate acted independently and did not move right as the big business

election strategists planned. However the top echelons of finance capital most certainly did.

Corporate power in choosing the right wing Conservatives opted for a more autocratic and

ruthless anti‐people administration at Ottawa. That reality is a cause for alarm for every

Canadian concerned about the state of real economic democracy in our country.

3 http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/results.html

http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/results.html






The Harper Conservatives won a majority of Parliamentary seats in spite of the fact that 60%

of the electorate rejected Harper’s big business pro‐US‐NATO war agenda. Finance capital,

abandoned the Liberals, the traditional capitalist party of wealth and privilege and gave

support to extreme right‐wing Conservatism. The Harper Conservatives could not have won

without the shift in corporate backing.

Liberal Mandarins Back the Conservative Win

Big business is applauding the right‐wing Harper Conservative Parliamentary majority. When

it comes to promoting the profit system, a party brand is inconsequential to the big investor

classes. Party allegiance to their profit interests is what counts.

Former

Liberal

mandarin

and

cabinet

minister,

John

Manley

now

head

of

the

Canadian

Council of Chief Executives in a post‐election congratulatory letter to Prime Minister

Stephen Harper 4 hailed his former Conservative adversary for his record of trade

liberalization (market driven free trade), regulatory reform (relaxing all government

restraints on capitalist business practice) and corporate tax reductions urging him to stay

the course.

Manley then laid out corporate Canada’s expectations of the new majority Conservative

government. In typical Bay Street lingo, Manley hailed Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s 2011‐

2012 budget supporting balancing the books by mid‐decade via a demand for a streamlined

public service, double speak for job cuts to the civil service and lower standards of service to

the people. Right on cue Treasury Board Chair Tony Clement is promising an immediate $4

billion cut to government programs, threatening not just reductions but the elimination of

entire programs.5

Manley alludes to tightening up on federal government transfers to the provinces code for

reductions to Health Care funding when the Canada Health Act comes up for renewal in

2014. Prime Minister Harper has set the stage for federal health care cuts to the provinces

4http://www.ceocouncil.ca/publications/pdf/test_c93adb6f64ca618185bf0569bb68e1bf/Letter_to_The_Right_Honourable_Stephen_Harper_May_6_2011.pdf 5 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/from‐clement‐a‐commitment‐to‐cut/article2029172/

http://www.ceocouncil.ca/publications/pdf/test_c93adb6f64ca618185bf0569bb68e1bf/Letter_to_The_Right_Honourable_Stephen_Harper_May_6_2011.pdf



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/from-clement-a-commitment-to-cut/article2029172/


















by predicting federal provincial conflict. Andre Picard in the Globe and Mail of March 31st

outlined the truth of the matter and what is at stake.6

From the outset the parliamentary opposition must expose and condemn any attempts by

the Harper majority to play the federal government against the provinces to evade his

responsibility to uphold the Canada Health Care Act and fund it as is required.

The people of Canada from coast to coast to coast aspire to live in peace and unity with one

another and deplore and reject attempts as is done in the USA to play provincial rights

politics. Artificially fomenting federal‐provincial disputes is a finance capitalist contrivance to

ensure the state treasuries at both the federal and provincial level are at their exclusive

disposal and use.

That is why, from the standpoint of defending the Health Care Act in 2014, the election of an

NDP government in the upcoming BC provincial elections would strengthen that struggle.

That outcome must be supported. It is on the matter of health care that the NDP has its

greatest support among the people and the election of an NDP government in BC would

send a powerful message to Harper that scuttling public health care is not on.

Back to John Manley and the CCCE

On international trade, Manley calls for closer ties with the USA promoting deeper

integration

and

security,

code

for

a

North

American

finance

capitalist

cooperation

in

pursuing US‐Canadian imperialist strategic rivalry among the leading imperialist states.

The CCCE promotes expanded markets abroad for Canadian resource exports, specifically

energy exports without regard for Canada’s future energy needs. Manley calls upon Harper

to speed up negotiations for a Canada‐EU and India trade agreements to counter the rise of

China. Manley supports a weakening of the Wheat Board and lifting of supply management

agreements for eastern Canadian egg, poultry and milk producers and calls for support to

the most reactionary provisions of the Doha Round.

Most ominously, and a warning to organized labour, Manley calls for collaboration between

the federal government and the provinces to promote higher productivity and “defining and

implementing a national labour market strategy” bafflegab for enforced labour mobility

6 http://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new‐health/andre‐picard/politicians‐must‐be‐clear ‐on‐federal‐

health‐issues/article1963606/?service=mobilehttp://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new‐health/andre‐

picard/politicians‐must‐be‐clear ‐on‐federal‐health‐issues/article1963606/?service=mobile

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/andre-picard/politicians-must-be-clear-on-federal-health-issues/article1963606/?service=mobilehttp://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/andre-picard/politicians-must-be-clear-on-federal-health-issues/article1963606/?service=mobile












































both inter ‐provincially and among the USA, Canada and Mexico. A finance capitalist labour

market strategy is based on a race to the bottom and weakened labour standards, speed up

and wage freeze for Canadian and all North American workers.

What Majority Does Prime Minister Harper Represent?

Prime Minister Harper’s right wing Conservatives were never interested in receiving majority

approval of the Canadian people. They coveted majority approval of finance capital and to

wield majority legislative power in Parliament on its behalf. The rewards to politicians that

do the bidding of corporate power are generous.

Prime Minister Harper assigned the task of wooing finance capital to Finance Minister Jim

Flaherty

Bay

Street

insider

and

confidant

of

Governor

of

the

Bank

of

Canada

and

propagandist in Canada for the IMF.

Flaherty convinced Bay Street and international investors that the Liberal Party lacked the

necessary ruthlessness to impose an IMF style program of economic austerity on organized

labour and the working people, and the Conservatives were the party best able to do that

dirty work for international and domestic investors. That is what Flaherty is tasked to do in

the next four years and that is why he has been reappointed as Finance Minister to impose

the upcoming austerity budget on all Canadians.

The

right‐

wing

Harper

Conservatives

with

a

bogus

populist

image,

were

chosen

by

finance

capital to finish the job started by the Paul Martin Liberals to erase the universality principle

from federal government social programming and by the method of gradual starvation of

federal funding to the provinces, erode universal health care, old age pension, plunder the

CPP, gut seniors and child care programs and open the door to across the board

privatization and for profit investment.

Big business recognized that Prime Minister Harper is ideologically committed to transform

Canada into a 21st century corporate state, where foreign and domestic investor capital has

absolute power and determines unimpeded, all political and economic development of the

entire country.

As such, the right wing Harper Conservatives pose the most serious threat to democracy to

arise in Canadian capitalist politics since the time of the discredited extreme rightist

corporate‐clerical regimes of Colonel George Drew and Maurice Duplessis. Stephen Harper

promotes that dark legacy into the modern era.




The Election Outcome and Credibility

The federal election has not erased the doubts of millions of Canadians about the credibility

of the Harper Conservatives. The right wing Harper Conservatives remain the government

of extreme demagogy. The record of the right wing Harper Conservatives is by stealth and

gradualism, by deceit and deception, by demagogic formulaic rhetoric, to inch by inch and

day by day, erode the social and economic gains of the people of Canada and promote the

profit interests of a minority of wealth and privilege that live parasitically on the backs of the

working people. Harper is notorious for contemptuously dismissing the social gains of the

Canadian people as a “northern European welfare state.”7

The right wing Harper Conservatives with active and enthusiastic support of the corporate

mass media deluded some voters into believing that the Conservatives were actually

concerned about hard working Canadians. That fog of deception was necessary to cover the

fiscal and monetary and economic policies that in essence serve domestic and foreign

investor capital not workers and farmers.

The Harper Government Is a War Government

Assuming the mantle of moral righteousness the Harper Conservatives subordinated

Canadian foreign and military policy to the strategic aims of US‐NATO‐EU‐Israeli

expansionism. It did that deliberately with the aim of acquiring a more prominent role for

Canadian finance capital at the imperialist round tables at NATO headquarters at Brussels,

Washington the IMF and Doha. In so doing Prime Minister Harper has been judged by

majority public opinion in Canada and abroad as having demeaned Canada’s reputation as an

enlightened and progressive society. Canada’s defeat by UN member states for a seat on

the Security Council was indicative of how the developing states view Canada’s international

performance under the Harper administration.8

War and militarism and massive arms spending are now the centre piece of the strategic

plans of the right wing Harper Conservatives to achieve more clout at the imperialist round

table.

Prime

Minister

Harper

has

abandoned

the

Liberal

pretense

to

a

peace

policy

and

without consulting Parliament chooses war as the first option in international affairs. To pay

for militarization Canadians will be deprived of necessary funds for social needs.

7http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SpecialEvent7/20051213/elxn_harper_speech_text_051214/http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SpecialEvent7/20051213/elxn_harper_speech_text_051214/ 8 http://rabble.ca/columnists/2010/10/un‐defeat‐reflects‐uneasiness‐about‐canadas‐shifting‐role

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SpecialEvent7/20051213/elxn_harper_speech_text_051214/http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SpecialEvent7/20051213/elxn_harper_speech_text_051214/



http://rabble.ca/columnists/2010/10/un-defeat-reflects-uneasiness-about-canadas-shifting-role





















Evading the issue of foreign policy in the federal election the NDP actually helped the

Conservatives get their majority. The NDP strategists were wrong to mute the issue of

foreign policy and the NDP is disastrously wrong to continue pander to the discredited “duty

to protect” fig leaf for US‐NATO intervention in the internal affairs of other nations such as

the current US‐NATO war on Libya.9 A strong anti‐NATO peace policy is the only way the

NDP can become an effective opposition. The Canadian Peace Congress in its federal

election statement outlined what that policy must be.10

The right‐wing Harper Conservatives, with majority legislative power, using a balanced

budget as the excuse, are now poised to spend massively on arms as they impose an IMF

austerity budget on the working people of Canada. The Harper Conservatives are devising

ways to carry forward the for profit privatization of health care, pensions, child care, and

seniors programs to divert social funding to war expenditures.

A Renewed Struggle for the Principle of Universality

The Harper Conservatives lead a government that is opposed to the principle of universality

and federal government responsibility for the needs of the people.

The Prime Minister has already signaled that he will artificially foment differences between

the federal government and the provinces to withhold urgently needed transfers of state

funds to assist provinces and regions both urban and rural to maintain infrastructure, health,

education and public transportation and maintain high standards of government service to

the people. His record of deceit on this issue has been exposed by the Canadian Union of

Public Employees. 11

Profit Stability for Finance Capital the Banks and Investors, Economic Insecurity for the

People

Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty appealed for votes claiming a majority

in parliament was necessary to ensure the continued recovery from the global capitalist

depression. Stability was necessary to ensure investor confidence in Canada’s much

vaunted economic recovery from the 2008 global capitalist depression.

9 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24799

10 http://www.canadianpeacecongress.ca/random.asp?ID=192

11 http://cupe.ca/political‐action‐materials/sheet‐health‐care

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24799


http://www.canadianpeacecongress.ca/random.asp?ID=192

http://cupe.ca/political-action-materials/sheet-health-care











http://www.canadianpeacecongress.ca/random.asp?ID=192





Any recovery now underway has nothing to do with Prime Minister Harper’s degree in

economics or Finance Minister Flaherty’s luncheons with his Bay Street pals. Any recovery

now underway in Canada is because of the rising demand for Canada’s natural resources in

particular its energy resources. Harper and Flaherty didn’t put oil and coal in the ground or

plant the wheat on the Prairies and it is utterly preposterous for them to take credit for what

is a predictable cyclical partial upturn. While the IMF praises Canadian banking stability it

neglects to mention that it is largely due to the demand of developing states such as China

and India for Canadian resources that is primarily responsible for that stability. The

combined banking and corporate investment sector manage the traffic in foreign

investment inflow and outflow making sure large amounts wind up in their coffers, but to

suggest that the banks are responsible for any recovery is part of the gold plated bamboozle

the media concocts for the gullible. Banks invest for profit – not for the people.

Finance Minister Flaherty takes pride and boasts that he has been instrumental in Canada

joining the coveted list of the ruling parties of the G7 capitalist states with “stable” majority

governments. A quick glance at the real situation in other G7 states reveals a similar charade

to that existing in Canada. All G7 finance ministers boast of their cleverness and all of the

governments they serve have plummeting public approval ratings.

International finance capital considers popularly elected legislatures to be nothing more

than a necessary adjunct to state monopoly capitalism that exists to give a periodic stamp of

approval to the actual decisions that are taken by the ruling elites of the G7 states outside of

the elected Parliaments at the IMF and NATO and the Doha Round where the approval of

the people is not required.

The ruling parties of the governments of the other G7 states, the USA, Japan, Germany,

Great Britain, France and Italy are all in various stages of economic and political crisis with

approval ratings of the governing right‐wing parties in free fall. None are stable.12 This is

the gang of seven Flaherty has tied Canada’s fortunes to.

12 http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack‐obama‐presidential‐job‐approval.aspx

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/japan/2011/03/28/296376/Japan‐PM.htm

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011‐02‐20/sarkozy‐s‐approval‐rating‐slumps‐to‐record‐low‐survey‐

shows.html

http://www.nowitaly.com/giornale/news_eng/90301/berlusconi‐govt‐approval‐rating‐drops‐public‐works‐graft‐

scandal‐appears‐damage‐executives‐image.htm

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx










http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/japan/2011/03/28/296376/Japan-PM.htm






http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-20/sarkozy-s-approval-rating-slumps-to-record-low-survey-shows.html
























http://www.nowitaly.com/giornale/news_eng/90301/berlusconi-govt-approval-rating-drops-public-works-graft-scandal-appears-damage-executives-image.htm




































The role of elected legislatures in the developed capitalist states, whether republican or

parliamentary democracies, whether in North America or the EU or Japan have all been

degraded and marginalized by the transfer and concentration of major decision making

regarding the economy and wars of aggression to the IMF and NATO. The result is a

profound crisis of legislative democracy in all developed capitalist states that will continue

and worsen. It is a state monopoly capitalist device to distance the people from influencing

real economic decisions making.

That reality is a source of political crisis and carries with it the potential for revolutionary

conditions arising very quickly. The manipulation of weakened parliamentary democracy by

the moneyed classes has widened the gap between the elites of wealth and privilege and

the needs of the working people, the real majority in any capitalist country.

What was at stake for the banks, the militarists and the investors in Canada’s vast energy

and mineral resources sectors in the federal election was to have a government in power

that will promote their strategic investor interests at the imperial forums at the IMF and

NATO at the expense of the people. These are the interests that are competing ferociously

to maintain a dominant place at the table of imperialist power.

The developed capitalist states led by the USA presume to set the international standard for

all of the peoples of the world. They fancy themselves to be the board of directors of global

corporatism where decisions are made and then imposed on elected legislatures. That is

what is meant when both the Liberals and Conservatives assert that Canadians must

surrender some of their sovereignty to the “international community” code for the

dominance of the G7 states.13

According to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, the stamp of approval has been given to

Canadian high finance by the IMF and NATO and Canada has now become a destination

13http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada+must+give+up+some+sovereignty&hl=en&rlz=1T4DACA_enCA314CA356&prmd=ivnsb&source=univ&tbm=vid&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=6MfVTbjOEYu6sQOl8‐

GxBw&ved=0CFAQqwQ&biw=1003&bih=578http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada+must+give+up+some+sovereignty&hl=en&rlz=1T4DACA_enCA314CA356&prmd=ivnsb&source=univ&tbm=vid&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=6MfVTbjOEYu6sQOl8‐GxBw&ved=0CFAQqwQ&biw=1003&bih=578

http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada+must+give+up+some+sovereignty&hl=en&rlz=1T4DACA_enCA314CA356&prmd=ivnsb&source=univ&tbm=vid&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=6MfVTbjOEYu6sQOl8-GxBw&ved=0CFAQqwQ&biw=1003&bih=578http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada+must+give+up+some+sovereignty&hl=en&rlz=1T4DACA_enCA314CA356&prmd=ivnsb&source=univ&tbm=vid&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=6MfVTbjOEYu6sQOl8-GxBw&ved=0CFAQqwQ&biw=1003&bih=578

















state for investment and deal making. Those accolades also poured in from Bloomberg and

Wall Street and ended the pre‐election nervousness of foreign investors.14

That is the reality that the NDP‐Liberal‐Bloc‐Green opposition must have the courage to

expose and confront.

The Betrayal of Small c Conservatism

The right‐wing Reform‐Alliance‐Conservatives posing a decade ago as a grass roots populist

movement has served its purpose as far as big business is concerned and has been tossed

aside as yesterday’s news. The political movement created by small business and farmers

and urban and rural middle classes has been cast aside and is now dominated by a small

minority

of

corporate

wealth

and

privilege

that

live

parasitically

from

the

labour

of

productive Canadians. Canadians who supported Reform and the Alliance in expectation of

reducing the power of wealth privilege over government and restoring a semblance of grass

roots democracy to Canadian politics have been betrayed by Prime Minister Harper.

Parliamentary power has passed from small c conservatism exclusively into the hands of big

finance capital and a small minority that prosper from its narrow profit interests. Those well

meaning and misguided Canadians must be urged to come back to the left democratic

mainstream and abandon the Manning, Flanagan, extremism and the narrow single issue

politics.

The Communists Must Re‐Evaluate

The Communist Party of Canada’s post election statement15 that the majority of voters did

not move right in support of the reactionary program of the right wing Conservatives is

correct as far as it goes. What they needed to emphasize was that finance capital did move

right and draw the full conclusions for the working class of what that means going forward.

The Communist have analyzed one election when they are called upon to analyze the

election in the context of the era in which we are living and struggling, the era of state

monopoly capitalism, imperialism. That reality has not been fully grasped by the Communist

party leadership nor has it as yet caused them to update and creatively develop their

program to reflect that reality.

14 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011‐05‐10/canada‐fiscal‐strength‐means‐commodities‐won‐t‐sink‐

economy.html 15

http://www.votecommunist.ca/2011/05/10/after ‐the‐election‐struggle‐shifts‐outside‐parliament/

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-10/canada-fiscal-strength-means-commodities-won-t-sink-economy.html






















http://www.votecommunist.ca/2011/05/10/after-the-election-struggle-shifts-outside-parliament/




















Instead the Communists conclude in their post election analysis; “that given the new

balance of forces within Parliament, the capacity of the NDP and other opposition parties to

counter this agenda will be significantly weakened; they will offer up their critiques and may

succeed in delaying various pieces of legislation, but with the Tories in control of both the

Commons and the Senate, the possibilities of actually blocking or defeat government bills by

parliamentary means alone have all but disappeared. In such circumstances, the focus of

resistance and struggle against this reactionary agenda must shift decisively to the extra‐

parliamentary arena.”

It is the view of CPS that the above assessment is too bleak and doctrinaire and formulaic. It

fails to take into account the full significance of a change that occurred in capitalist politics in

the 41st election and how the organized labour movement, the peace movement and the

democratic voters can take advantage of that change and position all of the anti‐

conservative forces to overturn their win and lay the basis for an entirely new type of

people’s democratic governance for Canada.

The Communist Party of Canada is called upon to overcome its isolation from the

movements of the people, to study more deeply their moods, mass psychology, limitations

and strengths. That task is not simple but unavoidable if the Communists are to begin to

engage in mainstream working class politics.

The tendency to preaching and doctrinarism, periodic flights into left infantilism must be

confronted and overcome. If it can do that, the courage and resolve that it took to field 20

candidates under extremely difficult circumstances will begin to bring the results that the

working class so richly deserves.

Next: The Energy Issue, Environmentalism and the Working Class

CPS 2011 Federal Election Analysis May 2011

Documents

Transcript of CPS 2011 Federal Election Analysis May 2011