But politically, Southern Ontario capitalists would stand to benefit from the North's resources, which has led to grumbling in the past.
In addition, the loss of manufacturing will impact workers in the south.
Results 21 to 40 of 46
Capitalists, of course. Whether it's mineral extraction in Ontario's "ring of fire", forestry, or fisheries and oil pipelines in other provinces, there's been a big push at the Federal level to gut environmental regulations and a lot of pressure on First Nations communities to allow extraction, sometimes under the guise of supposedly improving their economic situation. Ontario's no exception to the national trend.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
But politically, Southern Ontario capitalists would stand to benefit from the North's resources, which has led to grumbling in the past.
In addition, the loss of manufacturing will impact workers in the south.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
Yes!!! from Raise the Rates:
Liberal Party's Party Disrupted - No Cause for Celebration
This evening, a group of OCAP members found their way into an exclusive Liberal Party event with Kathleen Wynne and Justin Trudeau in attendance. We dropped a banner (pic here:
https://twitter.com/OCAPtoronto/stat...474944/photo/1) and had the following to say with a speech and flyers distributed through the air:
ATTENTION: No Cause for Celebration
Ontario Liberal Party: Making Life Harder for Poor People
As you celebrate the Liberal Party tonight, let us remind you of why poor people are suffering in this Province...
• After elected in 2003, on the heels of the devastating Conservative reign, the Liberals failed to reverse the Harris cuts including the 21.6% slash to welfare rates in 1995
• Since that time, social assistance rates have continued to drop. Token increases of 1% a year do not even match inflation. Today, welfare rates are 55% below where they should be with that initial Harris cut and 19
years of skyrocketing costs to housing, food, and basic necessities of life
• The Ontario Liberals have also slashed vital benefits such as the Special Diet - literally a benefit for food , and the Community Start-Up - a benefit to combat homelessness, and for women to re-locate from situations of domestic violence. These cuts are putting poor people’s health and lives at risk.
• Not one party in this election is even talking about poverty – in fact, all three parties are looking to cut social spending which would see our incomes continue to decline.
Poor people in this Province refuse to be treated like dirt. We have been organizing and fighting back. We will disrupt your fancy parties, your election campaigns, and your public events – we will not be silent or invisible.
We demand:
Raise the Rates of social assistance 55% now!
RaisetheRates.ca
https://www.facebook.com/RaiseTheRates
You have it the wrong way around, Brad. Staying at home legitimizes the electoral system, because "if you don't vote, you shouldn't complain."
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/cana...162236628.html
Last edited by Die Neue Zeit; 25th May 2014 at 00:45.
"A new centrist project does not have to repeat these mistakes. Nobody in this topic is advocating a carbon copy of the Second International (which again was only partly centrist)." (Tjis, class-struggle anarchist)
"A centrist strategy is based on patience, and building a movement or party or party-movement through deploying various instruments, which I think should include: workplace organising, housing struggles [...] and social services [...] and a range of other activities such as sports and culture. These are recruitment and retention tools that allow for a platform for political education." (Tim Cornelis, left-communist)
Someone else is recognizing my organization! Thanks so much DNZ! Still gonna vote but will pass the word!
Parroting liberal talking-points, are we? Come on, you can do better than that. If you DO vote, you are legitimizing the system. If you actively refuse to acknowledge its legitimacy, that's the opposite of legitimization. It's a pretty basic concept.
At this point I'm gonna bow out because there's nothing civil to be said.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
And the party bureaucrats keep calling it a Liberal plot...
Andrea Horwath campaign leaves prominent NDP supporters 'deeply distressed'
Letter to NDP leader says group is 'seriously considering' not voting for party
A group of 34 high-profile Ontario NDP supporters say they're "deeply distressed" by the direction party leader Andrea Horwath has taken in the election campaign and are seriously considering not voting for the party.
In a letter to Horwath obtained by Evan Solomon for CBC's Power & Politics, the group of longtime supporters, including Michele Landsberg (columnist and wife of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis) and former federal candidate Winnie Ng, warn she may lose their support "and the support of thousands of others." The email was dated May 23.
"From what we can see you are running to the right of the Liberals in an attempt to win Conservative votes," the letter reads.
"It is not clear whether you have given up on progressive voters or you are taking them for granted."
The letter goes on to say the NDP has risked the election of "the most right wing and vicious leader of the PCs since Mike Harris," referring to Tim Hudak, and that the proposed Liberal budget was the most progressive in recent Ontario history.
The warning comes a day after the NDP platform was released and during a campaign where Horwath's decision to force the election has been criticized by NDP insiders such as Gerry Caplan, along with Liberals.
The NDP issued a statement in response to the letter later Friday night.
Full story: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...ssed-1.2652766
Last election's turnout was just below 50%! With any luck it will go down further as the NDP overtly abandons any pretense of representing workers.
Meanwhile, there's this:
http://boycottelections.wordpress.com/about/
I'm not a Maoist but I kinda want to get involved, though I'd probably either be preaching to the choir or yelling at a brick wall.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
2014 Ontario Election: a Chance to Choose Between austerity, Austerity and AUSTERITY
Living wages, decent income and affordable housing are not on the ballot in this election. The only differences between the three parties is how much austerity each plans to impose and how quickly they intend to do it. All Parties agree that working class people and poor communities should pay for the crisis while the rich get a free ride. At most, the parties disagree about whether or not to throw a few crumbs at us as we sink deeper into poverty.
Tories; Mike Harris Re-incarnated:
The most extreme champions of austerity are, of course, the Tim Hudak Tories. They want to destroy 100,000 public sector jobs and impose an array of social cuts. Hudak would merge Ontario Works and ODSP into one program and have a set of brutal policies on ‘welfare to work’ at the ready that would pick up where Mike Harris left off.
Not-so ‘Social Justice’ Wynne:
The Wynne Liberals platform is not the blueprint for social justice they claim it to be. They promise to increase the minimum wage to a miserable $11 an hour – which is still a poverty wage. They also promise small increases for people on OW/ODSP, but rates remain far below the poverty line. None of their major cuts to social assistance were reversed. Their platform now promotes their support for the Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative (CHPI) as an anti-poverty initiative, which is merely a cover-up for the elimination of Community Start-up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB). The money put into CHPI came only after community protest and it is still only a fraction of what was cut. Similarly, the Liberals cut a promised $200 increase to the Ontario Child Benefit (OCB) in 2013 to a mere $100 increase. Now the Liberal platform boasts about raising the Ontario Child Benefit to $1310/year - the rate it was supposed to be a year ago. The Liberal platform promises more of the same – no reversal of their cuts to Special Diet or CSUMB, no real increases to minimum wage or OW/ODSP rates and no real action on poverty in their ‘second 5-year Poverty Reduction Plan’.
NDP no friend of the poor:
The NDP goes into this election with even the mainstream media wondering if they are still to the left of the Liberals. The NDP’s “Plan that Makes Sense” is silent on OW and ODSP, minimum wage and housing. Most alarming is the NDP’s pledge to appoint a Minister of Financial Accountability to find $600 million a year in austerity measures and cutbacks. In the past they have spoken in favour of a $12/hour minimum wage and ‘inflation’ increases to social assistance, but nothing is even mentioned in this new platform.
None of the mainstream parties running in this election even pretend they would seriously reduce poverty. All of them support the basic direction of the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario that seeks to redesign social assistance to make it a more effective means of driving people, including the disabled, into sub poverty employment. Some people may decide to vote in this election on the basis of supporting a ‘lesser evil’ and it is quite true that the Tories stand out as the Party that would launch the most vicious attack of all. However, it is equally true that, whoever forms the Government after June 12, our communities are going to be under attack and fighting back in the face of an escalating agenda of austerity and poverty.
This election will ensure that the poor will get poorer. The only way to secure a 55% raise in social assistance rates, an immediate $14/hour minimum wage and decent, accessible, affordable housing for all is to unite and fight back.
RAISE the RATES 55% NOW!
ONTARIO COALITION AGAINST POVERTY
www.ocap.ca
#RaisetheRates
The TV debate was tonight. Pretty sorry mess.
Let me guess, it was just one neo-liberal circle jerk, and nothing was actually debated.
That's pretty much what I gathered. I had to write something about the campaign recently...but I couldn't get past the first minute or so of the debate where Kathleen Wynne painfully squirms with vague rhetoric when asked about the gas plants. "It was wrong...uh...it shouldn't have been done...uh...I'm taking measures to make sure that won't happen again...yeah."
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
So there's another campaign being touted as an alternative both to voting and to "spoiling your ballot":
http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1055...says-activist/
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
UPDATE: Latest info on the "Decline Your Vote" campaign...excuse the poorly thought out condescension of the redditer.
http://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comm...s_invented_by/
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
The debates on the Left have been crazy here, but mostly pretty interesting and informed.
Had a freak out yesterday when I learnt I was on the Hudak chopping block -- my 18k a year is definitely in fat cat middle management zone -- fucker.
While I was biking home today, I ran into a couple putting up some "None of the Above" signs. There are several scattered around the riding (and it's a big one).
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
This is pretty cool: http://www.cbc.ca/pointsnorth/episod...ction-boycott/
This guy's even a hell of a lot more well-spoken than Elizabeth Rowley or anyone from the CPC-ML.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
--shit Liz Rowley is inarticulate -- The CP had a really good program & totally blew it by bad communication--
Here's a nice video with a union leader focus from an old comrade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVbYMnMiyfk
