4) HARRIS QUITS, BUT HIS AGENDA LIVES ON 5) THE QUEBEC APPROACH TO LABOUR POLITICAL ACTION 4) HARRIS QUITS, BUT HIS AGENDA LIVES ON By Liz Rowley MIKE HARRIS, favourite son of neo-conservatives everywhere, is heading back to North Bay after six years as Ontario Premier. During his tenure, Harris bulldozed public education, public health, affordable housing, the environment, taxation, local democracy, labour and democratic rights. He was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the death of Dudley George at the hands of the Ontario Provincial Police in 1995, and for the deaths and injuries in Walkerton resulting from privatization and deregulation of public drinking water. Harris' departure is not so surprising, given that he was the first Ontario premier ever to have to testify at a public inquiry. While defending his government's actions leading up to Walkerton, the Premier blithely blamed his Ministers for "not informing him" of the lethal consequences of privatization of water testing facilities, and of cutting the Environment Ministry's budget by 50%, virtually eliminating public health inspections. In fact, it was clear that the Premier and his entire Cabinet knew the risks to human health, and went ahead anyway. Testimony by Environmental Ministry staff exposed a paper trail of danger warnings all the way to the Premier's office. Most damning of all, former Ontario Medical Officer of Health Richard Schabas testified that the Premier had him removed from a Cabinet meeting after Schabas made it crystal clear that the government's actions compromised human health. The death of Dudley George is also coming home to roost. After six years fighting to avoid just such a situation, Harris is finally testifying in discovery proceedings being conducted by lawyers for the George family. It appears that a public inquiry into the murder of Dudley George, and yet another paper trail to the Premier's office, may now be inevitable as the George family pries it into the public record with their wrongful death suit against Harris, other cabinet ministers, various OPP officials, and gofers who carried the messages from Queen's Park to Ipperwash and back. Harris did a great job for the corporations who engineered his party's election in the first place. But in the long run, he became a liability. And so the search for a new leader is on, and a convention has been scheduled for early spring. Among the contestants to date are several hard-right neo-cons, including the current Ontario Treasurer Jim Flaherty, and Health Minister Tony Clement, who is also the go-between with Stockwell Day and the Reform/Alliance in Ottawa. On the "left" are Social Services Minister Elizabeth Witmer and former Treasurer Ernie Eves who are at odds with the dogma of right-wing "revolution" if not with the content. Witmer and Eves never opposed the bone-cutting hits to health and education, or the school vouchers brought in last spring. Nor has either expressed opposition to the billions of dollars in new cuts to services announced Nov. 19 by Treasurer Jim Flaherty after an inner Cabinet meeting. These new cuts, including to health and education, will be made to "offset" any deficit and to keep the books balanced, in the wake of the current recession which the Tories blame on the events of September 11th. Privatization of major public assets will also be undertaken, along with moves to make Ontario's corporate tax rates the lowest in North America and to cut capital gains taxes. New tax measures will see school vouchers remove approximately $300-600 million a year from the public school system, transferring about half of that to (unregulated) private schools. A provincial election is expected in 2003, perhaps earlier now that Harris is gone. All indications are that the Tories intend to sell themselves as a more moderate party of the right, free of the stigma which they hope will attach to Mike Harris, not the Tory Party. But this is not the agenda of an individual, or a Cabinet. It's also the agenda of the transnational corporations and pro-US forces which politically and financially back this party. The Tories must go. In their place, a new coalition of parties and forces must take shape, able to put forward policies and candidates that will sharply rebuff the neo-liberal agenda. Such a coalition is needed to chart a new course for Ontario, a course that will put people's needs ahead of corporate profits, restore and expand democratic rights, raise living standards, create jobs, and rebuild and expand our tattered social safety net. ***************** 5) THE QUEBEC APPROACH TO LABOUR POLITICAL ACTION By Andr� Parizeau THE DECISION by the NDP's Nov. 23-25 convention not to support the project raised by the New Politics Initiative will likely have the effect of a cold shower on some who thought the NPI was the way to develop a people's alternative to the right wing shift in Canadian politics. Others will say that such a negative conclusion was predictable, since the NDP apparatus was already very clearly associated with that shift to the right. In any case, the important thing at this stage should be for all Left-oriented forces, both within and outside labour, to seriously look at the current situation and develop some new tactics and strategies on how to move toward such an alternative. To my mind, it is especially important for labour to play a key role in such a direction, because no real alternative to right wing politics has any chance if labour is not a key part of it. Coming up with new strategies and tactics will not be an easy matter. One big problem confronting us is the fact that both politics and the situation of the labour movement tend to differ across the country. Some very interesting and positive developments are happening within the Quebec labour movement over the crucial issue of how to develop a new political alternative. Learning about such progress may be of great interest elsewhere. I must say, to start, that some key aspects of Quebec politics are quite different from the rest of the country. For one thing, the NDP plays little (if any) role in Quebec politics. Up to now, left-oriented forces and labour in Quebec were more inclined to associate themselves with the PQ. But, as the PQ has moved more and more to the right, people are breaking with that party; in that regard, there are similarities with the situation in English Canada. Secondly, no unions here are formally linked to any political party. That is not in line with the Quebec labour tradition, and the Quebec Election Act would not permit it. I will not go into details about the origins of this tradition, except to say that it is linked to the influence of the Catholic Church until the early Sixties, as well as a widespread belief that politics is for individuals, and not for labour or business organizations. In fact, such ties are formally prohibited by the constitutions of many labour organizations, such as the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CNTU). Elsewhere, such as within the Quebec Federation of Labour (QFL), there are no such clauses, but support to political parties is always seen as conditional to a specific election or for a limited time. No labour body gave any kind of support to any party during the last federal and provincial elections in Quebec. Mind you, the QFL gave strong support to both the PQ and the Bloc Quebecois in previous elections. Now, the Quebec Election Act forbids any donation to a political party which does not come directly from an individual. In a sense, Quebec labour is currently addressing the complex issue of political action from a rather different angle than in English Canada, where unions have had formal ties to the NDP for many years. But interestingly enough, key sectors of the Quebec union movement are now openly promoting the idea that labour should play a much more active role within the political arena. These forces say it is time for Quebec labour to stop sub-contracting our duties to political parties over which we have very little control. As an example, CUPW's large Montreal local recently adopted a resolution requesting the QFL to organize a public forum for affiliates to discuss whether labour should get more directly involved in politics. That resolution was sent for discussion to the upcoming QFL convention, and has since received the support of the QFL's Montreal labour council. Meanwhile, the Quebec director of the CAW, Luc Desnoyers, a key QFL vice-presidents, has committed himself even more over the last few weeks by stating publicly that labour needs to get more involved. Even more important was a decision by the CNTU's Montreal labour council, which ended its 31st convention on the same day the NDP began its meeting in Winnipeg. Prior to the discussion on that decision, the executive committee of that labour council, which includes about one third of all CNTU affiliates, had reported on its many efforts to help build a new left-wing alternative. Such efforts were in line with a decision made two years ago, at their 30th convention, that the labour council should support such actions. The executive committee reported especially about their involvement during the Mercier by-election last April, in support of left candidate Paul Cliche. The labour council currently participates as an observer to the work of the Liaison Committee of the newly formed Union of Progressive Forces (UPF), a coalition formed by three left wing political parties, including the Communist Party. While the committee report stated that the coalition was still too small to effectively challenge the Liberal Party and the PQ, it also stressed that the UPF is currently the only place where things are actually moving towards a left-oriented and viable alternative. This is the starting point, they said, even though the low votes for left-wing candidates during four different by-elections in September were discouraging to many. The report concluded on the need to consolidate and enlarge such a coalition with the support of many other organizations like Quebec Federation of Women. Finally, it reaffirmed that labour needs to preserve its autonomy at all times in such a process, as well as to make sure that involvement in the political arena should be based on labour's general orientations and not the other way around. At the end of the debate, the 500 delegates voted more than 90% in favour of a resolution which gave the labour council a mandate to go one step further and become an active player (as opposed to just supporting) in the building of such an alternative for the next provincial and municipal elections. We are still pretty far from the day when we will be able to constitute a mass political coalition of all left-oriented and labour forces in Quebec (one of the top items on the political agenda of the Parti communiste du Quebec), as opposed to bringing everybody into one unified political organization. (The latter unrealistic idea would also have major drawbacks in terms of preserving the current political diversity of the left, which is to our mind something precious to be preserved.) Building such a coalition is also a good way to promote the involvement of labour while these organizations can still keep their autonomy. This decision by the CNTU's Montreal labour council is an important step towards building a strong people's alternative in Quebec. (Andr� Parizeau is the chair of the Parti communiste du Quebec, and one of the PCQ's three delegates on the Liaison Committee of the Union of Progressive Forces.) *****************
