October 8, 2008 - No. 137
Harper's Corporate Tax Cuts Are a
Factor in the Economic Crisis
• Harper's
Corporate Tax Cuts Are a Factor in the Economic Crisis
• Oppose Racial Profiling and Division on the
Basis
of "Ethnic Votes" - Philip Fernandez
• The Kind of "Quebec Nationalism" of which
the Conservatives Are "Natural Allies" - Pierre
Soublière
Edmonton
• Support the Maple Leaf Workers!
• Abolish the Temporary Foreign Workers
Program! Status for All! - Peggy Morton
Harper's Corporate Tax Cuts Are a Factor in the
Economic Crisis
 Whenever
Harper speaks on the economy he touts corporate income tax cuts. He
wears corporate tax cuts as a badge of honour. Together with previous
Liberal Party corporate tax cuts, the next round of reductions planned
by Harper will have lowered the rate from 30 to 15 percent. These cuts
have been a factor
in the current economic crisis.
By taking more added-value out of companies, the rich
have squandered it on luxuries, saved it within their personal empires
or put it in hedge funds or other schemes using the value as collateral
for huge loans to buy up everything on earth. With leveraged buy-outs,
the rich have gone on a rampage privatizing
public assets everywhere, concentrating ownership in fewer and fewer
private hands, engaging in parasitic frauds involving real estate, and
using their wealth and power to push governments towards war and war
spending, where sales and earnings are guaranteed by government and
defeated countries can be pillaged
at will.
Lowering corporate income tax has transferred large
amounts of revenue from companies in the goods producing and service,
social and retail sectors into the financial sector for use in usury
and international parasitic speculation. Using computers and the
internet, trillions of leveraged dollars, euros and yen are
traded daily around the globe with interest and fees paid for each
parasitic transaction. This taking of added-value out of the socialized
economy to be squandered by parasites is unsustainable creating
conditions for the current economic crisis to be severe and potentially
very damaging to the peoples and economies
around the world.
Lowering corporate taxes has put the burden of taxation
on individuals leaving them with less to spend within the socialized
economy. High individual income, sales and property taxes, and user
fees for social programs have contributed to the current economic
crisis.
 Lowering corporate
taxes has intensified the backward
trend of the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, widening the gap
between the working class and the owners of monopoly capital. This
plays a significant role in making the periodic business cycles more
intense leading to production shutdowns, layoffs
and hardship for the people.
Having corporate income tax calculated on ownership
profit and not on revenue means that interest payments and fees paid by
companies are deductions from revenue on which corporate income tax is
paid. The degree of leverage within companies today is so high that a
large amount of company revenue is claimed
as interest and fees and siphoned off to moneylenders before any tax is
paid. High leverage also lessens the amount of revenue available for
reinvestment back in companies and has been another factor in weakening
the socialized economy.
The often unconscionably high claims by senior executive
managers of companies are another drain on company revenue. When
executive managers take out their claims from company revenue it acts
as another deduction from the amount on which corporate tax is based
further reducing it.
Low corporate income taxes mean that directors and those
holding major ownership rights have more incentive to take added-value
out of companies in ownership profit because they face lower corporate
income tax. Everything becomes geared to taking added-value out of
companies leaving less revenue available
to reinvest or retain for protection against hard times. This even has
a capital-centred name called "maximizing shareholder value."
 The Harper and Liberal Party cuts to corporate
income
taxes have been a factor in the present economic crisis. Corporate
income tax cuts are methods to pay the rich directly damaging the
socialized economy. Harper and Liberals should render accounts for the
problems they have caused to the Canadian economy.
They must be stopped from doing further damage.
A step towards resolving the problem of taxation would
be to have government take control of the wholesale sector to stop
monopolies from manipulating prices, eliminate individual taxes and
have all government claims made directly from company revenue.
Block the right-wing agenda of lowering corporate
taxation! Stop paying the rich and pandering to their destructive
greed; it causes economic crises! Join in to build powerful committees
for democratic
renewal!
Vote
Marxist-Leninist!
Oppose Racial Profiling and Division
on the Basis of "Ethnic Votes"
- Philip Fernandez* -
 One of the most
unsavoury aspects of the Canadian
political system of "representative democracy" is the violation of the
political rights of national minorities during and between elections.
When going door to door during elections, it is clear that many people
are opposed to the "major parties" targeting this
or that "ethnic group" as "vote banks."
Instead of treating national minority electors --
particularly those from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle-East
and the Caribbean -- as equal members of one electorate and one polity,
the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP apply various forms of pressure and
blackmail to capture the "ethnic vote." For example,
at a recent annual general meeting of a Filipino community organization
in Toronto, first the NDP candidate came along to remind the members
how she has been supporting their call to scrap the notorious Live-In
Caregiver Program and that she "hopes that everyone will continue to
work with her." Not to be outdone,
some minutes later the Liberal candidate appeared and spent the rest of
the meeting time going table to table for "photo-ops" and promising
those present that if he is elected he will do everything possible to
help them bring their families over to Canada and other such promises!
Those from the national minority communities who want to
be candidates for these "major parties" often have to negate their own
right to conscience and agree to "deliver the ethnic vote" to the
political party they belong to in exchange for the "privileges" of
office.
This whole strategy of "winning the ethnic vote" is a
reflection of the 19th century Eurocentric colonial outlook of the
Canadian political system and serves as an instrument of the political
corruption of the electoral process -- dividing the Canadian polity on
a
racist basis and further ghettoizing national minority
citizens and residents and their collectives. These political parties
humiliate the national minority communities by promising to do certain
things if they vote for these parties, e.g. ease immigration to Canada,
or recognize the professional qualifications of foreign-trained
citizens. These are not privileges, but rights
that must be provided with a guarantee, The manipulation of the
national minority communities serves to lower the overall political
culture and is an affront to all Canadians.
Leading up to and during the current elections, the
Harper Conservatives have gone all out to win over the "ethnic votes"
from the Liberal Party which is presented by the mass media as having a
sense of "entitlement" to the votes of the national minority
communities by virtue of having brought in large numbers
of immigrant in the post-war period as well as the official policy of
multiculturalism -- a racist policy that divides the polity between
majority French and English speaking peoples and the "visible
minorities" and Aboriginals where the former are to "tolerate" the
latter if the latter uphold "Canadian values."
In January 2007, the Harper government created an
"ethnic outreach team" headed by Jason Kenney, Minister of State for
Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity. At that time, according to Mr.
Kenney, the "ethnic outreach team" would engage in a "direct voter
campaign to build support" for the Conservative Party...
and "to replace the Liberals as the primary voice of new Canadians and
ethnic minorities." Media reports at the time pointed out that
Canadians and residents of Korean, Chinese, Jewish, South Asian,
Iranian, Polish, Jamaican, Filipino and Vietnamese descent in some 30
ridings cross Canada that were lost by 5 percent
of the vote make up a large enough percentage of voters to swing the
result next time were being targeted by the Conservatives.
Using public funds under the Department of Heritage, and
building a database of "ethnic voters" by "renting or buying lists of
names from third parties, and by attending events where they can gather
business cards and guest lists," the Harper Conservatives hope to use
national minorities to win seats in Vancouver,
Toronto and Montreal en route
to a majority government.
In his crude attempts to use the national minority
communities in the election, Stephen Harper even suggests that the
values of "new Canadians" are the values of the Conservative Party.
In a statement on the Conservative Party website posted on September 9,
2008, Harper states, among other things: "Friends,
the Conservative Party is your party. Just as you see in Canada the
promise of a stronger, safer and better future, we see in you the
promise of a stronger, safer and better Canada."
Stephen Harper and the other "major parties" sow a large
amount of disinformation between and during the elections to present
themselves as "friends" of "new Canadians." These charades may fool the
gullible, but not the vast majority of national minorities who belong
to the working class and who have direct
experience of the brutal attacks of the Harper Conservatives, the
intensifying of the anti-social offensive, the wrecking of the economy
and the criminalization of the people's struggles. The destruction of
the economy in Ontario for example, has meant that that more and more
national minorities are out of work and
face a bleak future. The Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants
for example notes that in the current period the income disparity
between immigrants and the rest of Canadians has been the widest in the
last 25 years. Karen Sun, executive director of the Chinese Canadian
National Council, Toronto Chapter,
notes that the "major parties" are "out of touch" with the reality of
living conditions of new immigrants and citizens from the Chinese and
other national minority communities.
National minorities have not forgotten that almost
10,000 people are deported from Canada each year for being "illegal."
National minorities have not forgotten that anti-immigrant laws such as
Bill C-50 which is aimed at expanding the number of temporary workers
to serve as indentured labour with no rights
for the biggest oil and other monopolies in Canada, was passed in June
this year with the support of the Liberal Party.
National minorities have not forgotten that the Anti-Terrorism
Act was passed by the "major parties" in 2001 and has been used to
commit acts of state-terror against South Asians and those of Muslim
faith as in the case of the Toronto 18; or that the security
certificate regime has been expanded
by the Harper government despite the demands of Canadians that it
should be scrapped. Nor have they forgotten that their demand that Omar
Khadr, a Canadian citizen imprisoned by the U.S. for more than six
years at its military base in Guantanamo Bay,
be brought back to Canada has been ignored by the Harper government.
What conclusion is
to be drawn from these facts? First
of all, that national minorities cannot rely on these "major political
parties "to defend their rights and the rights of the Canadian people.
Secondly, in order to guarantee their rights, well-being and collective
futures, national minorities must be in the forefront
of democratic renewal in Canada under the leadership of the working
class in order to end once and for all the endless attacks on their
rights by the Canadian ruling elites and their parties.
In this election, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada
has advanced the slogan Fund the
Process, Not the Parties! Public funds
now being used to fund the big political parties and their campaigns
must instead be used to empower and involve the citizens and residents
of a riding in the democratic act of selecting
and then electing suitable candidates from among their peers to
parliament. This would go a long way to enable national minorities not
only to participate as equal members of the electorate, but they will
stand as candidates on their own merits, and not be used as an
instrument by the big political parties to marginalize
their communities. These changes would go a long way in ending the
racial profiling, discrimination and abuse of national minorities
during and between elections.
No
to the Abuse and Racial Profiling of National
Minorities in the Electoral Process!
Fund the Process Not the Parties!
Vote Marxist-Leninist!
The Kind of "Quebec Nationalism" of which the
Conservatives Are "Natural Allies"
- Pierre Soublière* -
 According to Tom Flanagan,
political organizer and
ideologue of the Conservative Party in his book Harper's Team:
Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, from the time
of his association with the Canadian Alliance, in 2001, Harper
dedicated himself to the "alliance of conservatives"
in Canada. The first step was to merge the Reform Party and the
Progressive Conservative Party. The next is to win over the populist
conservatives of the West, the fiscal conservatives of Ontario and the
"Quebec nationalists."
Harper believes that Brian Mulroney's mistake of
dragging the country into constitutional changes must not be repeated
because, according to him, "it played in the hands of the
sovereigntists." In other words, Mulroney's mistake which led to the
Conservatives' crushing defeat in the 1993 election is not that he
ignored the verdict of the people who defeated the entire Canadian
establishment in the 1992 referendum on the Charlottetown Accord. The
verdict meant that Canadians want constitutional changes that will
correct the historical wrongs done to the nation of Quebec and the
First Nations and provide them with a means
to have a say in the country's political affairs. No, according to
Harper, Mulroney's mistake was to submit issues of a constitutional
nature to the judgement of the people and to give them an occasion to
express their democratic aspirations. Harper is saying that Canadians
in general and the people of Quebec in particular
must never again be given such an opportunity. This strategy of
reducing the people to silence would basically allow the Conservatives
to demonstrate that "it is not scary to have a Conservative government
in power."
The same strategy has now taken the form of a charm
offensive in Quebec, starting with Harper's motion in the House
recognizing the "Quebecois form a nation." Before tabling this motion,
Harper considered that calling Quebec a nation was mere semantics. But
he figured that adopting a motion which describes
the nation on an ethnocentric basis would take the wind out of the
sails of the sovereignty movement.
That was the flowers. Now the pot. The pot is all the
election dealings between the Conservatives and the Liberal Party of
Quebec and the Action Démocratique and their riding
organizations to "block the Bloc" and elect Conservatives in Quebec.
The truth of the matter, according to observers, is that the
Conservative
Party does not have enough membership in Quebec to wage the fight at
that level. While many of the local organizations of Jean Charest's
Liberals support the Conservatives on the ground, Charest himself
publicly expressed dissension with Harper and claims to be against
Harper's annexationist agenda and to be
the defender of the interests of Quebec.
In the years following the Quebec referendum of 1995,
the Liberal Party of Jean Chrétien threatened Quebec with
partition, saying that if Quebec can secede and "partition" Canada,
then Canada has to right to "partition" Quebec. The Reform Party at
that time supported this approach. The partitioning of Quebec
included the North, a strategic area for the U.S. imperialists in terms
of hydro-electric power, other natural resources and geo-strategic
location. And now another great "nationalist," Quebec Liberal Premier
Jean Charest, says he wants the next Quebec election to be about
northern development, hydro-electric power
and, no doubt, other resources as well. The talk is no longer about
partition because the annexation to the U.S. is proceeding as planed.
This, it seems, is the kind of "Quebec nationalism" of which the
Conservatives are the "natural allies."
Next: The Case of Dion
Edmonton
Support the Maple Leaf Workers!
About 325 members of United Food and Commercial Workers
Canada Local 1118 working at the Maple Leaf poultry plant in northeast
Edmonton are on strike. The strike began at noon on Sunday, September
21. The workers rejected a mediator's recommendation of an offer
similar to what the company tried
to force on the workers the previous week, with the threat of a lockout
if the offer wasn't ratified.
Maple Leaf is a highly socialized monopoly of meat
production, processing, rendering and distribution directly involving
23,000 workers across the country. It is owned and controlled by one of
the richest families in Canada, the McCain family oligarchs.
The workers are demanding higher wages and additional
personal clean-up time and parity with workers at the Lilydale plants.
The current start rate at the plant is $11.08 per hour with a 30 month
progression to the base rate of pay, which is $15.82 per hour. In
comparison, at the Edmonton Lilydale
plant the start rate is $13.50 with a 12 month progression to the base
rate of pay. The start rate at Lilydale in Calgary is currently $13.50
and will be $14.00 effective March 2009 and $14.50 effective April
2010. At Lilydale in Calgary the base rate is $17.08 and will be $17.58
effective March 29, 2009. The wage
difference with Calgary is currently $1.26 and will be 2.26 April 4,
2010.
Workers also want an additional five minutes attached
to break time to wash up properly before sitting down to eat or have
coffee. Currently their cleanup time is part of their 15 minute break
time and their half hour lunch time, rather than part of their working
time.
The strikers also described some of the difficult
working conditions at the plant. Packing plants and poultry processing
facilities are notorious for the breakneck speed of the line and many
workers suffer from repetitive strain and other injuries. They have to
work in the cold, generally below 10 degrees.
Overtime is compulsory and 9 or 10-hour shifts are normal.
Of the 325 workers at the Maple Leaf plant, 98 are
temporary foreign workers. Jack Westgeest, northern director of the
United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Local 1118, the union
representing the strikers, explained to TML that an agreement
had been reached with the
employer that up to 45 temporary foreign workers would be hired. As
part of the agreement, an English as a second language program was
negotiated for the workers. However, Maple Leaf violated the agreement.
In addition to the 98 temporary foreign workers working at the plant
when the strike began, fully aware
that a strike was imminent, the company brought in another 17 workers
from the Ukraine. The workers from Ukraine have never set foot in the
plant, so the union has no means of contacting these workers who are
now in Canada without jobs or any means of living.
The workers explained how the temporary foreign workers
are being gouged by the company. The company holds the leases on the
workers' accommodation and deducts the rent from their paycheques
directly. The rent for a duplex where workers are housed and must share
a room is $2,500 a month,
at least $1000 over the market rate. This is the method used to claw
back wages and pay the temporary foreign workers less. Despite promises
of free transportation, transportation costs are also deducted from the
workers' paycheques. Sometimes the workers are forced to wait one or
even two hours after their shift
for their transportation home.
The workers told TML that it is clear that
the preferred policy of the company is to hire temporary foreign
workers. The claim that there is a labour shortage is a fraud. The
company refuses to pay industry-standard wages and has forced the
workers out on strike for parity with other plants.
The workers said they know of many examples where citizens or permanent
residents who have applied for work were told that their English is not
good enough to be hired. Yet the company sends the temporary foreign
workers, some of whom do not speak English, into the plant with no
training, telling them to "learn from your buddy."
 Westgeest told TML that
despite the
vulnerable position of the temporary foreign workers who have nothing
to fall back on, there was an 85 percent strike vote at the plant.
He explained that when the temporary foreign workers
first arrived on the job, they did not even have food to eat for their
nine or ten hour shift. It was the care and concern of their fellow
workers who provided food and also helped the temporary foreign workers
with furniture, clothing, kitchen utensils
and food. Maple Leaf then tried to take credit for the efforts of the
workers.
Now that the workers are on strike, the temporary
foreign workers are not permitted by the program regulations to take a
part-time job to supplement their strike pay. Some strikers are
donating funds from their own strike pay to assist the temporary
foreign workers, Westgeest explained.
The workers explained how the police have been used to
intimidate the temporary foreign workers. The plant is quite isolated
within an industrial area with no main thoroughfare. The police sat in
their cars at the top of the street. To the workers who recently
arrived from countries such as Colombia
where hundreds of trade union leaders and activists have been murdered
by the paramilitary death squads and who are now indentured to Maple
Leaf, this is a clear attempt at intimidation.
"The workers are serious and are prepared for a long
strike," says Albert Johnson, president of UFCW Canada Local 1118.
"They are aware what their labour is worth, what's happened to the cost
of living in Alberta, and they are behind the current industry rate."
TML calls on Canadian workers to give all out
support to the Maple Leaf workers in their fight for a just contract.
Many unions, including other locals of UFCW, the Public Service
Alliance of Canada, the Teamsters and UNITE HERE Canada have already
joined the Maple Leaf picket
line to express their support. The plant is located at 91 Avenue and 26
Street.
Abolish the Temporary Foreign Workers Program! Status
for All!
- Peggy Morton* -
Workers at the Maple Leaf poultry
plant in Edmonton have
direct experience of how Harper has carried out a huge expansion of the
temporary foreign workers' program to attack their right to Canadian
standard wages and working conditions. The need to abolish the
temporary foreign workers program and provide
status for all is an election issue.
 The temporary foreign workers
program is a form of
modern-day slavery which is an unconscionable violation of human rights
and an affront to a modern conception of democracy in every possible
way. By creating a strata of workers with no rights, the rich aim to
split the class, pit worker against
worker and drive down the overall wages and working conditions of all
workers. The situation at Maple Leaf shows the brutality and inhumanity
of the employers and governments. It also shows that the workers and
their union have responded by doing everything to build their unity,
assist the temporary foreign
workers and oppose the attempts by the rich to pit worker against
worker.
Governments at all levels have put
themselves at the
disposal of employers and monopolies and are participating in a modern
day slave trade. In Alberta, hundreds of occupations have been declared
"under pressure" and for all these occupations the employers no longer
have to provide any proof whatsoever
that they are facing a "labour shortage." The Alberta Federation of
Labour reports that in 2006, Alberta became the first province in
Canada to bring more workers into the country under the temporary
foreign workers program than under the immigration program. In 2007,
the number of temporary foreign workers
grew to nearly double the number of new immigrants coming to the
province. As of December 1, 2007, there were 37,257 temporary foreign
workers in Alberta.
Workers at Maple Leaf have shown that the claim of
a
"labour shortage" is a total fraud. The work in the meat and poultry
plants is extremely hard. Maple Leaf refuses even to pay industry
standard wages, much less provide Canadian standard wages and working
conditions. It has forced the workers,
who are fighting for parity with other plants in the city out on
strike. What is more, the workers know from direct experience that
Maple Leaf turns away applicants who are citizens or permanent
residents of Canada. It prefers to hire temporary foreign workers over
whom it can exercise control over every aspect
of their lives, from where they live, how they get to work, and most
importantly, the power to sponsor them as immigrants some time in the
future.
 Together with the "Provincial
Nominee Program" and the
expanded arbitrary powers of the Minister of Immigration, governments
are complying with the demands of the monopolies that matters of
immigration and citizenship become the exclusive domain of the
monopolies in their drive to be internationally
competitive.
The existing temporary foreign workers program is in
contempt of modern society and modern relations between human beings
and must be eliminated. No worker can be indentured and tied to an
employer, and the program should be restricted to providing work
permits for genuinely short-term employment,
such as academic exchanges. Only with the consent of the union or
unions representing workers in a sector should the government be
permitted to declare a labour shortage.
Permanent resident status must be granted to both
undocumented workers and temporary foreign workers on the basis of
Status for All! and by affirming that No One Is Illegal!
Illegal activities such as those practiced by the
brokers to whom many temporary foreign workers have become indebted
must be ended and violators punished.
 To bring about these changes, it is
the workers with
their humane and enlightened stand to defend the rights of all who have
shown themselves fit to govern, not those who have put everything at
the service of the monopolies. We cannot permit the business parties
who only recognize the narrow interests
of the rich and act only to deliver what the monopolies are demanding
to maintain their stranglehold. Those who have reintroduced modern day
slavery have shown that they are not fit to govern. Society needs the
workers and the stand they represent that our security lies in our
fight for the rights of all in the leading
positions. These are the representatives we need in the Parliament,
our peers who fight every day for the rights of all. By building
committees for democratic renewal at our workplaces, in the
neighbourhoods, schools and colleges and amongst the seniors we can
together establish a program to select the candidate
who will represent that program and defend our interests.
Read The Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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