February 15, 2013 - No. 19
All Out to Rescind Anti-Social
Changes to Employment Insurance
More Rallies in Quebec
February
23
Day of Action Against
Anti-Social Changes to Employment Insurance
Demonstrations
against
Employment Insurance changes in La Malbaie and Mont-Joli, Quebec, February
4, 2013
CALENDAR OF
EVENTS
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All
Out
to Rescind Anti-Social Changes to Employment Insurance
• More Rallies in Quebec
Opposition to Quebec
Government's Anti-Social Offensive
• Government Scientists and Researchers
Strongly Oppose Cuts
Health
Care
Is a Right!
• Capital-Centred View of Private-for-Profit
Health Care Delivery to Pay the Rich
Latin America
• Elections in Ecuador
• Progress in Colombian Peace Talks
All Out to Rescind Anti-Social Changes to
Employment Insurance
More Rallies in Quebec
Montreal
Nearly 300 people held a militant rally February 12 in
front of the Guy-Favreau Complex in downtown Montreal to denounce the
Harper government’s
recent changes to Employment Insurance (EI), which they say are
destroying EI. Most at the rally were workers, including striking
workers from the MAPEI plant in Laval which produces chemical products
for the construction industry and locked out workers from the Maritime
Hotel in Montreal, members
of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) and the Quebec
Federation
of Labour (QFL), lecturers from the University of Quebec in Montreal
(UQAM) and several groups fighting for the rights of unemployed
workers. The Guy-Favreau Complex houses the Service Canada Centre and
the Quebec regional Employment
Insurance offices.
Slogans, banners and statements declared that the
changes have nothing to do with reforming EI, and everything to do with
an unprecedented attack on the most vulnerable.
The Harper government’s ideological offensive against
unemployed workers, contrary to what is conveyed in the monopoly media,
will impact all workers, not just in the regions, but in Montreal and
other major cities as well. According to Montreal’s Department of
Economic and Urban Development, 48 per cent of Montreal residents of
working age work part-time -- 52 per cent of women and 44 per cent of
men do not work full-time. Conditions of employment in several sectors
are deteriorating and full-time work is no longer the norm.
"Precarious employment status remains largely the
preserve of women, youth and immigrants," said the treasurer of the
Central Council of Metropolitan Montreal CSN, Manon Perron, who
denounced the social impacts of the Conservative attacks. "Several of
Montreal’s employment sectors are particularly affected
by this reform. Seasonal industries such as tourism or hospitality
immediately come to mind, but tens of thousands who work in school
transportation, construction or who teach will also be hurt, not to
mention job placement agencies, which will also be strongly affected.
The obligation to accept a lower paying
job will inevitably bring all wages down. There is nothing but bad news
for the workers here," she said.
The vice-president of the CSN, Jean Lacharité
said: "The federal government is torpedoing the EI program by refusing
any form of consultation. Worse, it is going ahead despite opposition
from the unions, advocacy groups for the unemployed, federal political
parties in Quebec, all the members of the National
Assembly, municipalities, the socio-economic development agencies and
by many employers and representatives of the business community, in a
rare unanimity of Quebec civil society. And don't forget, the
government has not put a penny in the fund since 1990; it is funded
solely by contributions from workers
and employers. This contempt must stop."
The coordinator for the Autonomous Movement in
Solidarity with the Unemployed (MASS), Marie-Hélène
Arruda, said that the Conservative government is disconnected from the
reality of ordinary workers. "When the Minister of Human Resources and
Skills Development Diane Finley encourages lecturers to
change careers if they cannot teach full-time, she is denying the
reality of the sector. It is the same for all precarious jobs. Who will
drive the school bus? Who will work in hotels during the summer? Who
will work the tourist season? Nobody, because everyone will be working
for a pittance at a fast food restaurant
irrespective of their qualifications or experience. This is a net loss
for Quebec’s economic competitiveness. Is this the social project of
the Conservative Party?"
Rallies in Sherbrooke, Victoriaville, Lévis,
Dolbeau-Mistassini, the city of Saguenay, Shawinigan and Joliette were
among the many held in Quebec.
All these gatherings highlighted the determination of
the workers and their allies to defeat the Harper government’s EI
reforms. Everyone is called on to participate in the national action on
February 23.
Victoriaville
Dolbeau-Mistassini
Dolbeau-Mistassini
(left); Shawinigan
Saguenay
Levis (left);
Tracadie-Sheila, NB
(Translated from
original
French by
TML.)
Opposition to Quebec Government's
Anti-Social Offensive
Government Scientists and Researchers
Strongly Oppose
Cuts
Researchers at several Quebec research institutions are
taking
action to oppose the Marois government's cuts to their budgets
announced December 6, which will negatively effect their work and
consequently the well-being of Quebeckers. In a statement December 7,
the government announced its expenditure
estimates for government departments and agencies for the 2013-2014
fiscal year. It stated, "Along with many other Quebec government
departments and agencies, the Quebec Research Fund is being called upon
to contribute to the government's effort to achieve the goal of a
balanced budget." The statement continued:
"According to the budget of expenditures tabled by the
President of
the Treasury Board, the budget for the Quebec Research Fund -- Nature
and Technology (FRQNT) will be cut from $50.1 million in 2012-2013 to
$35.2 million in 2013-2014, a reduction of 30%. The Quebec Research
Fund -- Health (FRQS)
will be cut from $79.8 million in 2012-2013 to $69.8 million in
2013-2014, a reduction of 13%. For the Quebec Research Fund -- Society
and Culture (FRQSC), the annual budget will be cut from $49.1 million
in 2012-2013 to $42.8 million in 2013-2014, a reduction of 13%. The
total budget cuts amount to $31
million for [2013], representing a reduction of $14.8 million for the
FRQNT, $10 million for the FRQS and $6.2 million for the FRQSC."
Since the announcement on December 6, hundreds of
scientists and
researchers from the FRQNT have denounced the cuts. More than 10,400
people have signed a petition addressed to Minister of Higher
Education, Research, Science and Technology Pierre Duchesne demanding
that he maintain the full integrity
of the budget and review the government's decision. The researchers
have also posted a satirical video in which they collect empty bottles,
wash windshields and hold car-washes to fund their work.
On January 30, managers, researchers and students from
18 research
centres at health facilities in Quebec began a campaign to demand the
immediate cancellation of the $10 million in cuts to the FRQS related
to the ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology.
The Laval University Students' Union and the Laval
Graduate
Students' Association added their voices to those denouncing the Marois
government's decision. They point out that this decision sets a
negative tone for the Education Summit scheduled February 25-26 on the
issue of higher education in Quebec,
and in particular the funding of universities.
To support the campaign, several health research centres
have posted
on their websites the testimonies of researchers, students and patients
about the importance of the research and their opposition to the cuts.
Doctors and scientists have criticized the cuts. "Our
2012 budget is less than in 2002. There has not been an increase since
2002 and now
it have been cut even further," said the director of the Research
Centre at the University Hospital Centre of Quebec City (CHUQ), Dr.
Serge Rivest. Approximately 3,500
people work at the Research Centre of the CHUQ, said Rivest. This
figure includes 1,500 students and 500 researchers.
"These sudden cuts have amputated health research in
Quebec in a
radical and definitive way, and undermined the hopes of thousands of
patients who require advanced health care and experimental treatments,"
said Dr. Jacques Turgeon, Director of the Research Centre at the
University Hospital Centre of Montreal
(CHUM).
"The cuts affect student scholarships at the Masters and
PhD
levels," said Cyril Schneider, professor and researcher in clinical
neuroscience. "They are full-time researchers, so that’s a loss of
wages. For researchers with grants, salaries for technicians and
research professionals have to be paid. Some teams scrape
the bottom of the barrel to pay them. These professionals will lose
their jobs. Laboratories may be less well run."
Louis Bernatchez of Laval University, winner of the 2012
Marie-Victorin award for science, said FRQNT grants finance the
operation of research teams and the training of graduate students, as
well as the scholarship programs available to masters and PhD students.
Graduate students or young Quebec scientists
will likely be the main victims of these cuts, he said.
The scientists and researchers denounce the government's
double-speak as Premier Pauline Marois' says her government is
committed to scientific research but imposes cuts that will undermine
it. The government claims that the cuts will not affect services to the
population. Whether in education, health care or
social programs, Quebeckers from all walks of life are very aware that
years of cuts "that do not affect services to the people" have
gradually destroyed the social fabric and the existing arrangements,
with real and often disastrous consequences.
Government Cuts to Research Followed by Pay-the-Rich
Schemes
Meanwhile, the Minister of Higher Education, Research,
Science and
Technology announced on January 29 a government grant of $2,560,000
over two years to the Consortium for Research and Innovation in Medical
Technologies
of Quebec (MEDTEQ). This amount is the maximum permitted, it is
reported. Established in 2012, the Consortium's mission is to
accelerate the development of the medical technology industry by
facilitating collaboration between companies and public research
institutions.
The Minister has also announced a national conference in
April that
will be used in the development of future policy on research and
innovation, which will be launched later this spring. What direction
will research take?
In the context of pay-the-rich schemes with money taken
out of social programs, what this research money will be used for is
suspect. The people of Quebec will remain mobilized against the
anti-social offensive.
Health Care Is a
Right!
Capital-Centred View of Private-for-Profit
Health Care
Delivery to Pay the Rich
Delivery of health care adds value to people and
society. How this should be done in the most efficient manner to serve
all people without prejudice and without value being drained out of the
health services system to pay-the-rich is a pertinent question. Most
Canadians believe public not-for-profit health care
delivery accessible to all without user fees is the necessary and best
way to guarantee the people's right to health care. This belief arises
in part from the negative experience of an early Canada without public
health care delivery. Many chronic diseases ran rampant through the
country causing havoc and misery for
the people and their communities, especially as Canada became more
urbanized and diseases more easily transferable. Something had to be
done to protect the common good. A uniform national form of public
health care delivery was established called Medicare.
Many in the ruling elite have never been comfortable
with public health care delivery and even less so with its extension to
the production and delivery of pharmaceuticals and hospital supplies.
This reluctance is born out of class bias and their sense and
expectation of privilege; it has nothing to do with efficiency,
productivity, combating illness, treating injuries or anything else
related to meeting the people's need for modern health care. The class
bias arises from their position as privileged owners of capital and the
narrow belief that every pore of the economy must be available to them
to make private profit in one way or
another. Within this world view, if economic activity does not generate
private profit to pay the rich then such activity, no matter how
laudable it may be, is of no use.
Even worse, this outlook contends
any activity that does
not generate private profit to pay the rich is more damaging than any
social good it may produce because it deprives owners of capital of
already produced value. This restricts owners of capital from using
potential capital for projects that may generate
additional private profit. Their capital-centred worldview is in
constant battle with a human-centred one. The human-centred worldview
keeps persisting against the capital-centred worldview because the
well-being and security of the people and future of society depend on
its success. Also, the human-centred view
is in harmony with the objective modern conditions and represents the
progressive trend of history. It constantly strains to bring the
subjective conditions and authority controlling society into harmony
with the objective socialized conditions.
The capital-centred worldview senses that its existence
is in contradiction with the objective socialized economy. It knows
this not in any theoretical way based on science but in a pragmatic
reactionary way forcing it constantly to defend its privileged private
interests in the face of an objective world that is not
in harmony with its outmoded view.
An example of this incoherent action to perpetuate the
capital-centred view is found in the constant pressure to privatize the
delivery of health care. The mass media play an important role in this
retrogressive pressure as they push the public will and opinion to give
up adherence to a human-centred outlook demanding
public not-for-profit health care delivery accessible to all without
user fees.
Patient Transfers
Emergency and non emergency patient transfers are
necessary features of health care delivery. The capital-centred view
wants to seize control of patient transfers to generate private profit
to pay the rich. Owners of British capital have apparently undermined
public delivery of patient transfers in the UK and decided
to expand their business into Canada. They recently established a
private enterprise called SN Transport Ltd, built a large facility in
Abbotsford, BC and purchased 50 vehicles including vans and full
service
ambulances. Using political contacts within the provincial government,
they acquired service contracts with
Lower Mainland Health Authorities, WorkSafe BC, ICBC and others to
transfer "medically stable clients whose condition requires
professional assistance and care -- but does not require transport by
Ambulance." The agency in question pays a contracted fee for each
patient transfer. The individual patient must also
pay a $50 user fee.
As this private for profit delivery of health care to
pay the rich goes against the trend of history, the mass media are
doing everything in their power to make sure no pro-social opposition
develops. They are running farfetched stories of oodles of money the
public agencies are saving by using private for-profit
patient transport. The "savings" are apparently calculated based on the
difference between the value provided by a full service public
ambulance with a crew of highly trained paramedics versus a
non-emergency transport vehicle staffed with lesser trained and lower
paid personnel. The mass media also said the reliability
of the private for-profit service is better because a full service
ambulance can be called to an emergency at any time leaving a scheduled
patient transfer for a later time. The mass media left unsaid the
private profit extracted from the value provided by the service to pay
the rich nor did they mention that a public
ambulance system could easily organize a non-emergency program of
patient transfers using less expensive vehicles and equipment and lower
trained personnel. This already exists in many regions of BC through
HandyDART, which is an accessible public transit service using vans or
small buses to transport disabled
or elderly passengers directly from their homes to travel destinations.
This system could easily be expanded throughout BC to include bedridden
patient transfers needing more specialized vehicles, equipment and
trained personnel. That would strengthen public not-for-profit health
care delivery available to all without
prejudice or user fees and the progressive trend of history.
The working class must take up the challenge to refute
the anti-social capital-centred view on all issues, including health
care delivery, and counter with a pro-social human-centred outlook.
Groups of Writers and Disseminators in workplaces, educational
institutions and neighbourhoods need to be organized to
discuss and publicize the human-centred view on all problems and
concerns facing the people and their socialized economy.
Latin America
Elections in Ecuador
On February 17, general elections will be held in
Ecuador to elect the president and the 135 members of the country's
National Assembly. On this occasion, the 11,666,000 electors across 24
provinces will choose from among eight presidential candidates. The
candidates represent: Aliance Movimiento PAIS (outgoing
President Rafael Correa's party), Partido Creando Oportunidades,
Partido Sociedad Patriótica, the Coordinadora Plurinacional of
Izquierdas, Partido Acción Nacional Renovador, Mouvimiento
Sociedad Más Acción Unida, Partido Movimiento Ruptura and
Roldosista Ecuatoriano.
Since the start of the election campaign, President
Rafael Correa has stressed the necessity to win the presidency and the
parliamentary majority in order to ensure the development
of the citizen revolution. Speaking of advances made since the start of
this revolution that was initiated with his election as president
in 2006, Correa said that "for years several bills favouring the
development of the common good of the Ecuadorian people have been
blocked by the opposition. This opposition is not democratic but a
conspiracy that is an obstacle and uses blackmail." Correa said that
the most important thing is to pursue the revolution
and quoted Ecuador's historical hero, Eloy Alfaro, "We seek
nothing for ourselves but to transform the unjust structures of the
country, political power is necessary." For this reason the President
is calling for the Ecuadorian people to make the saying Patria Para
Siempre (Homeland Forever) a reality by
unanimously voting for number 35 on the ballot, the Movimiento Alianza
PAIS party.
According to the latest polls published by
Opinión Pública Ecuador February 11, outgoing
president Rafael Correa will win the presidency in the first round of
voting which means he must get more than 50 per cent of the vote. In
the poll, Guillermo Lasso of the
Partido Creando Oportunidades came in second but trailed far behind.
A Union of South American Nations delegation is
on site to supervise the Ecuadorian electoral process. In addition,
some 35,000 military personnel have been deployed across the country to
ensure security for the people and the polls and ensure the
elections are properly conducted on February 17.
Progress in Colombian Peace Talks
The latest session of ongoing peace talks in Havana,
Cuba between
representatives of the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia -- People's Army (FARC-EP) was completed on February
10, ending the first three months of peace talks.
Representatives of both parties highlighted the advances
made in
these first three months of talks at a press conference, and each side
expressed satisfaction with the progress of the negotiations. The head
of the government delegation, Humberto de la Calle, said there is a
reconciliation of views on the formalization
of land ownership and that this will continue during the resumed
session on February 18. For his part, the leader of the delegation of
the FARC-EP, Luciano Marin Arango, confirmed some advances have been
made.
The development of a comprehensive land policy for the
ownership of
land is the first of five points of discussion at the negotiating
table. Its regulation, in the eyes of the FARC-EP, is a focal point for
the establishment of peace in Colombia. Other points are: an end to the
armed conflict, the treatment of victims
and the verification process, reintegration and the trafficking of
narcotics.
Official data from the Colombian government show 77 per
cent of the
land is controlled by 13 per cent of land owners, 3.6 per cent of whom
hold 30 per cent of the total land area.
Another breakthrough achieved with the last round of
talks is the
release of three hostages by the FARC-EP, demonstrating their
willingness to contribute to a cease-fire and to smooth bilateral peace
talks. On February 12, former Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba,
now
spokesman for the group Colombians
for Peace, said during an interview on Telesur: "With great joy, I
inform you that the coordinates [where the hostages will be released]
have come through. I have sent them to the Deputy Minister of Defence.
We
are ready
to begin releases." It is expected that two policemen and a soldier
will be free within 72 hours after transmission of the coordinates.
Although both parties are satisfied with the progress of
the talks,
thorny issues, such as that of victims of the conflict remain. On the
one hand, the government party continues to treat the issue of the
victims from the perspective that they are the consequences of
terrorist acts committed by the FARC-EP. De la
Calle said "there will be no peace agreement without the guerrilla
facing its victims. In time, we will implement the systems and
mechanisms to make that happen." Meanwhile Márquez, representing
FARC-EP, responded that "they are thousands, the victims of the
conflict, and if the government takes the issue of
victims very seriously, it should render accounts to society for the
historical rosary of crimes of state terrorism. There is no doubt that
the state is fundamentally responsible for these crimes."
Talks will resume on February 18 with the continuation
of
negotiations on agricultural policy. Many politicians in Colombia,
including the Polo Democrático Alternativo, strongly criticize
the Santos government using the talks to be re-elected in the general
elections of 2014.
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Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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