End divisive, cynical wedge political manipulations
By William Doyle-Marshall
Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party is determined to be always
the representative of her party’s constituencies. She made this absolutely
certain when she addressed a Town Hall meeting at the Legion Hall in Langford,
British Columbia. Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi, Green Party candidate for
Cowichan-Malahat-Langford was among speakers.
“Our job is to work for
you. Whoever your MP is, is your employee. This is a very long job application
process that Frances (Frances Litman candidate for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke) is going through because we are asking you to hire us to
work for you. We want to build the strongest, healthiest, economy with the most
local jobs everywhere,” May said.
To the applause of the
audience she emphasized “We are tired and we think Canadians are tired of
politics that seek to divide this country as though Ontario is against the
Prairies or B.C. is against Alberta. We are one country and we will accomplish
anything when we do it together. So our goal is to start thinking about Canada,
thinking like a country again. We’ve had too much divisive, cynical political
manipulations based on how to create what the political insiders call the wedge
issue.. It’s a terrible idea.”
She is disturbed that political parties and
the other parties are looking for an issue that will divide Canadians to motivate
people to vote only for them that is whatever party we are talking about. “This
wedge issue thing. I think it’s terrible. The job of parliamentarians should be
to work together to forge political consensus so MPs all together in parliament
at the end of an election start trying to figure out what is the common ground;
where do we start ensuring that we protect our health care system and build on
it; how do we ensure that our young people start out in life with a good start,
whether we are talking our kindergarteners or our kids coming out of university,”
May continued.
Questions from the audience
offered May the opportunity to speak about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
which was signed by Prime Minister Harper in secret without informing members
of parliament about its contents. In the document which has to be ratified by
the Parliament of Canada, May noted that Harper signed an Investor State
Agreement with the Peoples’ Republic of China which does nothing to advance Canadian
trade interests. She informed the community gathering that under the Investor
State Agreement foreign companies are given the right to file legal suit
against Canada if they don’t like a decision made by a municipal level
government, First Nation, a court decision, provincial governments or federal
government. “They don’t have to prove that the decision they don’t like was
made in a discriminatory manner against trade principles. They don’t have to
prove the decision we made was wrong or the science was wrong. All they have to
prove is that they were planning to make money here and our decision reduces
their expectation of profit. Then we owe them hundreds of millions, who knows,
billions,” May noted. She was adamant that this TPP will among other things,
increase the cost of pharmaceutical drugs, hurt our auto sector, open up supply
management for dairy and for poultry and it will allow ten more countries that
didn’t already have the right to suit us, the right to suit us.
“And by the way,” May
continued, “the claims about how much money is involved, how big the new market
is, how many people live in the TPP: when you hear the bragging claims just
remember TPP replaces NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed 20
years ago: between the U.S. Mexico and Canada). So all the trade and all the
money and all the people living in Canada, the USA and Mexico, are part of that
big number they are claiming as though it’s a new number. Subtract NAFTA and
what we have is a new agreement with Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, New
Zealand, Australia. The biggest part of the trade claim and the money claim and
the market claims you hear from Stephen Harper about TPP is the part we already
had under NAFTA.”
What all this means? The boasting by the Conservatives about how
strong their economic plans have been and the benefits Canada will gain from
this new TPP agreement has many holes that elephants can fall through and die.
October 14, 2015
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