June 25, 2013 - No. 79
Devastating
Southern Alberta Floods
• Salute the Workers and People of Southern
Alberta
Health Care Is a Right!
• Home Care Recipients Force Redford Government
to Take a Step Back
- Rita Soto
Education Is a Right! Increase
Investments in Education!
• Post-Secondary Maintenance Budget Cuts
Threaten Layoffs, Privatization and Contracting Out - Dougal
MacDonald
• Provincial Underfunding Sabotages Edmonton
Public School Board Budget
- George Allen
Discussion
• Alternatives to the Austerity Agenda, Part Two
- Peggy Morton and K.C. Adams
Defend Cuba's Right to
Independence and Sovereignty!
• Successful First Visit of Cuban
Consul-General to Alberta
Devastating Southern Alberta Floods
Salute the Workers and People of Southern Alberta
More than 175,000 people across southern
Alberta were forced to evacuate their homes due to massive flooding
caused by heavy rains that began late last week. On Monday, June 24, 27
communities were under a state of emergency, although several were
rescinded later in the day. Three people lost their lives, drowning in
the raging Highwood river which runs through the town of High River, 37
kilometres south of Calgary. In particular, the towns of High River,
Canmore, Bragg Creek and the City of Calgary have been severely
impacted. Siksika, Tsuu Tina and Stoney First Nations have also been
hard hit by the floods. Over 75,000 people in 25 Calgary neighbourhoods
were under a mandatory evacuation order over the weekend and the entire
communities of High River and Bragg Creek were evacuated. By Monday
afternoon, most Calgarians had been allowed to return to their homes.
They have been asked to stay home on Monday and Tuesday while recovery
efforts continue in the downtown core.
TML
expresses sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who
tragically perished in the floods. TML expresses
solidarity with the first responders and emergency personnel who have
worked tirelessly to rescue those stranded by flood waters, using
helicopters, trucks, combines, tractors and whatever means possible to
move people to safety and shelter. TML salutes the tireless
efforts of public sector and utility workers and others making enormous
efforts to safeguard the water and power supply, maintain
telecommunications networks, keep hospitals open, look after the sick
and vulnerable, and keep people safe despite their own personal
situations. TML also salutes the efforts of fellow citizens at
emergency shelters who are providing for those who have been relocated.
Homes, businesses, bridges, roadways,
sports complexes and government buildings have all suffered major
damage. The Trans-Canada highway was blocked in several places for over
24 hours and many bridges, highways and roads are closed in Southern
Alberta due to structural damage.
Those who have been evacuated from flooded
communities and towns have been forced to find refuge with family,
friends and in overnight shelters and residences set up by the
government and the Red Cross. As well, electrical power was cut off for
several days in 25 neighbourhoods in Calgary, including the downtown
core. Power is slowly being restored in some areas, while in others,
there is no estimate as to when power can be restored. These are the
worst floods in the history of Southern Alberta. Military forces and
helicopters have been called in and emergency forces from across the
country are assisting.
Media reports indicate that in the City
of Calgary, most of the 75,000 affected residents found shelter with
friends and family, with several thousand taking refuge in emergency
shelters. Calgarians are assisting in many ways, opening their doors,
offering spare rooms, water, food and other items, showing the spirit
and sense of responsibility people have to assist each other. People
have donated large amounts of food and clothing to the temporary
facilities where homeless Calgarians were re-located. The Calgary
Drop-In and Rehab Centre which offers shelter, meals and assistance in
finding employment to Calgary's homeless was forced to evacuate from
its downtown location, and its basement stores of clothing and other
necessities have been lost to the floods. At its new location, long
lines of cars formed as people dropped off donations of food, clothing,
toiletries and blankets.
A TML correspondent visited some
of the evacuation centres and spoke with residents who had made their
own way to these centres. Initially, evacuation and overnight centres
were set up in the southern end of the city. Within hours of the first
emergency evacuation notification, several communities in the northwest
sector of the city were given evacuation notices.Road closures due to
the flooding posed a problem, particularly for vulnerable low income
people heading to shelters. Several people TML spoke with spent
the first night in their vehicles and then made their way to the
centre. Others who had no transportation were driven by neighbours to
the evacuation centres. Many people arrived with not much more than a
change of clothes. Some of the initial evacuation centres were closed
and everyone relocated to residences at the Southern Alberta Institute
of Technology, Mount Royal University and other overnight shelters set
up in recreation centres around the city. Although there is an
emergency preparedness plan, providing assistance to those in low cost
housing and without transportation was not well planned and many people
had to fend for themselves in the pouring rain and flood conditions.
Most of those affected have no idea when they will be able to return to
their homes or what condition they will find them in.
At this time people in Southern Alberta are
mainly concerned with the immediate situation they face and helping
those most affected. But it is crucial that the people be involved in
summing up the lessons of the flood. These floods and the devastation
and damage they leave in their wake pose some serious issues for the
people. One is the fact that even though these floods caused by
overflowing rivers are termed "natural disasters" beyond the control of
human beings, why is more not done to deal with the capacity of dams
and water diversion to deal with the water flow? It is the social
responsibility of governments to take more preventative measures. This
emergency also shows the importance of people becoming organized in
their communities and neighbourhoods to prepare themselves in a very
practical way, so that the human factor, the people themselves, are the
decisive organized factor in these situations.
Health Care Is a Right!
Home Care Recipients Force Redford Government to Take a
Step Back
- Rita Soto -
Residents of Abby Road Housing
Co-operative, Artspace Housing Co-operative and Creekside Support
Services launched an effective campaign to stop Alberta Health Services
(AHS) from depriving them of their right to a say in their home care.
People with disabilities in the three housing co-ops have been managing
their own home care for as long as 26 years. Suddenly they were
informed that home care services would be taken over by the monopoly
Revera. The residents fought back and received immediate and
overwhelming public support. Following a meeting of members of the Abby
Road Co-op with Premier Alison Redford, the AHS backed down and said
current arrangements would continue.
At the same time, the AHS announced that it
was cancelling its new "one hundred kilometre rule" that forced seniors
to accept the first continuing-care space that came open within 100
kilometres of their current home. The policy resulted in people being
unable to see family and spouses, so that it came to be referred to as
"divorce by nursing home policy." This policy has been widely condemned
by the people of Alberta.
Home care services are now delivered in
Calgary and Edmonton through 72 different agencies, and AHS has
announced their consolidation into 13 companies. Not all the successful
bidders have been revealed, but all indications suggest they will be
large private monopolies whose reason for existence is to enrich
private interests.
By speaking of how it is learning from its
mistakes, in particular the need to listen to those affected by
changes, AHS is trying to stifle the larger questions raised by the
co-op residents who have organized their own home care to exercise some
control over their lives. The government is well aware that its secret
agenda of privatization and dismantling the health care system piece by
piece does not reflect the popular will, and it must continue to use
stealth and subterfuge to implement it. By claiming that it will do a
better job of individual consultations, the government and AHS want to
submerge the issue of why delivery of any home care services should be
handed over to these monopolies. This is what AHS does not want to
discuss. These private monopolies contribute nothing at all to home
care service delivery; they in fact siphon value out of the system to
pay their investors. These pay-the-rich schemes cannot stand up to
public scrutiny.
The Redford government is declaring that it
will do a better job of consulting individuals not for the purpose of
strengthening public control and government accountability but to
undermine public right and completely cave in to monopoly right. Having
ceded sovereignty and the right to decide to private interests,
particularly the oil, gas and other energy monopolies, there is to be
no discussion of the direction of the society. In this instance, no
discussion is to take place over the total lack of democratic
legitimacy of AHS or the government's secret plans to privatize more
and more of the health care system and in other ways destroy public
health care through death by a thousand cuts.
AHS operates without regard to any norms by
which health care systems have functioned in the past. For example, it
has eliminated the objective funding formula previously used to
allocate resources to communities and provides no public account of how
decisions about resource allocation are made. Whole sectors such as
home care are handed over to private interests without a single word
being spoken about why this decision was taken. Each AHS decision
removes more public control and accountability, as information is
declared confidential property of private businesses.
Albertans want their right to health care
to be provided with a government and even a constitutional guarantee.
Developing a broad public discussion about what is required to do so is
important work at this time. A broad program has emerged from all the
battles to stop the death of public health care by a thousand cuts. Not
only must the cuts be stopped and reversed, the government must
increase funding for social programs and stop paying the rich.
Developing a broad public discussion about a pro-social alternative
program is important work at this time. Uniting their ranks behind
their own independent politics and agenda in defence of the rights of
all, workers, youth, seniors and First Nations are putting forward
their own pro-social agenda and discussing how to bring it into reality
through actions with analysis. Politicians are emerging from their own
ranks who will faithfully represent and implement the people's
pro-social agenda and program. It can be done!
Education Is a Right! Increase
Investments in Education!
Post-Secondary Maintenance Budget Cuts Threaten
Layoffs, Privatization and Contracting Out
- Dougal MacDonald -
The Redford regime's savage March 7 cuts to
the operating budgets of Alberta's post-secondary education
institutions (PSEs) are creating serious problems for students, staff
and the wide range of people who work for or engage with Alberta's
universities, colleges and technical institutes. Less publicized is the
fact that the provincial government also made drastic cuts to the PSEs'
infrastructure maintenance grants, which fund basic maintenance of
roofs, heating systems, electrical systems, plumbing and so on, even
though ongoing upkeep and renovation of infrastructure is essential to
quality teaching and learning. The cuts to maintenance grants mean that
planned projects at all the PSEs will be delayed or set aside,
priorities will have to be re-evaluated and the backlog of deferred
projects will continue to grow. The downward spiral of funding could
also eventually cause certain buildings to be permanently closed.
Students and staff from Edmonton
post-secondary institutions protest the cuts, March 15, 2013.
The provincial cuts to the maintenance
grants were deep and system-wide, and totalled tens of millions of
dollars. Here are some examples.
The University of Alberta's maintenance
grant was cut by over 20 per cent from $22 million to $17.4 million,
even as it is dealing with a $685 million backlog of already-deferred
maintenance projects. Almost 50 per cent of the 500 buildings at U of A
are over forty years old and in need of upgrading and renovation.
The Northern Alberta Institute of
Technology grant was cut by over 40 per cent from $4.8 million to $2.8
million, with a backlog of $60 million in deferred projects.
The University of Calgary grant was cut
almost 40 per cent from $16.1 million to $9.9 million, with a backlog
of $400 million in deferred projects.
The maintenance grant for Mount Royal
University was cut by 67 per cent from $3.3 million to $1.1 million
with a backlog of tens of millions of dollars.
The Southern Alberta Institute of
Technology grant was cut almost 40 per cent from $4.3 million to $2.7
million.
The cuts to the maintenance grants will
also have a seriously negative effect on the lives and livelihood of
thousands of workers who do maintenance work at the different PSEs
across the province. Decreased funding will mean fewer projects will be
undertaken, which in turn will mean less available work. This is an
attack on the livelihood of the workers because it raises the threats
of layoffs and possible rollbacks of wages and benefits. The Minister
of Enterprise and Advanced Education, Thomas Lukaszuk, is already
interfering in the collective bargaining process that normally takes
place between Boards of Governors and employee organizations by
arrogantly calling on PSEs to adopt a wage freeze for all staff for the
next three years, even suggesting that existing collective agreements
should be reopened. Lukaszuk also threatened that he would review the
level of wage settlements when he approves each institution's budget.
The other very real threat raised by the
cuts to the maintenance budgets of the PSEs is that of privatization
and contracting out. In fact, the budget-cutting may be deliberate in
order to prepare conditions for contracting out. Currently, almost all
maintenance work at the PSEs is performed by experienced in-house
workers who work directly for the various universities, colleges and
technical institutes and who are very familiar with their institutions
and the work required to keep them running smoothly. History shows that
once budgets are cut, pressure mounts to hire private contractors to do
the in-house work based on the long-discredited pretext that the
private sector is "cheaper" and "more efficient." The reality is that
once the work is privatized and previous collective agreements are torn
up, workers' wages are lowered, benefits are reduced or eliminated, and
all kinds of corners are cut such as using cheaper materials. In
addition, once private companies take over the in-house maintenance
work there is a definite loss of transparency and accountability to the
institution and to the public.
Timely, high quality maintenance which
serves the public good is essential to the smooth running of the
province's universities, colleges and technical institutes because it
affects both teaching conditions and learning conditions. This requires
adequate funding, which the province refused to provide in its March
budget. In addition, the existence of millions of dollars in backlogs
of deferred projects at all the PSEs shows that even past provincial
funding was far less than required. The provincial government's phony
excuse for underfunding of post-secondary education continues to be
that no more revenue could be demanded from the immensely profitable
energy companies to invest in education and other social programs but
this has been repeatedly exposed both as a fraud and as further proof
that the government is nothing more than the agent of the monopolies.
Redford's underfunding of post-secondary
education is an attack on the right to education. A modern society must
be organized so that the right to education is guaranteed under any and
all circumstances. This guarantee includes always providing adequate
funding and constantly increasing investments in public education to
meet the growing technical, scientific and cultural needs of a modern
society. Students, faculty, support staff and their allies have been
vigorously expressing their opposition to the government attacks on the
PSEs through a number of effective actions across the province. The
maintenance workers and their organizations have no illusions about the
damaging effects of cuts to the maintenance grants and are preparing
themselves accordingly. All the PSEs and their allies must join the
opposition and demand that the provincial government increase
investments in all aspects of post-secondary education and guarantee
the right to education for everyone.
Provincial Underfunding Sabotages
Edmonton Public School Board Budget
- George Allen -
The Edmonton Public School Board (EPSB),
which oversees Alberta's second largest school district, released its
2013-14 budget on June 18. As predicted, due to the provincial
government's continuing refusal to adequately fund education, the
budget contained a great deal of bad news for students, teachers,
support staff and parents. Following the March 7 provincial budget, the
2013-14 EPSB budget had to be slashed by $46.9 million, even though
district enrolment is expected to increase by about 1,220 students to a
total of 84,661.
An EPSB document highlighting the budget
decisions reads: "The implication of the shortfall in provincial grant
funding has resulted in a loss of funds to the district of about $30.5
million or 3.8 per cent of our total provincial revenue funding based
on the 2012-2013 Revised Budget." The EPSB, like all school districts,
was forced by the provincial government to pass a "balanced budget"
even though it is greatly underfunded. The Redford regime also forced
the EPSB and all other school districts to cut administrative spending
by 10 per cent.
High School students walk out of classes in
protest against the cuts , June 11, 2013.
|
The June EPSB budget, which the trustees
passed with "great regret," will see 339 full-time jobs lost, including
about 180 teaching positions across the district's 199 schools. About
30 per cent of the teaching positions would be contract teachers on
probation, which will mainly affect new teachers. Ed Butler, president
of the Edmonton local of the Alberta Teachers' Association, stated:
"This budget represents broken promises by the Redford government, the
lack of funding to public education. We were promised a sustainable
budget with a two per cent increase, and in actual fact, the total
budget is about a four per cent rollback, which is six per cent less
than what people intended."
The 157 non-teaching positions lost
include education assistants, custodians and maintenance and support
staff, all of whom are integral to the quality of education in the
district. Maintenance funding was cut by $8.4 million. As a result,
maintenance staff could be cut by 24 per cent with 51 of 216 full-time
jobs gone in the fall, which also raises the spectre of contracting out
to private business. Carol Chapman, President of CUPE Local 3550, which
organizes district support staff, stated: "We've had considerable
amounts of reductions in hours and staff cuts. Many of our staff that
were full-time staff have had hours reduced. So when you're hearing
'staff cuts,' often times, '150 FTE' [full-time employees] may be
representing considerably more staff than 150."
Education Minister Jeff Johnson cried
crocodile tears over the budget and tried feebly to turn his
government's latest attack on education into a good news scenario.
However, more and more people are recognizing that it is the Redford
regime's refusal to invest in education that has created the whole
problem. The provincial government blames its budget cuts on a shortage
of revenue due to "falling oil company profits" but that has repeatedly
been exposed as a fraud. Resistance to the government's anti-education
agenda continues to grow, as was shown by the June 11 rally by about
700 Edmonton high school students at the Legislature under the theme,
"Taking Back Our Education." The students' recent action confirms once
again that it is the people of Alberta who must decide the direction of
education in Alberta, not the private energy monopolies and their
champion, the Redford regime.
Discussion
Alternatives to the Austerity Agenda
- Peggy Morton and K.C. Adams -
Part Two of the series, "Discussion on Alternatives to
the Austerity Agenda" follows. For Part One, see TML Daily, May 28, 2013 - No. 67.
Part Two
Who Has Claims on the Value from Workers Transforming
Natural Resources into Use-Value?
The Workers' Opposition demands that
governments fulfill their social responsibility to ensure a broad
benefit to Canadians and First Nations when workers transform the
country's natural resources into use-value. The issue has assumed great
importance, as governments across Canada have shifted their claims on
added-value from large corporations onto individuals and small
business. In doing so, they have concocted a contradiction between the
people, as taxpayers, with the necessity to increase public investments
in social programs, services and infrastructure.
The claims of government on the economy
should not come in an indirect way from the people's claims on the
economy arising from their work. The individual money of the working
class, mostly based on claims on the economy from work or from social
entitlements when not working, should not be touched by governments.
The claims of government should come directly from the economy and from
individual income that is not derived from work or social entitlements.
Government claims should be made directly on the economy and its parts;
those claims should be distinct from those of the working class and
owners of capital. In the natural resource sectors in particular,
government claims should come directly from the value generated when
the working class transforms natural resources into use-value.
Royalty payments are in contradiction with
a modern method of government claims. Instead of the Alberta government
making a direct claim on the value arising from workers transforming
natural resources into use-value, the PC government and others across
Canada have concocted a system of royalty payments. This system, in
conjunction with decreased corporate taxation, is designed to deprive
the people of Alberta, including First Nations and the rest of Canada,
of their claim on the value generated from transforming natural
resources into use-value.
In 2007, the PC government of Ed Stelmach
carried out a royalty review called "Our Fair Share." Part One of this
series discussed the concept of a "fair share."
The Stelmach royalty review states that the
claim of government, which aims to be "fair," is calculated after
guaranteeing an "adequate, market determined return" on the invested
capital of the global energy monopolies. An "adequate, market
determined return" on capital is the deciding factor regarding the
royalty claims of the Alberta government and that of First Nations. The
claims of natural resource workers also come under pressure if the
"market determined return" on capital is not "adequate."
As well, around half of the claims of
Alberta natural resource workers on the value they create (their wages,
benefits and pensions) is subsequently taken from them as claims by
governments using outmoded taxation methods such as income taxes, goods
and services taxes, home and small business property taxes, levies on
gas, liquor etc, tolls and continuously expanding user fees for public
services.
The claims of the owners of the resources,
the people of Alberta represented by their government and First Nations
are directly affected by and come after the claims of the investors and
their "adequate" return on capital within an accounting process
controlled by the energy monopolies. Within this scenario, the people
are told an adequate return for owners of capital is mostly determined
by a global market and prices over which nobody has any control,
including even the energy monopolies, but which many describe as under
the direct control of those in power within the monopolies who
manipulate the market and prices to serve their narrow private
interests.
The entire process reflects the anti-human
factor/anti-social consciousness of a system controlled through class
privilege where wealth and might make right. The working people and
First Nations, and their human factor/social consciousness are
sidelined and deprived of their right to decide and control
development, the direction of the economy, the estimation of value,
market prices, claims and who benefits, which are all matters that
affect the lives of the people and Mother Earth directly.
The royalty review states, "Economic rent
constitutes the maximum price that the owner of the resource -- the
citizens of Alberta -- can charge companies for the right to produce
the undeveloped resource. In principle, and in the absence of various
constraints, the owner of the resource should be able to charge this
maximum price and receive all of the economic rent accruing to the
resource. And indeed, this price might reasonably be viewed as 'fair'
in the sense that it reflects the provision of an adequate, market
determined return on the capital employed by the companies engaged in
the production of the resource."[1]
The royalty or "economic rent" as the
government likes to say, takes on similar aspects to corporate
taxation. It is subject to company manipulation of all the factors that
make up a declared net taxable profit and subsequent "return on the
capital employed." The monopolies employ hundreds of accountants in
their tax departments to ensure little or no corporate taxes are ever
paid.
The royalty claim of the government is
subject to "various constraints," which history has shown can reduce it
well below the "maximum price." Besides, the "economic rent," i.e.,
"the maximum price that the owner of the resource -- the citizens of
Alberta -- can charge companies" is nowhere defined objectively using
economic science. No objective criteria are spelled out to determine
the maximum economic rent. The main determinant, the people are told,
is the market price for bitumen, a fluctuating price secretly
determined by the monopolies and speculators, which has little
connection with bitumen's exchange-value (price) of production.
The royalty figures arise from the
capital-centred economic accounts of the energy monopolies themselves,
which are highly subjective and suspect. For example, none of the
subsidies, grants, free infrastructure or other pay-the-rich schemes
the governments may provide for the benefit of the monopolies is ever
reflected as income in their accounts.
In addition, the energy monopolies readily
employ "various constraints" to ensure that the arbitrary economic rent
or royalty is lowered even more because their guaranteed "adequate,
market determined return on the capital employed" in Alberta never
quite meets the mark and in fact has steadily decreased.
One of the big constraints is a fabrication
of the energy monopolies themselves. Most monopolies sell bitumen to
themselves, and oil sands royalties are based in large part on the
price of bitumen. The Alberta hand of the energy monopoly transfers the
bitumen to its U.S. hand at a price set deliberately low. The Alberta
hand declares that it has been constrained from receiving an adequate
return because of this "bitumen bubble" of low prices, which triggers a
lowering of royalty payments. How convenient, for meanwhile the U.S.
hand of the same monopoly declares record profits year after year from
its refining and other operations downstream partly due to the gracious
receipt of low priced bitumen from its Alberta hand.
This farce persists with the constant
refrain of the energy monopolies that it cannot refine much if any of
their bitumen in Alberta, as that would be unprofitable. How convenient
again. Deny refining in Alberta; deny the growth of a vibrant
petrochemical sector so that the potential value from the natural
resource is captured not in Canada but in Texas and elsewhere, and
Alberta is left with a narrow stunted economy, diminishing and
uncertain prospects for the future and with lower royalty payments and
corporate taxation in the present that do not meet the needs of the
people, their socialized economy and society.
An alternative to the present arrangements
could see the Alberta government and First Nations take firm control of
the situation and deprive the energy monopolies of their monopoly right
to decide the direction of the economy and to engage in such
anti-social practices as selling bitumen to themselves and cooking
their books to serve their narrow private interests and deprive
Albertans and First Nations of what is theirs by right.
A first step in a new direction would be to
reassert public control and public right over the natural resource
sector and the use-value workers produce by depriving the energy
monopolies of their right of control. The energy monopolies would be
welcomed only as paid contractors to do specific work at a carefully
monitored price but without any ownership rights or control over the
land, natural resource, the direction of the Alberta economy, the
use-value workers produce, its price of production and accounts, or
how, when and where that use-value is further transformed and directed
towards building a diversified dynamic Alberta economy based on
manufacturing, social programs and public services.
In this way, royalty payments would no
longer exist, as governments and First Nations would have a direct
claim on the value workers produce from transforming natural resources
into use-value, and the people would have a transparent objective
understanding of the amount of that value and how it could be used to
benefit the people, their economy and nation-building.
(To be continued: Other "constraints" on
royalty payments.)
Note
1. "Our Fair Share" --
Methodology Appendix, Final Report of the Royalty Review Panel
http://www.albertaroyaltyreview.ca/panel/final_report_methodology_appendix.pdf
Defend Cuba's Right to Independence and
Sovereignty!
Successful First Visit of Cuban Consul-General
to Alberta
Edmonton,
June 16, 2013
Domokos speaking in Calgary, June 18, 2013.
|
Javier Domokos Ruiz, Consul-General of Cuba in Toronto, made a
successful five-day visit to Edmonton and Calgary from June 13-18,
during which he updated people on current developments in Cuba. The
visit included a reception at a local artist's house in Edmonton, a
public meeting sponsored by the Cuba Edmonton Solidarity Committee and
a public meeting sponsored by the Canada Cuba Friendship Association in
Calgary, as well as other informal get-togethers and visits. During his
visit, Consul-General Domokos met with a wide variety of people,
including workers, trade union leaders, First Nations, politicians,
professors, researchers, visual artists, film-makers, musicians,
graduate students, seniors, representatives of the Latin American
community and businesspeople.
At the two public meetings in Edmonton and
Calgary, Consul-General Domokos was able to provide a great deal of
important information on what is taking place in Cuba today, to explain
the challenges that Cuba faces and must meet, and to answer the many
questions raised by those who participated in the meetings. A friendly
atmosphere prevailed and it was clear that those who were at the
meetings attended on the basis of both learning more about Cuba and to
show strong support for the Cuban nation-building project.
In his presentations, Consul-General
Domokos also stressed the great importance of continuing the solidarity
work in Canada, in particular, support for the international campaign
to Free the Cuban Five, the Cuban patriots unjustly held in U.S. jails.
In summing up his visit, Consul-General Domokos expressed his pleasure
at the wide diversity of people who are interested in Cuba and the many
positive links he made with people in both cities. People appreciated
the opportunity to meet with him and were very energized by his visit,
and all involved consider his first visit to Alberta to be a great
success.
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