The Marxist-Leninist Daily

The House of Commons rose for the summer on June 19, two months past the half-way point in the Harper government's bogus mandate to pursue its anti-social agenda. The Conservative Party engineered an electoral coup in 2011 to gain a majority of seats using fraudulent high-tech voter targeting and voter suppression. A Federal Court judge affirmed publicly that fraud had taken place to bring the Harperites to power. Using millions of dollars, unlimited mass media support, voter suppression and a micro-targeting machine in specific ridings, the Conservatives took state power with merely 24.3 per cent of the eligible votes.

The assertion that the Harper government is one desired by Canadians is day-by-day crumbling, leaving an empty claim that it has the power to do as it please regardless of the fraud and growing disgust and opposition of Canadians, Quebecois and First Nations. Harper's countless words that his government is accountable and working for the economy and national interest have been exposed as empty rhetoric. His actions and those of government officials at the highest levels reveal all manner of fraud, corruption, bullying and other criminal activity in the service of narrow private interests, at the expense of the interests of the people and the country.

The more Harper tries to divert the people from the stench of corruption by attacking others, the more revelations continue to emerge, sinking the government and the entire cartel party system deeper and deeper into a crisis of legitimacy. No doubt the Harper government was eager to see this sitting come to an end and hopes that during the summer it will "turn the corner" on the cascading scandals.

For the Workers' Opposition, resolving this crisis in a manner that favours the working people and does not lead to more of the same is a practical problem to be sorted out during the two years before the next federal election.

Climate of Rumours and Controversy

The House of Commons ended its winter session amid a series of scandals and controversy as the Conservatives used time allocation to rush various bills through with a minimum of debate.

The RCMP has announced an investigation of PMO Chief of Staff Nigel Wright, who admitted to giving $90,000 to Senator Mike Duffy to re-pay ineligible housing expense claims. In connection with the investigation, the RCMP has seized the election returns of nine Conservative MPs who used Duffy to promote their election campaigns. Several other Conservative and Liberal Senators are facing audits of their expenses by the Internal Economy Committee, some going back more than six years.

In the face of these and other scandals, the Harper government called for the unanimous consent of all Parties to adjourn the House of Commons. As no agreement could be reached on adjourning the House early, on May 21 a motion was passed stating that the House would sit until midnight from Mondays to Thursdays for the rest of the session -- until June 21.

NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen criticized the government for the way bills have been moved through the legislative process. In an interview with The Hill Times Mr. Cullen said, "I find it ironic that the government allots only five hours of debate to the content of the bill under time allocation, when the vast majority of our time is spent debating and voting on the time allocation motions and not on the bills. That is the Conservatives' way of doing business. When will the leader of the government in the House of Commons learn that a hammer is not the only tool available for getting the work done?"

Independent MP Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior North) said, "We've got a government which has now done time allocations, I think it's 45 times, and you know, if we don't have time to properly debate bills and get our work done properly, then we don't have time to go home early."

As the House adjourned for the summer, along with accusations that the Conservative government is stifling debate and ramming through legislation, were rumours that Harper will make a major Cabinet shuffle this summer. The House is scheduled to reconvene on September 16 and many are predicting that Harper will prorogue Parliament until October and then begin a new session with a Throne Speech.

These predictions may or may not be accurate but one thing is sure: the Harper Conservatives are desperately trying to cover up all the scandals that have hit the party and the government at all levels including the PMO. Their every action is based on damage control and survival and has nothing to do with dealing with the problems faced by the majority of Canadians.

Character of This Sitting of the House

The House of Commons ended its winter sitting by giving Royal Assent to 19 pieces of legislation. The House will resume sitting on September 16 unless, as has been rumoured, Harper prorogues the session. The large amount of anti-social legislation rammed through in the last three weeks was accomplished by the Harperites arbitrarily passing a motion on May 21 to extend the sitting hours of the House of Commons until midnight for the final month of the session, a measure normally reserved for the week before the House rises for the summer.

The sitting could be characterized as an opaque omnibus one, as many pieces of legislation were rammed through the House without Canadians having any knowledge or real say about their contents and significance, even where they were directly affected, such as in the case of the First Nations and the organized working class.

The sitting was also characterized by the steadfast resistance of First Nations and their allies to the Harper government's assault on their rights and dignity. Fittingly, it opened on January 28, 2013 with the First Nations and their allies rallying on Parliament Hill to oppose the various pieces of legislation the Harper government was set to debate and eventually pass. Those bills directly target the hereditary, constitutional and treaty rights of First Nations. Amongst other measures, they seek to impose fee simple onto the land and resources of First Nations so that those same lands and resources can be stolen from them in various ways. Showing the arrogance of the Harperites and their refusal to negotiate with First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis, the legislation the government tabled concerning First Nations has been passed despite overwhelming opposition from First Nations themselves and their allies and supporters in Canada and around the world.

This session of the House came under attack from workers across Canada, especially in Quebec and the Maritimes, who engaged in actions to oppose the government's anti-social reforms of Employment Insurance (EI). The aim of the changes to EI, passed using the government's second omnibus budget bill, Bill C-45, is further to turn workers into a pool of cheap labour at the disposal of monopoly capital. Similar to its Temporary Foreign Worker program of indentured labour, the anti-social EI reforms are to ensure that whenever the labour market in any region of the country swings even slightly in favour of the working class allowing it to defend and improve its standard of living and working conditions, the Harper government is there to swing the labour market back in favour of monopoly capital. The anti-social changes to EI do nothing to solve the chronic problems of unemployment and underemployment in certain regions of the country.

This session was also characterized by growing opposition from workers across Canada to the government's use of back-to-work orders suspending the legitimate strike actions of workers and to the private member's Bill C-377 targeting unions. Anti-worker Bill C-377 was too much to stomach for even certain Conservative Senators who voted with the majority against the bill, a strong rebuke of Harper. The anti-worker measures within Bill C-377 singling out unions for intrusive state abuse, which the Harperites say are necessary to enforce "accountability and transparency," have become a target of ridicule and cries of hypocrisy given the PMO's penchant for utter secrecy, control and non-transparency in all the government's affairs, including even in its strict control of Conservatives.

Of importance during the session was the active opposition to Harper's anti-social agenda by more and more scientists, librarians, diplomats and other government employees across Canada. They are raising their voices against the government's attacks on their professions, science and the participation of people in decision-making and its attempts to muzzle concerned public sector workers and prohibit them from doing their jobs.

The government used another omnibus budget bill to attack the Health Council of Canada and the current arrangements upholding the Canada Health Accord. It also took measures to usurp control over crown corporations by placing their relations with their employees under the arbitrary dictate of the Harper executive. This is a direct attack on the longstanding principle of free and fair collective bargaining with the various unions of public sector workers. It drags Canada back into the pre-war era of open season on workers, when the state and monopoly capital targeted workers individually as fair game and criminalized their collective defence, in particular denying public sector workers their elementary right to organize legally to defend themselves collectively.

The Harper government used the winter session of the House to entrench its anti-social agenda in the service of the private interests of the most powerful monopolies and to criminalize political opposition and those Canadians defending their economic interests and the rights of all. Celebrating imperialist aggression, criminalizing resistance, attacking workers and their organizations, and giving the state more powers over First Nations and their territories in the name of helping them, has been the overall direction of the Harper government in this sitting.

It passed legislation to entrench measures that give the state and its security agencies increased arbitrary powers to arrest and detain people on suspicion of conspiracy to commit or support terrorism. This legislation includes measures to hide the role of those same state security agencies in fomenting and organizing terrorist activities in the form of sting operations and other ways. State-organized terrorist acts became infamous when exposed by the 1981 McDonald Commission on RCMP Wrongdoing.

The "terrorist" legislation re-establishes and strengthens the regime of state-organized abuse of rights put in place in Canada after September 11, 2001. As well, it changes the definition of terrorism to broaden the state's ability to declare actions and non-actions conspiracies to commit terrorism and on this basis invoke arbitrary powers to terrorize anyone they accuse of being associated with these actions or non-actions. Canadians reject this attack on rights under whatever hoax and excuse, and have been organizing in growing numbers under the principled banner, "Our future and security lie in the organized fight to defend the rights of all!"

The Harper legislation also strengthens the regime of state secrets, allowing the state to declare yet more information secret and criminalize anyone who might disclose it such as a Canadian-styled Edward Snowden. Snowden is the young man who exposed the U.S. government's vast PRISM network of spying on its own people and the peoples of the world.

The Harperites also passed a private member's bill making it legal for police to conceal their identity as agents provocateurs when a protest or gathering is declared a riot, while no one else is permitted to cover their face. The Harperites are fully engaged to create an atmosphere of state repression of any opposition to their anti-social agenda, to frighten people from standing on principle and defending their rights, and fighting for what they consider just and in the public interest.

In this vein, the government passed Bill C-43, the faster removal of foreign criminals act, precisely at a time when the government itself is being exposed as full of criminal elements. While these elements who violate the law with impunity and try to cover their tracks, they are routinely rebuked by the courts.

The government was unable however to pass its private member's Bill C-425, an act to amend the Citizenship Act (honouring the Canadian Armed Forces), which was an attempt to militarize citizenship and fast track those who serve in the military. It would also have given the state the ability to strip citizenship from Canadians accused of committing unspecified "acts of war" against the Canadian armed forces. The bill did not pass because of a concerted effort by the NDP to stall the bill's progress at committee level. The bill will reappear in the fall sitting.

Internationally, the Harperites continue to be a disgrace to the peace-loving sentiment of Canadians who consider all peoples and countries as equal whatever their size and relative power, and that the peoples of the world have the sovereign right to determine their own affairs without interference by the big powers, especially U.S. imperialism and its armed forces. Before the sitting began, it was revealed that the Harper government was aiding the French imperialists with "logistical support" to send troops and military hardware to intervene violently in Mali, a former French colony and prohibit the people of Mali the right to settle their own affairs without big power interference.

The Harperites continue to call openly for regime change and the destruction of Syria based on supporting NATO-backed mercenaries active in the country and the surrounding region who are waging an extremely bloody proxy war against the Syrian state. This also includes an advertisement and endorsement for the merchants of death who peddle their armaments to all sides in conflicts.

The government also established July 27 as an official anniversary to celebrate the Canadian intervention in the Korean War in 1950-53. July 27 marks the day the defeated U.S. imperialists were forced to sign the Armistice Agreement in 1953. Harper wants to make July 27, a national day of remembrance for Canadian veterans of the Korean War, as opposed to remembering the more than three million Korean civilians and others brutally murdered by the invading forces, including Canada. Rather than apologize for the inhuman use of overwhelming military power and weapons of mass destruction to destroy and dismember a country, a gesture that would contribute today to an atmosphere of peace and friendship, the Harperites are seeking to stir up tensions and hatred. They are celebrating imperialist aggression and preparing the ground for yet more aggression, the killing of Koreans and destruction of their Peninsula.

Many Canadians have become clear during this sitting of Parliament that uniting in action to stop and defeat the Harper government and its pro-war, pro-annexation, pro-monopoly, anti-social, anti-worker agenda is the order of the day.

Senate Rejection of Anti-Union Private Member's Bill
Deepens Crisis of Government

On June 26, the Senate amended the Harper government's private members Bill C-377, an Act to amend the Income Tax Act (requirements for labour organizations) forcing the bill back to the House of Commons. Bill C-377 targets labour unions with an onerous system of public reporting, which is not required of other organizations. Among other things, the bill would force trade unions to report all transactions greater than $5,000, identifying the recipient, the payer, the purpose and description of the transaction. Disbursements to officers, directors and trustees would have to be reported, with an added disclosure of the percentage of time dedicated to political and lobbying activities. Information garnered would be posted for public viewing on the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) website.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal put forward the amendments permitting a united vote between Liberal Senators, who wanted the bill defeated and certain Conservative Senators who did not support the bill as written. Segal himself had stated previously in the Senate that he wanted to see the legislation amended and if it could not be, it should be defeated. When he spoke to the legislation in February he recognized that the government had tried unsuccessfully to "moderate the legislation" during committee hearings in the House of Commons.

According to Senator James Cowan, leader of the Liberal opposition in the Senate, the amendments gut the bill and render it ineffective. Conservative MP Russ Heibert, the bill's sponsor stated that the amendments make the bill "useless."

The amendments Segal put forward raised the threshold for salary disclosure from $100,000 to $444,000, the same as the maximum amount a senior deputy minister can earn. It also changed the amount for disclosure of union spending to $150,000, up from $5,000. The amendment would make the bill apply only to unions with over 50,000 members and require that solicitor-client privilege should be respected in any disclosures.

Forty-nine senators approved the amendments, including 16 Conservative Senators -- over a third of the Conservative caucus. Seven abstained from voting and 33 senators voted against the amendments.

In explaining why Liberal-appointed Senators wanted to defeat the legislation, Senator Cowan stated that the bill upsets the balance between employers and employees. The legislation would have put a more onerous requirement on unions compared with their employers, he said. He provided an example from the bill whereby an employer would be allowed to use information which the government required to be made public against the workers' interests, such as the size of a union's strike fund. No comparable information about employers is available, such as the depth of their pockets. Cowan also stated that the law interfered with the constitutional powers governing labour relations, which are within the jurisdiction of the provinces making the bill unconstitutional and a violation of Canadians' privacy.

Cowan explained that the Liberals wanted to defeat the bill completely but did not have enough votes, so they used the mechanism of Segal's amendments. He said it was his opinion that the four weeks of hearings in which legal experts, representatives of five provinces and others calling for the bill's defeat or amendment helped to convince members of his own caucus as well as the Conservatives to stop the legislation. Cowan also pointed out that if the NDP had its way and the Senate were abolished, Bill C-377 would have become law once passed by the Harper majority.

The bill will now appear in the House of Commons in its unamended form at third reading when the House resumes its fall sitting. At that point, the Harper dictatorship in the House of Commons will have the option to pass the legislation and send it back to the Senate, amend it, or not proceed with it. The Senate's rejection of the legislation sets up a confrontation between the Harper dictatorship and the Senate, in particular with members of its own Party in the Senate.

News reports, as well as the words of Harper government spokesperson MP Pierre Poilievre, have been quick to point out that there will not be a back and forth with the Senate over the legislation. The notion being pushed is that by convention, the Senate will eventually bow to the will of the House of Commons.

The Harper dictatorship is already trying to divert the public from the deepening crisis of legitimacy in which it is mired. Harper says his majority of seats gives him the dictatorial power to favour the monopolies over the working class and its organizations. He claims the unelected Senate is blocking the legal will of the elected House of Commons. Revealing the self-serving nature of this argument, government spokespeople will not even acknowledge that members of Harper's own Conservative caucus have defied what is widely reported as intense pressure from his office not to amend the legislation. As well, some have pointed out that when the Senate rejected the NDP's legislation concerning the environment, the Conservatives were happy to see it defeated.

The Harper dictatorship continues to refuse to even recognize that the Senate is an institution within the Canadian parliamentary system that has a definite origin and aim whether it likes it or not. The wreckers simply repeat that the Senate is unelected; therefore, it should not be permitted to stand in the way of the Harper dictatorship. This implies that Harper may try to kill the Senate, something on which he has been consulting with the Supreme Court.

In this and other ways, the Harper government is deepening the constitutional crisis in Canada setting up a confrontation. It will then no doubt attempt to use the turmoil to justify arbitrary dictate, as it tries to assert more powers in the face of growing opposition even from within its own ranks. Within this dangerous situation, the Harper government may attempt to use its majority to carry out a bolder coup against the current arrangements of state.

How Senators Voted

David Braley (Ontario)
JoAnne Buth (Manitoba)
Gerald Comeau (Nova Scotia)
Jacques Demers (Quebec)
Norman Doyle (Newfoundland/Labrador)
Stephan Greene (Nova Scotia)
Daniel Lang (Yukon)
Paul McIntyre (New Brunswick)
Don Meredith (Ontario)
Nancy Ruth (Ontario)
Richard Neufield (BC)
Hugh Segal (Ontario)
Judith Seidman (Quebec)
Larry Smith (Quebec)
Betty Unger (Alberta)
Josée Verner (Quebec)

George Baker (Newfoundland/Labrador)
Pierre De Bané (Quebec)
Catherine Callbeck (PEI)
Larry Campbell (British Columbia)
Marie Charette-Poulin (Ontario)
Jane Cordy (Nova Scotia)
James Cowan (Nova Scotia)
Roméo Dallaire (Quebec)
Dennis Dawson (Quebec)
Joseph Day (New Brunswick)
Percy Downe (PEI)
Lillian Dyck (Saskatchewan)
Art Eggleton (Ontario)
Joan Fraser (Quebec)
Elizabeth Hubley (PEI)
Mobina Jaffer (BC)
Serge Joyal (Quebec)
Colin Kenny (Ontario)
Sandra Lovelace Nicholas (New Brunswick)
Grant Mitchell (Alberta)
Terry Mercer (Nova Scotia)
Pana Merchant (Saskatchewan)
Wilfred Moore (Nova Scotia)
Jim Munson (Ontario)
Pierrette Ringuette (New Brunswick)
Fernand Robichaud (New Brunswick)
David Smith (Ontario)
Claudette Tardif (Alberta)
Charlie Watt
Rod Zimmer (Manitoba)

Salma Ataullahjan (Ontario)
Denise Batters (Saskatchewan)
Lynn Beyak (Ontario)
Douglas Black (Alberta)
Pierre-Hughes Boisvenu (Quebec)
Claude Carignan (Quebec)
Jean-Guy Dagenais (Quebec)
Nicole Eaton (Ontario)
Tobias Enverga (Ontario)
Suzanne Fortin-Duplessis (Quebec)
Linda Frum (Ontario)
Irving Gerstein (Ontario)
Leo Housakos (Quebec)
Marjory LeBreton (Ontario)
Michael MacDonald (Nova Scotia)
Ghislain Maltais (Quebec)
Fabian Manning (Newfoundland and Labrador)
Elizabeth Marshall (Newfoundland and Labrador)
Yonah Martin (BC)
Thomas Johnson McInnis (Nova Scotia)
Percy Mockler (New Brunswick)
Thanh Hai Ngo (Ontario)
Pierre Claude Nolin (Quebec)
Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Nova Scotia)
Victor Oh (Ontario)
Dennis Glen Patterson (Nunavut)
Rose-May Poirier (New Brunswick)
Nancy Green Raine (BC)
Michel Rivard (Quebec)
Asha Seth (Ontario)
Carolyn Stewart Olsen (New Brunswick)
John Wallace (New Brunswick)
David Wells (Newfoundland and Labrador)

Raynell Andreychuk (Saskatchewan -- Conservative)
Diane Bellemare (Quebec -- Conservative)
Andre Champagne (Quebec -- Conservative)
Céline Hervieux-Payette (Quebec -- Liberal)
Janis Johnson (Manitoba -- Conservative)
Donald Oliver (Nova Scotia -- Conservative)
Vernon White (Ontario -- Conservative)

Legislation Receiving Royal Assent on June 19

S-2: An Act respecting family homes situated on First Nation reserves and matrimonial interests or rights in or to structures and lands situated on those reserves

C-62: An Act to give effect to the Yale First Nation Final Agreement and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

S-15: An Act to amend the Canada National Parks Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to the Canada Shipping Act, 2001

C-47: An Act to enact the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and the Northwest Territories Surface Rights Board Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

C-383: An Act to amend the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act and the International River Improvements Act

C-43: An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

C-15: An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts - The Strengthening Military Justice in Defence of Canada Act

S-14: An Act to amend the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act — Chapter 26, 2013

S-17: An Act to implement conventions, protocols, agreements and a supplementary convention, concluded between Canada and Namibia, Serbia, Poland, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Switzerland, for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes -- Chapter 27, 2013

S-213: An Act respecting a national day of remembrance to honour Canadian veterans of the Korean War

C-321: An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (library materials)

C-63: An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2014

C-64: An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2014

Note to Readers

TML Daily will not be published the week of July 1 and will resume publication the week of July 8.

Read The Marxist-Leninist Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca

Unite in Action to Stop and Defeat the
Harper Government's Anti-Social Agenda

Unite in Action to Stop and Defeat the Harper Government's Anti-Social Agenda

Climate of Rumours and Controversy

Character of This Sitting of the House

Senate Rejection of Anti-Union Private Member's Bill
Deepens Crisis of Government

How Senators Voted

Legislation Receiving Royal Assent on June 19

Note to Readers

Unite in Action to Stop and Defeat the Harper Government's Anti-Social Agenda

Unite in Action to Stop and Defeat the Harper Government's Anti-Social Agenda

Climate of Rumours and Controversy

Character of This Sitting of the House

Senate Rejection of Anti-Union Private Member's Bill Deepens Crisis of Government

How Senators Voted

Legislation Receiving Royal Assent on June 19

Note to Readers

Unite in Action to Stop and Defeat the
Harper Government's Anti-Social Agenda

Senate Rejection of Anti-Union Private Member's Bill
Deepens Crisis of Government