Parliament Opens

Whose Agenda and Who Decides?

Parliament opened on January 25 with debate on Bill C-14, the Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2020, being one of the issues that was dealt with. Bill C-14 was last discussed on February 2 and Parliament is now in recess until February 16. The passage of Bill C-14 would allow the Trudeau government to implement the measures that it is proposing, in the name of dealing with the pandemic and sustaining the economy, to increase the scope and depth of its pay-the-rich schemes.

According to the cartel parties one of the main problems facing Canadian society is of keeping the economy functioning during the pandemic and this means strengthening the pay-the-rich status quo including with the state borrowing money from private sources. It calls these private funds "public funds," which it then doles out primarily to narrow private interests. That those monies, provided ostensibly to sustain people's livelihood during the pandemic, do not serve that aim, is brutally highlighted by the demand that vulnerable workers and students pay back thousands of dollars that they received through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and other payments because, it is claimed, that they did not qualify according to rules they were never told existed. On February 9, in response to broad opposition to this unconscionable attack on some of the most vulnerable people struggling to make ends meet, the Canada Revenue Agency announced the reversal of that decision. The problem remains, however, that a large number of people are not eligible for the new Canada Recovery Benefit and are left without any income at all.

Catering to the demands of private businesses, increasing police powers and funding the war economy to serve U.S. imperialism's striving for world hegemony are sucking public funds away from social programs and human-centred investment. Instead of mobilizing the entire society to solve the problems by having everyone participate in a nation-building project based on an economy and social programs that have the satisfaction of the needs of the people as their basis, the elite blame the people and "foreign actors" for all the problems, and then demand that everyone rally around the government and military and police agencies to defend our "democracy." The unanimous support in Parliament for the NDP demand that Proud Boys be added to the list of terrorist organizations and the subsequent designation by the Canadian government of Proud Boys and other organizations as terrorist entities is dangerous for the people's movement in defence of rights. It enshrines the fraud that police powers and their secret operation defend rights and security while it is those same police powers that have been linked with covert as well as overt violence against Indigenous Land Defenders, workers, political and social activists defending rights. The other fraud is that security is a balance between permitting covert police operations and giving them the green light to act with impunity and freedom of speech, association and expression. This is not the case. 

Above all, the cartel parties in government are united in their opposition to what is needed -- political renewal and a new direction for the economy based on a program to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programs.

This article was published in

Number 4 - February 10, 2021

Article Link:
Parliament Opens: Whose Agenda and Who Decides?

    

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