In the News April 14

Government Handouts in the Name of “Greening the Economy”

Stop Paying the Rich!
Demand a New Direction for the Economy!

The federal and Ontario governments speak often nowadays about investing to “grow the economy.” To hide pay-the-rich schemes which hand over public funds to private enterprises in the name of “greening the economy,” the recent federal budget announced the creation of a new Canadian Innovation and Investment Agency. According to the promo material, there will be a “world-leading” Canada Growth Fund, “a new public investment vehicle that will operate at arm’s-length from the federal government.”

It allotted $15-billion in seed money saying this will attract another $45 billion in private capital. Furthermore, to correct a historic under-investment in Research & Development (R&D), the government will “proactively work with new and established Canadian industries and businesses to help them make the investments they need.”

The fact is that the Trudeau government has been implementing pay-the-rich schemes which plunder Canada’s resources in a manner which destroys the natural environment and people’s health and, besides other things, most significantly tramples in the mud the hereditary rights of the Indigenous peoples. The more it has been exposed for defending neither the environment nor hereditary rights, the more it has stepped up using public funds to favour narrow private interests in the name of high ideals. Even before the last election, Trudeau and his ministers were donating public funds to the foreign steel barons without any regard for the rights of the workers in the restructured plants.

Examples include the March 16 announcement of another round of handouts of public funds to private global automakers, this time to Japanese-based Honda Canada Inc., and the March 23 announcement of an undisclosed amount in the hundreds of millions, if not more, for a “green energy” electric vehicle battery plant to be built in Windsor. Government ministers gloat that plundering the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario without the consent of the Indigenous peoples is a brilliant way to go. The enthusiasm is so great they cannot manage to hide the fact that it is all linked with the U.S. war economy.

This issue of In the News provides information about these pay-the-rich projects and also features a video sent by steelworkers from Max Aicher in Germany showing the treatment which awaits immigrants in Europe.

Stop Paying the Rich! Increase Investments in Social Programs!
Canada Needs an Anti-War Government!

Workers’ Forum, posted April 14, 2022.