No. 13September 2, 2021
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44th General Election
So-Called Leaders’ Debates in Full Swing
Demonstration outside so-called leaders’ debate in Montreal during general election, September 24, 2015.
The first televised so-called leaders’ debate will be held tonight on the Quebec-based TVA station. The two-hour program airs at 8:00 pm ET. It will include the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois. The Green Party is excluded from the TVA debate because criteria for participation is exclusionary. Besides other things, it requires that a party have at least one Quebec seat in the House of Commons.
The two national “Leaders’ Debates” organized by the government-funded Leaders’ Debate Commission are scheduled for next week, to be staged from the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. The French debate is set for September 8 between 8:00 pm and 10:00 pm ET. The English debate is scheduled for September 9, from 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm ET.
The cartel parties approved a $4.6 million budget for the Commission to organize the two shows. An additional $800,000 was allocated for the Commission to do “the necessary preparatory work” in the pre-election period, bringing the total to $5.4 million. Preparatory work included a phony consultation process on inclusion criteria to create the impression that the criteria is not exclusionary and to hide who decides and in whose interests the debates are held. What is certain is that they do not help to deliver on the right of Canadians to an informed vote.
Radio-Canada’s Patrice Roy is expected to moderate the French debate, with the assistance of Hélène Buzzetti of Les coops de l’information, Guillaume Bourgault-Côté of L’actualité, La Presse’s Paul Journet and Marie Vastel of Le Devoir. Noovo Info’s Noémi Mercier is also expected to moderate segments that include questions asked by Canadian citizens.
Angus Reid Institute President Shachi Kurl is expected to moderate the English debate, alongside Global News’ Mercedes Stephenson, CBC News’ Rosemary Barton, Evan Solomon of CTV News and APTN News’ Melissa Ridgen.
According to the press release issued by an entity called the Debate Broadcast Group, “debate topics will be unveiled three days before each event takes place. It will be simultaneously translated into American Sign Language, Lange des signes québécoise, and six Indigenous languages.” OMNI Television will live translate in Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Tagalog.
As to who is “invited” to participate, Leaders’ Debates Commissioner David Johnston announced in June that “by the date of the election, each candidate’s party must be represented in the House of Commons by an elected MP, have won at least four per cent of the national vote during the last federal election, or can show that it would garner four per cent of the national vote within five days after the federal election date is set, which can be measured through public opinion polling.”
The election was announced on August 15. Five days after the election was called was August 20, ten days before the close of nominations. Polling companies must have carried reports that day which told Canadians who would get more than four per cent of the vote and deserved a seat at the table. There is a suggestion that what polling companies say represents public opinion. This is hogwash. It certainly does not translate into providing Canadians with their right to cast an informed vote.
The Need to Change the Direction of the Economy
Statistics Canada reports on economic performance during the second quarter of this year (April, May, June) contradict Justin Trudeau’s remark that the “economy is roaring back.” To benefit their own campaigns, opposing cartel party politicians vying for their own cartel party to form the government immediately pounced on Trudeau’s “roaring” statement as nonsense.
Yes, the statement was nonsense. It reveals how self-serving the Liberals and their leader are. The response of the cartel parties is similarly self-serving. All of them promote themselves by making claims which are not true. The entire machinery of state, from the media, to pollsters and pundits, use their positions to give these cartel parties legitimacy by promoting their claims, disputing their claims and otherwise making sure they cannot be held to account.
Real problems require real solutions, not detached and irrational sound bites from cartel party politicians or endless pro and con spin from media, pollsters and pundits. To deal with the problems in the economy and build a future, working people themselves are coming forward to speak in their own name. The conditions are even forcing unions out of their traditional negotiating and grieving role within the confines of labour law, to protest and contest the use of the state machinery to dictate wages and working conditions, eliminate pensions and compensation for injuries or loss of employment, homelessness and the violation of rights on every front without exception. The new normal treats workers as disposable and negates the rights of all. An authority which permits such things cannot be left to rule.
The oligarchs in power in the economy and those who command the cartel parties vying for elected positions and to form the government to serve themselves and those holding economic power are not going to solve the problems facing the people and economy or even investigate them in a serious manner. They are engaged in a vicious fight over control of the state apparatus to serve their own narrow private interests. They have integrated the economy of Canada as a whole and of each province and territory into the U.S. war machine and are engaged in a brutal fight with rival coalitions and cartels which includes passing backward legislation to justify nation-wrecking in every aspect of life
Real Problems Require Real Solutions!
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada calls on Canadians to raise the level of politics by speaking in their own name about their conditions of life and work, about what they expect from the economy, how resources should be used and who should control them. These are all political problems because human beings cannot control their lives when their security is in the hands of cartel parties controlled by narrow private interests.
Join with fellow Canadians in discussing and charting a path forward to a modern Canada that stops paying the rich, makes Canada a zone for peace and humanizes the natural and social environment by protecting Mother Earth and defending the rights of all!
For Your Information
Economy Contracts in Second Quarter
Statistics Canada (StatCan) reports that the economy as measured in gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of this year (April, May, June) and continued the decline in July. StatCan found “substantial declines in home resale activities and exports pushed real gross domestic product (GDP) down 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2021.” Declines occurred in “exports (-4.0 per cent) and home ownership transfer costs (-17.7 per cent), which include all costs associated with the transfer of a residential asset from one owner to another.”
GDP measures market transactions in money. As such, GDP does not pinpoint problems in the economy or provide any specific information as to a way forward. For example, the fluctuation of business inventories of all manner of goods has a large impact on the GDP. When inventories accumulate, the GDP goes up; when the inventories deplete for whatever reason, the GDP goes down.
StatCan writes, “Businesses accumulated $9.7 billion in inventories, compared with a $6.2 billion withdrawal in the first quarter. The inventory accumulation, which was the major contributor to GDP during the quarter, was led by durable retail goods.” (Chart 1)
Another “predominant contributor” to the GDP is housing, including new construction, renovations and ownership transfer costs. The biggest contributor to GDP is not new construction or renovations, which create new value, but home ownership transfer costs. The “costs associated with the transfer of a residential asset from one owner to another” including the flipping of houses for quick profit, do not produce new housing or new value of any sort. As can be seen from Chart 3, these transfer costs, especially since 2020, have outpaced new value from construction as an element of GDP.
StatCan writes, “Since the third quarter of 2020, housing investment has emerged as the predominant contributor to economic activities and to capital stock — with residential capital stock surpassing non-residential capital stock. Moreover, the average housing investment for the previous four quarters was 17 per cent higher than the average over the last five years.” (Chart 2)
Reading these statements regarding the GDP, one would be surprised to then find out that a large number of Canadians are facing a housing crisis, including homelessness. Such is the detached nature of the GDP statistics. For cartel party politicians to use them to throw mud at their opponents vying for elected positions in Parliament shows how detached they are from the people and the real problems in the economy.
Chart 1
Chart 2
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