Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound NDP Riding
  • About BGOS NDP
  • BGOS Federal
  • BGOS Ontario
  • Submissions, Issues & Resourses
    • Renegotiating NAFTA
    • Ontario Workplace Reforms (Bill 148) Submission
    • Submission from BGOS to Commons Standing Committee on International Trade regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership
    • Submission to Federal Government Consultation on Affordable Housing Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound NDP 20 October 2016
    • Electoral Reform
    • Final Report from Precarious Work Group
    • Precarious Work - Living Wage
    • NDP Aboriginal Commission
    • Neoliberal angst and the Greek economy
    • Women
    • Health Care
    • Great Lakes, Water Issues
  • Media
    • News Clippings
  • Fixing Democracy
  • Submission to Ontario on Payday Loan Companies
  • FB Gallery
  • Membership
    • Volunteer
  • Contact Us
  • Photos & Video
  • BGOS Map
  • YOUTH - Bruce-Grey Owen Sound New Democratic
  • Events
  • Rules of a strike FAQ
  • 2019 Provincial Resolutions to consider
  • Chris Stephen Bio

Brexit & Trump By David McLaren

7/24/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
​What voters for Brexit and Trump have in common (and it’s not bigotry).
 
“The times, they are a changin’,” sang bob Dylan way back at the start of the ‘60s revolution. Well they are changin’ once again. The Brexit vote shocked not only the markets and the debt rating agencies (both of which promptly punished Britain for voting ‘leave’), but it led to the resignation of PM David Cameron. There was a lot of “what have we done” second guessing the morning after.
 
It would be easy, as some in the mainstream media have opined, to think that the yobs who hate immigrants, especially if they’re not white, carried Britain out of the EU. But please, not all the 17 million people who voted ‘leave’ are ignorant racists.
 
Yes, the leave vote was generally older, whiter, less educated and lived outside of urban centres, but not dramatically so. And yes almost all UKIP supporters voted to leave, but so did chunks of Labour and Conservative voters. Besides, Britain’s working people have an honourable history ofresisting racism and fascism. But, like both the Labour and the Conservative Parties, they too have blurred the lines between immigration, race, traditions and what really ails them.
 
You could say much the same about Mr Trump’s supporters. They too are older, less educated and largely working class. But it would be equally foolish to tar and feather them with the same race-baiting brush we might use on the Donald. Some of them are Democrats who would have voted for Bernie, but will now vote for Donald J.
 
What the Brexit voters and the Trump supporters have in common is betrayal. They have been betrayed by the very people who have said they “hear their pain.” For the past two generations they have been promised that work and money would trickle down to them; that free trade deals like NAFTA (and now TPP) would provide them with a good job; that if you work hard, serve your country and pay your taxes you’ll be alright.
 
Well, that’s a load of horse-spit, isn’t it? Workers in both England and American have lost real wages. Some have lost their homes and their health. They watch their political leaders bail out bankers and know that every day their CEOs are pulling in what they’ll make in a year. The good union manufacturing jobs are gone, replaced by precarious service jobs. And still they’re told they’ll have to make further cuts to salaries, to pensions to health care.
 
The Brexit vote last June was as much a revolt against this neoliberal agenda as it was about anything else. There is no party in the UK who can give the disheartened a voice – not the Conservatives under Thatcher-lite Theresa May, not Labour under whomever emerges from their civil war, not especially the UK Independence Party.
 
The Presidential vote in November is shaping up the same way. The disenchanted and disinherited vs the established corporate and political elite. With Ms Clinton, the ultimate insider on one side and the Donald on the other, the contest could not be more stark.
 
This is not to say that Mr Trump is the great white hope of the working man – he’s not. It is to say that the Brexit vote and the Trumping of American democracy are really the same urge for escape from a political and economic agenda that has disadvantaged so many people.
 
You can see the struggle in just about every democracy in the West: the rise (and co-opting) of the anti-austerity party Syriza in Greece, the quick ascendency of Podemos in Spain. But as the left resurges, so does the far right – the National Front in France, Golden Dawn in Greece, the nail-biter of an election in Austria where an old socialist narrowly defeated the far right Freedom Party.
 
The interesting thing about this revolution is that it’s democratic – as long as the Hillary Clintons and the Donald Trumps and the Theresas Mays don’t co-opt it.
 
Now that the oil patch is no longer propping up the middle class in Canada, expect to see the same fault lines start to appear here as well.

0 Comments

Summertime

7/24/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Michael McLuhan, EDA President

Your Executive is becoming busier on a number of fronts. Last month we sent comment into the Ontario government on its weak regulatory proposal to limit the interest charged by payday loan companies. We said that a much better solution would be to raise the minimum wage to a living wage (from $11.25 to $15 an hour in this area); and to authorize a financial institution to make small, short-term, relatively low-interest loans for those who still need them. Ontario used to have its own Provincial Savings Offices that could have done this, but the Conservative government sold off its assets just before the 2003 election.
 
This month we have contacted the Bank of Canada with our concerns about Nellie McClung who, in a recent poll, topped the list of women the Bank is considering putting on our currency. Despite her many accomplishments, her support for forced sterilization in the 1920s should disqualify her. Please read the article below by Colleen Purdon and MaryAnn Wilhelm, both of whom have done some excellent work on this.
 
Some of the comments we’ve heard (on facebook for example) include a complaint that we’re trying to make political hay out of this, especially since Tommy Douglas dabbled in eugenics himself. While Douglas did indeed write an MA thesis on eugenics, he did not promote sterilization and when he was presented with such a policy for Saskatchewan, he rejected it. You can find some information on Douglas’ thesis here. 
 
It appears Trudeau is enjoying a prolonged honeymoon from Canadians obviously weary of a decade of g Harper’s divisive leadership. However, the Liberals have yet to be tested. Will they ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement – a flawed treaty that will benefit multi-national corporate profits but do little to spark Canadian innovation or deliver good paying jobs? Will they deal honestly with First Nations on a nation-to-nation level as the Supreme Court suggests in its rulings and as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires? (Watch for the Cabinet’s decision on the Northern Gateway Pipeline.) Will they repeal the Conservatives’ anti-union legislation? Will they amend the loathsome Bill C-51?
 
Already there are signs the new boss is the same as the old boss (as the Who sang it in ‘Won’t get Fooled Again’). The Liberals have not put a stop to Canada Revenue Agency’s political audit of left-leaning charities. They decided to sell arms to Saudi Arabia in spite of that country’s human rights record, and now there is evidence that some of those arms are being used to attack Saudi civilians. Thanks to that deal Canada is now the 2nd largest supplier of arms to the Middle East. They continue to support Israel, right or wrong. They have not ditched the expensive and error-plagued F-35 as they said they would. They are fighting with veterans over compensation for service-related injuries.
 
You can follow some Liberal backtracking on Twitter at #NBisSOB, a hashtag David McLaren is using to record what the new boss is doing that’s the same as the old boss. Feel free to add your own observations. There is also a website that tallies Liberal promises against their actions:https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/. There’s good reason for our skepticism. You might remember Mr Chretien’s Red Book of promises in the 1993 campaign.Not a single one was kept.
 
What to do! Canada needs people to speak out lest our silence be taken for consent. Pick an issue you’re passionate about; write your local paper; call an open-line show; talk to our MP and MPP. Do not mistake the NDP for the grey porridge of the mushy middle. Listen to Stephen Lewis here and you’ll see what I mean. So mention the NDP and make your voice our voice.
 
If you are interested in sitting on the Executive and working for a better Bruce Grey, please contact me directly at michael@michaelmcluhan.com. Whether you’re interested in the Executive or not, come and sit with us at our meetings. Our next meeting will be on Thursday July 28th at the BDO Building in Owen Sound (1717 2nd Ave E, ground floor). Potluck from 5:30 pm.
​

0 Comments

Not Nellie: BGOS NDP urges Bank of Canada, ‘Don’t choose Nellie McClung for our money’

7/15/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture

 12 July 2016, for immediate release

​The Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound New Democratic Party is urging the Bank of Canada to choose any woman but Nellie McClung to put on our currency.
 
MaryAnn Wilhelm, Federal Vice President of BGOS NDP: “While we’re happy that the Bank of Canada is recognizing that Canadian women deserve to be recognized for our achievements, we have two concerns. One is that the Bank will choose only one woman. And the second is that it not be Nellie McClung because of her support for Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928.”
 
Nelle McClung was born in Chatsworth in 1873. The family moved west and, in 1921, she was elected to the Alberta Legislative Assembly. In her long career she fought for the right of women to vote and to be considered “persons” – the definition of which in the British North American Act was being used to keep women from public office. She was one of the ‘Famous Five’ women who forced Canada to recognize women as “persons.”
 
“These are worthy accomplishments,” says Colleen Purdon, BGOS NDP’s Women’s Rep. “Unhappily, Nellie also promoted Alberta’s eugenics legislation which, until its repeal in 1972, resulted in the forced sterilization of nearly 5,000 women.”
 
Rachel Mason, BGOS NDP’s Aboriginal Rep adds, “That number included Aboriginal women in greater proportion than their numbers in the general population. They were also much more likely to be declared “feeble minded” so they could not appeal the decision of the Eugenics Board. Surely, in the spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this is not something Canada should be celebrating.”
 
The Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound NDP Executive is surprised and a little dismayed that two other women from this region did not even make it to the Banks’ long list (at http://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/banknoteable): Nahneebahweeqwe (Catherine Sutton) who was such a strong advocate for the Saugeen Ojibway Nation in the 1800s, and Agnes Macphail who, in 1921, was the first woman elected to Parliament.
 
—30--
 
For more information:
MaryAnn Wilhelm, BGOS Federal VP & Outreach Director for the federal NDP Aboriginal Commission, (519) 534-2669, maryann_wilhelm@yahoo.com
Colleen Purdon, BGOS NDP Women’s Rep (519) 376 7145,  cpurdon@bmts.com
Rachel Mason, BGOS Aboriginal Rep & First Nations Director for the federal NDP Aboriginal Commission, (519) 379-9283,  mrachelmason@yahoo.ca 

Below provides a list of links with background to Nellie McClug, Eugenics, Bank of Canada public consultation: A Bank NOTE-able Canadian Woman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_McClung
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/eugenics-keeping-canada-sane-feature/

 http://bit.ly/1XBUPES

http://historyofrights.ca/encyclopaedia/main-events/eugenics/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization_in_Canada
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Sterilization_Act_of_Alberta
Long List of women being considered for our money:  http://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/banknoteable/


Local NDP doesn't want McClung on banknoteBy Denis Langlois, Sun Times, Owen Sound
Friday, July 15, 2016 5:28:08 EDT PM
 http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/2016/07/15/local-ndp-doesnt-want-mcclung-on-banknote


1 Comment

    Archives

    July 2019
    August 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015

    BGOS Calendar
    Join Newsletter Here
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.