Electoral Platform

FOR A PEOPLE'S RECOVERY FROM CAPITALIST CRISIS

This summer has seen record-shattering heat waves, the discovery of unmarked graves of Indigenous children, and growing imperialist war threats. The COVID pandemic and the economic crisis together have caused over 26,000 deaths in Canada, brought hospitals and healthcare workers to the verge of collapse, and left millions of workers precariously employed or jobless – their savings exhausted, their future uncertain. The capitalist system and the genocidal legacy of colonialism offer no future – it’s time for fundamental change.

Now Big Business – and their parties – are demanding austerity measures to be shouldered by the victims of these policies – workers, women, the unemployed, the poor, racialized people, youth, farmers and small business owners. But working people didn’t cause this crisis – and shouldn’t pay for it!

The Tories are the main danger with their demands for cuts to social benefits, wages and living standards, their support for Cold War policies, US wars and regime change operations, and their links to the religious right.

But the Liberals are also a Big Business party, who also support hot and Cold Wars, and who will bring austerity, abandoning election promises in the name of deficit reduction.

Despite advancing some progressive policies, the Bloc Quebecois often supports Big Business and the right. They are no friend to working people.

The NDP aims to replace the Liberals, and its tepid policies reflect that goal, while the Greens promote the illusion that “market-friendly” policies can achieve climate justice.

The so-called People’s Party is a conservative splinter group whose policies will increase corporate power and wealth.

The best outcome in this election, would be a minority government and a strong progressive bloc including Communists, with strong ties to the labour and people’s movements. A progressive bloc would fight for a People’s Recovery and win important victories for working people. The COVID Parliament would have delivered more for workers and the unemployed – and less for Big Business – with Communist MPs in a strong progressive bloc.

The Communist Party is fighting for a people’s recovery in this election, and will fight for it after the election, too.

Our policies would substantially improve the lives of working people, create jobs, raise wages and living standards, strengthen democracy, equality, and the fight for sovereignty, climate justice and peace. They would also weaken the power of the biggest corporations.

But they would not solve the fundamental problem of capitalism – a system built on the exploitation of one human being by another, on war, and the exploitation of the environment – all in the interests of increased profits.

Only socialism can build a society where the needs of people and the environment are in harmony and where working people are in the driver’s seat. A socialist Canada is the aim of the Communist Party – fundamental social change that’s possible, urgent and worth fighting for.

Don’t waste your vote on parties that put corporate profits ahead of peoples’ needs – and rights. Strategic voting will get you more of the same – or worse.

This time, vote for your own interests. For a People’s Recovery. For good jobs, affordable social housing, higher living standards, a future for youth. For equality, for peace, for climate justice. Vote Communist for fundmantal social and economic change benefitting working people.

READ OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN FOR CLIMATE ACTION

Create jobs: raise wages, pensions and living standards

    • Develop and implement a comprehensive full employment strategy based on massive public investments to increase value-added jobs in environmentally sustainable manufacturing and secondary industry.
    • Rebuild Canada’s public infrastructure.
    • Build one million units of affordable (rent-geared-to-income at 20%) social housing under democratic control using green technology.
    • Expand vital universal social programs, and enact a cross-Canada system of universally accessible, free, quality public childcare.
    • Introduce postal banking and restore universal home delivery at Canada Post. Withdraw from USMCA and other job-destroying free-trade agreements, and introduce plant closure legislation with teeth.
    • Raise wages and purchasing power which have stagnated or fallen over the past 30 years while labour productivity has grown almost 40%!
    • Let workers share the benefits of AI (artificial intelligence) and other new technology in the workplace with a 32 hour work week for 40 hours pay, with no loss in service to the public.
    • Raise the minimum wage to $23/hour across Canada, and legislate a minimum four weeks statutory paid vacations and 14 employer-paid sick days annually.
    • Ban overtime, ‘two-tier wages’ for new hires, and unpaid internships.
    • Include part-time, home-based and contract workers under federal and provincial labour laws.
    • Ban private, for-profit temp agencies.
    • Provide agricultural workers with the same labour rights, standards, and minimum wages as industrial workers.
    • Make Employment Insurance non-contributory and expand it to include all workers including part-time workers and first-time job seekers – for the full duration of unemployment, at 90% of previous earnings (or the average wage).
    • Enact and enforce pay and employment equity legislation covering women and racialized workers in every sector of the economy, and introduce a universal system of quality public childcare now.
    • Substantially increase pensions, and reduce the pension age to 60.
    • Introduce a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income to replace subsistence-level provincial welfare programs, securing health and dignity for those unable to work.

Global Environmental Justice – Act to Halt Climate Change

The world is at a tipping point of irreversible climate change requiring emergency measures and action by all governments.   But simply imposing carbon taxes in the form of increased fuel prices would impose enormous costs on working people, not on the profit-driven corporations responsible for over 70% of GHG emissions. A much more comprehensive policy is needed to reduce Canada’s carbon footprint, including public ownership and control of our natural and energy resources.  

    • Cancel the Energy Saguenay LNG project in Quebec, and the Coastal Gaslink, Trans Mountain Expansion, Line 9 and Line 5 pipeline projects based on expansion of tar sands extraction, and halt all fracking operations. Phase out nuclear energy and the tar sands operations, and guarantee jobs for energy industry workers in the renewable energy sector and in other sectors of the economy.
    • Slash the huge carbon footprint related to deployment of fighter-bomber jets, the naval fleet, and other military purposes with a 75% cut to military spending.  Redirect these funds to search & rescue, emergency disaster response capabilities, and to social spending on health, education, childcare, and job creation.
    • Replace cap-and-trade and carbon tax schemes with strict legal limits for pollution and hard caps on emissions, especially from industrial sources, to reduce emissions to zero by 2050.
    • Impose strong penalties for corporations which break the law, including jail time for corporate executives.
    • Invest heavily to create jobs through renewable energy and conservation programs, and phase out coal-fired plants and terminate reliance on nuclear energy.
    • Substantially expand urban mass transit, eliminating bus and transit fares.
    • Legislate stringent vehicle emission controls.
    • Build and fund high-speed rail as a better alternative to highways and airlines.
    • Rebuild publicly-owned and democratically controlled provincial electrical utility systems that include production, distribution, transmission and a bulk electricity system market, to ensure affordable, safe and reliable power supply for industrial and residential use.
    • Impose heavy fines and jail terms against polluters and destructive corporate practices, such as clear-cutting, in-ocean factory fish farming, and deep-sea draggers.
    • Stop construction of the Site C dam development in BC, and the Muskrat Falls dam in Labrador.
    • Ban industrial development in parks and halt urban sprawl.
    • Ban water exports from the Great Lakes.
    • Enact legislation to protect bio-diversity.

A Foreign Policy of Peace & Disarmament

    • Adopt an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace and disarmament, cut military spending by 75%, oppose the upgrading of NORAD, and withdraw from NATO and NORAD now.
    • Reject the Big Business parties’ drive to war and reaction.
    • No to nuclear first-strike.
    • Oppose the weaponization of space and the Ballistic Missile Defence system.
    • Make the Arctic a zone of peace.
    • Support the global abolition of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction – sign the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty.
    • Scrap the planned purchase of F35 fighter jets and warships that are equipped to carry nuclear weapons, the $5 billion purchase of armed drones, and cancel the sale of armoured military vehicles to Saudi Arabia.
    • Stop the Saudi genocide in Yemen.
    • End all military exports from Canada.
    • Cut military spending and convert to civilian spending, including adequate funding for emergency search and rescue, and environmental protection of Canada’s oceans and waterways.
    • Immediately end Canada’s involvement in US regime change in Venezuela.
    • Withdraw from the Lima Group, lift sanctions and restore full diplomatic relations.
    • End the US blockade of Cuba, lift all sanctions, and restore full services at the Canadian Embassy in Havana.
    • Respect international law, and the sovereignty of all states.
    • Repatriate all troops deployed outside Canada.
    • Support a peaceful, political settlement in Syria.
    • Bring Canadian troops home now, and oppose US war preparations against Iran, regime-change plans in Nicaragua, and the new Cold War against China and Russia.
    • Free Meng Wanzhou.
    • End support of the coup governments that Canada helped install in Haiti and Honduras.
    • Oppose Israeli apartheid – support a just peace in the Middle East based on Israel’s withdrawal from all territories occupied since 1967, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the formation of an independent, viable Palestinian state.
    • Enact boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel.
    • Enforce laws against military recruiting of youth in Canada by the Israeli Defence Force.
    • Cancel the international debts of impoverished and exploited countries.

Expand Universal Social Programs – End Poverty

    • Establish a universal system of quality public childcare now, with Canada-wide standards, that’s free to users.
    • Raise the wages of childcare workers, and make Early Childhood Education qualifications mandatory.
    • Expand Medicare to include pharmacare, long-term care, vision and dental care, and mental health care.
    • Introduce a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income to raise living standards and combat poverty especially among Indigenous peoples, new immigrants, women, youth, seniors and persons with disabilities.
    • Ban ‘workfare’.
    • Protect and expand the universal public pension system.
    • Substantially increase Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits and reduce the pension age to 60 with full pension benefits including access to the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
    • Increase funding to provinces and territories earmarked for health, education, social programs, social housing, and equalization, and enhance all-Canada standards, while ensuring that Quebec, and Indigenous peoples have control over and administer their own programs.
    • Restore and expand public services. Reverse privatization.

Nationalize Energy and Natural Resources

    • Adopt a People’s Energy Plan, including public ownership and democratic control of all energy and natural resources, including extraction, production and distribution.
    • Freeze and reduce energy exports.
    • Close the Alberta tar sands, and guarantee the jobs and wages of laid-off workers in renewable and in more sustainable industries.
    • Phase out nuclear energy.
    • Compensate the Indigenous peoples and communities affected by the tar sands.
    • No to the Energie Saguenay LNG project in Quebec, to Coastal Gaslink, Trans Mountain Expansion, Line 9, and Line 5 pipelines, and to oil and gas exploration and shipping on the west coast.
    • Put a moratorium on the exploration and development of shale gas resources.

Public Ownership and Democratic Control

    • Keep public assets and services out of the hands of profiteers.
    • Reverse the privatization and contracting-out of public services, Medicare, education, and social programs.
    • Stop P3s (Public-Private Partnerships) and build public infrastructure with public funds from the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
    • Restore door to door mail delivery and implement postal banking at Canada Post.
    • Nationalize the banks and insurance companies, telecommunications, and internet service providers.
    • Reverse the privatization of provincial energy utilities, Air Canada, Petro Canada and CN Rail.
    • Repeal ‘Deferred Prosecution Agreements’ that allow corporations like SNC Lavalin to avoid prosecution for criminal activities.
    • Strengthen laws governing corporations and prosecute corporate law-breakers to the full extent of the law.
    • Get out of the job-destroying USMCA (NAFTA 2.0), the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), and other supra-national trade deals that aim to give corporations more power than elected governments.
    • Ban exports of fresh water and the bottling of water in Canada.

Keep Industrial Jobs in Canada

    • Expand value added manufacturing and secondary industry in Canada and adopt trade policies that are multi-lateral and mutually beneficial.
    • Introduce plant closure legislation with teeth (including fines, jail time, and public takeover), to protect jobs.
    • Legislate a two-year notice of layoffs.
    • Increase employer-paid severance pay and retraining, and strengthen bankruptcy laws to protect workers’ wages and pensions.
    • Nationalize Air Canada, Bombardier, the basic steel industry, and the Canadian operations of the Big 3 US automakers which are moving can move their operations out of Canada to low wage jurisdictions at any time.
    • Keep the jobs, the plants and the machinery and equipment, and retool to produce urban and inter-urban rapid transit vehicles and an electric car that’s affordable and environmentally sustainable.
    • Make it the centrepiece of a new transportation policy for Canada.
    • Rebuild the machine tool, agricultural implement and household appliance industries destroyed by free trade, and use new green technology to do it.
    • Restore and expand ship-building.
    • Use tariff, currency exchange and other trade controls to protect jobs in Canada.

Expand Public Healthcare – Universal Pharmacare Now!

The COVID pandemic exposed the cracks in our weakened public healthcare system, and led to the deaths of many healthcare workers and seniors living in private, for-profit and deregulated long-term care homes. Acute shortages of essential Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), ventilators, and vaccines have cost many lives. Now Big Pharma hopes to make a killing on patented COVID vaccines, while Canada and other wealthy countries are hoarding vaccine supplies at the expense of the rest of the world.

    • End Canada’s vaccine hoarding now, and make the COVID vaccine universally available through the United Nations’ COVAX program.
    • Override patent rights so countries can buy or produce the vaccines in their own labs at cost.
    • Nationalize the pharmaceutical industry, and manufacture vaccines, PPE, and medical equipment in Canada.
    • Legislate 14 employer-paid sick days annually for all workers.
    • End private, for profit long-term care, and expand Medicare to include long-term care, pharmacare, vision, dental and mental health care.
    • Stop the attack on universal Medicare, by restoring funding, expanding services, and reversing privatization.
    • Enforce the Canada Health Act, and close private, for-profit clinics and labs.
    • Expand public health and reverse service cuts.
    • End hallway medicine.
    • Reverse P-3 agreements and require provinces to adequately fund public hospitals and healthcare services to meet community needs.
    • Reduce drug overdose deaths with harm reduction and ‘safe supply’ policies.

Progressive Tax Reform – Based on Ability to Pay

    • Tax the greedy, not the needy!
    • Enact progressive tax reform based on ability to pay, and put the load on those most able to pay: the corporations and the wealthy.
    • Double the corporate tax rate, restore the capital tax, and impose taxes on 100% of capital gains.
    • End corporate bailouts, including CEWS (Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy) and LEEFF (Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility), close tax loopholes and shelters; collect unpaid and deferred corporate taxes and jail corporate tax evaders.
    • Order a public inquiry into the CEWS and LEEFF programs that were a windfall for corporate profits.
    • Tax avoidance is tax evasion: Make offshore tax havens illegal.
    • Eliminate taxes on incomes under $40,000/yr.
    • Abolish the regressive HST, GST and provincial sales taxes.
    • Enact wealth and inheritance taxes on the wealthy.

Fair Trade & Sovereignty, not Capitalist Globalization

    • Adopt a trade policy of multi-lateral and mutually beneficial trade with all countries.
    • Get out of USMCA (NAFTA 2.0) and other pro-corporate ‘trade’ pacts, which allow for the free flow of capital while driving down wages, cutting jobs, and stripping Canada of good jobs in value-added manufacturing and secondary industry.
    • Withdraw from the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the Canada-European Union Trade Agreement (CETA), the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) and other capitalist investment pacts which supersede and undermine sovereignty and democracy.
    • Stop and reverse the expansion of U.S. and other transnational control over key sectors of the domestic economy.
    • Protect Canada’s supply management system in agriculture, and the family farm, which are threatened by these corporate pacts.

End Security State Laws

    • Stop the drive to a police state in Canada.
    • Repeal C-59 (formerly C-51) and all other undemocratic and repressive “anti-terrorism” legislation.
    • Abolish secret detention without trial, “national security” certificates and the no-fly list.
    • Rescind the “border security declaration” which allows U.S. troops to enter Canada during “emergencies.”
    • No to “preventive arrest” laws.
    • Defend the right to free speech and dissent.
    • Stop government spying, police violence and agents provocateurs, and use of the courts to repress civil and democratic rights.
    • Abolish CSIS, the RCMP, and the CSE.
    • Strengthen parliamentary oversight of provincial police forces and put municipal police under strict civilian control.
    • Disband the RCMP, CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).
    • Defend and expand on-line privacy rights.
    • Prosecute police for illegal activities including unlawful use of force and murder.
    • Ban the use of tasers.
    • Ban the sale and possession of hand guns and military assault weapons.
    • Ban racial profiling and carding, and cut police budgets to fund social housing, public education, healthcare and amateur sports.
    • Ban private funding of police forces and police “foundations”

A New Equal and Voluntary Partnership And the Right to National Self-Determination

    • Recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples, Acadians, and Québec to national self-determination, up to and including the right to secession.
    • Draft and adopt a new, democratic constitution based on a new equal and voluntary partnership of the Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Métis and Inuit), Québec, the Acadian people, and English-speaking Canada.
    • Rescind the “Clarity” Act.
    • Abolish the Senate and replace it with a House of Nationalities comprised of an equal number of elected representatives from the nations within Canada.
    • Guarantee the rights of Francophones across Canada, to education and services in their national language.
    • Support and fund Indigenous proposals and projects to protect and enhance Indigenous languages and cultures devastated by genocidal government policies.

Justice and Self-Determination for Indigenous Peoples

    • Act now to end the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
    • End the seizure and removal of Indigenous children and youth into state care by taking emergency action to improve living conditions, employment, health, education, and housing of Indigenous peoples, and immediately end the racist and discriminatory cap on educational and health funding for treaty First Nations children.
    • Implement the Calls to Action set out by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and by the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
    • Enforce Indigenous Treaty fishing and hunting rights in the Maritimes and across Canada.
    • Recognize and implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
    • Guarantee Indigenous rights to full, free, prior and informed consent over all development, including resource extraction and pipelines on or affecting their land or livelihoods.
    • Remove vestiges of colonialism from all federal legislation; act now for just settlement of land claims, including natural resource-sharing agreements, without extinguishment of inherent Indigenous title.

Full Gender Equality NOW!

Women’s participation in the workforce is at a 30 year low as a result of the pandemic and the economic crisis, which threaten to keep women at home and unemployed in the future. At the same time, attacks on the equality rights of women, 2S/LGBTIQ (Two-spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning) people have sharply increased. These attacks must be defeated and equality rights secured in law and in practice across the country.

    • Establish a universally accessible, free and quality public childcare system with Canada-wide standards.
    • Close the wage gap – legislate pay and employment equity for women, Indigenous people, disabled people, racialized, and 2S/LGBTIQ people.
    • Increase wages for child care workers.
    • Protect women’s right to EI maternity coverage; expand parental benefits to 52 weeks.
    • Guarantee accessible and publicly funded abortion and reproductive rights services in every province and territory.
    • End all forms of violence against women and 2S/LGBTIQ people, and provide adequate funding for crisis centres and transition houses.
    • Replace Harper’s “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act” with a decriminalization framework to protect the human and legal rights of sex workers, as proposed by the Supreme Court ruling in the Canada v. Bedford case.
    • Guarantee the equality rights of 2S/LGBTIQ persons.
    • Make ‘conversion’ therapy illegal.
    • Legislate and enforce protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, gender expression, and the bodily integrity of intersex people.
    • End two-tier age of consent laws for 2S/LGBTIQ youth, and ensure that sex education curricula in schools is 2S/LGBTIQ -positive.
    • Make Canada a safe haven for refugees fleeing state-sponsored homo-, trans-, and bi-phobia.
    • Strengthen and enforce pay and employment equity programs for women, Indigenous peoples, racialized communities and persons with disabilities.
    • Ban all discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and religion.
    • Guarantee the rights of women, Indigenous peoples and people with disabilities for equal access to social, medical and educational facilities and services.

Fight Racism

    • Oppose anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and all forms of racism and discrimination.
    • Enforce hate speech laws and prosecute white supremacist and neo-fascist organizations as criminal organizations. Defund and demilitarize the police, and redirect funds to social housing, social programs, education, recreation, job creation and equity-seeking organizations.
    • Disarm most police units, end racial profiling and carding, and put police under civilian control with teeth.
    • Remove police from schools and end streaming in education, and in the justice system.
    • Enforce laws banning discrimination in housing and employment.
    • Raise wages with pay and employment equity, and enforce laws against discrimination in housing, healthcare, employment and education.
    • Repeal Quebec’s ‘secularism law’, which targets and discriminates against Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, and other minorities based on their religion and dress.

A Democratic Immigration Policy

    • No one is illegal.
    • Stop deportations of immigrants and refugees, and reverse cuts to legal aid.
    • Repeal the ‘Safe Third Country’ agreement and stop criminalizing refugees forced to enter Canada illegally and in dangerous conditions.
    • Scrap the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the “Live-in Caregiver” Program, and provide a clear and accessible path to permanent residency and citizenship for all foreign and migrant workers, and undocumented workers, in Canada.
    • Scrap the 10 year ban on access to income supports and guarantee access to healthcare.
    • Recognize international educational credentials
    • Prosecute war criminals living in Canada.

A Future for Youth
Free Public and Post-Secondary Education is a Right!

    • Make universal quality public and post-secondary education free to all, including international students, and including textbook and lab costs, with stipends to cover students’ living expenses.
    • Eliminate student debt.
    • Cut military spending by 75% and adequately fund public and post-secondary education.
    • Stop the drive to corporatize schools, colleges and universities, to give corporations control over research and curricula, and to commodify public education.
    • Protect students’ right to organize.
    • Restore liberal arts education and include labour, Indigenous, and women’s studies in curriculum.
    • End unpaid internships and differential fees for international students.
    • Deliver equitable funding for Francophone education, and for Francophone minorities across Canada.
    • Build and fund the long-promised French language universities in Ontario, and in Quebec.
    • Deliver equitable funding for Indigenous education as set out in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.
    • End public funding of private and religious schools.
    • Reverse privatization and corporatization in public education.
    • Enforce hate speech laws on campuses and wherever racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic speakers and groups are testing the law.
    • Hate speech is criminal activity.
    • Hate groups should also be prosecuted as criminal organizations.
    • Significantly increase funding and access to training and apprenticeship programs.
    • Establish a pan-Canadian apprenticeship program with national standards for all trades.
    • Tools for the trade should be provided free to apprentices.
    • Education is a right, not a privilege.

A Bill of Rights for Labour

    • Enshrine a Labour Bill of Rights in the Constitution, guaranteeing workers the right to strike, picket, and organize; to free collective bargaining, and to take collective political action.
    • Ban strike-breaking and scabbing.
    • Strengthen labour standards; block anti-labour “right-to-work” laws.
    • Place farm workers, domestic workers, and migrant workers under federal jurisdiction with full labour standards and the right to organize and bargain collectively.
    • Outlaw temp agencies and pay day loan sharks.
    • Legislate a minimum of four weeks annual paid vacations.
    • Guarantee benefits and pensions for part-time, home-based and contract workers.
    • Put workers’ wages and pensions at the top of the creditors’ list in bankruptcies.

Housing is a Basic Human Right!

    • Build one million units of affordable (rent geared to income at 20%) social housing under democratic control, and create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs in construction and manufacturing.
    • Enact a federal housing policy that recognizes housing is a fundamental human right, and make housing a public utility.
    • Ensure that no-one pays more than 20% of their income on shelter using rent controls and rent roll-backs.
    • Use federal powers to end the housing crisis and homelessness now.
    • Build emergency shelters and transition housing.
    • Ban evictions, mortgage foreclosures and utility cutoffs due to unemployment, strike or lockout.
    • Establish federal-provincial-municipal land banks to assemble land for affordable social housing, schools, hospitals, parks and public works, and to prevent developers and builders from gobbling up valuable public land to inflate housing prices and rents, for profit.
    • Guarantee tenants the right to organize.

A Democratic Canadian Culture

    • Restore funding for the CBC and invest in the National Film Board (NFB-ONF), Telefilm Canada, CBC/Radio-Canada, Conseil des arts du Canada / Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Museum Association / Association des musées canadiens, and other publicly owned institutions.
    • Support the non-profit Aboriginal People’s Television Network which is unique in North America.
    • Make access to publicly funded museums, galleries, films, concerts, etc free to the public.
    • Create state agencies such as NFB-ONF that allow creators and workers in the cultural industry a stable and decent job.
    • No to precarious work in the cultural sector.
    • Tax Netflix and all foreign for-profit cultural businesses at a substantial rate, and use the funds to support public and democratic cultural work, and workers, across Canada and in Quebec, Acadia, and Indigenous communities and nations. Increase state support for Canadian writers and publishing.
    • Use Canadian textbooks in schools.
    • No consumption taxes on cultural work/products.
    • Increase public funding for amateur and community arts, culture and sports, including capital funding, and make them widely accessible and free to the public.
    • Public ownership of scientific and technological research institutions.
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Support Family Farms –
Defend Canada’s Food Sovereignty

    • Ensure Canada’s food sovereignty through policies that benefit family farms and fishers, including income supports – no more bankruptcies!
    • Expand Canada’s supply management system (threatened by free trade agreements), to raise farm incomes, and protect food safety and security.
    • Restore the Canadian Wheat Board elected by prairie farmers, and re-establish single-desk grain sales.
    • Reduce rail freight rates.
    • Curb the power of agro-industrial monopolies; set price controls to reduce the cost of farm inputs and shift to environmentally sustainable methods of agricultural development and food production.
    • Increase food safety inspections.
    • Set price controls on food staples for Northern and Indigenous communities.
    • Support organic farming; reduce the use of antibiotics, fertilizers, pesticides, and other potentially harmful farm inputs, and ban “terminator” seeds in Canada.
    • Require labelling of genetically-modified food products, and reduce the scale of the GMO food system.
    • Protect fresh water and ban water exports and water bottling in Canada.
    • Impose heavy fines and jail terms on polluters for destructive corporate practices, such as in-ocean factory fish farming, deep-sea draggers, and chemical spills.
    • Support family farmers and fishers with adequate income supports.
    • Enforce Indigenous Treaty fishing and hunting rights in NS and across Canada.
    • Stop construction of the Site C dam development in BC, and the Muskrat Falls dam in Labrador.
    • Enact legislation to protect bio-diversity.

A New Financial Deal for Cities

    • Restore local democracy and autonomy and adequately fund municipal governments and services.
    • Give constitutional status and wealth taxing powers to municipalities.
    • Return 50% of gas and licencing taxes to cities.
    • Abolish toll roads and substantially increase funding for capital and operating costs of expanded mass urban transit, and social housing construction and repairs.
    • Rebuild crumbling municipal and provincial infrastructure.
    • Increase statutory grants and upload 100% of the costs of education, healthcare, housing, transit, and social assistance to senior levels of government – reducing property taxes by 80%.
    • Re-establish low-interest loans to cities and towns, and facilitate municipal land-banking.

Transportation for People, Not Profit

    • End privatization and de-regulation (Open Skies) in the airline and rail industries.
    • Nationalize Air Canada, Bombardier, and CN Rail to develop a publicly owned transportation system with the goal of delivering affordable and environmentally sustainable transportation of people and goods across Canada, including to remote and northern communities.
    • Deliver public service, not corporate profits and bailouts.
    • Retool Bombardier to produce trains and public transit vehicles operating on renewable energy.
    • Introduce a bullet train, first through the Montreal to Windsor corridor, the busiest corridor in Canada for moving people and goods.
    • Create a publicly owned bus service, fueled by renewable energy, to replace and expand the service previously provided by Greyhound and other for-profit operators.
    • Combine bus service with expanded inter-urban rail service to meet the needs of rural and remote communities to move people and goods.
    • Build a Canadian electric car that’s environmentally sustainable and affordable, for sale in Canada and for export.
    • Nationalize the Canadian operations of the Detroit Three, and retool to produce environmentally sustainable public transit vehicles and systems.
    • Build mass rapid transit vehicles and systems for municipalities, to reduce use of private cars and to reduce carbon emissions.
    • Make rapid transit free to users, with dedicated lanes and right-if-ways to encourage usage.
    • Systems to be paid for by federal and provincial governments, including capital and operating costs.

Make Every Vote Count

    • Enact mixed-member proportional representation and the right to recall MPs.
    • Guarantee equal treatment for all registered political parties, and end subsidies for the Big Business parties.
    • Amend the Broadcast Act to give equal time to all parties, so that voters can make informed choices.
    • Lower the voting age to 16.
    • Conduct comprehensive enumeration before every election, and strengthen legal action against all forms of voter suppression.
    • Dramatically cut spending limits for political parties during and prior to election campaigns.
    • Remove restrictions on the right of unions to donate to political parties; enforce the ban on corporate donations including to Third Parties registered with Elections Canada.
    • Members of Parliament to receive the average workers’ wages and benefits.