Report: Nearly half of Canadian working renters a month or less away from not being able to pay bills -- Urgent relief for workers needed

In an analysis and press release today the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has found that close to "half of working renters in Canada don't have enough savings to pay their bills for more than a month if they lose their jobs".

According to the CCPA release:

"As more Canadians lose their incomes to COVID-19 every day, hundreds of thousands of families could soon be forced to choose between buying groceries and paying the rent," said Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and senior researcher with the CCPA Ontario office. "It's good that the Government of Canada has announced plans to support lower-income Canadians, but many families can't wait for support by April or May – they need it now. A lot of out-of-work tenants will be in dire straits before the end of the month."
Statistics Canada data from 2016 show that 3.4 million Canadian households are renters whose main source of income is employment or self-employment income. Of this group, 46 per cent, or 1.6 million households, only have enough money saved to pay their bills for a month or less, the CCPA analysis shows. Twenty-four per cent of the total, or 830,000 households, don't have enough income to get through a single week without pay.
"When we say people are living paycheque to paycheque, it's not just an expression, it's reality," Tranjan said. "As the crisis worsens, the need to support low-income renters becomes even more urgent. Both the federal and provincial governments must work to keep renters safe and solvent."

The report itself includes graphics that show very starkly the situation we are facing.

The analysis reinforces the urgency of demands for Employment Insurance reform and wage premiums from unions like Unifor. 

In a press release today Jerry Dias, Unifor National President said "We are facing a crisis of catastrophic proportions that requires fast action from government. Despite promising first steps, federal progress on worker supports has stalled and I'm afraid our opportunity for quick action may have passed".

The release further noted that:

Unifor is calling on Parliament to pass emergency measures on Tuesday to expedite the delivery of paycheques to displaced working families, through whatever means necessary, including via existing employer payroll systems or direct payments to households.
"Canada's workers were feeling the squeeze before they were forced out of a job by this pandemic. Without a dramatic change of tack, in a few more days laid-off workers will be left with empty cupboards and bare dinner tables," said Dias.

Unifor wants retailers remaining open to -- in addition to enhanced safety measures -- give their workers essential wage premiums like the extra $2 an hour that have been instituted by major chains like Rexall, Loblaw and Metro. This would both help workers to save towards a possible future shutdown of their workplace as well as with supporting their families where other household members may already be out of work. 

The time for action is now. 

"Last week, more than 500,000 individual E.I. claims were filed and there is no reason to expect that number to slow down," said Lana Payne, Unifor Secretary-Treasurer. "Millions more will have their work interrupted by this pandemic. The E.I. system, once overwhelmed, is now completely under water."

Dias added further that "Members of Parliament need to be prepared to make an immediate decision about how they plan to fund income replacement for Canada's workers tomorrow. If the E.I. system cannot handle these claims in a timely way, an immediate and temporary alternative is needed to ensure hardworking Canadian families do not fall into financial ruin.".

Tranjan in his CCPA report concludes:

The findings in this report show the magnitude of the need. Tenants don’t
have enough financial cushion to pay next month’s rent. And once they are
back to work, they won’t be able to pay arrears, given how little they were
able to save in normal times.
The federal government and its provincial counterparts need a plan, or
several plans. 

Ontario's poverty gap puts the lie to Wynne's 'social justice' pretensions

Back in 2013 when she was running for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, Kathleen Wynne famously told the Toronto Star that she wanted to be known as "the social justice premier". She also said that when it came to "liberal values", "I believe social justice is what drives us". 

Yet, when it comes to social assistance rates and those trying to live on them in Ontario, after 13 years in office this alleged liberal value of social justice is, to say the least, on scant display.

In fact, the Liberals in office have continued with Mike Harris' devastating war on people living in poverty that began when the Conservatives defeated the Bob Rae NDP government in 1995.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released a report today that looks at the "poverty gap" for people on both Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). The poverty gap is "the distance between total benefit income and the poverty line".

The report found that not only had the Liberals not reversed the dramatic increase in the gap created during the Harris years, they had maintained it. When one looks at the numbers, the vicious and cruel social assistance rates that force to people to try to survive on an "income" that is as much as 60% BELOW the poverty line continues to this day and has seen no significant improvement under the Liberals or Wynne.

Overall the numbers are shocking. As the report lays out:

The poverty gap for a single adult qualifying for Ontario Works was 59%.
It would take an additional $12,301 to close the gap.
The poverty gap for a single parent qualifying for Ontario Works was
35%. It would take an additional $10,386 to close the gap.
The poverty gap for a couple with two children qualifying for Ontario
Works was 38%. It would take an additional $15,686 to close the gap.
The poverty gap for a single adult qualifying for ODSP was 33%. It would
take an additional $6,783 to close the gap.
The poverty gap for a single parent with one child qualifying for ODSP
was 11%. It would take only an additional $3,261 to close the gap.
The poverty gap for a couple with two children qualifying for ODSP was
20%. It would take an additional $8,146.95 to close the gap.

In fact, single people on Ontario Works only just recently began to receive as much monthly in assistance in actual dollars as they received in 1993:

 At that time, a single person on social assistance received $663 a month, the equivalent of about $995 in today’s dollars.
Two decades later, in 2014, after severe welfare cuts by the former Mike Harris government and despite modest improvements to rates and other supports by the Liberals, single people on welfare received $656 in monthly Ontario Works payments and about $75 a month in Trillium benefits and federal GST credits.
Today, the maximum Ontario Works rate is $681 a month.

A government that squanders hundreds of millions on white elephant "infrastructure" initiatives for rich people, over a billion dollars on the eHealth boondoggle, that recently even handed out $32 million to IBM to fix a government software mistake that IBM itself  had made, and that has engaged in round-after-round of unnecessary "middle-class" tax cuts, has done nothing of any meaning to help the most vulnerable in the province.

This shameful situation will not be solved by pilot projects that may, a generation from now, lead to some kind of "guaranteed annual income" that may prove little more than a Trojan Horse.

We need action now. Social assistance rates well below the poverty line are grotesque and unacceptable.

The Liberals have been in power for more than long enough. And Wynne cannot use the excuse that she has only governed for a few of those years, for, as the CCPA report points out, it took the Rae government only three years to cut the poverty gap for single people on welfare from 40% to 20%.

As long as the Liberal government allows this to continue by its inaction, any pretensions by Wynne to claim to care at all about social justice remain a hollow farce.

See also: Joe Mihevc and Toronto politicians are "ripping off" the TTC -- Not transit riders!

See also: Toronto budget prioritizes policing -- Yet again

Reinforcing male privilege -- The Trudeau cabinet, Andrew Coyne and the mythology of "merit"

You really have to love it when the beneficiaries of the greatest social assistance program in the history of Western Civilization and Canada -- the one that did and has rewarded white men for having been born white men since the day the country was founded -- talk about "merit" to bemoan newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to make his cabinet have an equal number of men and women, thereby reflecting the actual gender composition of the country.

As is always the case about efforts to redress historic injustices it is met with cries of outrage about "quotas", "reverse sexism" and a bunch of other total rubbish.

Usually, as Andrew Coyne did in the National Post, they pay lip service to the fact that no past cabinet was ever based on anything remotely like merit and, in fact, had an outright quota system that ensured that all positions of power in both our government and society as a whole were 100 per cent held by white men, but they will not then accept either that these systemic biases continue to this day or that anything done to reverse them has any merit.

The injustices do still exist and it should come as absolutely no surprise that those like Coyne, who are in no small part where they are due to the cosmic crap shoot of birth that has a lot less to do with their own merits that they might care to admit, will then go on to pontificate in ways that serve to obfuscate their own profound privilege.

There is little doubt that positions of power in our economy and politics are greatly skewed and that white men remain the overwhelming beneficiaries still of the ultimate example of societal welfare.

Take the corporate world. As Kate McInturff , a Senior Researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives noted in 2014:

What makes the top 100 CEOs different from the rest of us (aside from the money)? For a start, they are almost entirely men. If the top 100 looked like the rest of working Canadians then 47 per cent of them would be women. In reality only 3 per cent are women.
In a recent survey, senior Canadian executives suggested that a lack of qualifications was the reason for the absence of women at the top. Yet two in five business post-graduates in Canada are women. Senior executives suggested that women were less ambitious than their male peers. Yet, 81 per cent of female MBA graduates seek corporate jobs following graduation. For those women who do manage to get their foot in the corporate door, there is no lack of hours to work. It's their pay that looks different. Women with MBAs earn $8,167 per year less than their male colleagues in their first jobs after graduation. And the pay gap, here as in every other field, just keeps on growing as they enter their 30s and 40s.

Note that here too, of course, the claim of "merit" and "qualifications" are used as a lie by male executives and their apologists to buttress the argument for doing nothing about the very real male privilege that still exists in their world. 

Never mind that, as she also notes:

It would take the average working age woman in Canada 235 years (or 85,778 days) to make as much as one of these CEOs makes in a single year. It would take a first-generation immigrant woman 268 years to do it. Visible minority women and Aboriginal women would have to work the longest, at 273 years and 285 years respectively.

Or take the fact, as noted in the Globe and Mail that when it comes to the persistent gender based pay gap:

After decades of narrowing differences in pay and labour-force participation rates, momentum has stalled, with some measures deteriorating in recent years. Canadian women still take home on average 73 cents for every dollar men earn, even as educational attainment has surpassed their male counterparts. The gap remains when controlled for measures such as occupations and hourly wages. 

In politics this same pattern has, of course, played out, and to such a degree that even Wikipedia, when commenting on the lack of women in leadership roles in Canadian politics, has come to the conclusion that:

This dearth of women in political leadership may, in some ways, be attributable to women's general exclusion from important cabinet positions that are seen as stepping stones to leadership. Women were largely excluded from Canadian cabinets until the 1970s. Only in rare instances do women comprise a significant proportion of Canadian cabinets, as in the case of then-Ontario Premier Bob Rae's first cabinet in 1990, in which 11 of 26 ministers were women. As of July 2013, the Harper Cabinet had 11 female ministers in a cabinet of 39, though most hold minor portfolios.

"This dearth of women in political leadership may, in some ways, be attributable to women's general exclusion from important cabinet positions that are seen as stepping stones to leadership." I think this needs to be emphasized as it points to the basic and grotesque hypocrisy and contradiction at work when primarily white male commentators pen these types of apologias for historic sexism.

Again, for example, we see Andrew Coyne state:

But nothing we have seen before can quite compare to the course the Liberals have embarked upon: an explicit 50-50 gender quota. This is not an objective or a target; not a balancing of merit and other considerations. It is a fixed rule, to be adhered to come what may.

And yet he himself, now obviously forgetting this in the typical way, already acknowledged that we had very much seen something that "could compare" -- the historic, and far more dramatic and exclusionary, white male quota!

Only now, when a Prime Minister seeks to actually upend the quota imposed on our society by white men for the benefit of white men do white men suddenly care at all about "merit"!

Where were all the white men whining about this when only, or virtually only. white men (and rich ones to boot) were the bulk or entirety of basically every cabinet in Canadian history?

That certainly was not based on merit! It was based on sexism and racism. It was only not considered a quota as the white men running the system had constructed racist and sexist narratives that claimed that only white men had the alleged "qualifications" necessary.

So folks like Coyne need to cut the false, self-serving sanctimony and bullshit. Trudeau's plan is not a quota, it is an effort to include voices deliberately excluded from being heard for the entire history of our country and perspectives that have been deliberately kept out of the real power positions of our government. Voices and perspectives that came from half the population.

The fact that countless white men were afforded positions of power and privilege not due to any merit but due solely to being white men is now supposed to be simply forgotten and ignored according to the Coynes of our discourse. It is a call for little more than business as usual and a call not for merit but for continuing the white male hegemony that defines "merit" solely in terms of the privileged qualities that its male commentators see in the mirror.

Are the Greens a "progressive" party?

Are the Greens a "progressive" party?

While Green voters would certainly appear to think so, some New Democrat partisans would seem to say otherwise claiming they are little more than Conservatives with composters. Recently, as an example, Paul Moist, head of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, in a letter critical of Leadnow and its strategic voting campaign stated “Neither the Liberal Party of Canada nor the Green Party are progressive...Both parties have very right-wing economic policies, do not stand for working families or public services. Only the NDP has a progressive platform.”

Is this at all fair to say, (especially when their economic policy platform is contrasted with that of the NDP's as this is what matters here) in the case of the Greens?

With the Greens having taken from the start a stronger and clearer stance on issues like Bill C-51 than did Tom Mulcair and the NDP, it is obvious why New Democrat partisans might be concerned that the Greens might appeal to some Canadian leftists and progressives, particularly given the NDP's own increasing and obvious economic centrism. 

Since Moist (and others) claim that the Greens are not progressive due specifically to their positions on economic policy, it is time take a look at those policies more closely.

The Green's open their "The Green Economy" platform citing in their preamble, among other things, the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) stating:

Unfortunately, employed Canadians are also among the most overworked citizens in the industrialized world. A report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) states that the richest 10% of Canadians are the only ones not working longer hours. The report concludes that, despite being better educated and working harder, Canadian families are now “running faster just to stay put and the bottom half is actually falling behind.” 

While presumably, and given that the statement came from a labour leader, a party that was not progressive and that was right-wing economically would be anti-labour, anti-worker and anti-union, in the case of the Greens that does not at all seem to be the case.

Under the heading "Labour" the Green's policy book begins by saying:

Canadians are among the most overworked people in the industrialized world. The Green Party wants to help restore balance in the lives of Canadian workers by increasing paid vacation entitlement at the federal level, and supporting provincial policies mandating shorter working hours.
The Green Party will raise the minimum paid vacation entitlement to three weeks. Many countries with minimum standards of four weeks and longer also have more productive and internationally-competitive economies than Canada’s.

It goes on to call for, among other things, establishing a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour under the Canada Labour Code, creating federal ‘anti-scab’ legislation, making changes to the Employment Standards law to provide equal protection to contract and temporary workers, strengthening non-union workers’ rights and protections to close the widening gap between union and non-union workplaces, increasing federal inspections and establishing stronger deterrents to illegal unpaid overtime work to achieve full compliance with Canada Labour Code standards, and re-establishing "in law the rights to equal pay for work of equal value".

It is very hard to see how this vision can be described as in anyway less progressive than the NDP's. In fact in certain key ways it is to the left of the NDP.

In the case of taxes sadly, just like the NDP but unlike Trudeau's Liberals, the Greens do not call for any personal tax increases on the wealthy. However, after decrying the logic of corporate tax cuts in very strong, and notably progressive terms, the Greens go on to pledge that they would "Return Corporate Tax rates, except for the Small Business tax rate, to the 2008 level", a policy that is at least as good as the NDP's on this front.

In fact, as the Greens do not, unlike the NDP, call for totally unnecessary and reactionary tax cuts for "small business", one could make a strong case that their tax policy is also to the left of the NDP's, though only very marginally.

The Greens call for ending subsidies to major corporations, especially in the fossil fuel sector, and use David Lewis' famous quip about "corporate welfare bums".

When it comes to debt reduction and balanced budgets, far from opposing public services or calling for austerity their platform states they would:

Set a disciplined schedule to gradually pay down the debt while maintaining public services and programs that meet immediate social and environmental needs, increasing debt reduction over time but starting with modest targets to permit investment in critical programs.

They call for "more effective antitrust laws in concentrated industry sectors" and for requiring "corporations to provide detailed information about their records of compliance with labour, environmental, human rights, consumer, health and safety, criminal, competition, and tax laws or policies" as well as for protections for corporate whistle-blowers.

The Greens want to see investment in expanding Canada's rail network and infrastructure, increasing "existing funding to stimulate a massive re-investment in public transportation infrastructure in all Canadian towns and cities to make it convenient, safe, comfortable, and affordable", creating an energy efficient national housing strategy, creating a variety of funds to support principles like a mass transit strategy and cleaning up toxic or brownfield sites, reducing "corporate control of the food supply", they have an entire platform plank promising to expand and enhance co-ops and credit unions, a policy supporting more open-source computer software and  any number of other policies none of which can, in my opinion, be described as "very right wing".

All the polices above, linked to or otherwise, are pulled directly from their election platform. You can read the polices for yourself on their website.

There are some typically centrist (and common to the Liberals and NDP as well) odes to "small business" and entrepreneurship, a call for "tax relief" for those with lower and middle-incomes, what I think can only be described as a muddled "policy" around income trusts, as well as, not surprisingly, a wide array of policies related to the environment, eco-tourism, creating a "green" economy, etc.

All of these policies are, to be clear, framed within what is a complete acceptance of the capitalist framework of the economy, but that is true of all of the mainstream political parties including the NDP.

There are no longer any anti-capitalist parties (even if only in theory) represented in Canada's parliament.

Again, given this, it is basically impossible to see how this program, while one might disagree with this-or-that given plank or priority, is any less "progressive" than the NDP's in any fundamental or meaningful way.

No doubt some will try to obfuscate with rhetoric about the NDP's historic ties with labour or about how the party emerged out of a socialist tradition. Both of these things could have also been said of the Labour Party of Tony Blair and are completely meaningless. In the here-and-now they are not at all relevant to whether the Greens are "progressive" or not.

Party election platforms matter, regardless of what a party may have been like twenty-five or fifty years ago, and they reflect how that party wishes to be seen and how it anticipates that it will govern. Taken at face value the Green platform is not a right wing one.

A cynic might state that the Greens won't really do what they say were they elected, but given the NDP's provincial track records with broken promises and shifts to the right once in power, the same cynic would then surely wonder how far the NDP can be trusted to do what they have promised as well.

Given the seemingly inexorable shift of their own party to the right and its rapid shedding of left-wing economic principle in its quest for power, it is understandable why New Democrats might wish to comfort themselves by continuing to portray the Greens as on the right, but this does not make it any more intellectually honest or true.

Even setting aside that, tactically, calling the Greens a right-wing party is perhaps not the best approach to attempting to appeal to Green voters, it also requires a hyper-partisan Orwellian feat of double-think to really believe and should be relegated to the realm of partisan fictions from which it emerged and to which it belongs.

See Also: Unintended consequences: Attacking Leadnow and "strategic voting" 

See Also: Do we really want to Stop Harper? The year ahead in progressive partisanship

Justin Trudeau's tax plan revisited: It is much smarter politics than policy

(This piece is a follow-up to: Trudeau outmaneuvers Mulcair on taxing the wealthy)

Since the Liberals released their tax platform for the upcoming election on Monday, which included a plan for the largest increase in personal taxes on the very wealthy in recent Canadian history, but also substantive tax cuts elsewhere, commentators have been seeking to read the tea leaves on how meaningful the plan is and what its impact will be.

Jeffrey Simpson argued that it was a tactical error for Trudeau to try to encroach on the Tories "turf", while  Chantal Hébert seemed to feel the exact opposite. Thomas Walkom claimed that, on close inspection, the plan "seems to be advocating Harperism with a human face". 

Which is probably pretty close to the truth, though not at all necessarily the point. 

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released a comprehensive analysis that started by saying:

First, the good news: many of the Liberals’ platform items overlap with the Alternative Federal Budget. These include:
Cancelling income splitting… check!
Reversing the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) limit increase… check!
Creating a new tax bracket for the wealthiest Canadians… check! 

But then went on to note that, according to their calculations, the corresponding pledge of a "middle class tax cut" on incomes of between $45, 000 and $89,000, when combined with the other aspects of the plan, actually has a net regressive result on everyone under the top bracket.

The NDP, who I have argued were totally outmanoeuvred by Trudeau on this (a point I will return to), predictably responded by trying to emphasize (and I would say thereby misrepresent) only that alleged aspect of the Liberal plan with online memes like this one:

Why they are doing this should be pretty clear -- the Liberals have taken the "tax the rich" narrative out of the hands of the perceived Canadian left and social democratic party due to the fact that Tom Mulcair has repeatedly, and foolishly, promised that personal income tax increases are off-the-table for absolutely all income brackets -- including the "1%".

New Democrats are in the position of having to argue that their plan to tax corporations and "close loopholes" is actually (though the net effect on income inequality of corporate tax increases is basically zero), somehow more "progressive" (and, of course, "better" for the all-important "middle class" that is the only class any politician talks about any more) than one that actually directly taxes rich people more!

The Liberal plan, to be clear, is not a good plan. While raising taxes in this way on the very wealthy is an excellent step, the corresponding tax cuts are totally counter-productive, harmful and, regardless of who the net benefit goes to, inherently reactionary, as are all calls for so-called "tax relief", including the NDP's absurd "small business" tax cut plan. 

But, and regardless of the commentary or the facts as correctly portrayed by the CCPA, and despite the NDP's attempts to frantically frame it in a way less harmful to them (for despite what Simpson and  Hebert say the Liberal tax plan is at least as much aimed at  the NDP's "turf" as that of the Conservatives), I am not sure that that will at all matter. 

Popular political narratives, especially in an era where all the parties pander to notions of "tax relief", are not really centred around "the details". While the politically conscious, policy wonks and commentators look at proposals in great detail, the voters tend to respond to broad narratives as opposed to what the CCPA or leftist writers such as, for example, myself are saying.

It is not as if there is a long established history of governments in Canada being elected based on the actual validity of their economic ideas or proposals!

Trudeau's plan is cynically smart. He can present it as redistributive -- which I can assure you he will -- and as taking from the wealthy to help those who are not. 

He will also certainly directly question Mulcair in the media and in debates as to why Mulcair is not also in favour of higher taxes on the wealthy -- which is, in fact a perfectly valid question. 

In typically Liberal fashion he also aims at Conservative voters. 

The plan aims to cut both ways and there is every reason to believe that it could easily succeed in this.

Mulcair, of course, can totally disarm Trudeau's jab instantly in his direction by pledging to do the same thing -- as virtually every left -wing voter and progressive in Canada would like to see him do. His inflexibility on this is mystifying given that it is impossible to see how this strategy will benefit the NDP unless they think they are destined to win the election based on the votes of those on the Bridal Path.

While raising taxes on corporations is a good idea, there is absolutely no reason the NDP cannot or should not favour taxing the rich directly as well -- and it is a consistently popular idea.

Mulcair's obsession with seeking to appear to be "responsible" and to eschew any hint of economic radicalism may truly come to haunt him and his party. 

If it does the NDP will have absolutely  no one to blame but themselves.

Keep the progressive announcements coming, Tom: An open letter to the Leader of the NDP

An Open Letter by Simon Dougherty

Dear Tom,

It’s been great to hear you’ll pull Canadian troops from Iraq if elected. Also, having a Prime Minister who’ll take from the rich and give to the poor will be a great relief to Canadians struggling with record levels of inequality.

These progressive announcements are important pieces of the “compelling new alternative” Jack Layton left for New Democrats to build. As you roll out more announcements in the months before the election, Canadians will “give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives -- and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together.”

People are listening and ready to build the alternatives; hopeful alternatives that overcome Harper’s politics of fear. Clear alternatives that cut through Trudeau’s mixed-messaging.

Offering clear alternatives to Harper’s war measures and hopeful alternatives to his austerity measures has the Conservatives stalling, the Liberals slipping, and the NDP surging. But there’s still a long way to go before the election; ample time to give a careful hearing to more alternatives and make them even better. Let’s build on the momentum.

Keep the progressive announcements coming, Tom.

Like that $15/day childcare plan to be phased in over eight years -- let’s go even further and make Quebec's $7/day the Canadian standard immediately. Then, let’s phase in a free and universal program like other countries around the world.

Like that $15/h minimum wage pledge -- let’s make it universal upon election, not just for a small number of federal workers in 2019. American cities like Seattle and Portland are showing $15/h can be achieved right now. Australia passed that threshold five years ago and is on track to hit $19/h in 2019. While strong minimum wages are being put in place, let’s secure living wages with a Guaranteed Annual Income program, like the successful "Mincome" experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba.

Like closing tax loopholes on CEOs  -- recovering $700 million is a good start. Let’s recover another $31 billion by uniting against austerity with Quebec’s second wave of the “Maple Spring.” The World Bank, IMF and OECD admit that inequality is killing growth. Let’s implement a comprehensive set of progressive tax reforms as outlined by Linda McQuaig, the Broadbent Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Uruguay has utilized progressive taxes to achieve the greatest income equality in a region that has seen 16 of 18 countries successfully reduce inequality.

Like the urban agenda you introduced in Toronto and Vancouver -- let’s make clear commitments to affordable housing and start moving towards free public transit. Many medium-sized cities across Europe and the Americas have made the transition, already. Cities as large as Paris have experimented with the idea.

Like your rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline and all your talk about “sustainable development” -- let’s reject the Energy East pipeline and develop a transition plan to 100% renewable energy by 2035 as Canadian researchers have shown is possible. Costa Rica has already been powering itself on 100% renewable energy for the last 75 days.

Like your promise to establish a national inquiry into Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women -- let’s build on that by honouring Treaty, respecting Aboriginal sovereignty, working in solidarity with Idle No More, and developing people-to-people partnerships as Canada was supposed to be doing from the start. Consider allotted seats for Aboriginal representation, as is done in New Zealand.

Like that promise to bring in Proportional Representation -- let’s join President Obama in advocating the idea of mandatory voting. Democracy is the NDP’s middle name, and many democracies, from Australia to Greece, already have compulsory voting.

Like your opposition to Bill C-51 -- let’s fully repeal it once in power. Repealing attacks on civil liberties is better than amending attacks on civil liberties. Tommy Douglas unequivocally opposed Pierre Trudeau's War Measures Act, and the same must be done with Harper’s ‘Secret Police’ Bill.

Like your promise to return the retirement age to 65 from 67 -- while we’re making sure Canadians can access the pensions they have earned, let’s make sure they can also access education and prescription drugs when they need them. A universal pharmacare program would save Canada billions. With savings like that we could abolish tuition like Germany and over a dozen other OECD countries.

All of these things have already been accomplished in some place at some time.

Another world is more than possible -- it’s actual. Don't let them tell you it can’t be done!

People will try to tell you that you have no choice but to vote for more of the same. More wars. More oil pipelines. More breaks for mining companies. More small business tax cuts. More corporate ‘free’ trade deals. But you do have a choice, Tom. It’s time to keep the focus where it belongs -- on helping Canadians with living wages, affordable homes, universal childcare and pharmacare, free tuition, public transit, a clean environment, a fair electoral system, the protection of civil liberties, the rejection of austerity, and justice for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis.

C'mon, Tom—together, we can do this.



Simon Dougherty is a former NDP candidate from Scarborough, Ontario. The son of Irish and Slovenian immigrants, he worked in trades and senior care like his parents, and then in education before graduating from York University. Simon has also done work in community organizing and videography. He is currently conducting doctoral research at ACU’s Institute for Social Justice in Sydney, Australia.

Photo via wikimedia commons