"Peace & Prosperity, Not War & Austerity": Communist Party of Canada is a real alternative in the federal election

By Michael Laxer

Calling on Canadians to "Join the Fight for Fundamental Change" the Communist Party of Canada is fielding a slate of 24 candidates across the country in the upcoming federal election on April 28.

In a press release candidate Rimmy Riarh, who is running in Taiaiako'n-Parkdale-High Park noted that the Communist platform "centres working people across the country as the change agents in a fight against corporate greed, militarism, and climate collapse."

Further, "titled “A People’s Agenda for Peace, Jobs, People’s Sovereignty and Democracy”, the platform demands transformative action to reverse decades of declining wages, privatization, and threats to peace, democracy, sovereignty and the environment."

All the mainstream neo-liberal and imperialist parties, whether Green, NDP, Liberal or Conservative, peddle the line that there are no real alternatives to capitalism and western institutions like NATO. As the party election website states the "Liberals and Tories have brought steep interest rates, high food and housing prices, deep cuts to real wages and living standards, and now rising unemployment and privatization, while corporate profits are higher than ever. The Liberals won’t reverse course – and the NDP and Bloc Quebecois won’t challenge these anti-people, pro-war policies in the streets."

But the Communist Party gives voters that alternative calling for genuine, radical anti-capitalist change with a vision that includes steps like public ownership and democratic control of all energy and natural resources, a 32-hour work week with 40 hours of pay as well as withdrawing from NATO, NORAD, and any other imperialist alliance immediately.

The full platform can be read at: https://communist-party.ca/platform-a-peoples-alternative/

Rimmy Riarh believes "like millions of Canadians, that the status quo no longer works for ordinary people. The current system is not “broken” – it is functioning exactly as it was designed: to benefit big business and their political allies at the expense of the working class." The Communist Party of Canada, however, is committed to building a real People’s Alternative to monopoly capitalism, one that prioritizes the needs of working families, students, seniors, and marginalized communities."

A full candidate list can be found at: https://communist-party.ca/candidates/

Michael Laxer is a leftist writer and activist based in Toronto. A former NDP candidate and Spokesperson for the Socialist Party of Ontario, he is the publisher and editor of The Left Chapter.

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