In the last election, many voted for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s calm, friendly demeanor and against Pierre Poilievre’s policies.
Since coming to power Carney has tacked hard right. He has been concentrating power in the prime minister’s office, bypassing democratically elected individual ministers and traditional cabinet authority.
Carney has made major changes to immigration and refugee asylum policy with Bill C-12. Carney is executing the fastest rate of deportations in over a decade totaling a record 22,500, of failed refugee claimants, including temporary foreign workers and international students.
Carney passed Bill C-5 which is eerily similar to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 5, giving the government the right to suspend environmental, labor laws and regulations to fast-track projects of national interest. These regulations were originally brought in to protect the environment and protect us from the excesses of the free-market system are now derided and ridiculed as red tape and barriers to prosperity.
Tax cuts and privatization
Both premier Ford and prime minister Carney are using the crisis created by Trump to bring in tax cuts, deregulation (cutting red tape) and privatization which they present as factual claiming it will protect us and bring back prosperity which is factually false and complete bunk.
Since the 1980s, trickledown economics has repeatedly been debunked, and repeatedly failed. The only thing trickledown economics has ever done is make the fabulously wealthy wealthier. Crisis and disaster capitalism has been brilliantly outlined by Naomi Klein in her book, The Shock Doctrine, a very good read.
Carney intends to privatize our airports and seaports claiming we have to modernize, reform, increase competitiveness and efficiencies through alternative models of ownership. Whenever you hear the words “modernize” and “reform,” alarm bells should go off.
Using the exact same language as when Conservatives tried to bring in “right to work” legislation, Carney is attacking unions by claiming he has to “modernize” labor legislation. The right to free collective bargaining and the right to strike is a human right. A right recognized by the United Nations.
It used to be that unions had to worry about Poilievre’s threat to bring in “right to work” laws that have decimated unions in the US. Now unions have to worry about a very serious attack on bargaining rights by Carney.
The top one per cent love their money. They also love the processes that make them even more money. These processes are tax cuts and tax avoidance, deregulation, privatization of public assets and services, weak environmental, health and safety laws and low wages. The only way to lower wages and increase profits for the wealthy is to weaken unions.
The existence of a union at your workplace is often the difference between a good standard of living and a bad one. It means you don’t have to live in constant fear of your boss and if you are fired, you have the right to a fair hearing.
Unions have been exposing the smoke and mirror show and corporations and the wealthy don’t like it. Carney is weakening unions so they can increase profits.
Perhaps the worst action Carney has taken is a complete reversal on the climate crisis, putting corporate profits before people and the planet.
Carney is on bended knee to Danielle Smith’s oil oligarchs who run that province. Carney has scrapped the carbon tax, EV mandates and dropped the emissions cap on oil and gas. Carney is committing to new pipelines to the environmentally sensitive west coast as well as supporting the carbon capture and storage scheme. A scheme dreamed up by oil executives, who are worried about the increasing evidence of the climate crisis, trying to protect their profits.
