By Wayne Clark. According to Mr. Randy Kamp Maple Ridge MP, the
middle class is doing better under the Conservatives! This stands right
up there with other outrageous statements by Conservative MPs, for
example Canada’s Minister of citizenship, immigration and
multi-culturism Chris Alexander who announced “poverty has been
eliminated in Canada”. How removed from reality is this government?
Amazing how you can make numbers say anything you want especially if
you don’t mind misspeaking a little along the way. First revelation from
the Conservative ideological bubble $120,000.00 is not the middle
class. I am sure this lower end of the upper class are paying less
taxes, the rich are the only people that are paying less, the middle
class average family income is from $60,000 to $85,000 dollars and this
group is shrinking while the poor and lower middle are growing.
Of course Mr. Kamp doesn’t mention that 1 out of 5 children are
living in poverty. Or our First Nations people have had a 2 percent cap
on costs since 1996. They are getting the equivalent of .23 cents on
the 1996 dollar. Mr. Kamp didn’t mention the 30,000 Canadians sleeping
on the street on any given night, or the 16.2% of Canadian people living
below the poverty level. As well as all the seniors that are falling
into poverty and debt trying to keep their heads above water.
This sham of a government has been playing a giant shell game cutting
transfer payments, social programs, medical and anything else for the
people and diverting our tax dollars to subsidizing corporations. Any
government can download the taxes on to the provinces and then the
provinces download them to the municipalities.
Thanks to the Conservative government cutting transfer payments to
the provinces for such things as medical, the citizens of BC pay more
for MSP than all the corporations pay in corporate taxes in BC. I pay
from $35-$65 dollars a month in bridge tolls (TAXES) now, and the
corporations get to use the infrastructure I pay for, for literally
nothing, not only that but exploit our resources for a pittance, never
mind about all the new fees and doubling and tripling of existing fees.
Then you have the nerve to say you have cut our taxes, if you put all
the Federal, Provincial, Municipal taxes, fees, tolls the money
governments take out of Hydro BCAA, liquor and sales taxes you would
find you give by far the lions share of your earnings to the government.
If the real rapidly shrinking middle class is surviving it is only
till they run out of credit as Canadians owe more now than they have
ever owed, just like their government who has Canada owing $647 billion
dollars the largest deficit in Canadian history.
Thanks to the Conservative inept and dangerous economic polices we
have a 7 percent unemployment rate , this in spite of about 500,000
million foreign workers doing Canadian jobs. This is destroying unions
as they have also destroyed the very organizations that trained our
apprentices and journeymen. Companies are quite happy to hire foreign
workers for less money than Canadians contrary to Mr. Kamp’s
misspeaking. Then we have a .90 cent dollar which I am sure Mr.Kamp will
tell you is a good thing and they are trying to get it down to .60
cents and then everything will be wonderful.
Talk about painting an incomplete picture these people do not have even a slight grip on reality.
Wayne Clark is the author of this story and is a Maple Ridge BC resident. He has been a long-time activist and has a regular column in the Pittmeadowstoday
My name is David Murray and I am currently on City Council in the City of Pitt Meadows British Columbia.
I ran Federally for the New Democratic Party in 2011 in
Abbotsford and with the great team we had in place had the distinction
of being the only riding in Western Canada that doubled our NDP vote!
I am the Editor of the Pitt Meadows Today Community Online
Newspaper which together with its sister papers the Abbotsford,
Chilliwack and Langley Today are receiving 250,000 hits a month!
http://www.pittmeadowstoday.ca/
My family goes back to the CCF-NDP party circa October 1935 as my father "Bud" Murray worked on Tommy Douglas's first campaign!
I am a union activist for CUPE and sit as the Secretary-Treasurer
of the Fraser Valley District Council and am on the executive board of
the Fraser Valley Labour Council (CLC) as the Political Action Chair.
Douglas knew how to dream big, championing medicare even when the critics said he'd never succeed.
“Dream no
little dreams,” Tommy would say – then show us how. Medicare is
impossible, the world cried out. You’ll never balance Saskatchewan’s
budget. The medical establishment won’t allow it. It can’t be done.
Then he got it done, through a dramatic team effort sparked by his
courage to dream big. That same courage lowered Saskatchewan’s voting
age to 18, pioneered public-sector bargaining rights, prototyped public
auto insurance, launched a public air ambulance service, and issued a
bill of rights – all in Tommy’s first term as our party’s first
provincial premier.
When
he came to Ottawa as the NDP’s first federal leader, Tommy set to work
building bridges with Lester Pearson’s minority government.
Persistently. Pragmatically. The results became defining aspects of
Canadian society – national medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, a
world-class affordable housing strategy.
That’s why older Canadians aren’t surprised to see today’s New
Democrats making minority Parliaments work. We’re learning from the
very best.
