| Unless there’s a major upset in the last days of the campaign, polls indicate that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives will win the election and maybe even a majority government.
That has various groups, including aboriginal, environmental, gay rights and activist organizations, concerned about what direction Harper would take Canada if elected.
Two new coalitions have sprung up late in the campaign to try and convince Canadians to change their vote. The Think Twice coalition is comprised of various groups including the Council of Canadians, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, the Canadian Federation of Students, Canadian Auto Workers, Egale Canada and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. On its website, www.thinktwicecanada.ca, the group says it is "standing up for Canada" by fighting for strong social programs, environmental protection and "fairness for everyone." "Stand up for Canada" is the Conservative slogan for this campaign.
A new coalition of environmental groups called the Canadian Climate Coalition has also formed to try and convince Canadians not to vote for Harper because his party doesn’t support Kyoto. In an interview with the Calgary Herald, Harper said the Conservative Party would likely abandon Kyoto and implement a plan with more "modest" targets that was signed by all large greenhouse gas emitters. The U.S. and Australia as well as developing countries such as India and China haven’t signed Kyoto.
The Sierra Club of Canada is one of the environmental groups involved in the new coalition. Lindsay Telfer, director of the Sierra Club’s prairie chapter, says if the Conservatives backed out of Kyoto it would be "catastrophic."
"To reopen the debate is really demoralizing and sad," she says. "(Harper) reneging on the international agreement would send a horrible sign about our commitment to climate change. That would send a message that we are backing Bush on this."
Meanwhile, Egale Canada is concerned about Harper’s statement that he would allow a free vote on same-sex marriage in Parliament if elected.
Executive director Gilles Marchildon says Harper has consistently voted against equal rights for GLBT (gay. Lesbian. bi-sexual and transgendered) people as a Reform, Canadian Alliance and Conservative MP.
Marchildon says Harper getting elected "would be a step backwards and it would obviously mean we’d have to redouble our vigilance."
The Assembly of First Nations is also expressing concern about whether or not the Conservative Party would honour a $5 billion commitment made by the Liberal government to aboriginal Canadians last November at a first ministers meeting. The AFN says Conservative candidate Monte Solberg said the party wouldn’t honour the commitments to improve quality of life for aboriginal Canadians, but candidate Jim Prentice later said it would.
In a press release, AFN chief Phil Fontaine says, "If the Conservative Party has a plan of its own, then clearly it was not developed with any input from First Nations and we are concerned that there will be yet another attempt to impose solutions on us. This colonial approach has failed repeatedly with disastrous impacts on our communities."
Harper’s foreign policy has raised alarm bells with peace groups across the country as well. Harper has said he’d reconsider supporting the U.S. missile defence shield and he was supportive of Canada sending soldiers to Iraq war when the war first started.
In a March 22, 2003 editorial to the Ottawa Citizen Harper writes that the Liberal’s governments decision not to enter the war in Iraq "has betrayed Canada’s history and its values."
"Reading only the polls, indulging only a juvenile and insecure anti-Americanism, this government has, for the first time in history, left us outside our joint British and American allies in their time of need," wrote Harper.
Bill Moore-Kilgannon, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, a left-wing lobby group, says it is concerned about the Conservative’s child-care plan – the Conservatives would give parents $1,200 per year for every child under the age of six to use as they choose, and $250 million a year to employers to create day care spaces. But the Conservatives will only honour the Liberal’s new funding arrangements with the provinces on a national day-care system for one year before switching to their own plan.
Moore-Kilgannon says Alberta announced new subsidies for low-income parents after receiving new federal funding, and he questions what will happen to those subsidies if the Conservatives get into power.
"We’re very concerned it’s going to have real drastic implications for the ability to have quality, affordable child care," he says.
Dennis Howlett, executive director of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, says the Conservative plan to cut the GST from seven per cent to five would benefit low-income Canadians more than the proposed Liberal tax cuts because the poorest of the poor don’t pay income tax but still have to pay GST. But he says the Conservatives haven’t made enough of a commitment to affordable housing and is skeptical whether the party’s plan to give $200 million in tax credits to developers per year would create any new social housing. |
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