Marxist Leninist – Carla Neal

Written Responses

The BC economy is heavily based on extraction of the vast riches that Mother Nature has provided. With such wealth comes great responsibility and the way our economy is organised today puts all decision-making power in the hands of a very small elite, the vast majority of whom are not from BC, not even Canadian and take no responsibility for our economy or our values, just their shareholders.

 

Decisions are made by those who have no stake at all except to profit from our resources and our labour without any responsibility for the long-term effects and sometimes even the short-term effects on workers, communities and the environment.  

 

Until the affected communities, particularly Indigenous peoples, are the ones making the decisions, without a gun to their head that either this fish farm, this mine, this pipeline or poverty, there is no basis for a rational discussion. Political parties, especially those that are beholden to the oligarchs that own the fish farms, the mines and every other major economic enterprise, are not going to solve this problem.

 

The Canadian justice system is rooted in the racist colonial project of the colonizers. Under UNDRIP in BC we have RCMP violence against Indigenous youth and women and men on Wet’suwet’en territory and RCMP violence at Fairy Creek with reports that Indigenous and minority youth are particularly targeted. Those who uphold that system are not going to change it.

 

The MLPC fights for renewal of our political system and for a constituent assembly through which Canadians can write a new modern constitution that recognizes and upholds the rights of all.  We need to end a political system that bring parties and not representatives of the people to power. We are proposing that for starters the MPs who are elected should elect the Prime Minister from amongst themselves and also appoint the governor general so that we can be rid of that vestige of a colonial monarchy once and for all.  We believe that a modern electoral system would have the state fund the electoral process and not parties.  Democratic renewal is necessary so that mechanisms and means are developed to hold those elected accountable, so that Canadians can participate in decision-making on all issues that affect their lives.

 

There is nothing democratic about a political system where there is no accountability and where citizens’ participation is nothing more than casting a ballot without even the ability to recall or hold accountable politicians who renege. It makes a mockery of the whole electoral process, that instead of electing representatives to speak for us and for people to be empowered, we actually vote on whose promises sound the best with full knowledge that they mean nothing.

 

Canadians, not politicians, make society function. We believe that that gives us the right to decide how it functions and to organize the economy in a manner that favours us. We have complete faith that an empowered people will sort out problems of the economy, of how to develop resources for our benefit and protect the environment, and of Canada’s role in the world as a force for peace not the handmaiden of the U.S.