|
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
Phone/fax: 1 250 355 2669
Email: editor@focusonsocialism.ca
Website: www.focusonsocialism.ca
April 13th 2007
Jack Layton, Leader New Democratic Party
House of Commons
Ottawa ON
Canada
K1A 0A6
Dear Mr. Layton
The announcement by Stephane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada that his party will not contest the federal constituency of Central Nova in the next federal election and will join with Green Party Leader and candidate Elizabeth May in a joint effort to oust Conservative Party foreign affairs Minister Peter Mackay requires careful analysis.
Your April 13th CBC statement characterizing the Liberal-Green electoral alliance in Central Nova as Liberal Party maneuvering and declaring that it denies the voters a “choice” is in our opinion specious. The choice in Central Nova as in all constituencies in Canada in the upcoming federal election is between the minority pro-Bush war party of neo-con Prime Minister Stephan Harper and a majority of the Canadian people who support an end to Canadian participation in the US-NATO war in Afghanistan.
The shortest route to bringing the troops home as the Quebec Convention of your Party unanimously agreed was urgently necessary, is to isolate and defeat the Harper Conservatives in the next federal election. The NDP cannot achieve the defeat of Harper alone. Only the broadest possible electoral alliance of anti-Harper voters can win.
With that reality in mind, we call upon you and your party to join with Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May and not run a candidate and agree to work together with them, in a joint effort to defeat Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay, and the pro-Bush war policy he represents.
We urge you and your advisors to think carefully about the NDP’s “go-it-alone” electoral policy that may lead to the re-election of Stephen Harper. The consequences for the NDP of such an outcome in our opinion would be grave. On the other hand participation in a grand anti-neo con alliance will be greeted and understood by all those who labour for living and who want peace and progress not war and fear. Such a gesture by the NDP would represent a higher form of democratic politics, so desperately needed by our country at this stage of its history and development.
Yours Truly
Don Currie, Chair
Canadians for Peace and Socialism |