Jobs and a Living Wage for All
- End low pay. Raise the minimum wage to at least $20 an hour, with no exemptions, as a step towards a true living wage.
- A 30-hour working week without loss of pay, with paid sick days and vacation rights for all from day one of employment.
- A living income for those who are unemployed, disabled, stay-at-home parents, seniors and others unable to work. Paid training for the unemployed. CPP, OAS, GIS and Welfare rates to be increased inline with inflation every month.
- Suspend Sales taxes to tackle inflation, with a tax supplement on profit-gouging corporations, such as oil and gas, banks and telecoms to make up the shortfall
- End job insecurity and overhaul Employment Insurance to cover all workers — including temporary workers, seasonal workers, and gig economy workers.
- Create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed and underemployed through a massive public works program to develop mass transit, renewable energy and energy savings, health care, education, and affordable housing.
Planet before Profit
- Fight climate change with a green jobs program. Massive public investment and well-paid union jobs in clean, renewable energy, retrofits, sustainable housing, freight and transport to rapidly replace fossil fuels. Guaranteed access to paid retraining for all workers in phased-out industries.
- Ensure access to healthy, safe and affordable food and water for all, with production conditions that protect the environment and food workers and treat animals humanely.
- Invest in publicly-owned, free, high-speed transit networks within cities and between urban and rural areas.
- No more pipelines. Phase out the oil sands, nuclear power, and liquified natural gas. Ban fracking.
- Take the profit out of energy. End subsidies to polluting and environmentally-damaging companies. Public ownership of the top energy companies to protect jobs and convert them to clean energy.
- Democratic planning and public ownership of forests, waters, fisheries and other natural resources to ensure the protection of the environment, ecosystems and biodiversity. Environmental justice means the rich, not working people, pay for environmental action.
Take the Market out of Housing
- Housing is a right: end homelessness.
- A mass program to build and renovate decent, safe and affordable public housing run by tenants’ democracy. Protect renters and homeowners from housing speculators.
- Build fighting tenants’ unions. End renovictions. Rent controls tied to the unit, not the tenant. Security of tenure for private rentals.
- Fight housing speculation by increasing taxes on corporate and wealthy speculators. Increase in land value due to planning and infrastructure changes should benefit the public, not private owners.
- Housing should not be a commodity. Place into public ownership big developers, major construction companies and corporate landlords.
Fight for Health, Education and Services
- No cuts to public services. Seize tax haven funds and drastically increase taxes on the rich and big corporations, not working people, to fully fund public services.
- Fully funded, comprehensive and public health system — with an emphasis on preventative care that recognises the social determinants of health. True public health care integrates social and long term care, to include mental health, addiction treatment, dental, eye treatment and pharmacare, with no user fees.
- Stop criminalizing addiction and end the toxic drug crisis: decriminalize and control all drugs to guarantee safe supply.
- Publicly-owned pharmaceutical, laboratory and vaccine industry. Stop and reverse the creeping privatization of health care.
- Fully funded and free public community, sport, cultural and social facilities.
- Stop privatization and Public Private Partnerships (P3s). Take into public ownership all public utilities, telecommunications and services.
- Fully funded, high quality, free public education from early childhood through university. Abolish tuition fees and cancel student debt. A living grant for all students. End the corporate domination of universities.
Democratic and Militant Unions
- For fighting, democratic unions run by and for the membership to campaign for better pay and working conditions. Unions should demand Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLA) clauses in all union contracts, and open existing contracts to include COLA.
- Repeal all anti-union laws. Full union rights for all from day one at work. Right to strike for all workers. No government back-to-work legislation. Fully enforce health and safety legislation.
- Unions to play a leading role in building broader movements for social change and in the building of a mass workers’ party.
- Unions must organize the unorganized with a bold campaign focused on youth, women, people of colour and migrant workers. Solidarity with the struggles of workers and the oppressed internationally – an injury to one is an injury to all.
- Full-time union officials and representatives should be elected regularly from the membership, subject to recall and receive the same wages as those they represent.
Equal Rights for All
- Fight discrimination in all forms. Full equality regardless of sex, age, gender identity, disability, race, language, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
- Equal pay for work of equal value.
- Full reproductive rights, including free, accessible birth control, abortion, counselling, free fertility treatment and sex education.
- Paid parental leave, comprehensive child benefit and high-quality maximum $10/day childcare, free for low income workers.
- Fight sexism, discrimination and all forms of violence and harassment. Fund quality shelters, facilities and services for people experiencing domestic violence.
- End the systemic oppression faced by Indigenous people. Implement the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the recommendations of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry. End poverty on reserves.
- Build cities and public services to be accessible for people with disabilities.
- Equal rights for all immigrants regardless of status. Recognize international qualifications with free government training to learn fluent French or English. Full rights of asylum; end the Safe Third Countries Agreement.
- Justice and solidarity among workers, whether immigrants or Canadian-born. End cheap labour with full labour, human, and citizenship rights for all migrant workers in Canada.
- Democratic control over police and courts. End police harassment, brutality and institutional racism in the legal system and establish culturally-sensitive legal processes. Reallocate a significant portion of police budgets to provide social housing and mental health support services.
Democratic Rights and the Right to Self-Determination
- Acknowledge that Indigenous title and rights to land predate colonial settlement and that Aboriginal Title has never been extinguished.
- Defend the right to self-determination for all Indigenous peoples. Protect Indigenous languages and culture.
- The principles of free, prior and informed consent must apply to all laws and measures that affect Indigenous peoples in Canada.
- Respect and enforce existing treaty and resource rights. Immediate legal recognition of Indigenous peoples’ title and right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally occupied or used.
- Under socialism land would not be privately owned but for all to share and steward, with individual user rights.
- Defend Quebec’s right to self-determination, its language and culture. For a socialist Quebec to be part of a voluntary socialist association of the Canadas.
- Defend cultural diversity, peoples’ right to their languages and identities.
- Abolish the monarchy and all its powers, as well as the Senate and other anti-democratic institutions.
- For a voluntary socialist confederation of the Americas with full rights of autonomy and independence.
The Fight for Socialism Is International
- Oppose neocolonial action by the Canadian government. Canada out of NATO and foreign military interventions. Slash military spending. End foreign exploitation by Canadian extractive corporations and banks.
- No to neoliberal globalization, no to nationalist protectionism. Capitalist trade agreements offer no way forward for workers anywhere. We need a socialist program on jobs and trade based on internationalism and solidarity.
- Take into public ownership the commanding heights of the economy — energy, resources, telecommunications, transportation, banking and financial institutions. These and all other public services to be run under democratic control and management of workers, users and communities. Compensate small investors, not millionaires, on the basis of proven need.
- For international solidarity and collaboration among workers’ movements.
- An international socialist transformation that lays the foundation for the democratic planning of society in the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the environment.
Many of these demands can be achieved through struggle, but winning them all will require a socialist revolution. Only a strong and determined movement of the working class can be powerful enough to accomplish this. Socialist Alternative and our sister organizations around the world are organizing to be at the forefront of rebuilding the workers’ movement and fighting for a democratic mass workers’ party. We have a world to win!
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