This labour day, opportunity knocks: By Dave Coles, CEP President. It’s no wonder the Prime Minister is in a big hurry to call an election. He’s banking on borrowed time and hoping that most Canadians have not yet woken up to the fact that he and his government have -- excuse the expression -- totally screwed up. This is a big country and it takes a long time for word to get around, especially when the corporate-controlled media is your mouthpiece.

But these days, from Blackberries to blogs and other social media, there is no shortage of communications tools for trade unionists to tell their side of the story. And that’s where you come in. This labour day, I am calling on CEP members to get involved in the election campaign by helping to expose the federal Conservatives’ incompetence at every opportunity.

Sad but true that many of you, especially forestry workers, are living with the results of that incompetence and speak from first-hand knowledge.

With the simple act of talking to friends and neighbours about issues or joining a chat group, all the way to going door-to-door for your candidate, you can make a difference and help take control of our future as a country.

Here are a few examples of how Conservative government policies and inaction have been bad news for Canadians:

• The Harper government sat on its hands as hundreds of pulp, paper and sawmills shut down, turning once thriving communities into ghost towns and throwing thousands out of work. Calls for meaningful federal government aid for displaced workers went unanswered. Calls for a national summit with stakeholders to discuss the survival and revival of what could be a leading-edge industry went unanswered. Calls to lower interest rates and energy costs to help plants survive went unanswered.  The $l-billion plan, announced with great fanfare by the Prime Minister last January, to be split among ailing sectors and with all kinds of strings attached, has proven to be totally inadequate. It has provided no relief for forest workers.
• The Harper government has let multinational oil companies re-draw the energy map of North America. With no concern for the potential jobs that could be created or for Canadians’ energy security, it has approved the construction of pipelines for the wholesale export of Alberta’s raw oil to American refineries for processing. Many Canadians are probably unaware that no pipelines exist to transport oil from western Canada to the eastern provinces.
• The federal government’s competition review panel is recommending more foreign ownership in Canada’s telecommunications and broadcasting sectors. This, despite polls that say Canadians want to keep jobs in Canada and retain control over these essential industries. Protecting our cultural and national identity was a major rationale for earlier legislation restricting foreign control and, given the elephant to the south, we need that protection as much as ever.

The last word belongs to the voters in this election campaign. With the help of CEP members, for Stephen Harper’s government, that word will be “goodbye”!

(Dave Coles is the National President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.)