One of the candidates seeking the leadership of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) visited Powell River recently. Peggy Nash, who tried previously to visit the community but couldn’t because of fog, talked to about 20 people at Powell River Town Centre Hotel.
Nash, who is the MP for Parkdale-High Park, Ontario, said jobs and the economy are at the heart of her campaign. She addressed the situation with Catalyst Paper Corporation, which is going through a restructuring process under court protection from creditors through the CCAA (Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act). “Obviously, the announcement by Catalyst is devastating to this community,” she said.
Nash believes Canada needs stronger legislative protection for hard-earned pensions that are too often sacrificed when companies go bankrupt. “They should be first in line, the people who built the company and worked for decades to invest in that company. They ought to be at the front of the line for any reimbursement from that company.”
She has been in many communities in different regions of the country where people are facing similar challenges in terms of mills closing, companies taken over by foreign companies, people losing their jobs, people terrified about what this means for their retirement security, Nash said. “It seems that the governments’ approach, and I say both provincial and federal governments, has been one of hands off. Let’s cut company taxes and we’ll hope that they’ll do the right thing and some of the benefits will trickle down to us.”
Instead, over the last number of years, over 60,000 jobs in the forestry sector have been lost, as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector, she added. “The benefits are not trickling down. In fact the gap between those that have and the 99 per cent is growing bigger than ever.”
Canadians need a government that is going to stand up for communities and is going to start defending good quality jobs in communities right across the country, Nash said. She also wants the raw log export policy to change, to ensure that jobs are not shipped out with raw logs.
There are seven candidates in the race to choose a successor to Jack Layton, who died in August 2011. Members of the party will vote on March 24.
