Candidate profile: Communist Party candidate Peter Kerek

Kerek says he got a first-hand look at Soviet-style Communism in the ’80s when he traveled to Hungary to visit family.

“I got to see that they were actually living a life that was more comfortable than my working-class family here,” he explains. “They were retiring sooner. They had free education at all levels. They had rights to employment and housing and food.”

The Communists are running 31 candidates across Canada, based on a platform of “People and Nature before profit.” He believes his party is the only one willing to make the necessary changes to the economic system, which will take power away from wealthy corporate interests and return it to the people.

“We’ve had so many decades of unfettered capitalism, yet we still haven’t eliminated homelessness, the need for food banks. We still have unacceptable levels of poverty in a country that has so much wealth.”

Kerek says if voters are serious about making a protest statement with their ballots, the Communist Party is the obvious choice.

“[Voting] for all the opposition parties [does] not send as strong a protest message as voting for the Communist Party. They can’t really, because all those parties are tied into the capitalist system,” Kerek says. “They don’t oppose it. Our party does… and that’s why we attract people looking for fundamental and radical change.”

While the Communist Party of Canada still believes in revolutionary change, they realize it can’t happen overnight. Instead, they hope to become a voice for Canadians disenfranchised with the current political climate.

“We fight for those fundamental issues that empower the working class, all the while encouraging people to keep their eye on the prize and move towards a society where we’ve dismantled capitalism.”

CANDIDATE Q&A

Ahead of the 2019 federal election vote, CFJC Today reached out to each candidate in the Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo riding for their positions on local issues. Here is the Communist Party of Canada candidate Peter Kerek’s responses.

In your view, what is an MP’s most important responsibility?

“The MP’s most important responsibility is to advocate on behalf of the needs of their constituents. I don’t include corporations as constituents or persons. I’ll believe a corporation has the same rights as a person when I see one face the guillotine. Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini famously said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power .” We should be alarmed at the rate at which all levels of government in Canada bend over backwards to covet the favour of corporations and their needs for endless profits.”

What are the biggest issues people in our riding have? How would you address those?

“All our issues tie into the economic landscape provided by the capitalist system. The needs of people and nature are routinely subordinate to the needs of corporations and profit. Job insecurity, housing insecurity, food insecurity and the student debt burden, are all symptoms of a system which is reliant on the desperation of its workforce and indigenous populations.

There is a direct link between an impoverished working-class and corporate profitability. This, however, can only last for so long as the increasing number of impoverished workers lose their purchasing power, and the overall national domestic economy produces fewer and fewer good-paying jobs, and the subsequent closure of factories and businesses that no longer have a domestic market to supply will inevitably lead to a collapse of the economy as we know it. We are currently surviving on the export of raw materials, but, that is not economically nor environmentally sustainable, nor is it stable, and, is also subject to said raw materials becoming available in other nations with weaker labour and environmental standards.

Getting out of “free” trade agreements is a first step. Ultimately, however, we need to move to a socialist economy in order to protect our labour force and our environment from the harmful exploitation we currently suffer through.”

If you were to be elected and then appointed as a federal minister, which department do you believe you would excel in and why?

“Minister of Labour and Employment. My past experience as a labour relations officer, as well as my lifelong activism in labour rights, gives me a significant understanding of the

power dynamics in the employee-employer, or master-slave, relationship. As a Marxist-Leninist I’ve also spent years studying economics, both the successes and failures of policies around the world, and can bring that combination of academic and real-life studies to my portfolio.”

How would your party address the family doctor shortage in our region?

“We propose to eliminate all post-secondary education tuition so that financial considerations are no longer an impediment to prospective doctors or any other high-skilled profession. We would also amend the Canada Health Act so that every community would have access to a publicly owned and operated health facility that employs a doctor.

Part of the problem with our family doctor shortage is that, while our family doctors are publicly funded, they are forced to operate as small businesses. Many family doctors complain of the burden of being a business person first, and a doctor second. This practice is also incredibly wasteful as doctor’s offices spend as many hours closed and empty as they do open and full of patients. Publicly run facilities can be run more efficiently with less downtime while removing the pressure, on the family doctor, to cover their overhead costs and keep their office profitable.

We would also support the creation of more doctor training institutions in smaller communities and universities. Most people prefer to live and work somewhere close to where they were raised, however, with most doctors getting their training in major centres, over many years, doctors are reluctant to return to the same small communities that offer no future potential for training themselves, or their children (should their children choose to follow in their footsteps).

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine was built to meet this exact demand, and the result is that 94% of students who attended that school, chose to stay and practice in that region after graduation. It’s been a complete success.”

How would your party address the opioid crisis?

“Adopting the “Portugal Model” and decriminalizing illicit drugs would be a good start. Beyond that Canada’s Health Act needs to be amended to ensure that sufficient substance abuse services are provided in every community across the nation, regardless of size.

Even better would be to address the trauma and abuse that are significant contributors to substance abuse and the habit of “reality avoidance”. We are all seeking to live more fulfilling lives, but, in a world where there’s increasing despair about one’s future, and apparent helplessness to do anything about it, harmful drug use is often used to “ease” one through

their existence; eliminating the societal and economic situations that contribute to the increase in trauma would be a good way to curb substance abuse in the first place. This includes ensuring the elimination of food insecurity, housing insecurity, employment insecurity, and creating an education and work environment where every person feels respected and dignified.”

How would your party address climate change?

“Right now the needs of both the environment, and people, are placed behind the needs of corporations and their desire to extract the greatest amount of profit from whatever business they’re involved in.

Their desire to maximize profit is not the fault of business, since a business that doesn’t keep up with its competition, in the drive for greater profits, will soon find itself bankrupt or, at least, out of business, or, moving to another jurisdiction or country where they can maintain the same profit level: this is, in a nutshell, how capitalism works – it is constantly at odds with the needs of people as the needs of people and the environment cuts into their profit margins.

As a result, Canadian Governments are under constant demand from corporations to ensure that their profit margins stay as high as possible, OR ELSE, they will leave the country and produce their goods elsewhere; we see this happening all over our region with the closure of sawmills and lumber mills, but this has been happening across Canada ever since Canada signed onto trade agreements that allowed for greater corporate rights to import and export as they please.

As a result, Canada’s capitalist governments have justified poverty and environmental destruction by saying that a “certain amount” of sacrifices must be made by workers, and the environment, in order to avoid losing all of our industries…in the their words…”we must remain competitive on the global market, and ANY job is better than no job…”. This same argument has been applied to environmental regulations; they could have better environmental protections in place, BUT, in their words, “…if we make them too strict, these corporations, and/or their investors, will simply close doors, or withdraw their investments, and move it into other projects that are more profitable…” – and often these projects are in areas that are in other countries where environmental and labour standards are lower than ours.

This has led to a global LOWERING of many labour and environmental standards as each country tries to become even more competitive for big corporations and capitalist investors to come set up shop in their country instead of ours. We say that these trades agreements have been incredibly harmful to our domestic industries and workforce. And, as it’s become ever more clear, these profit-driven policies have been incredibly harmful to our environment. We also say that capitalism, and the drive for constant and ever-growing profits and expansion, is the driving force behind our environmental destruction.

So, if we were to put people and nature before profit, it would be best done via the dismantling of the capitalist system in Canada AND internationally, and that’s what we’re fighting for.

If you look at the countries with the highest levels of CO2 output, per capita (per person), for example, they are ALL countries with capitalist economies. Even China, which has adopted a mixed economy of socialist and state-run capitalism, doesn’t make the top-40 list of per capita CO2 polluters. And, if you look at the other countries that claim to have socialist or communist economies, or actually have socialists or communists in government, such as Venezuela, Vietnam, Portugal, North Korea, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, plus others that have had a recent history of socialist governments, such as Spain, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador, you’ll see that NONE of them make the top 40 list of CO2, per capita, polluters (see link below).

In reality, had most of the capitalist nations taken a turn towards socialism decades ago, we wouldn’t be in the environmental mess we’re in right now. We do have an opportunity to turn things around, but, it will take a significant and revolutionary change in the way we do politics and economics, and, we say, that a socialist economy is the best way to start putting people and nature before profits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita?fbclid=IwAR1Tvla6z6C6j2SMLFSglAeNJ7aLDoqyagwBb2gjPPZ5l_jfdClpxRvpSew

I know it’s a dauntingly large book, but, I recommend folks read Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate”. Klein does a superb job at detailing just how capitalism has put us into our current situation, and that the so-called “green movement” can not provide a way out because it doesn’t actually challenge the economic and power dynamics of capitalism. (Don’t waste your time on the documentary of the same name as nearly all of the most important analyses presented in the book didn’t make it into the documentary.)”

How would your party address affordability for young families?

“We propose a massive restructuring of our tax system. Right now an elite group of super-rich Canadians are permitted to accumulate wealth that leaves too many Canadians, who actually need tax relief, impoverished. Restructuring our tax system would focus on redistributing wealth in a manner that eliminates homelessness, food insecurity, job insecurity, unemployment and underemployment.

We also propose a 75% cut to military spending. Canada currently spends $24 billion every year on our military, and the Liberals say they will increase that to $32 billion, and if the next government answers President Trump’s demands, that will increase to $70 billion. This is incredibly wasteful and unnecessary. Canada is not at war. There are plenty of politicians and war profiteers who make a living out of selling arms and keeping people scared. Cutting spending will also decrease Canada’s complicity in the war crimes and crimes against humanity currently being committed by our allies, namely the USA. These include the illegal bombings and/or invasions and/or occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, to name a few. Canada is also complicit in Saudi Arabia’s war crimes against the people of Yemen. Cutting our military spending would redirect funds back into our social safety net and reduce or eliminate our involvement in said crimes.”

by Ashley Legassic

Candidate profile: Communist Party candidate Peter Kerek

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