CPC (Alberta)

Building the Party, Press and YCL-LJC: 38th Central Convention, Main Political Report, Section three.

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As the economic crisis continues, more progressive people are drawing partisan conclusions and deciding they need to take action, get organized and involve themselves in resistance. Some are becoming active in their unions and mass organizations. The most advanced are being won to the struggle for socialism, and some are joining our ranks.

The urgent question today is to forge a plan of united class action linking the struggle for reforms with the revolutionary struggle for socialism.

Neither social reformism nor ultra-leftism can forge such a way forward. Socialist theory and practice will not arise spontaneously. Only the work of the Communist Party, as our programme says, Afuses scientific socialism with the class struggle and by so doing spreads political and socialist consciousness among the workers B an awareness of their historic mission as a class,@ to lead the peoples of Canada from capitalism to socialism and ultimately communism.

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Keynote address – 36th Central Convention, CPC

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Keynote address delivered by Elizabeth Rowley, leader of the Communist Party of Canada at the occasion of the Parties 38th Central Convention in Toronto.

Comrade Chair and Comrades:

We open this convention with a warm welcome to all of the Delegates and Alternates who have traveled from all over Canada to attend this 38th Convention of our Party, which takes place just one week short of the 95th anniversary of our Party’s birth on May 28, 1921.

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Alberta NDP refuses to challenge energy interests

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Commentary by Naomi Rankin, Communist Party-Alberta leader

If anyone in Alberta thought that electing an NDP government was all they needed to do to fix the economy, they had a rude awakening in the royalty review report finally issued by the NDP appointed committee. This is a document that could have been accepted by any Tory government in the last 40 years, or the Socreds before that, making no challenges to illogical economic assumptions that have guaranteed oil and gas corporate profits at our expense – except that the Tories might have felt obliged to engage in more window dressing of the blatant surrender to the big oil and gas operators.

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Video: Naomi Rankin, CP-Alberta leader, answers student questions

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In these four video clips, Naomi Rankin, leader of the Communist Party – Alberta, answers questions from high school students for the programme Student Vote.

The questions addressed funding for health and education, floor crossing, student access to jobs and training, as well as a better future for youth.

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Communists running in Alberta election

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Commentary by Naomi Rankin, leader of the Communist Party-Alberta

Visit the CP-Alberta election site at: www.communistparty-alberta.ca
It’s springtime and a whiff of change is in the air. For the first time in 44 years, the outcome of an Alberta provincial election is not a foregone conclusion. The Tory dynasty has survived in part by casting each new leader as a change, asking for and receiving a fresh start from the voters, setting aside the failed promises and accumulating scandals of the previous leader’s regime. Jim Prentice, recently elected as Tory leader and therefore premier, to replace the scandal-plagued Alison Redford, seems to have worn out his newness and freshness with remarkable speed. Some polls show the Tories behind the Wildrose and the surging NDP.

Of course, polls of decided voters don’t tell us what will be done by undecided voters. Loyal Conservatives who were polled may have claimed to support other parties as their only avenue to express frustration with their own party before finally voting as always. And a province gerrymandered to give disproportionate power to rural ridings, in addition to all the usual problems with the first-past-the-post system, could still give a substantial majority to the Conservatives even with a dwindling minority of the popular vote. An NDP sweep of Edmonton might be thwarted by the far-right Wildrose failing to run candidates in several key ridings, which could presumably give the combined Tory/Wildrose vote the majority.

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CPC Alberta enters election

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Commentary by CP-Alberta: www.communistparty-alberta.ca

Alberta politics are heating up this spring, with a May 5 provincial election now underway. While pundits differ in their readings of the past year, it has been something of a rollercoaster ride for the two big right-wing parties, the Conservatives and Wildrose, allowing new space for the Liberals and especially the New Democrats. On the left, the Communist Party-Alberta is also gearing up to run two candidates asking the main social and ecological question facing the province: who owns and controls the oil and gas sector of Alberta’s economy?

Just three years ago, Alison Redford helped win another re-election victory for the Conservatives. In power without interruption since 1971, the party has a proven track record of fully supporting its friends in big business. But in the last few years a new right-wing challenger emerged in the form of the Wildrose Party, whose ranks include Western regionalists, Christian fundamentalists, homophobes, libertarians as well as other far-right voices.
The Tory dynasty has also seen the two major cities, Edmonton and Calgary, increase in population and change in social character through immigration and the weakening of ties to Alberta’s agricultural roots. This is reflected in the relative strength of Liberal support in corporate headquarter Calgary, and NDP support in the somewhat more industrial Edmonton.

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