Canadian Elections: Our Time Has Come

IAM Canadian General Vice President Dave Ritchie emphasizes the importance of the upcoming national elections in Canada.

With only a few days remaining before the most important Election Day Canada has seen in decades, the IAM is doing its best to inspire voters to make a real change by electing a new government that will work for them, the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Getting Canadians, including fellow union members, to the polls is crucial to ousting the corporate-favoring Conservative Party and replacing it with the worker-focused NDP.

“In the last federal election, 50 percent of unionized households in Canada did not exercise their right to vote,” explained IAM Canadian General Vice President Dave Ritchie. “I find that shameful and if we want to end a decade of repressive Conservative rule, our members and other Canadian trade unionists must get out to vote. I have been a card-carrying member of the NDP for fifty years and we have never been this close before.”

Ritchie spoke of the importance of this election to more than 90 delegates at the 2015 Canadian Political Action Symposium held at the IAM’s William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center in Hollywood, MD. Committees reported that across Canada politics has indeed entered into the conversations on the shop floor like never before.

The dissatisfaction with the current Conservative government spreads across more than just the labor movement. Province by province, polls show the NDP with more support from voters who have suffered from nearly ten years of Conservative Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.

With Canadians going to the polls on October 19th to elect a new government, Ritchie offered a few choice words of inspiration. “Our time has come!”

For more information visit www.iamaw.ca

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