Manitoba Election

Darrell Rankin - Point Douglas

Why did you decide to run in the 2011 Manitoba election?

We need real change and our People’s Agenda is the best way to fix Manitoba’s growing problems. We will create good-paying jobs, boost education, create social justice and save the environment. Our Agenda is completely different from the policies which got us into our present mess.

The Agenda will improve the lives of working people in all nations in Manitoba, Aboriginal or not. We are the only party that supports full Aboriginal rights, the starting point to win full justice. We have many ways to win full justice in our Agenda.

Poverty is rising, spurred by the NDP’s corporate tax cuts, record profits and falling wages. Winnipeg’s food banks feed 29,500 children, up from 5,500 in 1997. Affordable, quality housing is still missing. We have not recovered from the loss of 12,000 manufacturing jobs in 2008, a rate higher than Ontario. In the last census, Manitoba has Canada’s highest drop-out rate, which means education must be a higher priority.

We are also running candidates to warn against the election of a Conservative government in Manitoba. The Tories would bring even more vicious measures for workers and the needy.

What experience will you bring to compliment your role as MLA?

When I joined the Communist Party in 1978, it opened a window into Canada’s real history, how working people actually won medicare and unemployment insurance, or organized all the major unions. Our party played the leading role in all these great struggles, but we could not have done it alone.

After 33 years of being part of the struggle, I know that our People’s Agenda matches or leads the most advanced positions of all the major popular organizations in this country, including the labour movement.

I have long experience in the people’s movements of Canada. I was a delegate to the founding convention of the Canadian Federation of Students in 1980 in Winnipeg; I am the past chair and treasurer of the Canadian Peace Alliance, our largest anti-war coalition. I know what it takes to win real change, and am always working to make it happen, for a real People’s Agenda.

For me, Marxism and its irrefutable analysis of capitalism have made me understand the source of poverty, war, unemployment, national oppression, and discrimination and what is needed to solve these problems.

Is there anything in particular you would like to change in our province? In your electoral division?

Manitoba is a low wage province because of a too-large pool of super-exploited labour – Aboriginal people, women, youth, people with disabilities, and newcomers especially. They are a source of super profits for the wealthy families. The colonial conditions of Aboriginal peoples is a festering sore on Manitoba’s soul and it is a strategic problem to fix, or working people will be unable to move ahead together.

Stronger, united labour and popular movements are needed in Manitoba to bring real change and a People’s Agenda. Voting for a People’s Agenda will help, yet the surest way to win it is more involvement by people in the political struggle.

In Point Douglas, the Communist Party would move the CPR tracks and create affordable, quality housing, recreation and parks. As Winnipeg’s poorest riding, Point Douglas especially needs a People’s Agenda.

What is one thing you stand for that is not a part of your political party’s platform?

My concerns are covered by our platform. Manitoba needs real change in many areas.

Do you have any other comments regarding your candidacy?

It makes me happy when I can meet my family’s needs and be involved in the life of my children and grandkids. I can only wish this on others and will work to build a society where families can meet every need for their children, and where children have a far brighter future without the threat or reality of hunger, nuclear war or global climate meltdown. We need to act now.

All around us global capitalism’s crisis is growing. It is not just war, job loss, poverty and hunger. Flooding in Manitoba will be worse unless we drop carbon emissions, yet there is not yet a scientific grasp of what policies will work. The NDP’s cap and trade system will make tons of money for corporations, solve nothing, and delay a real solution.

Finally, labour-farmer unity can defeat the threat by the Harper Conservatives to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board if action is taken immediately. Manitoba’s Tories support Harper’s dictatorial plan which will place farmers at the mercy of the giant grain corporations that now dominate the international grain trade. The plan will ruin thousands of family farms and put profit ahead of the starving millions in other countries.

What is your favourite location in the electoral division you are currently a candidate for?

I like the old buildings worth saving and the care people put into their homes to grow wonderful gardens and special places. I like Selkirk Ave, which is still thrives here and there, but with too many pawn shops and fast money outlets. Joe Zuken Park is named after a prominent communist in Winnipeg. It is next to the site of the Vulcan Iron Works where the Winnipeg General Strike started, so those two spots are my favourite in the riding.

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