To the Editor,
The NDP has claimed itself ‘the workers’ party’ since its inception as the CCF in 1933. But having been forced to choose between the Canadian AFL-CIO or the environmental lobby, they’ve decided to abandon private sector union workers.
Building trades unions and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers hosted a forum in Ottawa, discussing the looming skilled worker shortage in Canada.
Hoping to increase apprenticeships for skilled trades and to increase immigration of skilled workers, policymakers from the Conservative, Liberal and New Democrat parties were asked to attend and then to act upon this serious economic problem.
Christopher Smillie, senior adviser for the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations, Canadian Office, speaks on behalf of 450,000 Canadian construction workers, 40 per cent of whom work in oilfields-related industries.
According to Mr. Smillie, “Conservative MPs showed up, Liberal MPs showed up” but despite nine of their members being invited, “not even one NDP member showed up” or even called to decline, prompting Smillie to say that “Frankly, it was really rude.”
The oilsands offer young Canadians up to 300,000 skilled, high paying jobs.
The Keystone XL pipeline will provide our American neighbours not only 179,000 new and desperately needed jobs but greater energy security, leaving not only the U.S. but Canada less dependent on the despots and tyrants who for too long have controlled geopolitics while condemning their own people to lives of fear and misery.
Canadians would be advised to look closely at the ‘new’ NDP and decide whether their policies regarding both energy and the Middle East are in Canada’s best long-term interests.
Randy O’Donnell
Nanaimo
