Today's poll question; should corporations and unions be allowed to make political donations and run advertising during election campaigns? You may have noticed in recent years that many major unions in Canada have been spending a lot of money on advertisements espousing NDP and other left wing positions. This allows the Dippers to flood the airwaves with friendly words promoting their policies and attacking the government without counting towards legal spending limits. In Ontario the "working families coalition" (aka CUPE) put more money and effort into re-electing Dalton McGuinty than Dalton did! They wanted to keep the gravy train rolling, and it was worth their while to spend millions of dollars making it happen.
Unions are becoming very politically active, or perhaps they've always been and I'm just noticing it more as I grow older. Peggy Nash is the biggest union cheerleader in the NDP leadership race, and she was on TV yesterday saying that if you are not in a union, you're probably struggling to get by financially. I'm not sure that we need more electoral law when we already have several laws that are outdated and should be scrapped. They were discussing this "political contribution" issue on the radio yesterday as I was driving to work, so I figured it was at least worth a poll question. Corporations were included in the poll question because reasonably, you can't deny one and permit the other. It is all or none.
"should corporations and unions be allowed to make political donations and run advertising during election campaigns?"
ReplyDeleteHow about before them. We were treated to weeks of nauseating ads from the SGEU before the writ was dropped for Saskatchewan's elections.
Excellent point. Between elections is perhaps a different matter, even though CUPE is running ads against individual free trade agreements on Vancouver radio right now.
ReplyDeleteFrankly unions should never be allowed to spend money on political campaigns or anything else which has nothing to do with their mandate to negotiate wages, benefits and working conditions for their members. Yet they spend money on just about any other radical cause.
ReplyDeleteAgreed,Alain. The CUPW-sponsored school in Cuba is a good example.
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, the contributors should not be allowed to hide behind a bogus organization such as the 'family-friendly' one (can't remember the name) which put on all the ads in October. If a union or corporation makes a donation to such a group, then its name has to be there in bold print before and after - like the old radio ads 'this message is brought to you by .....'.
ReplyDeleteTha tragedy in this is that most of the pro-NDP union workers don't even know that their Pension Funds hold shares of the big banks and many for-profit businesses that avoid Unions because they bankrupt businesses even if Buzz Hargrove denies it.
ReplyDeleteI've followed the Auto Industry for 40+ years and what should have happened was that the cars were to include many new high-tech features and used the gear-ratios and wheels to get better mileage on the highway as a 5-passenger car. But what did happen was that the Union wages and imported cars forced the cheapenning of cars with more and more plastics and fake wood or chrome coated trim. They got lighter and carried less people with little space for luggage , 4 cylinder econo-boxes are death-traps costing health care a fortune as more people get serious injuries and more small cars are needed to carry people to the vacation spots or a big car to hold the luggage while 2-3 small cars carry people.
GM had a $60'000'000'000.00 unfudned Liablilty for their Pensions because the Union bosses robbed their paycheck from a hourly pay and projected it in to the Future as a pot-o-gold pension plan. canada has a $200'000'000'000.00 Liability for its federal Union workers promised the same Pot-o-Gold in 25-30 years , Ontario has a near-$300 billion debt about to cost $70'000'000.00 per day just to carry it with no new money coming in....but don't worry, Dwight Duncan assured John oakley that an Accounting firm produce a report they agree with that said there would be lots of money in the Future from GREEN jobs and the taxes would go down.
Honest folks, has McGuinty ever lied before an Election????
Public Unions and their leaders are in for a big surprise when the Pyramid-scam collapses and is exposed that for all these years they were treated like useful-idiots and suckers to pay their Dues and shut-up, but the tax payer is the real Sucker in this just as ENRON imploded when they ran out of suckers to supoprt the Pyramid base to fund the APEX as people cashed-in.
Pyramid scam are suposed to be illegal because during the progression to recruit sucker at twice the previous rate...they always run out of people on earth to prop it up.
Each tax payer will not be able to support 5-6 retired CUPE Union workers that retuire at 55 and some get rehired part time by the same Goverment they left, the Double-dipping by teachers and Buzz Hargrove types must stop before China start looking at how cheap it is to use canadian slave-labour and they build plants here with $2.20 a hour jobs that immigrants and refugees rushh to get.