CONSERVATIVE LEADER ERIN O'TOOLE SAYS CANADIAN WORKERS HAVE BEEN BETRAYED BY POLITICAL AND FINANCIAL ELITES, AND BEMOANS THE FALLING RATES OF PRIVATE SECTOR UNIONIZATION.
Warns against West ceding power to China
Conservative Leader Erin O'toole says Canadian workers have been betrayed by political and financial elites, and bemoans the falling rates of private sector unionization as industrial jobs have migrated to China.
His remarks, given in a virtual speech to the Canadian Club Toronto on Friday, are another example of how O'toole is changing the party's message since being elected leader in August.
O'toole's speech noted that private sector unionization has “collapsed,” observing that one in three private sector workers were union members in the 1950s but today it's “closer to one in 25.”
“It may surprise you to hear a Conservative bemoan the decline of private sector union membership,” said O'toole. “But this was an essential part of the balance between what was good for business and what was good for employees. Today, that balance is dangerously disappearing. Too much power is in the hands of corporate and financial elites who have been only too happy to outsource jobs abroad. It's now expected of a shareholder to ask a CEO: `Why are we paying a worker in Oshawa $30 an hour when we could be paying one in China 50 cents an hour?'”
O'toole, whose riding is in the Oshawa area where General Motors plants have steadily scaled back and threatened to close entirely, has made championing workers a key part of his rhetoric as leader. He said he's seen his hometown of Bowmanville “hollowed out” over the past few decades, a situation made worse by the economic chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I want to tell you that everything is not okay,” O'toole said, echoing a line that was in a recent Conservative advertisement.
He said Canadian workers used to be able to expect fulltime employment, a steady salary and a pension, but that now feels like a “bygone era.”
“Do we really want a nation of Uber drivers?” he asks. “Do we really want to abandon a generation of Canadians to some form of Darwinian struggle? A future without the possibility of home ownership? A sense of inevitability? While some benefit, millions are losing hope and resentment is growing.”
O'toole said the Conservatives recognize that during the pandemic, unusual measures are needed to protect vulnerable Canadians.
“We understand the need for deficit spending at a time of national emergency,” he said, and pointed to the precedents set by spending during the world wars and, more recently, the 2008 financial crisis.
“This is not something I would support in normal times, but these aren't normal times,” he said. “We are facing more than a health crisis. We are facing the greatest economic crisis of our lifetime.”
But he warned the Liberals are attempting to use this crisis to “launch a risky experiment with our economy,” moving Canada sharply to the left.
“Exploiting understandable concerns for the environment, they want to implement vast green energy experiments,” he said.
O'toole's concluding section of the speech argued that political, financial and business elites have been insulated from economic turmoil as they steadily let China take over more manufacturing jobs.
“We made a mistake in allowing ourselves to de-industrialize totally,” O'toole said. “Thirty years ago, the Western world's political, financial and business elite made a bet: we would allow China to have unfair access to our market while they protected their own... Once it became a rich and prosperous country, we hoped it would turn into a good actor, would democratize, take human rights seriously, liberalize, and play by global rules. We all know that this has not happened.”
O'toole said it is not in Canada's national interest to let China manufacture supplies like drugs, masks and ventilators.
“So, I will say this: when the most efficient outcome does not align with our national interest, a Conservative government will ensure that the national interest comes first,” he said. “Free markets alone won't solve all our problems.”