Drew's Back for Round Four

Communist Party candidate Drwew Garvie has officially added his name to the list of local candidates running for the riding of Guelph in the 2011 Provincial Election.

Garvie first ran in the 2007 Provincial Election, eventually winning .4 per cent of the vote. Running the next fall in the Federal Election, he didn't finish as well with only .13 per cent of the popular vote, but he did however capitalize on that in this past spring's Federal Election, increasing his vote share to .17 per cent True it doesn't sound like much, but for a so-called third party candidate, literally every vote counts.

Here's the announcing press release from the Garvie campaign:

Drew Garvie announced today that he will once again be the Communist Party’s candidate in Guelph, in the upcoming October 6th provincial election. He will be one of nine candidates running for the Communist Party in the election on a platform of “real, progressive change for Ontario.”

Drew Garvie, 26, is a service sector worker, part-time student, and a campus and community activist. He was the Communist candidate in Guelph in the 2007 provincial election, as well as in the last two federal elections.

Drew supports the student movement in its call for universal, quality public education at all levels and calls for the elimination of tuition fees, massively increasing public education funding, and stopping military recruitment and privatization on campus. He actively protests Canada's war in Afghanistan and is a supporter of the Six Nations reclamation in Caledonia.

“Youth and working-people in Ontario are justifiably angry at the Liberal Government for protecting corporate wealth and privilege while real wages and living standards are falling, real unemployment is rising and the real economy is tottering on the edge of another deep recession. But voting Tory to punish the Liberals is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire,” Garvie commented.

The Communist Party is calling on working people to block the right, and to elect a progressive block of MPPs, including Communists to fight for policies that will put people’s needs ahead of corporate greed. Full employment policies, strong social programs and public services, quality healthcare and accessible post-secondary education, and progressive tax reform and tax relief for working people.

Garvie and the Communist Party will also be raising policies that the larger political parties refuse to raise such as scrapping the regressive HST entirely and replacing it with a truly progressive tax system that taxes those with the ability to pay, the “greedy and not the needy”.

The Communist Party works with the labour and democratic movements, and all those who struggle for peace, democracy, equality, sovereignty, and social progress. The CPC’s history has been intertwined with the struggles of labour and the peoples’ movements 1921, when it was founded in Guelph, Ontario.  It is the second oldest political party in Canada.