(The following article is from the March 16-31, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

People's Voice Editorial

Elected on March 7, Andrea Horwath is the first woman to lead the NDP in Ontario, and the only candidate with the backing of the OFL, Steel, and CUPE. The youngest of four candidates, Horwath was a community organizer and city councillor before becoming the MPP from Hamilton Centre in 2004.

     A big step forward? Maybe. It's hard to find specifics about her program, other than support for a provincial system of quality public child care and investment in public transit. Her rejection of corporate tax cuts seemed like a no‑brainer, but some other candidates advocated them. Like two other candidates, she opposed Mike Prue's sensible proposal to rethink NDP support for Catholic school funding in favour of a single public school system.

     In the Legislature, Horwath soon went after the Premier about the bloodletting in the manufacturing sector. A good start, but the self‑described "leader with urban sensitivity and working class grit" will need some hard‑edged policy to curb the power of the corporations, and a strategy for uniting in action outside the Legislature with all those opposed to the corporate agendas of the Liberals and Tories.

     She'll have her chance, as the Ontario Tories replace the hapless John Tory, finally defeated in a by‑election after losing the 2007 campaign on a platform of full funding for private and religious schools. Good riddance to the hysterically anti‑labour Tory with his anti‑people agenda, who was not reactionary (or successful) enough for the extreme right core of his party. The signs point to a convention dominated by "common sense revolutionaries" of the Mike Harris strain. Frontrunners include Christine Elliot (wife of Jim Flaherty), Randy Hillier, leader of the Ontario Landowners' Association (dedicated to "the protection of private landowners and property rights"), and Tim Hudak (a Harris cabinet minister and husband of Deb Hutton, top organizer, ideologue, and member of the Harris "Kitchen Cabinet").

     Hard times are here, and more is coming. Unity, unity and more unity is the only thing than can beat back the right, and win. We hope Sister Horwath sees it, and fights for it too.