Stop a Harper Majority, CAW Urges

The CAW is urging its members to get involved in the federal election campaign. The union is moving ahead with campaign materials that include a series of election town hall meetings, fact sheets and an election factbook on its newly redesigned website.

CAW President Ken Lewenza is urging CAW leadership and membership to get involved in the election campaign and do whatever they can to stop a Stephen Harper Conservative majority government.

Lewenza slammed Harper's record during its two-and-a-half years of minority rule.

"This government has abandoned the manufacturing sector, endorsed the overvalued dollar and the overheated energy boom; dedicated tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations, which are already enjoying their highest profits in Canadian history; dismantled federal commitments to the Kelowna Accord for aboriginal peoples, a national child care program and the Kyoto Accord; and involved Canadians ever more deeply in the failling war in Afghanistan," Lewenza said.

"And that was with a minority! Just imagine what Canada would look like in just a few years, if Harper wins his quest for a majority," he said.

So far in election campaign stops by Harper in southern Ontario, flag-waving CAW members have repeatedly and noisily raised the issue of Canada's struggling manufacturing sector.

Canada has lost more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs in the last five years because of the high value Canadian dollar, unfair one-way trade deals, and the lack of a comprehensive manufacturing policy by the federal Conservatives.