New party hits Liberals, Tories, for stealing its platform

New party hits Liberals, Tories, for stealing its platform

Mr. Partap Dua, in a press release lashed out at Liberals and Conservatives for stealing his party’s election platform regarding landing fee and Chinese head tax apology.

Mr. Dua said that it was only the UPPC platform that had included these and many other important concerns of the immigrants. He stated that he had already released the platform to the media on Dec.15, 2005. The Parvasi and Hindi Abroad ethnic papers carried full-page ads about the UPPC platform and these two points were the highlights of platform and news.

Hindi Abroad and a few other newspapers carried his press release about the conduct of Liberal Revenue Minister Mr. John McCallum, representing the Chinese majority riding of Markham. Mr. Dua said that Mr. McCallum being a cabinet minister could not even extract a written apology for the Chinese and other victims of head tax and exclusion policy (this includes the Kamagatamaru ship exclusion) from his government, what could one expect form such a minister or party.

He openly criticized the Liberal party and the government for making fool of immigrants for the past 13 years. No sooner Mr. Partap addressed a congregation of East Indian Community on New Year’s day at a Liberal controlled Sikh temple in Scarborough and distributed fliers to the public, John McCallum’s campaign workers and the Liberal Party got into action. They immediately announced the scrapping of head tax on Tuesday (Jan. 2) as well as a promissory apology to Chinese head tax victims. The conservative party made similar announcements. It is so simple for these parties to keep distributing promises to people during elections. If they were at all serious about things why did they not include immigration and other important issues like racism, discrimination, inequality and immigrant jobs as part of their main platform? Do they know as to how many new immigrants are without jobs and live below poverty lines? The answer is that these parties couldn’t care less about immigrant issues and their focus is just on votes and keeping the majority Canadian population happy.

Mr. Partap asked as to where were the liberals and conservatives for all these years? “Why did they not act for so long? This is despite the fact that all the issues about immigrant plight including Chinese head tax victims compensation and landing fee, etc were brought to the notice of mainstream party leaders 18 months ago, before the last elections in June 2004 when our party handed over a book to the party leaders titled, ‘RISE, A WAKE UP CALL TO THE IMMIGRANTS IN CANADA.’ These very leaders including Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and Jack Layton refused to include even a single immigrant issue in their last election platform. They did not even have the decency to acknowledge the problems of immigrants. Till then we had a very high opinion about the NDP, but it was shattered when we saw that the psyche of all Canadians is the same when it comes to welfare of immigrants and visible minorities. The parties also failed too include these issues in their platforms even in this election.

“Why did these parties not make any policy announcement then? They are scrambling now to make these announcements for their survival. These parties even didn’t have the decency to return our phone calls. They didn’t realize that we had spent over $50,000 of our own money just to publish the book to make them aware of immigrant issues. It is a mockery that these parties have the right to declare anything as a policy announcement whenever they want during the election, and it becomes part of their platform. The fact of the matter is that they are only doing these things to for votes and nothing else.

The Liberals, who claim to champion the cause of minorities, are no different than any other party. The Liberals have caused maximum harm to the immigrants and visible minorities in their 13-year rule in Canada.”

Sue Suntharalingam
(Manager marketing and campaign coordinator)

OUR CONFIRMED CANDIDATES: PARTAP DUA (INDEPENDENT) (MARKHAM UNIONVILLE), Tel 905 294 3295; FAROOQ KHAN (INDEPENDENT), (SCARBOROUGH GUILDWOOD) Tel: 416 277 9255.

(PRESS RELEASE)