Union organizer Stuart Ryan is again the candidate for the Communist Party in Ottawa Centre. Ryan, who has run in several provincial and federal elections, has been the organizer of the CUPE local at Carleton University for 30 years.
Ryan graduated in 1979 from the journalism program at Carleton and has lived in Ottawa Centre ever since. He has been a part of the labour movement, the Central American solidarity movement and the peace movement.
The Communist Party believes that people should be favoured over profit. Ryan backs the party’s pledge to scrap the harmonized sales tax and double corporate tax. The party also favours a progressive income tax system. This, it believes, would lead to lower taxes for low-income families. The system would provide enough revenue to eradicate poverty and fund various social programs.
Ryan says his party pledges more public and social housing as well as increased funding for education to be funded by increasing corporate taxes. This, Ryan says, would result in a post-secondary system marked by students’ ability, instead of the size of their bank accounts.