Vachon, André

Alberta, Calgary West, Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada

André Vachon is a worker politician who moved from Quebec to Calgary in 1970. He is representative of the thousands of young workers from Quebec and Eastern Canada who followed the work in Canada's boom and bust resource-based economy. Most of his life he has worked on pipeline construction.

André believes that Canadians, not the political parties of the rich, should be the decision-makers in Canada; and that without democratic renewal of the Canadian political system none of the problems facing the Canadian people can be resolved.

As a worker politician, André has been chosen on many occasions to act as a spokesperson to advocate for the rights of his co-workers. For André the right to a safe working environment and a safe and healthy natural environment are issues that cannot be continually put on the back burner. The number of workers injured and killed on the job in the last two years was amongst the highest ever recorded in Alberta, and that does not include the workers who have been killed on the notoriously dangerous highway 63 leading to Fort McMurray. This shows who is bearing the burden of the so-called boom.

André stands for an alternative where workers, women, youth and seniors take the initiative and demand the restriction of the monopolies to act with impunity and call for a Canada-wide discussion on how to satisfy the claims of the people for high quality public healthcare, education and other social programs.

André is part of the generation from the 1960s who opposed the U.S. aggression in Indochina and opposes the use of force and violence by countries to occupy and annex sovereign nations. He joins all those who are calling for Canada to have an anti-war government, which advocates the peaceful resolution of conflicts between nations and does not participate in U.S. wars of aggression and occupation.

majority seats = 155