Marie Kelly from Steel nominates Horwath. Andrea understands how important it is to stand up for working people and keep good jobs in Ontario. Now more than ever we need a strong leader who can protect the interests of working people and the right to join a union, who will pass anti-scab laws, cares about working people. It's time for Andrea.
Tyler Downie of SEIU seconds nomination. This will be the most important decision we make as NDPers. we must take community organizing to a new level, engage young people, communities. it takes a commitment to on the ground organizing and andrea can engage and bring people together. we don't need another politician, we need an organizer.
Chris Charlton, MP: I've known Andrea for 20 years, we've been on picket lines together, fought for housing, pensions... she has enthusiaism to get the job done. she was cochair of hamilton days of action and succeeded in bringing 50,000 workers out. succeeded in getting on city council and in the legislature. now is the time.
Kormos introduces Horwath [sorry I lost my notes of what he said due to a technical glitch]
[video]
[drum band walks Horwath in]
Horwath: thank you so much. There is no other place i would rather be than right here with you because i believe the people in this room hold the seed for ontario's future. great change started in rooms like this. people like you decided that every child deserves an education... this room is filled with real people who work in hospitals, day care centres, factories... we are students, retirees... but we all came here because we are committed to change. we may not be rich but we are powerful. we believe in building a better world. you can knock us down, ignore us, write our political obituaries but we are the people who will keep on going. knock us down and we will get up again because we are new democrats. like every ontarian we are experiencing change. a week ago the steel mills in the skyline represented work. now they represent people out of work, an economy ripped apart by neo-liberalism. an economy with a gutted industrial base. those mills represent steel no longer made but also autos no longer made in windsor, a devestated forestry sector... when we look we see all of ontario. i was a caw brat. i went to university because my father had a good job. i would not be here today if it wasn't for my father's well paid union job. this economic and social crisis will effect everyone of us. when good jobs disappear how many children lose their future? when we lose child care how many families become working poor.
look at the difference a year has made. the middle class is disappearing and the working class is largely unemployed. we could accept this and adjust, that's what the other parties say, but adjust to what, growing unemployment lines and growing food bank lines, adjust to this growing . discrepency. adjust so that those who stole our money can get more of it? We refuse to adjust!
we'll invest in ourselves, our workplaces. it's our money we will demand an equity stake. it's our money. smart investments, targeted investments in products of the future. light rail. we'll build green cars. we will produce once again and we will buy our own products. we'll buy farm products grown in ontario.
we'll put light rail systems in our cities and invest in our work by making ontario a transit hub. we'll make every job a good job. we will make sure minimum wage is a living wage. we'll get rid of scab labour. we will make sure part time, casual and migrant workers are all treated like the real workers that they are and we will bring our workforce back to health. we will stop eating away at our public system. we will expand our public system. let's make child care and post secondary education fully public.
the neo liberal experiment has exploded. the invisible hand doesn't work. it never existed and we should not trust invisible hands to take care of us.
we won't adjust to the growing misery. we will change. we will think for ourselves and won't trust a few greedy individuals to take care of us.
i'm a community organizer and i trust people but it's not a blind trust. i've seen what people can accomplish together like the days of action. when i think about our climate crisis i do so with the mind of an organizer. people want a cleaner environment and i trust people will make the changes they need to make to get that. we must help them by making environementalism affordable with loans for [environmental retrofits]
we won't check our socialism at the door when it comes to building a better future. let's do for the environment what we did for health care 50 years ago. let's make environemtalism universal.
we owe people a real choice. we have to be ready to change ourselves. we have to set internal goals for our party that seem impossible. we must double our party membership by 2011. we must reflect ontario with more women, young people, diverse communities. we must work in communities like organizing by listening and working together on issues that are relevent. let's be truly representative as a party. put regional organizers on the ground. change the financial relationship between ridings and the parties. make ridings vibrant. i will spend half my time on the road to make us vibrant. it's time for us to believe in ourselves again. we can make this province a better, fairer place where the avg working woman gets the child care she needs and McGuinty gets the pink slip he deservces and that is what we owe the people in ontario in 2011.
things aren't working at queen's park. it's time for new voices, change. it's time for the NDP, in 2011 we will bring change to queen's park and i am the woman to do it.
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