Let’s Elect Governments that Work for Us

February 1, 2025

Dusty Kelly  -  AFM International Executive Board and Executive Director Local 149 (Toronto, ON)

As I sit down to write my February column, wildfires in Los Angeles are still burning, Donald Trump is on the eve of commencing his second four-year term, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has resigned as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The wildfires are certain to have a negative impact on the economy in Southern California. Not only are thousands of persons displaced, but thousands have lost their jobs. For gardeners, cooks, baristas, cleaners, drivers, waiters, performers, far too many occupations to list—the fires have destroyed their workplaces.

Tragically, many AFM and other entertainment union members have also lost their homes and tools of their trades, unable to work as they put their lives back together. The cause of these fires will be investigated. But make no mistake, climate change has played an oversized role with drought like conditions and unusually strong Santa Ana winds.

In my own home province of British Columbia, we too have had our fair share of wildfires. In 2021, the entire village of Lytton burnt to the ground. Not yet fully rebuilt, residents are still living in temporary housing. Severe windstorms are on the increase in Vancouver, and heavy rains have caused catastrophic mudslides as drought ravaged soil cannot absorb the excess volume of water.

In Toronto, our subways shut down last summer when sudden severe torrential downpours flooded the downtown stations. Don Valley Parkway, a major artery into the city, flooded too. Climate change is impacting our lives right in our own backyards.

We now have an individual taking control of the Oval Office, who flip-flops on their position on climate change, querying whether it is really manmade. In Canada, the political party leading in the polls to form the next government also has members who question if climate change is manmade.

Their leader, Pierre Poilievre, is a true career politician who has never known another job. He has yet to share any policies on climate change—except to “axe the tax” (referencing the carbon tax). Other snappy soundbites include “defund the CBC” and “burn, baby, burn.”

Let’s face it, no government is perfect and change in leadership is good, but it should not come at the expense of its citizenry’s well-being. More than ever in these times of change and crises we must elect people to government who work for us. We need government that does not pit worker against worker and that understands that, for our countries to take meaningful action on climate change, we need a just transition for those whose livelihoods are impacted by job losses.

Yet, politics has become driven by emotion and it shouldn’t be. Citizens around the world are electing politicians to governments that do not govern in their best interests, but in that of the politicians themselves and at the beckoning of their billionaire masters.

Emotions and stories, over facts and progressive policies, are driving the narrative. The party with the better stories, rather than the better achievements, is winning the day.

American Author Thomas Frank states: “You vote to strike a blow against elitism, and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining … It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”

My fellow Canadian members, I invite you to join me this spring by helping your constituencies elect a government that works for working people—a government that funds our cultural institutions and the arts, enacts legislation to protect human creators’ copyright, protects jobs in the age of artificial intelligence, acknowledges that climate change is manmade, funds public health care, and upholds the rights of workers to organize, in other words, a government that supports CFM musicians and their families.

We may be apt to disagree on various issues, but we should never lose sight of our and our family’s collective well-being. As AFM President Tino Gagliardi recently stated: “Our solidarity is needed now more than ever.”

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