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Pathway :: Home
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Ed Whelan: Humanity First |
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Contributed by John W. Warnock
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Thursday, 13 December 2007 |
Shortly after the 1999 provincial election I received a telephone call from Ed Whelan. I knew him vaguely from the past, when I was an active member of the NDP, but I had not seen him in years. He wanted to talk to me about the New Green Alliance. I went over to his house and once again met his wife Pemrose, who I remembered as one of the few women in the NDP back in those days who really fought for gender equality in the party. That was a lost cause at the time.
Ed Whelan passed away peacefully on Dec. 11, 2007 at age 88.
The long conversation with Ed led to our political friendship over
the past ten years. He made it very clear that he was greatly disturbed
by the NDP’s strong shift to the political right under Roy Romanow. He
hoped that Lorne Calvert would reverse this trend, but it did not
happen.
Ed was from Windsor, Ontario where he was an auto worker and a committed trade unionist. He joined the CCF and during the Second World War moved to Saskatchewan where he worked as a farm labourer in the harvests. He was a strong supporter of co-operatives and credit unions. He became an active member in the CCF-NDP and was elected as an MLA in northern Regina between 1960 and 1978. He retired before the 1982 election.
Unlike most of the top NDP officials, Ed remained strongly committed to workers, the trade union movement, and the goal of eliminating poverty. He was appalled by the taxation policies adopted by the NDP government: cutting corporate and business taxes, cutting income taxes for those in the high brackets, and then imposing users fees and raising property taxes.
Since he had been Minister of Mineral Resources, he was very interested in the research I was doing in this area. He could not believe that the Romanow-Calvert governments were lowering royalties and taxes on the resource corporations. He had been shocked when the NDP governments completed the privatization of the Crown Corporations in the resource sector. He was stunned by the privatization policies they imposed on Sask Power and Sask Energy.
He was most disturbed by the policies of the NDP government in rural Saskatchewan. There was no longer any commitment to the co-op movement. They supported the privatization of the Wheat Pool, the closure of profitable grain elevators and the abandonment of rail lines. They stood in opposition to the National Farmers Union on almost every issue. Ed was not surprised that the NDP lost all of its seats in rural Saskatchewan.
That is why he wanted to talk to me about the New Green Alliance. He was very supportive of this development and even became a major financial contributor. He wanted to meet some of the candidates, and I brought them over to his house. He was very impressed by the young activists. He believed that the NGA and its policies were very close to those of Tommy Douglas.
“Don’t move to the right,” he would say. “Canada doesn’t need another middle of the road middle class party.” What the country needs is an alternative that supports the rights of workers and the poor. He will be missed by those of us who are still committed to social justice.
Obituary and online book of condolences
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 13 December 2007 )
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