Elizabeth May - Green Party rally in Halifax - April 2011

Elizabeth May discusses the Green Party platform, and the tendency of the corporate-ruled mainstream to suppress information about the important issues she raises, including through her exclusion from the televised "leaders debate." Environmental damage and the elimination of democratic principles by the current government of Canada threaten everyone's future, all to serve the almighty corporate dollar. The Green Party is the only party who seems prepared to take any meaningful action on these issues.

After her speech, I had a chance to briefly discuss with Elizabeth the rampant abuse of injured and disabled Canadian workers who try to claim disability benefits promised to them by their employers, and how this problem extends beyond abusive treatment of disabled military veterans. The Green Party is well aware of this, and if elected will amend the law to regulate all "employee group disability plans" under the Insurance Act, which will then impose some level of accountability on insurers who currently abuse disabled workers with no consequences.

In my own case, I am a former government-employed nurse who has been disabled for many years by an unstable degenerative bone disease. Manulife Financial, "administering claims" for the Province of Nova Scotia, decided to deal with me by aggressively trying to bully my doctors into silence and bully me into "signing a waiver" to help the bottom line of the "Nova Scotia Public Service Long Term Disability Plan Trust Fund." As a tactic to pressure me to "sign the waiver," Manulife cut off my disability benefits because I refused to "sign the waiver." The LTD Plan bosses (including the NSGEU) insist I have "no right to appeal" anything they or Manulife do to me, ever, and that my doctors have no right to say a word about it, ever, while the entire Provincial government bureaucracy, elected officials, and local "legal professionals" all agree that Manulife's "determination" to terminate my benefits must be considered "final" because nobody will stand up to the corruption.

This is but one real world example of how the toxic sludge of corporate money-grubbing, which increasingly permeates our society, mows down and destroys the lives of little "insignificant" and useless Canadian people like me. My elderly father, a World War II veteran who was injured in Europe fighting for our Canadian democratic freedoms, cannot understand what has happened

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News & Politics

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• 2011