By Grant LaFleche,St. Catharines Standard
Sept. 30, 2008
Get Sam Hammond a worn-out old horse and a rusted lance, and he’d be ready to charge a windmill.
The 67-year-old Communist Party of Canada candidate in St. Catharines knows exactly how Don Quixote must have felt, fighting a battle he cannot possibly win.
But, just like the fictional knight errant, Hammond fights it all the same.
“Yes I am tilting at windmills,” Hammond said. “But I believe the windmill will eventually come down.”
He doesn’t see his election campaign as a lost cause even though he knows that, at best, he will pick up only a few hundred votes.
Hammond, like many candidates from what is politely called “alternative parties” but often dismissively referred to as “fringe,” isn’t out to win. He’s out to raise issues.
“I’d say 90 per cent of what we do as a party has nothing to with elections,” CPC Leader Miguel Figueroa said during a campaign stop in St. Catharines Monday. “We are working with labour unions, trying to build the movement. But we get involved in the election because this is a democracy, and it’s important.”
Figueroa, one of only two party leaders to visit St. Catharines so far — Liberal Leader Stephane Dion was in St. Catharines on the weekend — said there are issues being lost in the debate.
“This has become all about who is the better leader. But polls before the election showed the No. 1 issue for people was health care,” he said. “But there has hardly been a mention of health care. Meanwhile, people are really suffering.”
So Hammond and Figueroa, who is running in Toronto’s Davenport riding, try to bring issues to local campaigns and influence the debate, focusing on Canadian economic sovereignty, social medicine and education.
“We’re moving away from an industrial economy to a mainly resource-based economy,” Hammond said. “We don’t make anything ourselves. We ship our raw resources overseas and then buy what is made from it.”
Sticking to key issues is the same tactic used by Christian Heritage Party candidate David Bylsma in the riding of Niagara West-Glanbrook.
“The one thing you can do with this type of party is really stand on principle,” Bylsma said.
“The other parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, have to compromise and drift to the centre, but we don’t have to do that.”
Bylsma, who is now in his sixth election campaign, has no illusions about winning his riding. But like Hammond, he hopes to influence the debate and perhaps build something for the future.
“Look at the Green party,” said Bylsma, who is running a Christian-based, pro-life campaign. “They used to be out there on the fringes with us.”
The region’s only other small party candidate is Ron Walker, who is running in the Welland riding for the Marxist-Leninist party. He doesn’t expect to win, either.
“I know I won’t win, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t,” he said. “We are a viable alternative.”
Walker said the Marxist-Leninist party was formed in 1970 as a breakaway group from the Communist Party, which was formed 51 years earlier.
“We felt it was not a true party of the working people, and was an agent of Stalinist totalitarianism,” he said.
Despite some doctrinal differences, Walker’s key political issues are similar to Hammond’s, with a heavy emphasis on ensuring public medicine stays public.
