CUPE National President Paul Moist denounces Sid Ryan's proposed resolution.

CUPE National president, Paul Moist, released a statement on January 13th calling Sid Ryan’s proposal wrong and discriminatory.

“As the national president of Canada’s largest union, with over 580,000 members, I can say that none of CUPE’s over 2,000 chartered bodies – including CUPE Ontario – have adopted such a resolution. I believe such a resolution is wrong and would violate the anti-discrimination standards set out in the CUPE Constitution. I will be using my influence in any debates on such a resolution to oppose its adoption.”

He then went on to describe CUPE’s position on the Middle East. He said that CUPE wants an end to the violence and a durable peace agreement. Now, all this may seem very great, however, if you read closely, this statement seems as empty as Sid Ryan’s recent apology.

Paul Moist left many questions unanswered. Why has Sid Ryan not gotten punished for his actions if his employer thinks his actions are wrong? Why did Paul Moist state that the actions are against CUPE’s constitution instead of stating the more obvious and more serious – the fact that his statement was both anti-Semetic and against Canada’s Charter. Why does Paul Moist only “use his influence” instead of actually acting to stop CUPE Ontario from attempting to propose this resolution if it violates their constitution? Why does CUPE National not comdemn Sid Ryan for making a comment on Canadian politics when it is not his position to do so? They only condemn the actual comment he made and not the fact that he made the comment in the first place.

Maybe the reason for CUPE National’s weak statement and lack of an authoritative stance is the fact while they don’t agree with Sid Ryan about a ban on Israeli professors, they do agree that Israel is wrong to be in Gaza. Paul Moist wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on January 2nd and said, “I am writing to demand that the Canadian government condemn the military assault on the people of Gaza that the State of Israel commenced on December 26, 2008. CUPE condemns all acts of violence in the Middle East, including the Hamas rockets being launched into Israel and the Israeli offensive mentioned above. To date, your government has stated publically your support for the Israeli people to protect themselves from attack. This is a woefully inadequate and frankly shameful response on behalf of Canadians.”

Paul Moist used the words “assault on the people of Gaza” instead of “assault on Hamas” which shows that he clearly does not understand the situation or he has some sort of bias towards the Palestinians. The Israeli government has made it clear that they have entered Gaza to stop Hamas and their army is taking actions to only target Hamas militants. If they had actually entered to assault the people of Gaza, hundreds of thousands would be dead. As well, even though he claims he is seeking peace and equality, he ignores the fact that rockets are consistently being fired into Israel. You can not call for Israel to leave Gaza without suggesting a way to stop the rocket attacks. If Israel leaves, the rockets will not magically stop. An intelligent thing to do when you are in such a high position like Paul Moist, is to actually suggest solutions that solve the problem.

So to summarize this article in a sentence: CUPE National thinks Sid Ryan is wrong, but they aren’t going to do anything about it.

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Tags: canada, gaza, hamas, harper, israel, Sid Ryan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Canada and the World, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.