Green Party of Canada
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Read the full plan here.
Summary
Sustainable Infrastructure
Promise 1: Establish a Canadian Sustainable Generations Fund to invest in skills-training, education, energy efficiency, renewables, and emerging technologies.
Promise 2: Roll out a national sustainable jobs plan.
Promise 3: Create a Canadian Infrastructure Bank to provide more robust and innovative financing and investment partnerships.
Promise 4: Slash Canada’s student debt immediately by limiting any student debt above $10,000 and eliminate tuition fees by 2020.
Promise 6: Partner with First Nations for sustainable long-term resource development on a nation-to-nation basis through Council of Canadian Governments.
Small Business
Promise 7: Ensure Canadian small business owners and entrepreneurs have access to the funds they need to create local jobs and revitalize local economies through a federally-funded $1 billion per year Green Technology Commercialization Grants.
Promise 8: Use a “Think Small First” legislation ensure that new federal laws and regulations enhance, rather than hinder, an economic environment where local businesses.
Promise 9: Support local food and small-scale producers such as farmers’ markets, small-scale farms and producers, and the wineries and microbreweries.
Promise 10: Shift government-supported research away from biotechnology and energy-intensive farming and towards organic and sustainable food production.
Healthcare
Promise 11: Defend single-payer universal health care. Bring all parties back to the table for a renewal of the Health Accord.
Promise 12: Innovate in health care through electronic health records, patient-centred team medicine built around the family physician working with nurse-practitioners, pharmacists, midwives, naturopaths and others.
Promise 13: Expand health care to cover prescription medication for all Canadians through a National Pharmacare Plan and public dental coverage for low income youth (under 18 years of age).
Promise 15: Immediately create a National Conference on Lyme Disease to develop a national strategy to confront Lyme Disease.
Promise 16: Adopt stricter regulations to prohibit cancer-causing chemicals in our food and consumer products.
Seniors
Promise 17: Implement a National Seniors Strategy, including:
Poverty and Equality
Promise 18: Phase-in a Guaranteed Livable Income beginning with a federal minimum wage f $15 an hour.
Promise 19: Ensure equal pay for equal work.
Promise 20: Collaborate with provinces, territories and First Nations communities ensure high quality child care for every Canadian family who wants it.
Promise 22: Implement a National Housing Strategy based on Housing First principles.
Indigenous Relations
Promise 23: Implement the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Promise 24: Beginning by recognizing indigenous rights and title, negotiate in good faith to settle land claims, establish treaties and self-government arrangements, and move to repeal the Indian Act should that be the consensus of First Nations.
Promise 25: Work to expand rural health care infrastructure by investing in telehealth and mobile medical units, to ensure indigenous communities have access to critical care.
Promise 26: Launch a national inquiry and fight to ensure that structural violence against indigenous communities is addressed.
Promise 27: Provide new federal funding for culturally appropriate education in traditional languages.
Culture
Promise 28: Invest an additional $285 million in the CBC in year 1 and $315 million in every subsequent year.
Promise 29: Restructure the governance structure of the public broadcaster to end the political influence board appointments.
Promise 30: Increase funding to all of Canada’s arts and culture organizations including the Canada Council for the Arts and Telefilm Canada.
Promise 31: Prevent the further monopolization of Canadian media.
Promise 32: Enshrine the principle of “net-neutrality” in Canadian legislation.
Public Services
Promise 33: Preserve door to door mail service.
Promise 34: Diversify Canada Post’s services to possibly include insurance and banking for remote communities.
Public Safety
Promise 35: Reverse funding cuts and re-invest in disaster preparedness, training, and equipment for our forces on the frontlines.
Promise 37: Use Canada’s defensive capacities for peacekeeping; defensive missions with our allies; border, northern, and coast guard patrols; search and rescue missions; and patrolling our parks.
Promise 38: Re-open the closed Veterans Affairs offices across Canada, reversing the $200 million cut to Veterans Affairs.
Promise 39: Ensure access to service dogs trained to assist veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Promise 40: Provide secure and generous pensions to veterans.
Governance
Promise 41: Green MPs will conduct themselves with integrity and civility, treat others with respect, and never heckle in the House of Commons.
Promise 42: Make all votes for the Green caucus free votes.
Promise 43: Green MPs will publish their expenses online, and never use Parliamentary resources for party or personal benefit.
Promise 44: Immediately restore the long-form census.
Promise 45: Enact Public Access to Science legislation to ensure that government scientists and science are freely accessible to the public without censorship.
Promise 46: Restore scientific capacity by providing $75-million annually to Environment Canada, Health Canada, Parks Canada, and Fisheries and Oceans.
Promise 47: Ensure that any new laws or regulations are based on sound evidence that is transparent, rigorous, ethically produced, easy to access and understand, based on the best available information and free from political manipulation.
Promise 48: Work to end the illegitimate use of omnibus bills.
Promise 49: Control access to prorogation by requiring a 2/3 vote in Parliament.
Promise 50: Enact new rules to require the summoning of a new parliament (within 30 days of an election) and for the dissolution of Parliament.
Elections
Promise 51: Implement a proportional representation voting system within one year of the next Parliament.
Promise 53: Make the Commissioner of Canada Elections (CCE) responsible for investigations into campaign irregularities, reporting directly to Parliament, and give him or her the power to fully investigate and hold to account anyone who breaks Canada’s electoral laws.
Promise 54: Mandate the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to encourage voter turnout.
Promise 55: Appoint both the CCE and CEO by an impartial Public Appointments Commission.
Promise 56: Amend the Elections Act to give the power to sign local candidate nominations papers to the local organization rather than the party leader.
Federalism
Promise 57: Create a Council of Canadian Governments to reinvent how different levels of government work together and ensure regular solution oriented meetings.
Promise 58: Catalyze the improvement of interprovincial and international recognition of credentials and common product standards through the Council of Canadian Governments.
International Relations
Promise 59: Shift focus and funding away from NATO military contributions, towards United Nations peacekeeping, poverty alleviation and disaster relief efforts.
Promise 60: Commit to ending poverty globally by contributing 0.7% of GDP to official development assistance.
Promise 61: Not purchase the F-35 stealth fighter jets.
Promise 62: Purchase fixed-wing search and rescue planes, ice-breakers and replace dangerous old military hardware.
Promise 63: Overhaul our immigration and refugee protection system to ensure that Canada is seen as a welcoming and compassionate home for people fleeing violence and persecution.
Promise 64: Reverse numerous changes to our laws that have created two-tiers of Canadian citizenship.
Promise 66: Repeal as unconstitutional the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
Promise 67: Repeal Bill C-51.
Sovereignty
Promise 68: Press for legislation to require that any and all complaints from Beijing under the Canada-China investment agreement (FIPA), even early diplomatic complaints, must be made public.
Promise 69: Pay damages rather than change any law as a result of Chinese complaints under FIPA.
Promise 70: Vigorously oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).
Promise 71: Work with Green MPs in governments around the world to open a full-scale global review of all investor-state agreements with the goal of revising and improving all of them.
Democracy
Promise 72: End the “American-style” attack politics by slashing the budget of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) by 50%.
Promise 73: Slash the advertising budget of the federal government.
Promise 74: Require that all advertising contracts be publicly tendered on a website with decisions being removed from political operatives.
Promise 75: Empower parliamentary committees to fully discharge their oversight responsibilities, by:
Promise 77: Overhaul Accountability, Conflict of Interest, Privacy and Access to Information legislation.
Promise 78: Curtail patronage through use of an independent Public Appointments Commission.
Promise 79: Apply anti-trust legislation to corporate media.
Constitution
Promise 80: Enshrine in the Constitution the right to a healthy environment.
Promise 81: Reform the senate to be elected by a national referendum.
Promise 82: Amend the constitutional amendment formula to require a national referendum.
Promise 83: Protect the fundamental principle that the prime minister reports to parliament; not the other way around.
Climate Change
Promise 84: Oppose all new raw bitumen export proposals.
Promise 85: Protect existing jobs in the oil sands, create new jobs by upgrading and refining existing production, and provide skills training for workers who have been laid off or who want to transition to more stable, long-term jobs.
Promise 86: Increase refining capacity in the oil sands.
Promise 87: Provide urgent support to First Nations living downstream from the oil sands and suffer serious health consequences as a result of pollution.
Promise 88: Partnering with the provinces to price carbon, implement a Canadian Fee and Dividend Plan.
Promise 90: Develop a national climate strategy.
Promise 91: Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.
Promise 92: Invest in an infrastructure that promotes renewable energy, and a more robust east-west electricity grid to promote renewable energy transmission between provinces.
Promise 93: Reduce the enormous waste in our energy systems.
Promise 94: End the export of coal for burning in foreign coal plants.
Promise 95: Demonstrate leadership on climate change at the United Nations.
Transportation
Promise 96: Create a national transportation strategy with strict new rules on rail safety.
Promise 98: Develop a comprehensive plan to limit the burden on our rail system that has been created by exporting unprocessed oil by rail.
Promise 99: Give regulators the tools they need to protect our neighbourhoods from train derailments, especially those involving hazardous materials.
Promise 100: Fund the re-routing of tracks for freight and rail yards away from populated areas.
Summary
Sustainable Infrastructure
Promise 1: Establish a Canadian Sustainable Generations Fund to invest in skills-training, education, energy efficiency, renewables, and emerging technologies.
Promise 2: Roll out a national sustainable jobs plan.
Promise 3: Create a Canadian Infrastructure Bank to provide more robust and innovative financing and investment partnerships.
Promise 4: Slash Canada’s student debt immediately by limiting any student debt above $10,000 and eliminate tuition fees by 2020.
- This will begin by eliminating tuition fees for the lowest income students and removing the 2% funding increase limit on First Nations education spending.
Promise 6: Partner with First Nations for sustainable long-term resource development on a nation-to-nation basis through Council of Canadian Governments.
Small Business
Promise 7: Ensure Canadian small business owners and entrepreneurs have access to the funds they need to create local jobs and revitalize local economies through a federally-funded $1 billion per year Green Technology Commercialization Grants.
Promise 8: Use a “Think Small First” legislation ensure that new federal laws and regulations enhance, rather than hinder, an economic environment where local businesses.
Promise 9: Support local food and small-scale producers such as farmers’ markets, small-scale farms and producers, and the wineries and microbreweries.
Promise 10: Shift government-supported research away from biotechnology and energy-intensive farming and towards organic and sustainable food production.
Healthcare
Promise 11: Defend single-payer universal health care. Bring all parties back to the table for a renewal of the Health Accord.
Promise 12: Innovate in health care through electronic health records, patient-centred team medicine built around the family physician working with nurse-practitioners, pharmacists, midwives, naturopaths and others.
Promise 13: Expand health care to cover prescription medication for all Canadians through a National Pharmacare Plan and public dental coverage for low income youth (under 18 years of age).
- Through bulk buying the Pharmacare is projected to save Canada $11 billion.
- The Pharmacare Plan will be accompanied with new “gold standard” drug application review.
Promise 15: Immediately create a National Conference on Lyme Disease to develop a national strategy to confront Lyme Disease.
Promise 16: Adopt stricter regulations to prohibit cancer-causing chemicals in our food and consumer products.
Seniors
Promise 17: Implement a National Seniors Strategy, including:
- A Housing plan, with affordable, predictable home care support;
- A National Dementia Strategy, including more long-term care beds in neighbourhood facilities;
- An approach that supports “aging in place”;
- Expansion of CPP;
- Promotion of intergenerational programs that allow children to visit seniors and develop relationships that have proven benefits to both generations;
- Convenient and safe public transport to support independent living;
- Access to the equity in homes to support day-to-day living expenses;
- Addressing the Supreme Court of Canada decision to allow physician-assisted death.
Poverty and Equality
Promise 18: Phase-in a Guaranteed Livable Income beginning with a federal minimum wage f $15 an hour.
Promise 19: Ensure equal pay for equal work.
Promise 20: Collaborate with provinces, territories and First Nations communities ensure high quality child care for every Canadian family who wants it.
- This may be done in part by providing tax incentives to employers to create workplace daycare spots.
Promise 22: Implement a National Housing Strategy based on Housing First principles.
Indigenous Relations
Promise 23: Implement the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Promise 24: Beginning by recognizing indigenous rights and title, negotiate in good faith to settle land claims, establish treaties and self-government arrangements, and move to repeal the Indian Act should that be the consensus of First Nations.
Promise 25: Work to expand rural health care infrastructure by investing in telehealth and mobile medical units, to ensure indigenous communities have access to critical care.
Promise 26: Launch a national inquiry and fight to ensure that structural violence against indigenous communities is addressed.
Promise 27: Provide new federal funding for culturally appropriate education in traditional languages.
Culture
Promise 28: Invest an additional $285 million in the CBC in year 1 and $315 million in every subsequent year.
Promise 29: Restructure the governance structure of the public broadcaster to end the political influence board appointments.
Promise 30: Increase funding to all of Canada’s arts and culture organizations including the Canada Council for the Arts and Telefilm Canada.
Promise 31: Prevent the further monopolization of Canadian media.
Promise 32: Enshrine the principle of “net-neutrality” in Canadian legislation.
Public Services
Promise 33: Preserve door to door mail service.
Promise 34: Diversify Canada Post’s services to possibly include insurance and banking for remote communities.
Public Safety
Promise 35: Reverse funding cuts and re-invest in disaster preparedness, training, and equipment for our forces on the frontlines.
- Including investments in comprehensive earthquake, forest fire, flooding and tsunami response plans.
Promise 37: Use Canada’s defensive capacities for peacekeeping; defensive missions with our allies; border, northern, and coast guard patrols; search and rescue missions; and patrolling our parks.
Promise 38: Re-open the closed Veterans Affairs offices across Canada, reversing the $200 million cut to Veterans Affairs.
Promise 39: Ensure access to service dogs trained to assist veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Promise 40: Provide secure and generous pensions to veterans.
Governance
Promise 41: Green MPs will conduct themselves with integrity and civility, treat others with respect, and never heckle in the House of Commons.
Promise 42: Make all votes for the Green caucus free votes.
Promise 43: Green MPs will publish their expenses online, and never use Parliamentary resources for party or personal benefit.
Promise 44: Immediately restore the long-form census.
Promise 45: Enact Public Access to Science legislation to ensure that government scientists and science are freely accessible to the public without censorship.
Promise 46: Restore scientific capacity by providing $75-million annually to Environment Canada, Health Canada, Parks Canada, and Fisheries and Oceans.
Promise 47: Ensure that any new laws or regulations are based on sound evidence that is transparent, rigorous, ethically produced, easy to access and understand, based on the best available information and free from political manipulation.
Promise 48: Work to end the illegitimate use of omnibus bills.
Promise 49: Control access to prorogation by requiring a 2/3 vote in Parliament.
Promise 50: Enact new rules to require the summoning of a new parliament (within 30 days of an election) and for the dissolution of Parliament.
Elections
Promise 51: Implement a proportional representation voting system within one year of the next Parliament.
- An all-party committee in consultation with the public will determine what form of proportional representation is best suited for Canada.
Promise 53: Make the Commissioner of Canada Elections (CCE) responsible for investigations into campaign irregularities, reporting directly to Parliament, and give him or her the power to fully investigate and hold to account anyone who breaks Canada’s electoral laws.
Promise 54: Mandate the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to encourage voter turnout.
Promise 55: Appoint both the CCE and CEO by an impartial Public Appointments Commission.
Promise 56: Amend the Elections Act to give the power to sign local candidate nominations papers to the local organization rather than the party leader.
Federalism
Promise 57: Create a Council of Canadian Governments to reinvent how different levels of government work together and ensure regular solution oriented meetings.
Promise 58: Catalyze the improvement of interprovincial and international recognition of credentials and common product standards through the Council of Canadian Governments.
International Relations
Promise 59: Shift focus and funding away from NATO military contributions, towards United Nations peacekeeping, poverty alleviation and disaster relief efforts.
Promise 60: Commit to ending poverty globally by contributing 0.7% of GDP to official development assistance.
Promise 61: Not purchase the F-35 stealth fighter jets.
Promise 62: Purchase fixed-wing search and rescue planes, ice-breakers and replace dangerous old military hardware.
Promise 63: Overhaul our immigration and refugee protection system to ensure that Canada is seen as a welcoming and compassionate home for people fleeing violence and persecution.
Promise 64: Reverse numerous changes to our laws that have created two-tiers of Canadian citizenship.
- For example, making it possible to repeal citizenship as punishment for certain crimes.
Promise 66: Repeal as unconstitutional the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
Promise 67: Repeal Bill C-51.
Sovereignty
Promise 68: Press for legislation to require that any and all complaints from Beijing under the Canada-China investment agreement (FIPA), even early diplomatic complaints, must be made public.
Promise 69: Pay damages rather than change any law as a result of Chinese complaints under FIPA.
Promise 70: Vigorously oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).
Promise 71: Work with Green MPs in governments around the world to open a full-scale global review of all investor-state agreements with the goal of revising and improving all of them.
Democracy
Promise 72: End the “American-style” attack politics by slashing the budget of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) by 50%.
Promise 73: Slash the advertising budget of the federal government.
Promise 74: Require that all advertising contracts be publicly tendered on a website with decisions being removed from political operatives.
Promise 75: Empower parliamentary committees to fully discharge their oversight responsibilities, by:
- Appointing committee members for a full session of Parliament;
- Selecting chairs through secret ballot;
- Ensuring adequate budgets; and
- Strengthen the mandates.
Promise 77: Overhaul Accountability, Conflict of Interest, Privacy and Access to Information legislation.
Promise 78: Curtail patronage through use of an independent Public Appointments Commission.
Promise 79: Apply anti-trust legislation to corporate media.
Constitution
Promise 80: Enshrine in the Constitution the right to a healthy environment.
Promise 81: Reform the senate to be elected by a national referendum.
Promise 82: Amend the constitutional amendment formula to require a national referendum.
Promise 83: Protect the fundamental principle that the prime minister reports to parliament; not the other way around.
Climate Change
Promise 84: Oppose all new raw bitumen export proposals.
Promise 85: Protect existing jobs in the oil sands, create new jobs by upgrading and refining existing production, and provide skills training for workers who have been laid off or who want to transition to more stable, long-term jobs.
Promise 86: Increase refining capacity in the oil sands.
Promise 87: Provide urgent support to First Nations living downstream from the oil sands and suffer serious health consequences as a result of pollution.
Promise 88: Partnering with the provinces to price carbon, implement a Canadian Fee and Dividend Plan.
- This system would take the funds generated from the carbon pricing system and pay them out to each Canadian over 18.
Promise 90: Develop a national climate strategy.
Promise 91: Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.
Promise 92: Invest in an infrastructure that promotes renewable energy, and a more robust east-west electricity grid to promote renewable energy transmission between provinces.
Promise 93: Reduce the enormous waste in our energy systems.
Promise 94: End the export of coal for burning in foreign coal plants.
Promise 95: Demonstrate leadership on climate change at the United Nations.
Transportation
Promise 96: Create a national transportation strategy with strict new rules on rail safety.
- Including an investment of $600 million in 2016-2017, building to $764 million by 2020 in VIA Rail.
Promise 98: Develop a comprehensive plan to limit the burden on our rail system that has been created by exporting unprocessed oil by rail.
Promise 99: Give regulators the tools they need to protect our neighbourhoods from train derailments, especially those involving hazardous materials.
Promise 100: Fund the re-routing of tracks for freight and rail yards away from populated areas.