Why Vote Green?

* A consistent voice for the environment. While both the NDP and Greens favour immediate electrification of the Pearson Air Rail Link, the NDP would subsidize the oil industry and make car pollution easier by reducing gasoline tax, even though some of those funds help provide transit services like the TTC. The Green Party has a solid and consistent policy to reduce energy bills by prioritizing conservation, such as investing in retrofits for your home and business, opposing expensive new nuclear projects, and investing in the renewable energy sector where prices are steadily falling. Read more about our Energy Platform

* A voice for individual equality unbiased by vested special interests. Unlike the Liberal party which has continued to ignore discrimination in our publicly funded schools, the Green Party stands behind a plan to work – through a citizen’s assembly – to create a single taxpayer funded school system (for each official language) which is open to all students, parents and teachers regardless of religion, sexual orientation, or any other consideration. Read more about our platform on Education, Jobs & the Economy or watch Justin discuss some of the problems with our current school system in this video

* A pragmatic and moderate approach to governance. Unlike the PCs who favour taking a sledgehammer to vital programs because they aren’t working perfectly, we favour reforming them to make them work. The PCs would undo the Green Energy Act, the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and a number of other programs. Instead, we favour reforming the Green Energy Act to prioritize local small business access to the grid and reforming the LHINs to allow real community engagement in healthcare decisions. This would have been useful in the case of the Methadone clinic on Strickland Ave. Read more about our Healthcare platform or watch Justin’s video

In addition, we are the only party to put forward some innovative new ideas:

* Only Greens have a Food & Farming Strategy among our 5 point plan, focused on providing food security and healthy food options in schools. Read more here

* Only Greens are focusing on governance reform to ensure openness and transparency, and calling for an end to donations by powerful corporations and unions to provincial parties. Read more here

* Only Greens are discussing a fundamental shift in the way we tax. We would balance a reduction of taxes on the things we want, like income and increasing property value, as a spur to job and housing creation, against an increase in taxes on those things we wish to decrease, to provide an incentive to reduce pollution, carbon emissions and the poor use of land. Only Greens are proposing for Ontario a version of the popular and successful BC carbon tax. Justin gives more details in this video

Listen to our party’s main radio ad as well as our ads in these key areas: Jobs  Health  Energy  Food   Governance

It was a pleasure to share reasons why the Green Party is the best Party for Toronto on a recent episode of The Agenda, hosted by Steve Paikin. Here is a link to the episode page

My fellow debaters were:

Here’s a link to the episode

The debate covered a lot of ground, especially focusing on crucial local issues. I’d encourage any undecided voters to give it a watch

Green Party of Ontario Plan will Create Jobs, Reduce Pollution

During the controversy over a possible Liberal admission they would tax carbon and the PC fury at the very idea, the Ottawa Citizen published an editorial praising the Green Party policy to emulate the highly successful and very popular BC carbon tax:

“The modest carbon tax in British Columbia – the model that the Green Party of Ontario wants this province to emulate – won praise this summer from The Economist, which pointed out that after three years of a carbon tax, British Columbia’s economy is among the strongest in the country and that the tax itself is popular, as taxes go.”

Green Party of Ontario addresses inequity in publicly funded schools

Toronto, Ontario (Sept 30, 2011) – The Green Party of Ontario today
called for a Citizen’s Assembly to address the transition to a single
school system (French and English).

“Greens believe in a fair, equitable, and financially responsible
school system that enriches learning for all students. All Ontarians
fund our school system, and it is government’s job to ensure that the
public has a voice in how that money is spent.” said Green Party
Leader Mike Schreiner.

Currently both Public and Catholic boards are funded per student from
the same public fund. Canada ratified the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights on May 19th, 1976, with the consent of all
provinces, including Ontario. In November 1999 and again in November
2005 the same committee censured Canada again for failing to ‘adopt
steps in order to eliminate discrimination on the basis of religion in
the funding of schools in Ontario.’

“Our current system operates under a constitutional privilege that
dates back to when women were not permitted to vote,” explains Justin
Trottier, Green Party candidate for Parkdale High Park. “Other
provinces, like Quebec, have achieved a bilateral agreement with the
Federal government to unify their school boards so that no particular
faith is being funded by the province.”

Recently the issue of inequality in our school system has been
underscored by Catholic school boards openly denying students the
freedom to form Gay Straight Alliances to create more inclusive
environments for students and staff.

“Ontarians pride themselves on their diversity,” said Toronto Centre
candidate and LGBT rights activist Mark Daye. “Our eduaction system
needs to reflect that.”

The Green Party of Ontario believes that our education system must be
fair, equitable and efficient for all students, teachers and families.
The Green Party is the only party with a plan to allow Ontarians to
address equality in our school system, by moving towards one publicly
funded school system, in French and English.

Green MPPs will:

• Call for a citizen’s assembly to review moving to one publicly
funded French and English school system to study and offer
recommendations on the constitutional, procedural and logistical
issues relating to a single public school system in Ontario. The
citizens assembly will provide an opportunity for all Ontarians to
comment on and participate in this important discussion. Citizen input
is essential to help determine the best way forward.

Facts:

• Under the Constitution Act of 1982, Constitutional change in an area
of provincial jurisdiction (such as education) can be accomplished
through bilateral agreement between the province and the Parliament of
Canada alone. Ten post-1982 amendments have been made to the
Constitution, five of which concern denomination education rights.
Quebec and Newfoundland once had denominational school systems. Both
provinces modernized their school systems in the 1990s.

•       Ontario’s school boards are publicly funded according to the
province’s ‘funding formula’, which is based primarily on student
enrolment. Municipal ‘school support’ designations have no effect on
the amount of funding a board receives. Catholic taxpayers are not the
sole supporters of Catholic schools. All taxpayers support all
schools.

•       Canada ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights on May 19th, 1976, with the consent of all provinces, including
Ontario. In November 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Committee
found Canada in violation of the equality provisions of that Covenant
by virtue of Ontario’s discriminatory school system. In November 2005
the same Committee censured Canada again for failing to ‘adopt steps
in order to eliminate discrimination on the basis of religion in the
funding of schools in Ontario.’

Dear Friends,

I am honoured to have worked along-side the concerned citizens and local farmers in the fight against gas plants sited in improper locations in Ontario.  I’m inspired by citizens who work tirelessly for the benefit of our community and for sensible policies that follow the rules.  I want to thank the thousands of people from across the province who signed petitions and wrote letters to the government on this issue.

The Green Party believes that increased investment in efficiency can decrease the need for such developments. We also contend that before proceeding with additional natural gas generation, greater consideration on the location of gas plants is required. Ontario’s Long-Term Energy Plan must establish safe setback rules for the placement of such plants. It is not appropriate to site large gas plants near residential areas or on protected countryside near prime agricultural land – such as the Holland Marsh.

The Green Party of Ontario will continue to fight for community voices so that inappropriately sited gas plants like the Sherway Gas Plant are not imposed on other communities.

The Green Party supports the cancellation of the Oakville and Sherway Gas Plant. We are also committed to cancelling the development proceeding in the Holland Marsh.  Proper set back requirements and community planning processes are needed immediately to avoid the huge costs associated with having to cancel ill conceived projects.

I would once again like to commend your community on your efforts to fight this development.

Thank you,

Mike Schreiner

Thank you for your letter, and for the opportunity to share the Green Party’s position and my own personal thoughts.

The Green Party of Ontario is dedicated to ensuring the pay system in our province’s labour market is equitable and sustainable. Any pay gap that exists due to an individual being a member of any demographic group (such as gender or race) is an issue that needs to be resolved.

Governments must ensure that there is pay equity and equality in all of our institutions, our public offices and our decisions. One of the Green Party of Ontario’s core values is equity amongst citizens, including in professions, regardless of gender. We, like the Equal Pay Coalition, believe it is important for Ontario’s government to address where inequity exists and implement strategies to close inequity gaps. We would work to provide necessary enforcement funding to ensure the government’s obligation to protect individuals from pay discrimination. As a party that has accountable government as one of its 5 platform pillars, we would do this by clearly articulating a province-wide plan for implementation and monitoring, ensuring all employers across the various sectors of our economy were held to the same standards.

The Green Party of Ontario’s Green Jobs Plan seeks to lower personal income taxes by immediately increasing the personal tax exemption by $2000. This will particularly benefit workers with lower incomes. The Green Party of Ontario believes that all workers should have jobs that provide adequate income to meet basic needs.

We recognize that this is part of a larger fight for equality in different areas between men and women. I wanted to add a personal note. I’m very much involved in a variety of causes to promote gender equity. For example, I am working to advocate for Equal Parenting Legislation that will make equal time with mom and dad the default
position in the unfortunate situation of family break up, which would benefit both mothers by removing the stereotype that mothers must be the primary or only source of childcare following divorce, and it would also benefit fathers, who often find our family courts preferring to see them only as a source of funds rather than of love and parenting. In the best interests of children, who deserve both parents in their lives, we feel Equal Parenting legislation is vitally important. It would also mean that women could better balance the competing commitments in their life, such as parenting, furthering their career and other interests.

To read the Green Party platform, please visit itstimeforgreen.ca.

Thank you for your important question!

Excerpt of his remarks below. Photos from the rally are below as well.

Any pride I have in representing the only 1 of the 4 big political parties for which One School System is an important issue, is offset by the embarrassment of being the citizen of a province in which only 1 of the 4 big political parties dares to speak up on this.

This shouldn’t be a Green party issue. This should be a multipartisan issue. But when invitations were sent to members of the Liberal, PC and NDP parties the response was a deafening silence.

So you’d think, given their unquestioning support for the public funding of catholic schools, politicians from these 3 parties would have some excellent arguments to make.

When questioned, what do the politicians from these parties say in support of this system? Actually, they don’t even bother trying to support the current system. I’ve heard only 2 actual responses.

The most popular, by far, is “It’s in the constitution”. That’s usually accompanies by the shrugging of shoulders.

Notice how that isn’t actually an argument in favour of the system. Instead, it’s an attempt to avoid HAVING to argue in favour of a system that has nothing in its favour.

Things have changed since the British North America Act of 1867.

The BNA Act called for 4 provinces, now we have 10.

The BNA Act had no provision for our fundamental freedoms. Those were added through the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The BNA Act provided voting rights to only its male citizens. Now women vote and run for office. This last point is worth dwelling on. Although those attempting to stop female suffrage would refer to men’s voting rights as rights, we now know it was in reality a privilege. You see, a privilege is what we call a right when it’s only available to a subset of the population.

Things have changed since 1867.

I said there were two common answers from politicians on the matter of catholic schools. The first is the fall back on the supposed constitutional guarantee. The other is that the system is working just fine.

I always wonder just who the system is working fine for? The system is certainly working well for the bishops and the trustees. But how about the students and teachers?

Is the system working just fine for non-catholic teachers who are effectively barred from over one third of all public teaching positions, or teachers who have lost their job for breaking some aspect of catholic dogma?

Is the system working just fine for the students who were dismissed from class for daring to advocate for pro-choice at a school sanctioned pro-life rally?

Is the system working just fine for parents who wish their kids to have access to the full range of books and literature, but have school boards banning books that are deemed inconsistent with catholic dogma.

Did the system work just fine for Marc Hall, who had to go through the burden of getting a court injunction to allow him to bring his same sex partner to the prom, against the explicit wishes of the school board?

Did the system work just fine for students who wanted and deserve the best sex ed curriculum they can get? No, in a despicable move, the government capitulated to conservative catholic bishops and shelved their new sex ed curriculum after a mere 2 days, depriving both catholic school students and secular school students.

Is the system working just fine for gay students who have their charter right to freedom of assembly explicitly trumped by the catholic board? The TDCSB just a couple of weeks ago approved an amendment to their equity and inclusivity policy. From now on, whenever denominational privileges are in conflict with human rights requirements, the bishops get to overrule the government. Quite apart from the specific case here, how can we have a system paid for by all us taxpayers but accountable not to our elected officials, but to religious leaders?

The system isn’t working just fine, and I’m tired of hearing it is.

Now next time you hear either of these attempts to avoid actually defending cahtolic school funding, please do what I do, and tell these politicians to stop avoiding the core question and to do the right thing. If this issue is still with us in a year, I don’t want to be here reprsenting the only party with the guts to challenge the stauts quo and influential vested interests.

Photos courtesy of Jim McDonald