Media Release

For Immediate Release

April 28, 2011

smart economy – strong communities – true democracy.

NEWMARKET – The Green Party in Newmarket-Aurora is pleased to announce that our election night party will be at local restaurant, Tom & Jerry’s (Yonge and Millard), starting at 8 p.m.

Local Candidate Vanessa Long said, “We are looking forward to celebrating at Tom & Jerry’s. It took some effort to find a restaurant that was truly accessible so that all of our volunteers and supporters can join us after an intense local campaign. I was assured by one local restaurant that they were 100% accessible but when I visited them, there was a 2″ lip at the entryway and the washrooms were unreachable by someone in a chair. If it was this hard for me to find a location, imagine how hard it would be if I were in a wheelchair. Universal accessibility needs to be a priority in a fair and equitable society.”

Vanessa has emphasized the importance of quality of life throughout this campaign, championing the right of every resident in Newmarket and Aurora to live with dignity.

“Hopefully on election night, we’ll see the results of our hard work and Vanessa’s excellent showings at the local debates. However it turns out, we’ll be celebrating our most successful campaign to date and planning to build momentum in 2011,” said local Green CEO Carter Apps.

Everyone is welcome to drop by on Monday, May 2nd, and enjoy some Green company.

Tom & Jerry’s: 17335 Yonge Street, Newmarket, ON L3Y 8Z2 Tel: (905) 853-2345.

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Contact:

Media Release
For Immediate Release
April 7, 2011

smart economy – strong communities – true democracy

NEWMARKET – The Green Party released its platform at a press conference in Toronto on Thursday, April 7, 2011. Vanessa Long, candidate for Newmarket-Aurora, joined Green Party candidates and Canadians across the country as Elizabeth May unveiled the platform by live-streaming video on the Internet.

The Green Book contains tax cuts for low income Canadians, tax splitting for Canadian families and real measures to clean up the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our platform makes it clear. The Green Party of Canada has a plan for a smart economy, strong communities and true democracy. We have spent our time developing solutions – not engaging in partisan name-calling. We have solutions to help families and young people, to combat climate change, to create a national transportation strategy, strengthen our communities and to fix our democracy. We call it smart economy, strong communities and true democracy,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

The platform contains a suite of measures designed to be economically viable, create jobs, address poverty, protect our health care system, increase support for youth and seniors, respond to the climate crisis and clean up the environment. Each measure has been fully costed.

“We will create thousands of jobs investing in renewable energy, expanding passenger rail, modernizing freight and retrofitting thousands of buildings,” added Ms. May. ”We are also the only party so far in this campaign speaking to international issues and raising trade deals as a concern.”

“I encourage all the voters of Newmarket-Aurora to have a close look at our platform. We are serious about ensuring every Canadian can live in dignity with a strong local economy, a healthy community and a true democracy,” said Vanessa Long.

The Green Party Green Book is available at www.greenparty.ca/platform2011

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Thanks to Teresa Latchford at the Era-Banner for her article on how local political candidates would help families in Newmarket-Aurora.

Here’s what I said:

Thank you for asking me to comment on how the Green Party would help Ontario families. As the Social Services Critic for the Green Party, this issue is of particular importance to me.

The Green Party is committed to ensuring that every Canadian, regardless of their age or geography, can live with dignity. This means providing opportunities for youth to gain education and employment without crushing debt. It also means ensuring that our public pensions will be there when our aging population needs them.

On Thursday, April 7, 2011, Elizabeth May released the Green Party of Canada platform – the Green Book – in Toronto. It includes a fully costed budget to get Canada on the right track with a strong economy, healthy communities, and true democracy. We believe that all three of these areas need improvement to help Canadian families.

Specifically, for Ontario families, the Green Party of Canada would:

- eliminate personal income tax below the low income cut-off of $20,000 as the first step to eliminating poverty in Canada;

-reform the Divorce Act to reduce the adversarial environment of the Family Law courts with a default assumption of equal parenting as being in the best interests of the child;

- extend maternity/paternity leave for new parents;

- implement a national housing strategy to retrofit homes and businesses making them more energy efficient as well as creating affordable housing spaces for those in need;

- make it easier to telecommute or work from home to help people balance work and family life;

- ensure flexible child care with access for all including more workplace child care spaces;

- provide support for those who stay home to raise their children and support for those who need to get back to work while their kids are still young;

- support arts and physical education in schools, including national fitness testing;

- invest in First Nations education, safe drinking water, and improved housing to rectify the abhorrent conditions that currently exist for these communities;

- and, finally, the Green Party would lower income taxes and introduce full income splitting, immediately, to reduce the tax burden on married couples and families;

The Green Party recognizes that families depend on their municipal infrastructure and as part of our platform we are providing help for local governments through sustainable long-term funding to repair decades-old crumbling infrastructure. This fund will help Canadian towns and cities build for the future with more of the common amenities all communities need for recreation, transportation, water works, and arts and culture.

As the Green MP for Newmarket-Aurora I would dedicate myself to improving the quality of life of all Canadians by implementing Green thinking and policies. Instead of ’boutique’ tax cuts and credits, we would lower income tax rates for all Canadians so that they can invest their own money – in the arts, in active living, or in any one of a myriad of ways that can increase quality of life.

Won’t it feel good to vote Green?!

We’ll be at the Second Cup on Bayview in Aurora just north of Wellington (it’s near the theatre) between 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Afterwards we’ll be heading out to pound in signs and do some door canvassing. Please plan to be there if you have already volunteered.

If you would like to know more about the Green Party and its messages this is a great opportunity in a relaxed setting.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Join us at the Crow’s Nest in Newmarket Sunday night at 8:30 for our Campaign Kick-off.

A brief moment to enjoy the calm before 5 weeks of election craziness.

Crow’s Nest is at 115 Prospect Street. Can hardly wait to see you there!

Came across a couple of articles today that, combined with the gas prices we’re seeing at the pumps, has me thinking about the importance of Transition Town and a Green perspective.

Today, the UN issued a report that food prices have reached an all-time high after eight straight months of increases. The basket includes a number of commodities including cereals, dairy and meat. The high prices are attributed to a combination of rising oil prices, declining cereal production and other global changes.

As well, I came across an article talking about the growing political unrest in Saudi Arabia. As one of the key sources of oil for the West, if Saudi oil production becomes unpredictable, or stops during a regime change, oil prices will skyrocket leading to shortages and/or high prices at the pump.

These two issues make it even more important that we begin to focus on our local economies – making them diverse and resilient. Do you have community gardens and orchards? Are you allowed to have small livestock within your Town boundaries? Is there adequate local food/energy/water production? Are there solid community networks to ensure that the most vulnerable don’t fall through the cracks?

The answers for Newmarket and Aurora right now are, sadly, no. We have a lot of work to do to prepare for a changing global situation.

The good news is that, thanks to the hard work of Transition York Region, things are beginning to change. Slowly but surely we are strengthening our community linkages and resilience.

We have to hope that it will be enough.

Through my involvement with Greens and Transition Towns I’ve learned a lot about the importance of building local resiliency and local capacity.

Capacity, to me, is the ability of our community to meet local needs. Do we have enough food, power generation, waste handling, water, services, etc. to take care of our citizens?

Resiliency is our ability to bounce back after sudden changes. If, for example, there was an oil shock and the transport trucks stopped rolling for a week, would we have the capacity (there’s that word again) to adapt quickly to the change and ensure that everyone was taken care of? Furthermore, how would we ensure that no one slipped through the cracks? We need systems in place and a strong community to truly claim resiliency.

This weekend I was privileged to attend a workshop by Joan Stonehocker from the York Region Food Network at Markham’s Sustain-a-licious Food Fair and her division of activities into Emergency, Capacity-Building, and System Change really resonated with me. Especially as we move into the Holiday season, and everyone is asking for donations of non-perishable items, I’m struck by the importance of building capacity in our social services.

Make no mistake, food banks and shelters are meant to provide Emergency services and they are vitally important to the communities in which they function. However, they are not meant to be a long-term solution to the problems that they address. They are a bandage. I think our society has made a tragic error by equating food donations with caring for those in need. Much more attention is needed if we intend to reduce or eliminate poverty.

Money, of course, is a huge factor in this equation. Social assistance, as you can calculate at Do the Math, is woefully inadequate to enable those in need to live with dignity. It is a value cornerstone of the Greens to change income tax and social assistance levels so that everyone can meet their basic needs.

But it is about more than money. Capacity building includes abundant, reliable and accessible community kitchens, gleaning, community gardens, year-round farmer’s markets and culturally appropriate food provision. Why do we not have these in Newmarket and Aurora? Why have these services not been made a priority by our Regional and Municipal Councils?

System change happens when we successfully advocate for policy changes. Every municipality must create a Sustainability Report to qualify for Gas Tax funding. Markham’s ‘Greenprint’ is available here and it is excellent. It creates a vision of a localized and resilient community with ample local food production and service provision to ensure that all of its residents are cared for.

Aurora’s is here and Newmarket’s is here. Just kidding! Apparently we don’t have them yet. I have calls in to both Towns to see what the progress is for the reports, if any, and am waiting to hear back. I’ll update you as I find out more.

So, please, drop off your food donations, they are urgently needed. But take one step further and find out about capacity building in your town and how you can help.

March 22nd is World Water Day and it seems like an excellent time to muse over the current state of our water resources. Canada is so truly blessed with abundant fresh water and some of the healthiest tap water in the world and perhaps that is why we have been able to keep our per capita consumption rates down (though it has been steadily increasing).

This article from the Huffington Post is an excellent introduction to a few of the issues surrounding bottled water – peak oil, leaching chemicals, and corporatisation. “According to the UN, by the year 2020, two-thirds of the world will lack access to clean drinking water,” and there are many political observers who believe that the wars of the 21st century will be about water. Actually, these wars are already happening – the Golan Heights has been a constant issue between Israel and Syria and its main benefit is significant fresh water resources, providing over half of Israel’s fresh water.

The Council of Canadians has been fighting the privatization of Canada’s water resources for years, with fairly good success. It is also a solid Green Party of Canada platform plank that we support a public trust for water and enshrining the right to water in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. By contrast, our current governments (and by that I mean the NDP, Liberals, and Conservatives) have done little to promote public, safe water and with each free trade agreement we make we move a little closer to losing our ability to maintain our common right to safe water.

Check out the new documentary, Tapped. Maybe we’ll have to have a GPC movie night…

This issue has recently gained the spotlight in Ontario with Bill-237 which would create corporations and implement full cost recovery and metering of municipal water supplies. This Bill was killed when McGuinty prorogued the Ontario Legislature but these seemingly innocuous steps have often been precursors to water privatization. While the Green Party supports full cost accounting it must be done in the context of preserving public access and management of this vital resource.

My family recently had the conversation about whether or not to continue using plastic water bottles. I confess that as a Personal Trainer I used my fair share of water bottles when I worked at the gym. Generally I would buy a bottle and then refill it from the water fountain for a few weeks and then replace it with a new one, but, still, that was a lot of plastic. I even remember buying a case one summer and carrying it around in my trunk – by the end of that case the water had taken on a distinctly funky taste, who knows how many pseudo-estrogens I ingested that summer from the heated plastic. My plastic water bottle usage is almost nothing now, thankfully.

Anyway, my partner’s three kids get a packed lunch every day, and as part of that they each receive a water bottle. Every school day. Finally, I couldn’t take it and after serious debate about practicality, health, taste (only one likes the taste of Brita water, the other two prefer tap water), and political image (after all it looks pretty bad to have the GPC candidate using that much plastic) – my partner went out and bought metal water bottles for all of us. Now the kids have ample water and our plastic recycling rate has dropped immensely. And everyone seems happy.

It makes me wonder what it would be like if Newmarket and Aurora went plastic water bottle-free?

Thanks to Carter for sharing this link with me. Tyler Hamilton at CleanBreak.ca discusses a couple of solar co-ops that are popping up around southern Ontario.

One is Countryside, partnering with ARISE Technologies to start photovoltaic (PV) projects on commercial/industrial rooftops. People who are interested in participating in PV but do not have adequate sites can buy shares in the projects and participate in revenues from the Ontario Power Authority’s (OPA) feed-in tariff program.

Another, on a much smaller scale is the Neighbourhood Unitarian Universalist (NUU) congregation in Toronto installing a PV system on their church roof. Again, they are selling shares.

I think I’ve already mentioned that I have a wee crush on Cathy MacLellan, one of the partners of ARISE (she started it with her husband after they graduated from Waterloo). She is also the Green Party of Canada candidate for K/W and a totally inspiring entrepreneur.

I also happen to love the UUs, my church of choice and one I would love to see in Aurora and/or Newmarket. Social justice is one of their core principles, just as it is for the Green Party.

As for the province’s feed-in tariff program – the Liberals almost got it right. If they can overcome their issues with back-end red tape it could be a really great program and encourage small-scale renewable energy projects all over the province – including here at home.

Anybody feel like starting an energy co-op in Newmarket? Count me in.

[Letter number 2 in what will most likely be a series of Letters to the Editor of the Era-Banner that I am not allowed to send because I am a declared candidate for an election that will happen sometime in the future. I wish I had realized that when I declared for the Green Party I would lose my voice at the Era-Banner but such is life. Now I get to make my letters longer. Ha!]

Dear Editor,

Re: Voter turnout low because politicians lie, letter from Mr. L. Rothwell, Feb 11 / Re: If you care about democracy, vote, editorial, Jan 28

With all due respect to Mr. Rothwell I must challenge his hypothesis that when “80 per cent of voters… stay at home. Then, maybe, politicians will get the message.”

While there are a few directions my disagreement could take – including my belief that when 80% of voters stay home we will live in a true oligarchy where only the select few have any say in government and tyranny will reign and Canada will weep. Though, this scenario is fairly close to the mark with respect to municipal elections. Anyways.

That was not the point.

What I really wanted to dispute was Mr. Rothwell’s obvious anger towards ‘politicians’ and his categorization of them as “people who lack integrity and ethics.”

Of course, as a recently declared political candidate I take it a little personally that because of my political choice I suddenly have no integrity nor ethics. I actually consider myself to be a person possessing both integrity and a high ethical standard.

But that is still not the point, though closer to it. The point is – there are no politicians. There are merely people, just like Mr. Rothwell and myself, that have chosen to join in the political process.

Politicians are not usually born. They are made. They are people who have decided to pursue a public life – hopefully in the service of their country and the best interests of the electorate.

Do these people sometimes lose focus and become swayed by the pretty, shiny danglings of lobby groups? Yes.

Do they sometimes pursue power to the exclusion of everything else. Yes.

Do these people sometimes let us down? Yes. Often.

Do we have a democratic crisis in Canada? Yes. I believe we do.

But my point is that sitting at home and whinging about it is not the best use of one’s time.

Stand up. Get engaged. Make your voice count.

And if you can’t find a single political candidate that you can trust – then take the leap and become a candidate. For municipal, provincial, or federal politics quality candidates are desperately needed.

Of course, it would be super-spiffy if you would support me and my bid to be the first Green MP for Newmarket-Aurora, but if you can’t, then get your butt out there and run against me.

I also have an issue with your contention that “the population is a lot more educated these days.” Hardly. When the anti-proroguing rally was being organized most people did not even know that our democracy had been suspended. They didn’t understand what it meant. And they didn’t know why they should care. Some were happy to get the ‘liars’ out of Ottawa for a while. People know far more about what Britney Spears is up to than what our PM is doing showboating in Vancouver.

But that isn’t the politicians fault. If there are issues with our democracy it is because we expect ‘someone else’ to take care of it for us.

We are the change we wish to see. We are the smallest unit of a democratic society. And it is up to us to keep it safe and keep it strong. If we don’t have anyone to vote for then it is up to us to find them – or to become them. That is what I did. And it is what I encourage everyone else to do.

That is why I am so proud of local organizers like Liz, Neale, Nick, Carter and everyone else who helped make the January 23rd rally such a success – and who are now organizing a public meeting in Aurora on February 25.

Holding the Line on Democracy will take a frank look at what is happening in our society and, hopefully, send people away feeling more educated, more empowered, and more motivated to take action to keep our democracy strong.

Mr. Rothwell, I am personally inviting you to join us. It’s kind of fun to be around other people who care as passionately as you obviously do.