Today’s Random Green Party Policy of the Day from Vision Green is from page 44 (as chosen by @donutsnprayers):

“Green Party MPs will:

Establish the design and management principles of a nationally integrated electrical power grid capable of supporting many diverse sources of renewable electrical energy

Develop a transition plan that will transform the existing electrical distribution pattern into a pattern of distributed renewable generation…

Develop peak power production from burning demonstrably sustainable agricultural and forest waste as necessary to meet peak power demands but within the constraints of maintaining soil nutrients.”

Quick Translation: The Green Party will create and support a system that is capable of producing and distributing sustainable electricity to all Canadians.

Won’t it feel good to vote Green?

Today’s Random Green Party Policy of the Day from Vision Green is from page 42 (as chosen by @greendude33):

“Most of today’s housing stock will still be standing by 2040, when we seek an 85% overall reduction in Canada’s carbon emissions, so retrofitting Canada’s existing stock of buildings is critical.

Green Party MPs will:

Develop a national retrofit standard suitable for a post-carbon economy that will reduce energy use in existing buildings by an average of at least 80% below that of 2009 average structures.

Promote the adoption of this high efficiency standard by:
1. Providing revolving federal loans for retrofits to homeowners.
2. Funding a nation-wide program to upgrade all low-income rental housing on a phased year-by-year basis to be completed by 2025, as Germany is doing.
3. Identifying the barriers to sustainable energy retrofits and eliminating them.
4. Providing refundable tax credits for all energy retrofit costs, based on before-and-after EnerGuide or infrared heat tests for residential, commercial, industrial and institutional buildings.
5. Promoting tax-deductible Green Mortgages for home-owner energy retrofit costs.
6. Introducing a national program of energy retrofits to public sector buildings such as universities, schools, museums, and hospitals.
7. Introducing a 100% Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance for all businesses for energy retrofit costs.
8. Providing revolving federal loans for residential or business energy retrofits.

… and a bunch more.

Quick Translation: The Green Party is serious about reducing carbon emissions and saving Canadians money through more efficient buildings. And while we look ahead to 2040, we’ll start right now.

Won’t it feel good to vote Green?

Today’s Random Green Party Policy of the Day from Vision Green is from page 68 (as chosen by a Facebook supporter):

“The Greens will continue to support ‘quality of life’ evaluation methods such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as a means to improve quality of life and protect biodiversity.

The Green Party will also support research into the economics of protecting biodiversity and the development of fiscal tools to limit the negative impact of human activity on the Ecosphere.

Eliminating capital gains on donations of ecologically significant land and more appropriate land-use taxes are key measures to limit demand-side pressures on biodiversity.”

The Green Party believes that as changes are made to Canada’s ‘natural accounts’ through the depletion or addition of fish, trees and soils, these should be reflected in measures of Canada’s worth. We believe in full-cost accounting, which means that there are no externalities. Pollution, exploitation, and illness are all factored in.

Purely economic measurements, such as Gross Domestic Products (GDP), ignore key factors of well-being (as I’ve mentioned before) and the GPC believes we need to account for key social, environmental and long-term economic features in different parts of the country and local communities.

Quick translation: We need to change how we measure economic success.

Won’t it feel good to vote Green?

Last Friday I was on CP24 with Ellen Michelson, the Toronto-Centre Green Party Candidate and Stephen LeDrew. Stephen asked me if the GPC was a one-issue Party and what we’ll be doing to counteract that belief.

Here’s one thing I’m going to do: I’ll be posting a random Green Party of Canada (GPC) policy of the day, hopefully every day. I’ll be using Vision Green, the GPC’s primary policy communication medium. You can access the online version of Vision Green at greenparty.ca.

Today’s Random GPC Policy is from page 11 of Vision Green (as chosen by a Facebook supporter):

“Canadian businesses want two things from their government: predictability and policy coherence. The Green Government will ensure that the rules are clear, the playing field is level and decision making is transparent.

Key societal goals:

- Ensure Canadians have more time for friends, family and community engagement.

- Send the right price signals to the economy. The days of cheap, abundant energy are over. A carbon tax will send that signal and generate the revenue to cut income taxes, allow ‘income splitting’ and reduce the tax burden on small business.

- Eliminate perverse corporate subsidies. No more ‘corporate welfare bums.’ No more unpaid ‘loans’ to government granting agencies.”

Ooh! Clear! Transparent! Coherent! Predictable! These are all things that you should demand from your MP and your government.

Won’t it feel good to vote Green?

Last week’s statement by PM Harper that being found in contempt of Parliament multiple times and being charged with election fraud are merely ‘distractions’ is a clear sign of the lack of respect he has for Canadian democratic institutions.

Make no mistake, these systems are in place as safeguards against abuses of power by those who claim to lead us. This government, which has managed to cling to power for going on five years now despite the support of less than 25% of eligible voters, has consistently shown that they consider Parliament and the people of Canada to be simply obstacles in the way of their doing business.

Claiming that the economy is their #1 priority (while running up record deficits) attempts to scare people into compliance with a false argument.

The real argument here, and all left and right parties will make it, is that we are mere units in an economy and that, beyond the economy, everything else is secondary. Somehow a strong GDP translates into a ‘better’ country.

Well, when my Mom got cancer and died, that increased the GDP. That’s as far as I need to go to know that there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to run a country based on GDP.

The Green Party is different. Unlike the traditional left-right continuum of economic-based Parties, the Greens are ecologically-based.

Now, before you go off and start trumpeting that this is why we will never lead, take one minute to think about what this means.

Greens look at the whole system and figure out how to make it run as best as possible. We are not so focused on the economy that we ignore the quality of life that citizens enjoy.

We’re smarter than that. We know that quality of life is what should determine how the economy runs.

What does a green economy look like? It doesn’t pollute without cost. It provides local, resilient employment so that all Canadians can enjoy a higher standard of living instead of the increasing concentration of wealth into a few hands.

And it doesn’t think that someone dying of cancer is a good thing because it brings more money into the system.

Instead of sick care, a green economy promotes health care. Real health care. Not more prescriptions because those help drug companies. But healthier citizens because that increases the quality of life.

Change is coming. It won’t be from the left-right parties who are trapped in their economy first mindset.

It will come from the increasing number of people who realize that their lives are more important than money. That’s why I vote Green.

I’m reading a wonderful little book on Reverence by Paul Woodruff and, very close to the beginning, he asserts that reverence is really more about politics and living in community than religion. For Woodruff, reverence is the feeling of awe and respect towards something that is not created by humans, something beyond us to which we secede authority.

So, for example, one would not feel reverence for the Canadian Parliament because it is an institution created by humans but one could feel reverence for the ideals of discourse, unity, truth, harmony, democracy, and freedom. Ideals which, I believe, are the ultimate goal of our Parliament but that our representatives seem to have forgotten.

To me, the current level of political discourse has become incredibly shallow and mean-spirited. I have not heard our political ‘leaders’ providing us with anything approaching a vision for the future of Canada that rises above the ‘we’re not them’ and ‘aren’t they terrible’ arguments. Nothing that deals with the realities of democratic and ecological crisis, globalization, peak oil, peak water, climate change, a crumbling infrastructure, and a radically changing demographic.

If our MPs had reverence for the ideals which inspired our democratic system they would remember that they are in Ottawa to help our country function better, both domestically and internationally, and to further the success and happiness of Canadians. They would remember that though they have different views, they are united by a love of Canada and democracy and would work to craft legislation that furthered that vision. They would listen with respect and stay open-minded to new solutions.

But they don’t. They appear to be ideologically frozen and bicker as they jockey for position in a series of meaningless and endless polls. It leads me to wonder if those who claim to represent us are irreverent, not recognizing the higher authorities of the ideals that led to the institutions where they practice. And, if this is true, weep for our children.

The recent Manning Centre 2010 Barometer found that 89% of Canadians (based on 1000 interviews) strongly believed that “nothing is more important than family,” a value the Manning Centre claimed for conservative ideology. This contention caused a bit of a stir – do conservatives have moral ownership of the ‘family’ issue?

One comment was that this focus on family (sounds conservative doesn’t it? It’s amazing how well their spin machines work) as the ‘most important thing’ flew in the face of Canadian values and the idea of ‘love thy neighbour’ and taking care of those less fortunate.

And it got me thinking, “Is family the most important thing?” and, as a politician, is it perhaps where I should be focusing. How about we claim family as a Green value – as THE Green value.

My family is the most important thing in the world to me. And I will do what it takes to protect them and ensure that they have a happy and healthy and safe future. That is why I am running for the Green Party. And that is why I think everyone who has kids, and wants to protect them, should vote Green.

This happened to coincide (I just love synchronicity, don’t you?) with an email I received from the most excellent Mr. Kempton, who runs the Albedo blog, and who was informing me that he had had a ‘minor revelation’ which I happen to think is actually pretty major – at least as it pertains to GPC policy.

“It occurred to me last week that we don’t have to get people to believe that climate change is real, or a great danger, etc. We just have to get them to act as if they believe it. Maybe that’s the basic concept behind pushing the positive economic, health, lifestyle effects of changing our ways of being on the planet… Passion and hope are more powerful, really.”

I have a confession to make: [deep breath] I couldn’t agree more. I can’t stand talking about climate change. I know that it is a GPC mainstay but I think it is nothing but detrimental to our cause. Because I think the truth is that climate change paralyzes most people – it is too big, too nebulous, and too easy to argue. Let’s talk about how we will help your family, your kids, your life.

And, as a political issue, climate change is useless. The people who get it have already gotten it, we need to reach the people who won’t get it. I know that fear is a great motivator when it comes to marketing but I don’t think it works as well when it is packaged as existential angst. It works when it is something much more concrete, like, ‘if you don’t use this pill, you’ll never have another erection.’ Now that gets some attention.

Telling people that there are massive planetary changes underway that will slightly increase the earth’s temperature and have catastrophic consequences leads to, ‘Woah! My brain shut down halfway through what you said and I’m now thinking about my shiny new car.”

Moreover, we don’t need it. The Green platform is amazing. We’re promoting healthy, vibrant, abundant communities where people know each other, care for each other, and have the resources they need, locally, to feel happy. We are offering an awakening, a re-vitalization of people’s lives, their homes, and, yes, their families. We actually care that people get to see their kids, that they aren’t spending two hours commuting every day, that they aren’t on the hamster wheel of ‘success’ but empty inside. Our Vision provides all of that.

We have the best plan for job creation.

We have the best plan for energy sustainability.

We have the best plan for food security.

We have the best plan for health.

We are offering passion, hope, and happiness. So let’s drop the focus on… what was it again?