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?!

There is something very exciting happening in York Region and I am thrilled to see it happening, and even more thrilled to have the privilege to be involved. A few intrepid souls have started a Transition Towns (TT) ‘mulling’ group and it is already bringing together knowledge, skills, and a vision for a resilient and localized community.

The Era Banner did a pretty darn good Sunday feature on Sue McKee (one of the initiators) though the consensus has been that it did not emphasize the, as one of our illustrious members put it, the fact that “Transition Town is quite simply the most synergistic, optimistic, supercalifragilistic social engineering idea I have ever seen.”

You can find out more about the York Region TT group here.

Last night, three local TT’ers ventured to Peterborough to learn more about their TT movement, which has advanced from ‘mulling’ into ‘launching,’ and Open Space facilitation, one of the preferred meeting moderation techniques of TT.

Part of the evening was used to lay out some of the key learnings of the Peterborough group and what they considered to be essential local needs. To me, most of these local needs would translate well to working groups and comprise essential political issues. So I thought I’d pass them along:

Health
Transportation
Infrastructure
Food
Water
Housing
Energy
Money
Banking
Education
Waste
Pollution
Soil
Forests
Wetlands

What do you think? If you are interested in learning more about Transition Towns or joining the York Region group please feel free to contact me.

[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.