Today’s Random Green Party Policy of the Day from Vision Green is page 76:

“Greens subscribe to the World Health Organization’s definition of health as a ‘complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’ Our present health-care system addresses only one dimension – the treatment of disease and/or trauma by qualified professionals in publicly-funded medical facilities…

The Green fully support the Canada Health Act (CHA) and all of its principles. We oppose any level of privatized, for-profit health care. The five criteria of the CHA guiding the provincial public health insurance plans, which we believe to be non-negotiable, are:

1. Public administration: The public health insurance plan must be managed in a public, not-for-profit fashion.

2. Comprehensiveness: All residents must be covered for ‘medically necessary’ health services.

3. Universality: All residents must be covered by the public insurance plan on uniform terms and conditions.

4. Portability: All residents must be covered by their public plan, wherever they are treated in Canada.

5. Accessibility: All residents must have access to insured health care services on uniform terms and conditions without direct or indirect financial charges, or discrimination based on age, health status, or financial circumstances.

The threat of a NAFTA challenge from the American for-profit health care industry cannot be over-estimated. Allowing for-profit health care would be the ‘thin end of the wedge’ that jeopardizes our entire health system…

Green Party MPs will:

Eliminate Two-Tier Health Care

- Identify and measure the extent of two-tier health care in Canada and strive for the elimination of two-tier health care as quickly as economically possible.

Improve Our Existing Acute Care System

- Use the full force of federal spending power under the Canada Health Act to oppose any steps that open the way to further two-tier health care in Canada.

- Address the cost crisis that produces long waitlists by providing more money to hire staff to open currently closed beds, fully utilize existing operating rooms in hospitals and purchase new diagnostic equipment.

- Provide funds immediately to being training more doctors and nurses.

- Work with the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) to immediately establish qualification standards and on-the-job mentorship programs to fast-track certification of foreign trained health care professionals.

- Provide student loan forgiveness incentives for graduating doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health care professionals who agree to staff rural facilities and family practice clinics where recruitment is currently a problem…

Improve Our Chronic Care System

- Enshrine a policy that seniors’ care must be provided in the communities where they or their families live.

- Expand home support and home care programs and assisted-living services to support people with chronic care needs, including many seniors who wish to stay in their own homes and communities…

Reduce the Costs of Pharmacare

- Advocate for immediate action on the 2004 Standing Committee on Health recommendation that Health Canada enforce the current prohibition of all industry-sponsored advertisements on prescription drugs to the public to help reduce the demand for unnecessary prescription drugs…

- Immediately embark on a commission to study and conduct a cost-benefit analysis on the feasibility of establishing, in cooperation with the provinces, a new crown corporation to bulk purchase and dispense generic drugs to pharmacies, and the feasibility of establishing a national pharmacare program that ensures that effective pharmaceuticals are available to all Canadians who need them.

Quick Translation: Canada’s Health Care system is worth preserving, and it also needs alot of work to ensure that it is accessible, universal, and effective.

Won’t it feel great to vote Green!

A friend of mine sent me this interesting, and kind of disturbing article about Detroit’s proposed solution to its urban sprawl and diminishing populations: tearing down the neighbourhoods and creating new agricultural land.

It has taken me a while to write about it, because, honestly, I wasn’t sure what I could say – it is heartbreaking to see a city that was built on the promises of a modern world in decay and decline. But it is also unsurprising – thanks to Michael Moore’s early films like Roger and Me (which focused on Flint, MI), it is widely known that Detroit was made promises by the auto industry that were not kept.

Promises that could not be kept given the current legislation that deals with corporations (and, yes, I realize that legislation in the States is different than here). Corporate Charter legislation that demands they provide ever-increasing profit to their shareholders, regardless of consequences. ‘Free’-Trade Legislation that makes it more affordable to build cars 1,000 or 5,000 kilometres away from the market where they will be sold than to pay union wages. Accounting and Income Tax legislation that allows companies to externalize environmental and social justice repercussions of the decisions they make. And, finally, a legislative bundle that has created an entire generation of corporate CEOs and profiteers with a twisted set of values where a dollar is more important that a human life and lying is justified when it will make more profit.

I don’t really have a problem with delivering value and profit, that is what companies are for, after all. The problem I have is with the current definition of ‘value’. As a Green, if a company wants to deliver value to me, then it had better be thinking, not just about the jingle of money in my piggy bank, but also the long-term health and well-being of me, my children and my community. I care about the sustainability of my investments, I want to know that it is a good idea not just for me, but for my kids and their grand-kids.

And I have to say that the current corporate culture does not seem to be taking us in that direction. Our current system of fines is largely meaningless and has almost no power to change the behaviour of a corporation – especially for the largest ones, the current fines are considered part of doing business, certainly not a deterrent. Yet, in case after case, companies that take better care of their employees, community, and the environment are more profitable than those who insist on sticking to the ‘status quo’.

So here’s what I would like to see: a Corporate Charter granted in Canada would be dependent upon the company agreeing to both domestic and foreign Corporate Social Responsibility Charters and that, if a corporation was in violation of that Charter on a regular basis, that the Charter would be revoked, the Corporation would be dissolved, and the proceeds of asset sales would be used to compensate employees and shareholders. I would like to see the onus of proof on the corporations themselves, and I would like to see this legislation enforced.

Oh, and one other tidbit I would love to see thrown in to deal with exorbitant executive salaries: let’s cap their compensation at 1000x that of the lowest paid worker. That’s right, if you operate in a free trade zone and the worker there makes $0.50 or $1.00 per day, your total compensation (no sneaking around with stock transfers) is going to work out to around $52,000 per year. Too low, you protest. How about 10,000 times? $520,000 doesn’t sound too bad. Does it? Right now, there are many executives being paid 100,000 to 1 million times more than their lowest paid worker. Does that seem right? Do you think that companies would behave differently if their compensation were tied to that of their lowliest employee (contract or part-time)? I do.

As for Detroit, a relic of the modern-age experiment in automobiles, perhaps they will figure out a way to revitalize their economy and transition to sustainable growth through green industry… or maybe it will just become a great place to own a farm.

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?

Thanks to Treehugger for posting the new Annie Leonard video in honour of World Water Day 2010 – The Story of Bottled Water.

Well worth the watching, it lays out the product cycle for water bottles and the idea of Manufactured Demand. Of course, the site seems to be down right now (could it have crashed from too much traffic?), but I’m sure it will be back up soon.

Here is a video of his speech and the text.

“Sometimes I think about how I got involved in politics. I didn’t think of myself as a potential politician when I get out of college. I went to work in neighborhoods, working with Catholic churches in poor neighborhoods in Chicago, trying to figure out how people could get a little bit of help. And I was skeptical about politics and politicians, just like a lot of Americans are skeptical about politics and politicians are right now. Because my working assumption was when push comes to shove, all too often folks in elected office, they’re looking for themselves and not looking out for the folks who put them there; that there are too many compromises; that the special interests have too much power; they just got too much clout; there’s too much big money washing around.

And I decided finally to get involved because I realized if I wasn’t willing to step up and be true to the things I believe in, then the system wouldn’t change. Every single one of you had that same kind of moment at the beginning of your careers. Maybe it was just listening to stories in your neighborhood about what was happening to people who’d been laid off of work. Maybe it was your own family experience, somebody got sick and didn’t have health care and you said something should change.

Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican. Because somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, I believe in an America in which we don’t just look out for ourselves, that we don’t just tell people you’re on your own, that we are proud of our individualism, we are proud of our liberty, but we also have a sense of neighborliness and a sense of community — (applause) — and we are willing to look out for one another and help people who are vulnerable and help people who are down on their luck and give them a pathway to success and give them a ladder into the middle class. That’s why you decided to run.”

I wish them all the best tomorrow during this historic vote.

P.S. As for the TeaParty opposition, you might want to watch this revealing video on their Fox News educated protest.

This is going to be one amazingly ‘signature’ Conservative plan. No abortion – deep sigh but okay. But to not even include access to contraception as part of our super-duper G8 ground-breaking plan to improve maternal and infant health? I’m having a hard time imagining what will be in this plan.

Guaranteed access to:
Clean water? Not sure how they would do this…
Affordable medication? Nope, this would threaten pharmaceutical monopolies.
Nutritious food? Nope, this would interfere with free-market agribusiness.
Education? Nope, then women might learn about family planning and their rights.

Or maybe they’ll just make sure that every newborn gets a Tory-blue swaddling blanket and a booklet on how to keep their legs crossed in the future.