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?!

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.

Thanks to the ever-informative Jim Harris for the link to this article in the OilDrum today about global oil production in 2010 and the likelihood that we are seeing Peak Oil.

In the article, Nate Hagens points out that “what has happened in Canada the past decade is that cheap conventional barrels of oil have been replaced with expensive tar sands barrels of oil. The result? Running in place in terms of supply, but at a much higher cost structure.” As oil becomes more expensive to produce we ought to see a higher price per barrel. And that is not even counting the damage to the ecosystem and indigenous peoples near and downstream of the tar sands. This higher price, when passed along to consumers, will change our habits. We’ll buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and demand that our government provide better transit.

Hagens also points out that Canada, and the International Energy Agency, have been engaging in “channel stuffing” which means we’ve been lumping tar sands production, biofuels and natural gas liquids in with conventional crude production. They are not the same thing and mixing them together means only that we continue to delude ourselves for a little longer about global oil supplies.

If we are at Peak Oil, or have already passed it, the smart question becomes what do we do now? So far, our government has followed the U.S. lead of attempting to control as much global supply as possible, building infrastructure to ensure that whatever crude remains continues to flow in a favourable direction. This leads to increasing conflict, increasing deficits and a citizen base that is treated like children for as long as possible.

Of course, if you happen to be part of Transition Town, or the Green Party (or any number of other groups that are calling on consumers to wake up and become citizens), the choice you are faced with is, not how do I protect myself as long as possible so that I can continue to consume with wanton lust, but, instead, how do I lighten my impact on the planet and build local resiliency so that the coming changes don’t decimate my ability to survive and take the rest of humanity down with them.

And change is coming. Any politician who tells you that you can continue with your present standard of living indefinitely is lying to you.

We are already facing the largest income gap in Canada since 1929. The very richest among us, we’re talking the top 10%, continue to get richer, at accelerating rates. But the normal people like you and me, we’re slipping. Our real wages, those that account for inflation, have not increased since the early 80s.

What that means is that the average Canadian is working harder to make ends meet, or even worse, watching the ends fray and fall apart.

This while our governments continue to tell us that they have a handle on things. And that they’ll take care of us.

They don’t. And they can’t.

While in my more cynical moments I wonder if they even care that the average Canadian is slipping slowly out of the middle class, and won’t be able to retire, in general I am more optimistic. I figure they just don’t see a solution.

With their ideology, that of infinite growth, total globalization, and infinite resources, there is no solution. That’s because the neoliberal/neoconservative ideology can’t think small. They can’t look at a community and ask, “How can we make this work?”, or “What resources and genius do we have right here, at the municipal level?” And those are the questions that need to be asked.

The other Parties would ask, “How can we get bigger to get out of this mess?” while I’m asking, “How can we get smarter to get out of this?” The answers are very different and their way isn’t working.

And my way is more fun.

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.

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.

The April 11th issue of the Era-Banner had an article about York Region’s plan for a Common Roof Family Justice Centre where several social justice (victim services) organizations would be brought together in one location to make accessing services simpler.

It is inspired by The Family Violence Project of Waterloo Region in Kitchener.

Barrie and Orillia also have a Common Roof project, though it appears to be less victim and more generally social justice focused.

Newmarket is also working, with Belinda’s Foundation, to build York Region’s first homeless shelter specifically for women.

Maybe it would be an interesting idea to see if they can all be brought together.

Would it save money? Would it make it easier for those who need help, to find it.

Or, would it make it easier for abusers to find their spouses, knowing that all the services were under one roof? I suppose having police stationed in the building would certainly make it safer, but I wonder…

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?