May to attend Climate Negotiations, Poznan, Poland December 1st -12th

OTTAWA - On December 4th, Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada, will join more than 15 000 leaders and civil servants in Poznan, Poland for the Fourteenth Session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Fourth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. 

"It will be particularly exciting at this meeting of the UNFCCC, with new President-elect Barack Obama and new Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice, to see if Canada's approach changes to be more progressive," said Ms. May. "At the last set of Kyoto negotiations in Bali, Canada was consistently awarded ‘Fossil of the Day' for our obstructionist approach. It was embarrassing."

The meeting in Poland will build on negotiations begun during last year's UNFCCC in Bali, Indonesia, and lead up to 2009 negotiations in Copenhagen. The meeting in Copenhagen will signal the beginning of ‘Phase II' of the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately, Canada will not have met our targets for Phase I, in fact Canada is close to 30% higher emissions (from 1997) then the 30% below 1997 levels we had agreed to achieve.

"The parliamentary budget office confirms what we said during the election, that the Harper government set us on a course for a deficit. Now that we are faced with a recession, stimulating the economy by following the Green economic plan is more important than ever," said Ms. May. "Infrastructure investments are a key part of stimulating the economy and this is an opportunity to encourage green infrastructure providing jobs, improving the health and safety of our communities and helping the environment all at the same time."

The Green Party advocates investments in energy efficiency, including retrofitting existing buildings, and renewable energy to get Canadians working on solutions to the climate crisis. Other green investments that will create jobs include help for municipalities to clean up brown-fields, investments in public transit and public housing and building new green facilities for Canadians.

Shifting taxes from employment and onto pollution is also part of the Green economic plan. According to Ms. May, "By reducing taxes for small and medium sized businesses, particularly in their first 5 years of existence, we lift their tax burden so that they can employ more people. To make up for that lost revenue, we would shift that tax to polluters." Thousands of new "green collar jobs" can be created by encouraging the development of low-emission, renewable energy industries in areas most affected by the shift away from natural resource sectors.

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John Bennett
Director of Communications
Green Party of Canada
Phone: 613 562 4916 ext. 230
Cell: 613 291 6888
Fax: 613 482-4632