Principles guiding the Green Economic Plan

Reducing waste: Improving our lives

Greens are committed to improving our collective well-being.  Greens recognize that we need new measurements of our societal health and well-being.  Greens know that the notion of unending economic growth is a dangerous illusion.  We can do far more with far less. The central driving principle of Green Economic Policy is to improve well-being by eliminating waste.  Our society has embedded wasteful practices at every turn.  We waste raw materials, waste water and waste energy. In fact of all the energy used by Canadians, more than half is wasted.   Green economic policies aim to improve the efficiency of resource and energy use by a factor of four. 

In their seminal book, Factor Four, Ernst von Weizacker, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins concluded: “The amount of wealth extracted from one unit of natural resources
can quadruple. Thus we can live twice as well – yet use half as much.”

There is abundant evidence to support this contention. Improvements in labour productivity drove economic growth after World War II.  We must now repeat the exercise as we improve the productivity of resource and energy use.

Get the prices right

To get there from here, market distortions created by a failure to internalize externalities must be removed.  In other words, we must get the prices right.  The single most significant government policy tool to advance or retard economic sustainability resides in the fiscal framework. 

Our fiscal plan is straightforward:  Use the tax system to help meet societal and ecological goals. Get the prices right.  Allow business to pursue profit, with clear signals of environmental and societal objectives.

The Green commitment to Green tax relief will:

• Reduce income taxes, including a stop to the practice of over-taxing married couples.
• Reduce payroll taxes.
  
• Introduce a carbon tax, sending a clear economic signal that wasting energy and resources implies real costs.

According to an editorial in The Economist, September 9, 2006:

“Ideally, politicians would choose the more efficient carbon tax, which implies
a relatively stable price that producers can build into their investment plans.”

The Greens will also eliminate large corporate subsidies and grants programs.

It makes no sense to subsidize the wealthiest companies on Earth to make the world’s most profitable product -- a barrel of oil.  These perverse subsidies must be removed.  It makes sense to reduce taxes on things we want – income and employment – while increasing taxes on things we do not want, like greenhouse gases and pollution that causes smog.

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.