One of the most frequently asked questions...
I am often asked how the Green Party differs from the other parties.
For a quick spot check, I put this little list of “ONLY’s” together. We are the ONLY party calling for the following:
- A carbon tax, an indispensable step in getting the prices right in energy choices and allowing reduced income and payroll taxes.
- “Income-splitting” to reduce the tax burden on middle class couples.
- A continuing role in Afghanistan but within a transformed U.N. mission, legalizing and regulating the poppy trade for medicinal use, and bringing in more Islamic nations into the peace-keeping, security efforts in Southern Afghanistan through the U.N.
- An end to asbestos mining and export to developing countries. (truly outrageous that for all the talk about asbestos, only the Green Party is prepared to call for banning mining and export.)
- The phase out of nuclear power and uranium mining.
- The reform of the Divorce Act to make family law less of a battleground.
- To launch a national dialogue toward a Guaranteed Livable Income.
- The legalization of marijuana, to be controlled, regulated and taxed.
- The six month notice to get out of NAFTA with immediate re-negotiation of key provisions.
- Support for open source software and net neutrality.
- National shift to GE-free, organic agriculture and regional food self-sufficiency.
- A moratorium on new projects in the tar sands.
- Creation of a federal Department of Tourism
- Protect drinking water at its source (no other party will do this--the BC NDP jailed citizens for trying to protect drinking water).
- Amend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to enshrine the right of Canadians to an ecological heritage that includes breathable air and drinkable water.
- Pass federal legislation to prohibit bulk water exports.
- Establish a National Parks completion budget; protect at least half of Canada's Boreal Forest in a network of large interconnected protected areas as called for in the 2003 Boreal Forest Conservation Framework
- Zero waste, including laws requiring lifetime stewardship of products
- A cancer prevention strategy that includes a toxic-free Canada -- taxing toxics and pollution; ending the production and use of the most dangerous toxic chemicals by 2012.
- Pan-Arctic waste management strategy.
- Shift funding from mega-freeway projects like Pacific Gateway that encourage urban sprawl and use the funds instead for public transit.
- Implement Genuine Progress Indicator (or Index of Well-being)
- Enact "living will" legislation to give person the choice to die with dignity.
- Explore establishing a new crown corporation to bulk purchase and dispense generic drugs - to bring down the costs of pharmacare.
- Pass pay equity legislation; immediately implement full pay equity for women employed in the federal sector and develop tax incentives for companies to meet gender and pay equity.
- Press professional societies to remove unnecessary barriers recognizing the professional credentials of immigrants.
- Canada must support and implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- Revamp CIDA to focus on developing community-based green economies, poverty alleviation and programmes to combat and adapt to climate change.
- Declare Canada a nuclear free zone.
- Reform WTO, IMF and the World Bank, placing these under the authority of the UN General Assembly and shift the direction of international trade away from free trade to fair trade.
- Scrap the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership).
Although there are many other commitments, I hope this is helpful short list of where we stand alone. We urge other parties to advance our policies.
- Elizabeth May's blog
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Comments
Great Idea!
This list was a great idea --I linked to it on my Facebook page! You know, it would be great if we could build a poll around a list like this to see what percentage of Canadians agree with each of these points. I'll bet we'd get a majority all across the board! At the very least it would let us know how "on track" we are as a party with the wishes of Canadians. Just a thought. Thanks again for this!
-- Brandon :)
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Brandon, Guelph Ontario
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www.ecobuddhist.blogspot.com
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Income Trusts
I am so glad to see our party fighting for Canadians on this issue.
"The Green Party of Canada is calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to launch a public inquiry into Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s unproven allegation that income trusts result in a loss of tax revenue to Ottawa."
http://caiti-online.blogspot.com/
List update: Asbestos
The NDP now support our long standing position on asbestos. Pat Martin MP has campaigned for ever on this issue, and finally it seems his Party are with him, (and us), on this.
See http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/071130/health/h... for info.
Asbestos
I wish you were right Andrew. It would be nice to see another party adopt our position on the need to ban asbestos mining and export to Third World countries from Canada. Unfortunately, we checked with the NDP website and called Pat Martin's office. Pat Martin has adopted the Green Party position. His party has not. The NDP is against asbestos on Canadian toys, but not against shipping asbestos from Canada to the developing world.
Elizabeth
Turning this into an election platform
This is excellent, and is a good start to defining "why should I vote Green in 2008?"
30+ points is too many to communicate easily, but if the campaign team could identify 10 key points, our message could be very powerful.
John Ogilvie
Need to adjust our democratic process
I would suggest that any list of differences in the Green principles should include the changes we wish to see in the democratic process.Such as proportional representation, strict limits on lobbying, and some kind of equality control in the use of media during elections.
Not until we become a democratic organization!
I'm all for this, but we need to create a democratic internal process first. As it stands right now, the GPC is the least democratic of any of the main Canadian political parties. Why would I say such at thing? Because we have no delegate system for our conventions and the decision-making process we have used in the past is designed to thwart the will of the majority of people at the conference.
I don't think that this is the result of any conscious choice, but rather that past Federal Councils have never made conference process a priority and they tend to be extreme "control freaks" that refuse to delegate work that they aren't willing to do themselves.
I have begged Council after Council to set up a functioning delegate system and to create a practical and democratic decision-making system for conferences. (I suppose this could be construed as the latest edition--.) But until we have a system in place that even looks like it represents the rank-and-file membership we have zero credibility when it comes to complaining about parliament not being democratic in nature!
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." H.L. Mencken
High priority needed for this
Bang on, Bill. (as usual)
This should be a test of our current council's competence, whether they can get a delegate system set up in time for our 2008 meeting. The national media will be watching our 2008 conference like they never have before. In 2004, they paid little attention. In 2006 they were interested in the leadership race - primarily because of Elizabeth May's participation. In 2008, they will, for the first time, actually pay attention to what kinds of policies we debate and pass - and how we do so.
All the other parties have some kind of delegate system - generally one that is too complex and arcane to explain in a sound bite, but that approximates even representation from around the country. Those who study it in depth will likely find a large amount of insider influence and top-down control in delegate selection, but to the masses, it looks rather well organized.
In contrast, our system is at once the most and least democratic. It is the most democratic in one way - that each and every member of the GPC is entitled to attend the meeting and vote for her/himself, not having to accept a delegate voting for them. No other party does this. What could be more democratic than that?
Except, of course, that most members can't afford the time or expense to attend. We're lucky if we get 5% of the membership there. Those who attend will set the policy direction for the whole party. This wouldn't be so bad if the few who attend were chosen based either on being good, grassroots representatives of their ridings, or based on policy expertise and experience. Sadly, it will rely on whomever can show up. It will contain a significant percentage of what Bill has termed 'conference bunnies' - people who attend every conference and like to have their voice heard, yet are invisible or ineffective in their own ridings in between. They are basically attracted to the limelight or soapbox of a national meeting yet unconstrained by grassroots democracy or real-world qualifications. $10 gets you a membership and some free time & cash gets you to the conference.
Now is the time to design and implement a system of proxies or delegates. The GP Ontario has a rather effective (and tested) proxy system that I favour for the GPC - it's simple and fair - while some would prefer some kind of delegate system. Either way, if we can't get one or the other in place by August, we don't deserve to be running a 'democratic' nation.
Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
Barrie, ON
The views I express on this blog are purely my own and should not be construed to represent the official position of the Green Party of Canada - the same goes for all other people's posts & comments.
I have found it easy to establish more than one e-mail address
An e-mail address system can be established, the green party e-mail system
one per party member sorted out by priority codes and number.
using two or more recieving addresses to conferm green member, voting for or against or change required.
any system can be abused, it does require checks and balances.
maybe a techie can come up with a firewall and security system to eliminate or detect abuses.
Web-based?
If everyone is invited to attend, why not use a web-broadcast and web-based voting for those who cant attend. It would be far more environmental for people in the outer regions of the country to not have to fly in. I do realize the social benefits of the gathering for those that do choose that route though.
There are big problems with web-based system
The GPC has experimented with web-based systems in the past and the experience we had was that they are extremely divisive (ever heard of "flame wars"?) and only a very small fraction of the membership ever used them. In effect, a web-based system would hand over the party to the vanishingly-small fraction of the membership that are comfortable with the internet. Instead, we need to give up on the ideal of direct democracy and come up with a system of representation through delegates.
What we need is not a system that requires a huge effort from the individual member, but rather a system where they can be represented by someone they trust at a face-to-face meeting. This will not only allow the members to have some representation, it will also allow the EDAs to fund the travel of delegates to the Convention, which will allow deserving but poor members the opportunity to attend.
Another point we need is to come up with a better process at conventions. At the last one the organizers were still flirting with formal consensus in the workshops, which gave an effective veto to any small group of individuals who wanted to hijack a resolution. Again, I don't think that this was done by ill-will, but rather by good-meaning people who didn't understand what they were doing.
As Eric says above, we have been getting a "free ride" up until now. But the media will be watching. Moreover, we have never had to worry about outsiders doing "dirty tricks" up until now. But under the system used in Ottawa, a couple dozen NDP sympathizers could have easily destroyed the process in the workshops.
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." H.L. Mencken
Web but not wiki
I imagine Dean is thinking more in terms of real time webcast than the wiki experience which seems to inform Bill's reply. I don't know that the Green Party (in Canada) has ever tried to webcast meetings.
What might work would be if the general meeting were to take place in one city, but other cities had rooms booked with a big screen, cameras, and two-way satellite hookup - as is currently done for some university courses. Rather than fly across the country, you would attend the 'local' meeting nearest you. (David Suzuki does this as well, and when he spoke at a school in Barrie last year, they had simulcast hookups to large screens at other schools across the county).
Of course, this would require some rather high-end technical skill (we'd have to outsource) and might be quite expensive. It could work for plenary, but would be harder to adapt to workshops.
I agree that trying to have everyone hook up from home would screen out all but the most web-comfortable members, incurring considerable bias.
I think satellite webcasting is more suited to policy discussions which are intended to explore ideas more deeply but not end with an immediate up/down vote. It would go well with the kind of themed policy conferenced Elizabeth was organizing last year. That way, it will self-select for those who are most interested in that policy area but not create a biased vote result.
Current technology works best for one-to-many type functions, like university lectures or a Suzuki talk. It is not yet equal to the kind of many-to-many discussions which are the meat of a general meeting.
Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
Barrie, ON
The views I express on this blog are purely my own and should not be construed to represent the official position of the Green Party of Canada - the same goes for all other people's posts & comments.
Web
Yes Erich that was along the lines of what I was thinking.
If you don’t attend maybe you forgo the right or ability to contribute to the discussion but you could still have a view only webcast (that shouldn’t be to hard to do, even if our site will not support that much bandwidth I am sure we can link to a site that will for a fee). Voting shouldn’t be hard either, just give everybody a access code that they use to vote, voting closes 5-10 minutes after it starts. If there are technical problems, sorry too bad should have used the proxy (why not do both?) and move on.
I like your idea of a few mini-conventions linked as well.
Democracy is not just a question of voting----
I really dislike the idea that there would be an isolated group of people voting on resolutions from their television sets. Democracy is not just voting, it also needs to have a vigorous debate and a lot of information being spread around through hundreds of independent discussions. To be honest, I am always horrified how naive so many Greens are about internal democracy in the GPC. There are many, many ways in which a glib "slick Willy" type person can pull the wool over the eyes of members if they only have to go on a very brief, managed discussion.
I think part of the reason why we don't have a delegate system is because the party refuses to make a decision between the "populists" who want some sort of Swiss "participatory" system, and the others (like myself) who see so many ways such a system could be abused that we want a more traditional, representative system.
I do know that every time I raise this issue, someone starts arguing for some sort of electronic system, the debate gets side-tracked and nothing ever happens.
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." H.L. Mencken
blog entry highlighted
by Toronto Star writer Susan Delacourt at
http://www.thestar.com/SpecialSections/article/295883
please update this list
This list is really great. However, it's from last year and could use an update.
Can this list be updated for
Can this list be updated for the election, please? It is necessary, esp. given the very silent change in the NDP's asbestos policy.
One of the most frequently asked questions...
Thank you Elizabeth for this precious little list.
It is the perfect time to tell this to our local journalists!
Your wrote: "I am often asked how the Green Party differs from the other parties.
For a quick spot check, I put this little list of “ONLY’s” together. We are the ONLY party calling for the following:"
The details of the list are on Mrs May's blog "One of the most frequently asked questions... Submitted by Elizabeth May on 6 December 2007 - 11:00pm"
Cheers,
Jean-Yves
recognizing the credentials
recognizing the credentials of immigrants is playing with fire. It is at time very difficult and sometimes impossible to confirm immigrant credentials and more then often, the credentials are of lesser quality. If we are prepare to embrace and welcome substandards in the professional sector, then why not lower our own standards and offer the employement to Canadians that falls a little short. This is done in most remote communities where it is difficult to recruit professionals with the proper credentials. Training and educating Canadians is the key. Language barriers are also a detriment, I hate to deal with a healthcare professional who's not proficient in either official languages. It's My health, My life we are talking about, I don't want any details to be lost in translation. I don't want to go to the U.S. in order to be treated by a Canadian doctor either.