AUTHORIZED BY THE ELECTION COMMUNICATION COMMITTEE OF THE GREEN PARTY OF CANADA
Introduction
The Green Party of Canada established a Shadow Cabinet in 1996. For nine months it has been conducting an extensive development of a long platform. Platforms for each of the government departments have been developed with immense effort by volunteers from coast to coast. Prior to the election, an Election Communication Committee was set up. This committee has extracted action statements from the long platform, has authorized new material and editorial changes, and prepared this Election Highlights 1997 document.
Index for this page.
- Department of International Cooperation
- Department of Foreign Affairs
- Department of Defense
- Department of Canadian Heritage
- Arts and Culture
- Department of Human Resources and Development (Human Rights)
- Department of Indian and Northern Affairs
- Department of Intergovernmental Affairs
- Department of Health
- Elections Canada
- Department of Justice
- Department of Finance
- Department of the Environment
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of Fisheries
- Department of Natural Resources
- Department of Transport (Emissions)
Department of International Cooperation
A Green party government would call upon the member states of the United Nations:
- to sign and ratify international agreements that they have not yet signed and ratified, and to enact the necessary legislation to ensure compliance and enforcement.
- to undertake to fulfill expectations created through General Assembly resolutions and declarations, and to act upon commitments arising from conference action plans.
- To ensure that corporations including transnationals comply with national codes, social security... international laws, including international environmental law.
- To establish mandatory international normative standards/regulations (MINS) drawn from international principles and from the highest and strongest regulations from member states harmonized continually upwards.
- To recommend to the OECD to cease deliberations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) which if implemented would undermine the United Nations, and the ability of nation states to harmonize social and environmental standards upwards.
- To revoke charters of corporations that violate human rights, cause environmental degradation, or contribute to conflict or war
- to act upon the Malaysian General Assembly resolution which affirmed that "the continuing existence of nuclear weapons poses a threat to all humanity".
- to embark immediately and conclude before the year 2000 negotiations on a nuclear weapons abolition convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons within a time bound framework with provisions for effective verification and enforcement
- to immediately reduce the military budget by 50% and transfer the savings:
- to prevent further environmental degradation and human rights violation and thus to fully act upon the commitment under principle 14 of the Rio Declaration which calls for the prevention of the transfer to other states of substances or activities that cause environmental degradation or that are harmful to human health. This principle would presumably include toxic, hazardous, and atomic substances and wastes and associated activities. Prior informed consent by the receiving country does not absolve the export state from the commitment to not transfer these substances.
- To extend this principle to include transfer within states to lands of indigenous peoples, or to communities of marginalized citizens.
- To act upon a commitment in recent UN Conferences to move away from the overconsumptive model of development, reduce the ecological footprint and reject the notion that economic growth will solve the urgency of the global situation.
- To invoke the Precautionary Principle found in the Rio Declaration, Convention on Biological Diversity, and Framework Convention on Climate Change Convention) and not wait until there is scientific certainty that environmental degradation, loss or reduction of biodiversity, or climate change will occur for current practices causing environmental degradation, loss or reduction of biodiversity, or climate change to be banned, discontinued, or phased out.
- To adhere to the Prevention of Disasters Principle as enunciated in the Habitat II Agenda, and ban, discontinue and phase out the use of substances and activities that could potentially cause disasters.
- To address the issue of pharmaceutical corporations dictating changes into the Codex Alimentarius.
- To institute an International Court of Compliance where citizens can take evidence of state and corporate noncompliance.
Department of Foreign Affairs
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to advocate that security be achieved through fair trade not free trade.
- To discontinue the arms trade including the banning of antipersonnel land mines
- to demilitarize Canada's North and stop low-level flights
- to cease treating the unique ecosystem of the North and the communities living there as commodities for the use of southern urban centres.
- To withdraw from NATO and NORAD
- to improve Canada's contribution to conflict prevention and resolution, and peacebuilding
- to make environmental and social charters the backbone of trade deals.
- To stop all exports of arms from Canada (for the last 5 years Canada has been annually increasing its arms exports).
- to improve regulations for imports to avoid products made with child and slave labour.
- To stop all export and national movements of hazardous wastes
- to stop sale of nuclear technology from Canada (technology for dealing safely with nuclear waste does not exist)
- to reduce the need for large-scale human migration by requiring rich countries to pay a fair price for third world commodities, and through eliminating the arms trade
- to maintain and expand trade sanctions with countries with human rights abuses.
- To encourage bioregional self-reliance in basic goods and services.
- To ensure debt forgiveness for poor countries and to restrict wealth transfer from poor to rich countries in the form of corporate profits.
Department Of Defense
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to enforce the World Court decision which affirmed that the use or threat of nuclear weapons is contrary to international humanitarian law.
- To terminate international training exercises with offensive purposes on Canadian soil. This includes low-level flying exercises in Goose Bay, Labrador, cruise missile testing in Cold Lake, Alberta and submarine training in Nanoose Bay, British Columbia.
- To convert the manufacturing of arms to sustainable and useful production.
- To reduce the military budget by 50% and transfer the savings into achieving a culture of peace-the guaranteeing of human rights, the protecting of the environment, the preventing of conflict, and the creating of socially equitable and environmentally sound work.
- To withdraw from the global arms race, including through the phasing out of uranium mining.
- To promote the banning of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and land mines.
- To close Canadian waters and ports to nuclear armed and/or powered warships.
- To establish a civilian-based national defense program that would train citizens in unarmed national defense initiatives.
- To permit the redirection of taxes from the military to promote peace initiatives.
Department of Canadian Heritage
A Green party government would undertake:
- to invoke the precautionary principle in relation to practices that could contribute to loss or reduction of biodiversity. Where there is a threat of loss or reduction of Biodiversity it is not necessary "to wait until there is "scientific certainty" that clear-cut logging and other ecologically unsound practices "contribute to the reduction and loss of biodiversity."
- To avoid and minimize the threat to biodiversity by banning ecologically unsound practices.
- To ensure the stability of animal populations.
- To ensure that all biosphere reserves have an extended core area with conservation corridors where no commercial intrusion can take place, and have all practices in buffer and transition zones linked to the convention on biological diversity.
- To discontinue the current practice of privatization of parks services.
- To produce a "Green Forest Field Guide" for the public on forest issues as a critique of, and interpretive guide to, pulp and lumber companies' public relations statements. This will give the public an opportunity to carefully consider information disseminated by the forest industries.
- To fulfill the requirements of the Convention on Biological Diversity by:
- establishing a system of protected areas or areas where special measures
need to be taken to conserve biological diversity
- protecting ecosystems
- promoting the protection of natural habitats
- promoting the maintenance of viable populations
- establishing a system of protected areas or areas where special measures
need to be taken to conserve biological diversity
- to recognize that all of the species of plants and animals in Canada are part of Canada's heritage, and if their continued existence becomes threatened or endangered, then part of the heritage of Canada similarly becomes threatened or endangered.
- To enact a Code detailing the Rights of Species in Canada. These Rights will include the right to life, to habitat and to areas large enough to support species in their natural habitat. It will be in the form of an Act and will apply to all of Canada -- its lands, waters and air space.
- To negotiate with provinces having similar Acts; since these Acts differ among the provinces, the aim of negotiations will be to place the responsibility for all of Canada's species with the federal government. The Federal government will cooperate with provincial jurisdictions to satisfy both the letter and the spirit of the federal Act.
- To cooperate closely with First Nations in the development of and implementation of an Act Respecting the Rights of Species in Canada. A Green Party government would: ensure protection of all Canadian animal and plant species in their natural habitat through creation of legislation that would maintain wilderness areas and interconnected wildlife corridors through preserving all remaining old growth forest areas and other critical habitat.
- To seek advice of scientists working in the field in any decisions made about listing endangered or threatened species of plants or animals.
- To automatically include the habitat of any species on the list, and to
be required
- to protect the habitat of any and all endangered species; give the force
of law to recovery plans for threatened or endangered species;
- subject to an advance review comprising of a thorough environmental
impact assessment any development projects proposed for areas containing,
or found to contain, threatened or endangered species and will:
- require the Minister of Canadian Heritage to bring to the attention
of the Cabinet and of the Minister of Environment evidence presented
by the scientific community that a species is facing imminent threats
to its survival,
- enable any citizen to bring private enforcement actions in court
where the government is not enforcing the law upholding the rights
of species,
- act immediately when there is an immediate threat to a species' survival.
- require the Minister of Canadian Heritage to bring to the attention
of the Cabinet and of the Minister of Environment evidence presented
by the scientific community that a species is facing imminent threats
to its survival,
- to protect the habitat of any and all endangered species; give the force
of law to recovery plans for threatened or endangered species;
Arts And Culture
A Green party government would undertake:
- to increase the share of Canadian programming watched by Canadians beyond the present figure of 4.4%
- to require the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to promote the cultural diversity of Canadian music, literature, dance and drama, many of which are already funded by Canadian taxpayers.
- To maintain and increase arts funding, especially for smaller, community-based, participatory arts and recreational activities.
- To eliminate the Goods and Services Tax on books, magazines, newspapers, films, videotapes, audiotapes, compact disks and all other means of artistic expression.
- To ensure that CBC-TV will be required to produce programs that are educational, thought-provoking, useful and unavailable elsewhere.
- To provide stable funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -- both radio and television services.
Department Of Human Resources
And Development (Human Rights)
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to ensure that the protection from discrimination should be inclusive of additional grounds that have been recognized since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In this Declaration, there were listed a series of grounds concluding with the expression "other status" which indicated the intention to include other grounds as they arose. Through various human rights instruments, states have recognized the following grounds of discrimination: race, sex, gender, tribe, culture, colour, ethnicity, national ethnic or social origin, nationality of birth, refugee or immigrant status, marital status, different forms of the family, disabilities, age, language, religion or conviction, political or other opinion, nature of residency or other status.
- To include sexual orientation as a listed ground of discrimination. in all Canadian human rights documents, and to lobby for its inclusion in all international human rights documents.
- To ensure the right to shelter, the right to food, the right to social security, the right to affordable quality education including the option of repaying student loans through community service, and the right to work in socially equitable and environmentally sound employment.
- To enact a Social Security Act to provide national standards for welfare.
Department Of Indian and Northern Affairs
A Green party government would undertake:
- to recognize the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in its confirmation of original nations as sovereign peoples with inherent rights.
- To act on the commitment made at the United Nations conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992) to not carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or that would be culturally inappropriate.
- To prevent the deposit on the land of first nations peoples of toxic, hazardous, and atomic wastes, and disallow all testing of weapons over the lands of indigenous peoples.
- To seek honourable settlements with the successors of original nations that will lead to the creation of culturally and economically self-governing successors of original nations throughout Canada.
- To seek nation-to-nation partnerships with the original nations of North America.
- To not impose a form of self-government or a frame work of nationhood on the successors of the original nations. Original peoples can best choose the forms of governance appropriate for themselves;
- to ensure that no resource extraction, economic activity, or settlement occurs on land which is in dispute, unless the successors of the original nations involved consent to such activity In the absence of consent, interim measure shall be in place. The fiduciary obligations of the Federal Government to the successors of the original nations, where ever they live in Canada, must be increased during this healing and transition process. Programs flowing from these obligations need to be planned, operated, and controlled by original peoples in their local communities in order to be culturally appropriate and responsive to needs.
- To call a national meeting in 1997 to discuss the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission Report on Aboriginal Peoples
- to apologize to First Nations for the Indian Act, and for residential schools.
Department Of Intergovernmental Affairs
A Green party government would undertake:
- to ensure that provincial decision making functions within a framework of overarching environment, social justice and human rights principles.
- To advocate amending the Constitution to include Quebec and by doing so would directly address the concerns of those Quebecois (of which there are many) who wish a partnership with Ottawa that would allow for basic protections of the French language and culture in Quebec.
- To observe the expressed desire of Quebec in the following five areas:
- Provincial veto over future Constitutional amendments;
- Limiting federal spending powers in programs falling under the exclusive
jurisdiction of Quebec;
- Appointment of judges from Quebec to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada;
- Broader immigration powers;
- Constitutional recognition of Quebec as a distinct society
- Provincial veto over future Constitutional amendments;
- to constitutionally entrench "opt-out" powers in terms of federal spending in Quebec. That is to say that Quebec would enjoy the same opt-out powers that it has now, but that they would irrevocably be entrenched in the Constitution.
- To permit Quebec to submit to the federal government of the day a list of nine Supreme Court judge candidates, from which the federal government would select three to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada, recognizing Quebec's need to be involved in the process with respect to the province's particular judicial character.
- To ensure the constitutional entrenchment of power over immigration for Quebec, recognizing that Quebec's demographics are such that it has (since the mid-1970's) been unable to maintain its population due to both lower birth rates and mass sovereignty-induced emigration to other provinces. Thus immigration in Quebec has been centred around maintaining and perpetuating the French language and culture in that province and its immigration policies should provide for that".
- to recognize that protection of the French language and culture in Quebec is essential to its identity as a nation, constitutional protection is unequivocally necessary insofar as Quebec finds itself surrounded by a continent which is primarily anglo-centred.
- To clarify and redefine the phrase "distinct society," it is necessary to clearly define the terms and conditions involved in the constitutional protection of the French language and culture in Quebec.
- To support constitutional protection of the French language and culture in Quebec on the condition that its definition be clearly defined by Quebeckers and the Quebec governments with a view towards avoiding any alienation of the non-French Canadian population of Quebec."
Department Of Health
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to build on the strong foundation of the Canada Health Act by providing research funding for healing techniques that complement drugs and surgery, and by including reportedly effective techniques from world medicine and traditional practices.
- To establish channels to align Canada's research excellence more closely with effective techniques from world medicine and traditional practices.
- To ensure an admonitory labeling strategy for all nonnutritive substances and processes affecting food (e.g.. genetic engineering). to address the concern that the health of Canadians is currently under threat from decisions that are made both inside and outside Canada. Governments have cut health care spending and have contemplated privatization or a two-tier system.
- To allocate significant research funding to healing techniques that complement drugs and surgery.
- To initiate an effective program of public education about the health benefits of uncontaminated food, water and air.
- To establish environmental standards to protect health rather than just promote trade.
- To include the health status of the human population and the ecosystem as criteria in any scale or method for assessing prosperity.
- To encourage research that factors in all the determinants of health (the medical equivalent of "full cost accounting).
- to ensure that doctors and hospitals continue to serve their valuable role in our communities while also engaging resources for the health promotion and disease prevention.
- To work cooperatively to address First Nations' health concerns.
- To include health research and health services responsive to women's needs and reflective of the diversity of women's life stages.
- To endorse a program of reproductive health.
- To respect the wishes of patients who are of sound mind as to the manner and duration of their treatments.
- To reorient the priorities of the Health Protection Branch to provide a more stringent and holistic review process for new and existing human-made chemicals, technologies, genetic manipulation and electromagnetic disruption.
- To take a friendlier approach to the views of herbalists and citizens who use time-tested, naturally occurring substances in health care.
- To evaluate policies by considering the well-being of future generations rather than relying only on short term indicators of progress.
- To ensure the availability of less expensive generic prescription drugs.
- To replace the current Canada Food Guide with a New Canada Food Guide based on the recommendations of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (P.C.R.M.) as a model. A New Canada Food Guide will recommend the New Four Food Groups which the P.C.R.M. recommends, i.e. (1) fruits, (2)vegetables, (3) grains, and (4) legumes, with other items mentioned as foods that people may choose to eat, but not recommended as ideal or necessary for health.
Elections Canada
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to reform our current electoral system along the principles of proportional representation where a party receives a number of seats equal to their share of the vote.
- To promote proportional representation for its positive effect in electing more women and minorities to parliaments around the world.
- To recommend a Promotional Representative system similar to that used in Germany and New Zealand, where political parties hold seats after passing a 5%-threshold of the popular vote
- to encourage the use of the mixed-member-proportional system where Canadians would vote twice: once for their local representative (as they do now) and once for the party of their choice (which would determine how many seats a party can have). Such a system would ensure Canadians have both personal and political representation.
- To phase out limits to democratic participation such as $1000 deposits required for federal candidates.
- To impose strict limits upon election campaign spending, and particularly limit amounts raised from vested economic interests such as corporations and unions, and eliminate refund of 22.5%
- to ensure equal access by all registered political parties to publicly regulated media during elections.
- To eliminate the use of funds by incumbent and government parties during the pre-election writ period.
Department of Justice
A Green party government would undertake:
- to institute substantial reforms to the administration of justice within Canada, in terms of human rights, electoral and government reform, law enforcement and reform of the criminal code.
- To institute a system of justice which fairly balances the right to due process with collective security and works to reduce crime through prevention, deterrence and rehabilitation.
- To institute an inclusive electoral political process which represents both minority and mainstream views effectively
- to hold a referendum (either by preferential ballot or followed by a series of runoffs) giving Canadians the opportunity to set the direction senate reform should take.
- To implement anti-SLAPP legislation strictly limiting the rights of corporations to sue groups and individuals for pecuniary loss.
- To guarantee through legislation:
- the right to clean air
- the right to clean water;
- the right to uncontaminated food
- the right to clean air
- to empower Canadians whose environmental rights have been violated to take governments, corporations and individuals to court for violation of these rights.
- To closely examine the use of sentencing circles, house arrest for nonviolent crime, increased community service and civil suits for punitive damages to keep nonviolent first offenders out of prison facilities.
- To keep nonviolent individuals who are employed while under house arrest, on parole or performing community service.
- To regulate alcohol, tobacco and currently prohibited opiates, hallucinogens, stimulants and depressants (such as marijuana, heroin, cocaine, MDA, MDMA, LSD etc.) under the same legislation as one another.
- To enact a bill of inter-species rights which would guarantee all species
native to Canada the following rights:
- the right to exist;
- the right to exist in at least one geographical location without human
interference;
- the right to access to food, clean water and clean air
- the right to exist;
- to conduct a full review of government contracts, procedures, statutes and regulations to address other areas in which same-sex couples face systematic discrimination.
- To redirect government gun control efforts as follows:
- a ban on all assault weapons;
- clearer regulation of gun storage;
- a program to phase-out handguns by tightening eligibility requirements
over time;
- a ban on large capacity magazines.
- a ban on all assault weapons;
Department Of Finance
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to reduce the current 10.6 billion military budget by 50%, and transfer a significant proportion of the savings into restoring transfer payments to the provinces.
- To institute a Community Economic Development (CED) that promotes local sourcing, revolving community loans, development of bioregional social and material needs inventories, and matching of those needs with local suppliers. A study of the feasibility of developing local alternative currencies would be encouraged.
- To support the LETS or similar community based programs.
- To enact legislation that would ensure that corporate owners and officers be held legally liable, in criminal and civil court, for any environmental and social harm they cause.
- To eliminate subsidies to nuclear power and to fossil fuels and/or chemical-dependent sectors and to embark on time-bound phasing out of the use of civil nuclear power and fossil fuels.
- To replace the Gross National Product with the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). The GNP excludes social and environmental costs in its accounting, thus facilitating the illusion that community breakdown, crime, the loss of farmland and biodiversity, and unemployment have no economic significance.
- To institute an average four-day/32-hour work week which would mean that existing jobs could be shared with those now unemployed.
- To enact product stewardship legislation that would require producers to increase the life span of their products and to assume the full recycling and disposal costs.
- To enforce the "Polluter Pay Principle", and to raise corporate taxes to OECD levels.
- To cease involvement in the CANDU owners group, to end all subsidies to AECL and to cease to sell CANDU reactors internationally.
- To prevent the transfer of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons in Russia and the USA to be used in CANDU reactors.
- To prevent the transfer to other states of substances or activities that are harmful to human health or the environment.
- To dismiss the use of "Prior Informed Consent" to justify the transfer of harmful substances; "the right to be harmed" is not a legitimate right.
- To revise the tax treatment of renewable energy and energy efficiency investments immediately to make them more attractive to investors than investments in conventional energy sources such as oil and gas.
- To spend 50% of energy research and development on renewable energy technologies by the year 2000.
- To discontinue all spending on nuclear energy research, including the subsidy to Atomic Energy of Canada.
- To focus programs related to fossil fuel energy supply, production and consumption on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful environmental impacts.
- To stop all foreign energy assistance related to energy mega-projects by the year 2000.
- To discontinue all foreign energy assistance related to nuclear and fossil fuel projects by the year 2000.
- To make energy efficiency and renewable energy supply from appropriately sized community planned and driven projects a key focus of overseas development assistance.
- To advocate the creation of a jointly administered federal/provincial Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) which would replace all current income support programs. A GIS would provide a subsistence income to those who are unable to work and top up the incomes of the underemployed and unemployed by 50% of the gap toward a target income at, or slightly above the, poverty line.
- To prevent the situation where states that wish to raise their standards and regulations are prevented from doing so through GATT , or Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), or through threats from the corporate sector to relocate elsewhere by establishing Mandatory International Normative Standards/regulations (MINS) drawn from international principles and from the highest and strongest regulations from member states harmonized continually upwards.
Department Of The Environment
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to provide preventive and restorative solutions to problems of environmental and social instability thus moving government and society away from the current "clean up after-the-fact" approach.
- To address the fact that we are among the 20% of the world's population who consume 80% of the world's resources, and thus reduce the Canadian ecological footprint.
- To promote an amendment to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ensure the right to an ecological heritage and to a clean and safe environment, and to require political decisions to be made on the basis of ecological integrity.
- To restructure the current environmental assessment review process so that it becomes a legitimate environmental assessment and less a project review mechanism.
- To ensure that Canada implements all international environmental agreements by enacting the necessary legislation for compliance and enforcement, and enforces all federal and provincial environmental acts and statutes.
- To strengthen the current Canadian Environmental Protection Act., and to incorporate into the Act an Environmental Bill of Rights.
- To phase out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances.
- To strengthen the resolve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with time-bound and enforced reduction targets.
- To introduce legislation to promote the reuse or replacement of minerals in industrial production
- to ban the use of cyanide leaching process for mineral extraction.
- To require the double hulling of all vessels carrying petroleum products in Canadian waters.
- To discourage the continued production and consumption of substances and continued activities that are harmful to human health and to the environment. The environmental and health impacts of the continued production and use of toxic, and hazardous (including nuclear substances) wastes are becoming more and more evident.
- To phase out of all substances and processes which have been clearly shown to be hazardous or deleterious to human health or to the environment, including genetically engineered foods.
- To require the "Reverse Onus Principle" where the proponent of an intervention that could be harmful to human health or the environment shall have to demonstrate the safety of the intervention rather than the opponent of the intervention having to demonstrate the harm.
- To allocate significant research funding into preventing environmentally-induced diseases.
- To establish a policy across Canada to prevent pharmaceutical companies, along with other corporations involved with biotechnology, and with environmentally unsound practices from sponsoring and influencing the direction of research
- to increase support for research into ecological interrelationships, social structures and their reciprocal effects one another by independent scientific bodies.
- To encourage efforts and initiatives which promote free political and scientific activity in universities and a science in the service of humanity and nature.
Department Of Agriculture
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to develop and communicate eco-agricultural models and practices from studying and synthesizing principles from the diversity of sustainable, natural and eco-community-centred agricultural approaches created by indigenous peoples and traditional subsistence mixed farmers together with modern sustainable, organic agriculture, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, agroecology, and other approaches to farming the natural way in nature's image
- to phase out Agriculture Canada and other federal research support for large-scale agribusiness chemical, pesticide and genetic and other bioengineering practices and refocus support on the development of family and community scale ecological agriculture models, principles and practices such as biological soil and pest management approaches like soil rebuilding crop rotations, companion planting, intercropping, and perennial polycultures.
- To support basic and field research in the natural breeding, field trials, propagation and protection of alternative ecologically adaptable crops such as native perennials, 'heritage' vegetables, grains, legumes and fruits, hemp and quinoa.
- To support the establishment of a diversity of public and farm-based model demonstration and experimental stations for extension and education in each of Canada's natural regions.
- To phase-out federal support for college and agency agribusiness educational programs and refocus supports on family farm and community scale eco-agriculture workshops, distance education, undergraduate and graduate and diploma.
- To establish, monitor and enforce Eco-agriculture Standards, Certification and Labeling.
- To support the efforts of organic and ecological agriculture associations in establishing organic/ecological farm practice codes, standards and certification processes. Included in the principles and standards would be: the use of naturally bred, nongenetically manipulated plant or animal seedstock; soils, plants and pests managed and grown without synthetic pesticides or significant soil loss or deterioration; farmstead and fields planned and worked as part of an integral preserved or restored ecommunity of native woodlands, grasslands, wetlands and watershed protecting native plant and animal habitat; livestock provided with species-appropriate shelter, space and freedom of movement, clean water, natural foods free of antibiotics, no growth or lactation stimulants and humane treatment and transport.
- To establish, monitor and enforce a system of labeling for both domestic and imported foods as to contents, chemicals utilized in cultivation and pest management, seedstock breeding history if genetically engineered, livestock husbandry practices. An 'organic audit trail' and a regularly monitored and enforced food pesticide residue level process would be required components of this certification system.
- To inform consumers of the excessive amounts of protein, particularly meat protein used by Canadians.
- To revise the Canada Food Guide to present legumes, vegetables, fruits and grains as a complete alternative to a meat based diet and one which will meet all nutritional needs, including all proteins, while reducing health hazards such as heart, stroke, kidney , urinary, osteoporosis and certain cancers.
- To cancel or renegotiate completely those aspects of GATT and NAFTA which distort and limit Canada's ability to restore a community and regionally based self sufficient and sustainable ecological agriculture and food provision system.
- To support each people's right to food self sufficiency. Where climatic and other natural limitations restrict the growing of food necessities by Canadians or other peoples,equitable trade will be established directly between producer and consumers. Cooperatives or similar Green structures would replace transnational food cartels.
- To complete a national Environment Canada/Agriculture Canada GIS Canada Land Inventory-based map zoned for agricultural and ecological integrated use planning and protection
- to develop, cooperatively with the provinces, a program of land use and protection standards and practices, education, incentives, disincentives and expropriation compensation to ensure that land managers utilize and/or protect their lands as per its zoning such that: prime farmland is protected for agriculture from industrial or residential development; endangered plant and animal habitat, and special ecocommunities are given perpetual protection; farms are generally developed and operated as part of a sustainable natural ecocommunity by protecting and /or restoring native woodlands, grasslands, wetlands and watersheds.
Department of Fisheries
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty.
- To establish a network of Marine parks, and ecological reserves.
- To prevent risks of disease transfer from netcage fish to wild stocks, such as black cod, herring, and salmon
- to address the following outstanding issues in aquaculture, and maintain
a moratorium on increased fish farming:
- Risks of introduction of exotic diseases from the continued importation
of Atlantic salmon into Pacific waters;
- Pollution from fish sewage, contamination of shellfish, and loss of
habitat;
- Death, wounding, and harassment of mammal and bird populations due to
shootings, net entanglements, and acoustic deterrent devices;
- Loss of access to traditional fisheries for First Nations people, with
increased risks to their health from exposure to drug residues from food
collected near netcage operations;
- Competition for spawning beds and genetic interaction between wild and
escaped salmon in fresh and salt water;
- Decline of wild stocks Losses of wild fish, such as herring and juvenile
salmon, consumed by netcage fish;
- Endangered human health from the increased use of antibiotics and other drugs, which have already led to the spread of fish diseases that are fully resistant to three types of antibiotics.
- Risks of introduction of exotic diseases from the continued importation
of Atlantic salmon into Pacific waters;
Department of Natural Resources
A Green Party government would undertake:
- to eliminate subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels and to raise taxes on them to reflect environmental costs.
- To accelerate investment in sustainable energy infrastructure.
- To redirect research and development spending to focus on environmentally sound energy technologies.
- To change the focus of international energy assistance away from mega projects towards appropriately sized community planned and driven projects.
- To immediately revise tax treatment of renewable energy and energy efficiency investments to make them at least as attractive to investors as investments in conventional energy sources (such as oil and gas) including changes to flow-through share eligibility to include development costs and elimination of the Specified Energy Property rules.
- To provide incentives to renewable energy producers and investors with a production credit of $0.05 per kilowatt hour.
- To implement an Energy Research & Development Act to divert in excess of $1 billion in annual federal research and development spending to fund sustainable energy research and development.
- To allocate a significant portion of energy research and development spending to support field trials and commercialization of renewable energy technologies to improve their reliability, efficiency and competitiveness in Canadian and international markets and thereby accelerate their adoption by clients.
- To ensure that water is not declared to be an "economic good".
- to prevent any privatization of community water systems.
Department Of Transport
A Green government would undertake:
- to move away from car-dependency as agreed to at the Habitat II Conference (1996).
- to tax all vehicles to pay for the damage they do to the roads and environment.
- To design all highways to serve first walkers, then cyclists, then public transport, then other forms of transport.
- To design taxes and support research to build an efficient, cheap automobile, suitable for rural use, the range to be suitable for the user to travel to the nearest rail station;
- to actively promote the use of rail for all heavy loads, and extend the rail network to serve all urban locations conveniently.
- To actively promote and extend light rail transport for all city and intercity travel.
- To adopt the green transportation hierarchy: walking, bicycles, transit, and lastly private automobiles.
- To promote the reformation of cities to an aggregate of neighbourhoods, to minimize the need for travel.
- To advocate that the heaviest loads should be, where possible, carried by water;
- to de-emphasize the use of air transport or eliminate it if surface transportation is faster.
- To promote environmentally-sound transportation systems that contribute to the development of Ecocities.