A list of some of the Green Party’s promises

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This article was published 16/09/2019 (2185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – The Green Party released its platform Monday, with a focus on climate and reconciliation. Here are a selection of the party’s promises:

— Pass a law requiring a 60-per-cent cut in Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030, reaching net zero in 2050.

— Have 100 per cent of Canada’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030 and ban the sale of cars with combustion engines by that year.

— Set legal emissions limits for industries that decline over time, with penalties for exceeding those limits, and maintain a “broad-based, revenue-neutral carbon fee.”

— Approve no new pipelines, coal, oil or gas drilling or mining, including offshore wells; phase out bitumen production and ban hydraulic fracturing; cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline and subsidies to fossil-fuel industries; and help transition workers out of fossil-fuel sectors through income protection, jobs guarantees, retraining and resettlement.

— Develop and legislate a comprehensive national strategy on plastic pollution to be implemented over 10 years, and in the meantime, ban the production, distribution and sale of all unnecessary or non-essential petroleum-based single-use plastics by 2022.

— Recognize Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights of self-government and implement the recommendations of the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

— Eliminate post-secondary education tuition and forgive the portion of existing student debt that is held by the federal government.

— Bring in a guaranteed liveable income.

— Expand medicare to include pharmacare for all and dental care for low-income Canadians.

— Reorient Health Canada’s mandate towards mental health and addictions, health promotion and disease prevention, and the health risks of climate change.

— Decriminalize drug possession.

— Lower the federally set price for cannabis to make it competitive with illegal supplies.

— Eliminate mandatory minimum criminal sentences.

— Ensure that the 2019 election is the last “first past the post” election and lower the voting age to 16.

— Apply a corporate tax on transnational e-commerce companies doing business in Canada such as Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Uber.

— Increase the federal corporate tax rate from 15 to 21 per cent, and maintain the current level of taxation for small business.

— Limit credit-card interest rates to a maximum of 10 percentage points above the Bank of Canada prime rate.

— Limit ATM fees to $1 per transaction and ban financial institutions from charging their own customers ATM fees.

— Set the federal minimum wage at $15 per hour.

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— Study the impacts of adopting a shorter work week.

— Reform anti-trust laws to enable the break-up of media conglomerates.

— Increase funding to CBC and Radio-Canada by $315 million per year until the per-capita level of funding is equal to that of the BBC.

— Legislate housing as a legally protected fundamental human right for all Canadians and permanent residents.

— Eliminate the first-time home-buyer grant.