Basic income, food security, landfill search promised in Green Party platform

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This article was published 16/09/2023 (809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s Green Party announced its provincial action plan Saturday, releasing a slate of campaign priorities that included environmental interventions, universal basic income and democratic reform.

“We need the change now. We need to make the changes in our systems to address the climate emergency,” party leader Janine Gibson said, speaking to a small crowd at Vimy Ridge Memorial Park in Wolseley.

“The biology in Manitoba is suffering, the people are suffering, as is the environment, so the Green Party will stand strong.”

The party committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through collaboration with Manitoba’s transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, retail and energy sectors. One approach would involve shifting away from industrial animal agriculture to focus on small-scale operations and plant-based producers, Gibson said.

Additionally, a Green government would address health-care challenges by introducing a new basic income program to ensure all Manitobans have access to enough money to be fed and housed.

“We really need life to be more affordable for all,” Gibson said. “We need a higher quality of life for those struggling with poverty. Canada and Manitoba are a wealth of resources… there’s no need for us to have the level of poverty and the level of community suffering we are seeing.”

The program would reduce strain on the health-care system by addressing poverty, homelessness, addiction and crime at their roots, she said.

If she’s elected, Gibson said her first order of business would be to improve food security in Manitoba.

Saturday’s platform did not include a cost outline. Gibson said the income program could be funded through the sale of green bonds, with additional money sourced by reducing corporate tax breaks.

“We can do this by not subsidizing profitable corporations to the tune of billions of dollars. We don’t need to keep giving the folks that are already making money more money, but that’s what provincial and federal governments have been doing,” she said.

The Greens also want to eliminate Manitoba’s first-past-the-post electoral model, replacing it with a proportional representation system.

Gibson acknowledged her party, which has put forward 13 candidates, is unlikely to win provincial leadership in the upcoming election. However, she said capturing even one constituency would afford the party a stronger voice within the Manitoba legislature.

“With our objectives in mind, Green MLAs will be strong advocates… for whichever dominant party makes the most action on these points, which we think are crucial,” Gibson said.

The victorious party should commit to searching Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of Indigenous women believed to be buried there, she said, disputing a feasibility study that estimated the search would cost up to $184 million. That study, Gibson said, “has been influenced by institutionalized racism and sexism, and that’s what I’ve seen all through this.”

She suggested search efforts could involve volunteer groups, despite safety concerns identified in the study.

“A really good mask and a really good hazmat would do it.”

Gibson is running in Wolseley, where the Green Party captured 36 per cent of votes in the 2019 provincial election, losing out to the NDP by roughly 900 votes. The Greens also finished a close second during the 2016 election, losing to the NDP by less than 400 votes.

Gibson estimated she must increase Green votes in the region by around 10 votes per poll to ensure a victory.

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca