Video of my comments at a dinner event with Elizabeth May Tuesday of last week, the same day that Bill Graham announced his resignation. The video starts abruptly because I had to cut off the first minute in order to not go over YouTube’s 10-minute-maximum.
Video of Elizabeth May During Pride Week
There’s an unfortunate irony to blogging: when you’re busy with lots of interesting stuff going on, there’s no time to blog about it. So it has been this past week.
This past Sunday I marched in my third Toronto Pride Parade in a row. I think I’ve mastered the required elements: lots of sunscreen, as little clothing as possible, and a humble acceptance of the inevitability of getting soaked by high-powered water guns (otherwise known as hoses). The banner photo of this site (for the moment at least) was taken just before the parade, and is of Victoria Cate May Burton, myself, Elizabeth May, and Amanda Bond.
The below video, as previously promised, is of Elizabeth’s speech at our Pride Week Meet & Greet earlier that week at Byzantium on Church Street. In it she highlights a few little known Green Party facts, including that we’re the only federal party to have ever had an openly gay leader, and that we became the first federal party to support same-sex marriage in 1996. (Our openly gay leader was Chris Lea, from 1990-1996. For some reason people sometimes make the incorrect assumption that it was Jim Harris, thus Elizabeth’s clarification in the video.)
This Is The Question
The question Ontarians will be asked in the October 10th referendum is: “Which electoral system should Ontario use to elect members to the provincial legislature?” Voters will then indicate a choice between the First Past the Post system and the Mixed Member Proportional system.
This question seems designed to favour the status quo. We didn’t need that; with a (possibly unconstitutional) 60% threshold required for a “yes to MMP” victory, votes for the status quo are already being weighted more heavily than votes for change. The Ontario government should have used a question following the format of the British Colombian referendum, which was “Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform? Yes/No.”
It’s important for voters to understand that this new voting system was designed and recommended by their peers, just as sub-committees typically report recommendations to their parent committees.
So here’s the real question: why are the people in power so afraid of giving Ontarians a democratic, simple majority yes/no vote on such a fundamental issue?
UPDATE (June 22nd, 2007): The way the two options are worded addresses my primary concern. Apologies, that wasn’t in the original news report I read. Thanks to Saul for pointing it out.
Steep carbon tax could actually stimulate economy: report
It’s not every day you read a glowing news report about the Green Party in the National Post, but we live in interesting times. The story in yesterday’s paper has the same headline as this blog entry, and begins as follows:
OTTAWA — It was denounced by Environment Minister John Baird as “the mother of all taxes,” but a new report for the federal government says a $50-per-tonne carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas pollution would do little harm to the Canadian economy.
The study – titled “Cost Curves for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction in Canada: The Kyoto Period and Beyond” – was submitted to the government in January.
Green party Leader Elizabeth May said it proves the Conservatives knew the top experts were urging them to accept her proposal of a $50-per-tonne carbon tax as the most effective tool to fight global warming.
“The Canadian public can conclude that the Harper government is deliberately misleading them when they claim that a carbon tax does serious damage to the economy, because they know it’s not true,” May said at a news conference.
In an analysis of carbon taxes ranging from $10 per tonne up to $250 per tonne, the report, obtained by May through an Access to Information request, concluded that the $50-per-tonne carbon tax could even have a positive effect on the economy by 2015. The Green party has proposed a tax shift by transferring revenues from the new carbon tax to reductions in payroll taxes for companies and in income taxes for individuals.
Mark Jaccard, whose consulting firm produced the study and who has been recognized by senior government officials as “one of Canada’s top climate policy experts,” went on to say, “if we’re serious about reducing greenhouse gases, we have to have a carbon tax or its equivalent. So in fact, Elizabeth May is the only politician who’s being honest to Canadians right now.”
In summary, our government has had a report in their hands since January, from one of their own trusted experts, that says they’re wrong and we’re right. They tried to keep this report secret, and we only now know about it because Elizabeth May obtained it through the Access to Information Act.
They know it’s not true that action on climate change would cripple the economy. They know that a carbon tax is needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change. They know that the Green Party’s “tax shift” idea (reduce income and payroll taxes, add carbon and pollution taxes) could actually stimulate the economy.
Faced with those facts, they decided the best thing to do would be to try and keep this information from Canadians. Honestly, what kind of mind works like that?