GPO Unveils Its Plan for the Province

Any election plan that includes the phrase, "None of our demands will rely on fairy dust or magic pots of money," kind of demands your scrutiny. In Toronto today, the Green Party of Ontario andparty leader Mike Schreiner unveiled their 2014 election campaign platform, which along with environmental protection included new revenue tools, funding initiatives, and their controversial plan to combine Catholic and separate school boards in the province. Schreiner, of course, is our local Green candidate running in Guelph, so we'll be on the front lines of the party's efforts to sell their ideas to the greater provincial electorate. 

You can read the full party platform by going to this link here, but the highlights of the plan can be read blow: 

In the next session of the legislature, our Green MPPs will demand that the government:

1. Raise the Employer Healthcare Tax exemption from $450,000 to $900,000 for businesses with payrolls of less than $5 million.
2. Implement dedicated revenue tools to raise $3 billion a year to build and operate the transit we need in Ontario.
3. Put $4 billion over four years into home energy retrofit credits.
4. Save $1.2 to $1.6 billion a year by moving to one public system with French and English public school boards.
5. Double the child tax benefit for half a million children living in families near the poverty line.  
6. Endow a Social Innovation Fund to support social and economic innovation by young adults.
7. Permanently protect Ontario’s Class 1 farmland and source water regions.
8. Increase royalties and levies for mining, aggregates and water-taking. 
9. Close loopholes in legislation that threaten your community and our natural heritage from harmful activities.

Each of the demands is costed, and we are clear about where the money is coming from.

 

None of our demands will rely on fairy dust or magic pots of money. None of our commitments will increase the deficit. None of our promises will quietly disappear once they’ve done the work of getting us elected.

A lot of this ground was covered in my interview with Mike Schreiner, which should hopefully be posted here in a couple of days.