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Pharmacare Would Save Canadians Billions

REPOST

The federal Green party is making a national pharmacare plan a key plank of its election platform.

The party says it would make affordable medicine a reality for all Canadians while saving billions of dollars.

The plan would expand and co-ordinates the patchwork of public and private plans that already provide drug insurance to 22 million Canadians.

Green party Leader Elizabeth May says the plan would ensure two million Canadians have access to prescriptive medications that they otherwise could not afford.

She says the Greens will work with all federal parties, provinces and others with a stake in health care to implement the plan - the second phase of Canada's universal health system.

Moreover, the party says its approach would apply greater rigour to drug registration by refusing to register medications that hurt more people than they help.

(via Elizabeth May: Pharmacare Would Save Canadians Billions, Huffington Post, July 27, 2015)

Greens extend conditional helping hand for potential minority government (repost)

There’s talk about non-cooperation between the Green Party of Canada, the Liberals, and the NDP. But as Jeff Lee reports in the Vancouver Sun, Elizabeth May is reaching out to other parties. Here’s his article, originally published in the Vancouver Sun on August 11, 2015.

Elizabeth May says her party could hold the balance of power after angry backlash over Harper’s political style

By Jeff Lee,

Green party Leader Elizabeth May ruled out forming a coalition government with the Liberals or the NDP Monday, but has set four conditions for her party to provide support to them if they find themselves in a minority position after the Oct. 19 election.

In return for helping either of the parties form a government, May said the Greens want an end to the current “first-past-the-post” electoral system, substantial movement on climate change action, the repeal of Bill C-51 anti-terror legislation and a substantial reduction of the Prime Minister’s Office budget.

Speaking to the The Vancouver Sun’s editorial board, May said she increasingly believes people are so angry at the power control politics of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Canada will be faced with a minority government situation on October 20. She believes the Greens have a realistic shot at winning about 12 seats in the 338-seat Parliament, perhaps forming a balance of power.

That situation could be the basis for a collaborative form of government not seen since Lester B. Pearson’s Liberal minority governments of the 1960s were supported by the NDP, she said. Those governments brought in health care, the Canada Pension Plan program and the student loan program.

May said she has already talked to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau about co-operating, but that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair won’t take her calls.

“I am not floating a coalition, I am floating the idea that we can work together after the election,” she said. “I don’t want to be in a coalition. I’ve told both my friends in the NDP who will talk to me, and the Liberals, up front, I am not looking for a cabinet seat in any of their governments. I don’t want it.

“I’d rather continue to have the Green caucus in opposition, holding their feet to the fire, operating for responsible government and changing the tenor of Parliament by making it more respectful and reducing heckling.”

May said the Liberal and NDP leaders are already on record as saying they want election reform and more substantial action on climate change, so what she’s asking for in a minority situation is not a big deal.

May said she’s keeping the Governor General’s telephone number in her pocket in order to “facilitate a discussion” about who should form a government, but she ruled out the idea of working with the Conservatives.

Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office is a “dangerous” abuse of Canadian government powers and has to be reigned in, May said. Its $10 million budget should be cut to $1 million, but May would be satisfied for now if it was cut in half.

“It doesn’t exist in our Constitution. It doesn’t exist in legislation, it’s not part of our system of government. And Stephen Harper has essentially eliminated cabinet government. His cabinet ministers are nothing more than public relations spokespersons for policies developed in the PMO,” she said.

“This much power in the hands of one person is not our system of government, and it is really dangerous.”

May also decried party apparatchiks who are less interested in what’s good for Canada than in keeping their leaders in power.

“The party war rooms? That’s a whole different level of spin-doctoring and kneecapping. I think those people in all parties are suffering from a shared psychosis. They really are polluting the well of democracy by their existence,” she said.

Harper and Mulcair have refused to acknowledge the Green party’s power, May said, as evidenced by their desire not to allow her into national leaders’ debates during the election. But she said MPs can still pressure their leaders to work together collaboratively.

“If I can’t get Trudeau and Mulcair as individuals to work together, ramp up the pressure on every single one of the Liberal and NDP MPs across Canada,” she said. “You want Harper to form government? Sit where you are and let your leader dictate to you.

“There’s a lot of ways that we can respect the supremacy of Parliament again by reducing the illegitimate power of political parties.”

Trudeau has already said he won’t form a coalition government. But May said that’s just election politics, and that math at the end of election night may be more convincing to Trudeau and Mulcair.

“He doesn’t want to be a junior player to Mulcair in the midst of an election campaign. If the roles were reversed and Trudeau was ahead in the polls, Mulcair would be saying no coalition,” she said.

Follow Jeff Lee on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/sunciviclee

Originally published in the Vancouver Sun at: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Greens+extend+conditional+helping+hand+potential+minority+government/11280151/story.html#ixzz3j5THR4io

THE CLOSING OF THE CANADIAN MIND (repost)

What is Canada? What was Canada? What is at stake when we vote on October 19th? Writer Stephen Marche's article has gotten a lot of attention since it was published on August 14 in the New York Times. If you haven't read it, here it is.

By STEPHEN MARCHE

THE prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it.

He has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public venues, like the scholarly Munk Debates and CPAC, Canada’s equivalent of CSPAN. His own campaign events were subject to gag orders until a public outcry forced him to rescind the forced silence of his supporters.

Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.

Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.

His relationship to the press is one of outright hostility. At his notoriously brief news conferences, his handlers vet every journalist, picking and choosing who can ask questions. In the usual give-and-take between press and politicians, the hurly-burly of any healthy democracy, he has simply removed the give.

Mr. Harper’s war against science has been even more damaging to the capacity of Canadians to know what their government is doing. The prime minister’s base of support is Alberta, a western province financially dependent on the oil industry, and he has been dedicated to protecting petrochemical companies from having their feelings hurt by any inconvenient research.

In 2012, he tried to defund government research centers [sic] in the High Arctic, and placed Canadian environmental scientists under gag orders. That year, National Research Council members were barred from discussing their work on snowfall with the media. Scientists for the governmental agency Environment Canada, under threat of losing their jobs, have been banned from discussing their research without political approval. Mentions of federal climate change research in the Canadian press have dropped 80 percent. The union that represents federal scientists and other professionals has, for the first time in its history, abandoned neutrality to campaign against Mr. Harper.

His active promotion of ignorance extends into the functions of government itself. Most shockingly, he ended the mandatory long-form census, a decision protested by nearly 500 organizations in Canada, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Catholic Council of Bishops. In the age of information, he has stripped Canada of its capacity to gather information about itself. The Harper years have seen a subtle darkening of Canadian life.

The darkness has resulted, organically, in one of the most scandal-plagued administrations in Canadian history. Mr. Harper’s tenure coincided with the scandal of Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto who admitted to smoking crack while in office and whose secret life came to light only when Gawker, an American website, broke the story. In a famous video at a Ford family barbecue, Mr. Harper praised the Fords as a “Conservative political dynasty.”

Mr. Harper’s appointments to the Senate — which in Canada is a mercifully impotent body employed strictly for political payoffs — have proved greedier than the norm. Mr. Harper’s chief of staff was forced out for paying off a senator who fudged his expenses. The Mounties have pressed criminal charges.

After the 2011 election, a Conservative staffer, Michael Sona, was convicted of using robocalls to send voters to the wrong polling places in Guelph, Ontario. In the words of the judge, he was guilty of “callous and blatant disregard for the right of people to vote.” In advance of this election, instead of such petty ploys, the Canadian Conservatives have passed the Fair Elections Act, a law with a classically Orwellian title, which not only needlessly tightens the requirements for voting but also has restricted the chief executive of Elections Canada from promoting the act of voting. Mr. Harper seems to think that his job is to prevent democracy.

But the worst of the Harper years is that all this secrecy and informational control have been at the service of no larger vision for the country. The policies that he has undertaken have been negligible — more irritating distractions than substantial changes. He is “tough on crime,” and so he has built more prisons at great expense at the exact moment when even American conservatives have realized that over-incarceration causes more problems than it solves. Then there is a new law that allows the government to revoke citizenship for dual citizens convicted of terrorism or high treason — effectively creating levels of Canadianness and problems where none existed.

For a man who insists on such intense control, the prime minister has not managed to control much that matters. The argument for all this secrecy was a technocratic impulse — he imagined Canada as a kind of Singapore, only more polite and rule abiding.

The major foreign policy goal of his tenure was the Keystone Pipeline, which Mr. Harper ultimately failed to deliver. The Canadian dollar has returned to the low levels that once earned it the title of the northern peso. Despite being left in a luxurious position of strength after the global recession, he coasted on what he knew: oil. In the run-up to the election, the Bank of Canada has announced that Canada just had two straight quarters of contraction — the technical definition of a recession. He has been a poor manager by any metric.

The early polls show Mr. Harper trailing, but he’s beaten bad polls before. He has been prime minister for nearly a decade for a reason: He promised a steady and quiet life, undisturbed by painful facts. The Harper years have not been terrible; they’ve just been bland and purposeless. Mr. Harper represents the politics of willful ignorance. It has its attractions.

Whether or not he loses, he will leave Canada more ignorant than he found it. The real question for the coming election is a simple but grand one: Do Canadians like their country like that?

The original is published at: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html

Follow Stephen Marche on Twitter at https://twitter.com/StephenMarche

Who’s standing up for Canadian values on Vancouver Island?

Who are the Vancouver Island #greencoastBC alternatives to the Conservatives? Let’s start from the north of the Island, and work our way south.

Brenda Sayers is the candidate for North Island—Powell River. You’ll find out more about Brenda here:

http://greensofnorthisland-powellriver.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/NIPRGreens

https://twitter.com/niprgreens

Glenn Sollitt is the candidate for Courtenay-Alberni. Find our more about Glenn here:

http://www.glennsollittgpc.ca

https://www.facebook.com/GlennSollitt

http://www.twitter.com/glennsollitt

Paul Manly is the candidate for Nanaimo-Ladysmith. Find our more about Paul here:

http://paulmanly.greenparty.ca

https://www.facebook.com/VoteforPaulManly

http://www.twitter.com/PaulManly

Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi is the candidate for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Find out more about Fran here:

http://www.franhuntjinnouchi.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/FranHuntJinnouchi

http://www.twitter.com/FHJinnouchi

Frances Litman is the candidate for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. Find out more about Frances here:

http://franceslitman.ca

https://www.facebook.com/franceslitmangreenparty

https://twitter.com/franceslitman

Jo-Ann Roberts is the candidate for Victoria. Find out more about Jo-Ann here:

http://joannroberts.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ

https://twitter.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ

https://instagram.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ/

Elizabeth May is the candidate for Saanich-Gulf Islands. Find out more about Elizabeth here:

http://www.elizabethmaymp.ca

https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethMayGreenLeader

https://twitter.com/elizabethmay

https://instagram.com/_elizabeth.may/

https://www.youtube.com/user/canadiangreenparty

#Canada #elxn42 #voteoct19 #Green Party of Canada #Stephen Harper #Conservative Party of Canada #Vancouver Island

Judy Wilson is concerned about Canadian politics. Here's what she said about hearing Elizabeth May speak. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc

#greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

Clive Gammon is a Glenn Sollitt supporter in the Courtenay-Alberni. Here he is showing off his political colours at the Comox Valley Green Party of Canada launch event .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc (at Glenn Sollitt Comox Valley HQ)

#greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

Glenn Sollitt listening to Courtenay-Alberni voters at today's Green Party of Canada launch in the Comox Valley .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc (at Glenn Sollitt Comox Valley HQ)

#greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

Greg Sabo used to be a Liberal supporter. He's now voting for Green Party of Canada candidate Glenn Sollitt in the Courtenay-Alberni riding .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greencoastbc

#greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

Michelle and Andrea - solid Sollitt supporters /p>

Michelle Borden and Andrea Lang at the Glenn Sollitt Comox Valley launch event. Andrea has known Glenn for years, and was voting Green long before him. Michelle, however, was always a Conservative Party supporter. She voted Conservative for decades because of their fiscal policies, and because she believes they stood for "Canadian values." In this election she's voting for Glenn Sollitt and the Green Party of Canada because she likes their policies better, and because she likes Glenn's values. He's a business man who's committed to defending BC's coast, and the families that rely on a healthy coastal environment for their economic well-being. Do you know other conservative voters who are looking for an alternative? Citizens who want to be proud of this country again? Tell them about Michelle. She's one of thousands of Vancouver Island conservatives for whom voting Green is making a lot of sense.

#comoxvalley #greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

Michelle Borden is a long-time Conservative voter who has decided to vote Green in 2015. She's now a solid Glenn Sollitt supporter in the Courtenay-Alberni. #elxn42 #voteOct19 #greenpartycanada (at Glenn Sollitt HQ in the Comox Valley)

#greenpartycanada #elxn42 #voteoct19

Elizabeth May rocks foreign policy at #MacDebate (repost)

Last week Elizabeth May rocked it at the #MacDebate. Here’s what Andrew Moran had to say about her foreign policy content.

Op-Ed: Canada's Green leader wins on foreign policy in leaders debate

Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May was the big winner during last night's federal leaders debate. But it wasn't on the economy or energy. It was her stance on foreign policy and tough criticisms of our involvement in the Middle East.

You can sum up the main three party leaders' stance on foreign policy: Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes any sort of military participation. New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair wants war under a United Nations mandate. Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, well, who knows what he wants? But Elizabeth May's viewpoint is something completely different than what we have seen on the main stage of Canadian politics for some time. Instead of bombing countries or picking sides, May believes this entire battle in the Middle East is intricate and there are many unknown variables. Essentially, we don't know enough to start engaging in combat missions and sending million-dollar jets overseas.

May began to cite so many things wrong with this global war against the Jihadist movement that you started to ponder: how come no other Canadian politician has talked about this over the years? Because there is no real difference between the three main parties. They want to persist in the welfare-warfare state.

First, May delved into the dubious attack against Libya to take out Muammar Gaddafi. This mission, which left Canadians with a multi-million-dollar tax bill, was engulfed in complications from the start. Why exactly were we eliminating Gaddafi? Who are we helping by doing this? Aren't the rebels members of al-Qaeda? What's going to happen after we leave Libya?

Libya has now turned into a rebel-controlled zone with violence and chaos taking over the streets every single day. It's now shambles. It's worse than when we decided to bomb the country a few years ago. Who knows who the good guys and the bad guys in the region?

Second, May touched upon ISIS, our new enemy that we must fear as they can be lurking behind every corner, every tree, every building. May, who should be applauded for her blunt attitude, informed the viewing public, and sought clarity from her opponents, that ISIS rebels were our friends in Syria because they raged against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Now they're our adversaries.

Doesn't something seem wrong with this?

Indeed, the rise of ISIS can be blamed on the United States. It's a revelation conceded by former military officials and even the Pentagon. This was the only part May didn't reveal during this segment of the debate. Other than that, May was on a roll and should be commended for her honesty and integrity on this issue.

The Green Party leader, who holds a seat in Parliament, was just as effective as she ran down Bill C-51, the anti-terror legislation that comes with more erosions of our freedoms and liberties than ever before. Anyone concerned about civil liberties should be shaking in their boots about it.

Here is a little bedtime reading of Bill C-51 for you to take a gander at:

A lack of oversight regarding authorities spying on citizens.

Constant sharing of citizen information across departments and with the RCMP.

Limits freedom of expression.

The creation of a secret police under Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Bill C-51 needs us to reiterate the old adage: "When you sacrifice liberty for security, you get neither liberty nor security."

Again, other party leaders ignored this fact. Harper introduced it, Trudeau voted for it and finally Mulcair said he would repeal it if he formed government (before he noted he'd just amend it). But he didn't eloquently outline the real dangers of Bill C-51.

So as Harper and Mulcair awkwardly smiled throughout the two-hour debate (it looked quite painful for both men) and as Trudeau looked like a deer caught in headlights, May was championing a non-interventionist foreign policy and the abolition of a police state that Harper and his cronies so desperately want.

Whether it's Harper, Mulcair or Trudeau as prime minister, our foreign policy will likely be more of the same: Follow the United Nations, follow the United States and follow NATO. Even if it isn't in our best interests or for our national security, we'll always be entangled in battles that place our men and women of the Armed Forces in harm's way.

This opinion article was written by Andrew Moran, an independent writer, and originally published at DigitalJournal.com

Vancouver Island Green Candidates

There are at least two things you can do to get a #GreenCoastBC result on October 19, 2015. One is to get out and vote for Green Party of Canada candidates (they’re listed here, and you’ll also find a handy reference on how to register to vote online, below).

Another way you can help make a #greencoastBC happen is to use online tools – email, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, etc – to spread the word about why you’re voting Green on October 19. With the new changes to the (un)Fair Elections Act, and with the very long campaign PM Harper has thrown all of us into, your actions on the social media and internet front are more important than ever.

In a nutshell: get out the vote on October 19th, AND in the weeks leading up to that date, get out the media: like, comment on, and repost stories you like on Facebook or elsewhere on the internet, reTweet Tweets you support, give people the links to register and ways to vote (below), and use email to send important information to your friends and family. More than ever, grassroots media action is going to play a role in determining the future of our communities and our country.

The candidates

Who are the Vancouver Island #greencoastBC alternatives to the Conservatives? Let’s start from the north of the Island, and work our way south. Like their Facebook pages. Follow their Twitter accounts. Share their blog posts. And: vote on October 19th!

Brenda Sayers is the candidate for North Island—Powell River. You’ll find out more about Brenda here:

http://greensofnorthisland-powellriver.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/NIPRGreens

https://twitter.com/niprgreens

Glenn Sollitt is the candidate for Courtenay-Alberni. Find our more about Glenn here:

http://www.glennsollittgpc.ca

https://www.facebook.com/GlennSollitt

http://www.twitter.com/glennsollitt

Paul Manly is the candidate for Nanaimo-Ladysmith. Find our more about Paul here:

http://paulmanly.greenparty.ca

https://www.facebook.com/VoteforPaulManly

http://www.twitter.com/PaulManly

Fran Hunt-Jinnouchi is the candidate for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Find out more about Fran here:

http://www.franhuntjinnouchi.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/FranHuntJinnouchi

http://www.twitter.com/FHJinnouchi

Frances Litman is the candidate for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. Find out more about Frances here:

http://franceslitman.ca

https://www.facebook.com/franceslitmangreenparty

https://twitter.com/franceslitman

Jo-Ann Roberts is the candidate for Victoria. Find out more about Jo-Ann here:

http://joannroberts.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ

https://twitter.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ

https://instagram.com/JoAnnRobertsYYJ/

Elizabeth May is the candidate for Saanich-Gulf Islands. Find out more about Elizabeth here:

http://www.elizabethmaymp.ca

https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethMayGreenLeader

https://twitter.com/elizabethmay

https://instagram.com/_elizabeth.may/

https://www.youtube.com/user/canadiangreenparty

Are you registered?

You can find out if you're registered – and register to vote – here: Register to vote online.

Here are the ways you can vote in this election: Ways to vote.

#Green Party of Canada #greencoastBC #elexn42 #election #Canada #Vancouver Island #vancouverisland #voteoct19

What about the economy?

Canadian Business magazine says Elizabeth May "showed another way forward." And that includes putting people to work on things that need doing if we're going to be serious about facing the issues, it means investing in our communities.

Here’s the full story, from Canadian Business Magazine:

Why Mulcair and Trudeau fought on Harper’s terms—and lost

There is nothing more refreshing in politics than a leader who has nothing to lose.

A victory for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in the October election would be any opportunity to hold caucus meetings around something bigger than a coffee table. The low threshold for success means she is free to play offense—as she did Thursday in the Maclean’s leaders debate. Unencumbered by expectations, May was the most comfortable of the four performers. Most of the intelligent things that were said about the economy came out of her mouth.

To his credit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did well, given he was the target of nearly every attack. Harper is an ideologically arrogant leader entirely convinced of his right to foist his worldview on the country, even though 60% of voters in the last election cast ballots for someone other than a Conservative. But arrogance was an advantage in Thursday night’s setting. Harper was rarely flustered. He effectively shrugged off the Bank of Canada’s prediction that gross domestic product contracted in the first half of the year. Growth will be positive on the year, he said. Message: stick with me and everything will be fine.

The opposition leaders were good at pointing out that Harper has been rather poor macro-economic forecaster. His vision of Canada as an energy “superpower” wrongly assumed oil prices had shifted forever higher. And when the foundations of the global economy were trembling ahead of the financial crisis, Harper denied that a recession was coming. In fact, in the autumn of 2008, when the rest of the world was scrambling to deal with the fallout of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Harper made a priority of curbing public funding for political parties. The move triggered a political crisis that wasted weeks of precious time. The prime minister eventually presented a credible economic stimulus plan, but only after experiencing a near-death experience in Parliament.

Harper is vulnerable on the economy, which is why his campaign also is emphasizing “public safety” as another reason to give the Conservatives another mandate. Yet the two main opposition leaders did a poor job of exploiting it. New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair cleverly noted that Harper’s legacy as economic manager could include two recessions. Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, pointed out that his predecessors bequeathed Harper big budget surpluses that he turned into deficits.

Why the federal government shouldn’t balance the budget Yet neither Mulcair or Trudeau really hurt Harper on the economy. That’s because they chose to debate the prime minister on his terms. Harper wants the debate about economic policy to revolve around balanced budgets. He says anyone who votes for a New Democratic or Liberal candidate is asking for Greek-style debt crisis. The charge is absurd, but no more so than the repeated attempts by Mulcair and Trudeau to smear Harper for running “eight-consecutive deficits.”

Any responsible leader would have run shortfalls in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Harper’s failure is his refusal to plan for a ninth or even a tenth deficit. Business investment is weak. Exports are struggling. Households are too indebted to carry on spending in their post-crisis pace. If there ever is a time for a more active role for government in the economy, this is it. The federal government easily could do more because its debt is low and borrowing costs may never be lower. But Harper won’t because he is ideologically fused to balanced budgets. The Conservatives want to equate fiscal probity with superb economic management. By trying to embarrass Harper for running deficits, Mulcair and Trudeau are playing into the prime minister’s hands. They elevate the importance of balanced budgets by trying so hard to convince voters that they too would run tight fiscal policy. The New Democratic Party and the Liberals, therefore, would do no better at boosting economic growth than the Conservative Party is right now. So why change prime ministers?

And now back to Elizabeth May. She was the only leader who recognized that if the objective is to stimulate growth in the near term, then Ottawa has to change the way it frames economic policy. When asked to rate how important it was to run a balanced budget, May said: “In the scheme of things, not very.” It was a recognition that fear of even a small deficit limits ambition. May said she would unleash an “army of carpenters” to retrofit buildings that leak warm air in the winter, and require occupants to blast their air conditioners in the summer.

This is the kind of creative thinking that Ottawa has lacked for years when it comes to economic policy. May could finance her army cheaply with record-low interest rates and promise—in legislation, if need be—to pay it back as soon as the economy was once again growing at potential. The Greens’ prospects are slim. But on Thursday night, the party’s leader was alone in showing that there was another way forward.

by Kevin Carmichael Aug 7, 2015 Originally published here.

#greencoastBC #elxn42 #Green Party of Canada #GPC #voteoct19

Canada. Our strength is in our communities. On October 19 vote for the candidate who can truly represent your community. Don't settle for a candidate who will be whipped into following a party line or a Prime Minister's dictates. Vote for your community .. #elxn42 #voteOct19 (at Vancouver Island, Bc)

#elxn42 #voteoct19

A photo posted by Tim Groenenberg (@timgroenenberg on Instagram) on Aug 6, 2015 at 8:43pm PDT

When Elizabeth May invited former conservative Prime Minister Joe Clark to speak on Salt Spring Island he filled the room. Here's how Elizabeth describes what the man who led the federal Tories from 1976-1983 had to say about the current Tory leader. We're talking about the foundations of responsible, democratic government in Canada. On October 19, vote for Canada.

#greencoastBC #voteOct19 #elxn42 #Green Party of Canada #GPC

Kim Hancock lives in Coombs on Vancouver Island, Glenn Sollitt country. She has a simple message for Canadians tired of what Stephen Harper has been doing to our country: Please come out and vote! Kim hasn't been political in the past. But events in recent years have changed that. At the recent Glenn Sollitt Green Party of Canada fundraiser she pledged $400 in support of Glenn's campaign in Courtenay-Alberni. That's the amount she received from Harper's cynical recamped Child Tax Credit scheme. She said she was putring into Glenn Sollitt's campaign because she's had enough of this government. Her kids' future is at stake. #greencoastBC #elxn42 #voteOct19

#greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

The one consistent principle guiding Stephen Harper is the movement of bitumen out of Alberta ~ Elizabeth May speaking with Glenn Sollitt, Green Party of Canada candidate for Courtenay-Alberni, in Coombs on Vancouver Island. #greencoastBC #elxn42 #voteOct19 (at Coombs Country Market)

#greencoastbc #elxn42 #voteoct19

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