Hear about the Green Party’s future from the women who’ll help shape it!
There will be an opportunity to mix and meet our honoured guests and you’ll have the opportunity to choose and own one of the books by our distinguished authors.
You will also have the chance to schmooze with other well-known personalities and enjoy a buffet reception.
Danforth Greens Pub Night
last Tuesday of every month
7 – 9 pm at Gabby’s
in the “Library Room”
729 Danforth, just east of Pape
Come raise a glass of cheer, meet, chat, get informed and have some fun!
I get asked a lot about the garbage strike. While there’s not a lot I can do to settle a municipal labour dispute as an aspiring MP, and people recognize this, as a Green MP I could do rather a lot to help Toronto achieve its stated goal of zero waste, which would make a garbage strike a lot less unpleasant. Read more »
In a recent post, George Monbiot suggests diverting military spending to addressing the much more serious threats facing the world. One area in which we could redirect the energy of our armed forces could be to retrofit existing housing stock which is incapable of keeping us warm without fossil fuels from which we should be weaning ourselves. Read more »
Here are some farmers’ markets, arranged from west to east. Two are in our Toronto-Danforth riding (that is to say between the Don River and Coxwell). The others are just outside — but one actually has a free shuttle from within the riding. Read more »
The Canadian Health Coalition is concerned about new threats to our universal public health care system. They are concerned that the new head of the Canadian Medical Association, who owns private clinics himself, is promoting a mixed model of health care delivery.
I applaud the goals of the Canadian Health Coalition, which has just launched a website to address this new threat, and urge everyone to sign the pledge online, which I appear to have signed twice in my enthusiasm. Read more »
Here’s today’s press release from the Green Party of Canada regarding the coup in Honduras: Read more »
I’ve had a couple of people ask what Green Party policy was on disabilities. One concern was that some of the policies towards greening the economy were fairly hostile to people who had a difficult time already dealing with life’s challenges. This is something I’ve pledged to address on Shadow Cabinet.
In the meantime, I’m proud also to say that the Green Party has a very robust and human-scale policy towards people with disabilities centred on two policy points which I find incredibly important. Read more »
The stresses we put on the planet are a product of individual demands on resources multiplied by the number of us there are. Ecologists are well aware of this and used to discuss it when I was a child. One of the reasons these concerns were dropped politically is because population control can be used as an excuse for a lot of nasty policy — racist immigration reforms, draconian meddling in personal fertility and tax structures that punish children who are in no way to blame for being alive.
Still, plenty of sensible voices lament silencing of the issue, which is serious. And many of these have been unhappy about the Green Party’s refusal to address this issue. I’ve heard this concern expressed at the door at least four times while canvassing – and I’ve been proud to say that at the last Green Party of Canada AGM, we adopted a sensible population policy that recognizes the problem, yet proposes to address it in ways that are non-intrusive and which enable rather than punish the most disadvantaged people on the planet. Read more »
With the election of Barrack Obama in the United States, they have slightly improved their climate change policy, enough for Canada to beat them out for last place among the G8 countries in a joint evaluation by the World Wildlife Fund and the Insurance giant Allianz. Read more »
Apparently, Stephen Harper is once again contemplating removing the per-vote party funding which nearly brought down his government last year. And this time, he might just succeed, since the Liberal Party at this stage relies less on the mechanism. This would be a tremendous step backwards for democracy and needs to be fought tooth and nail.
I’m wary of fighting for policies that benefit the Green Party, because they open us up to charges of promoting only what’s best for us. But in this case, it’s so obviously a toxic policy that I find it easy to fight.
PM Harper will undoubtedly suggest that this is needed as a cost-cutting measure. But there are at least five ways that our government finances political parties. Stephen Harper wants to get rid of only one – the one that is the most representative of democracy, and also the one that proportionally benefits him least. If he really wants to save money, why doesn’t he instead get rid of one of the other, less democratic, methods? Read more »
In late March 1964, my parents went to visit the newly unveiled Brazilian capital of Brasilia. My mom, pregnant with me, returned to Uberlândia, where my father’s family lived, to their great relief. Brazil had just suffered the military overthrow of their elected government, and my mom and dad, seeing the sights in the capital city, hadn’t even noticed.
Like the recent military coup in Honduras, Brazil’s coup was bloodless. But it ushered in twenty years of political repression, journalistic censorship, disappearances, a pattern of torture, and even amid a time of burgeoning economic growth known as the “Brazilian miracle”, a rise in infant mortality, the collapse of the education system and the polarization of society into a small group of ultra-rich and a huge class of desperately poor. The Brazil that I came to know as a teenager was a Brazil teeming with urban poor clustered in shantytowns of unimaginable squalor. Read more »
In my canvassing, I’ve so far encountered three people who told me that they supported every policy of the Green Party except our opposition to nuclear, which they feel will be a necessary part of the solution to climate change. Read more »
I just spent Canada Day at Harbourfront and didn’t canvass at all today. My son buried his dad in the beach sand at HTO Park along with a few little friends who had to join in the fun. We got some yummy fruits and Tibetan and Indian food, and listened to music on the freshly laid astroturf at Harbourfront Centre. What a great day.
In many ways, the morning rain and overcast sky made this the best Pride Parade I’ve ever been in. The cool weather gave us all extra energy. Here we are waiting for the parade to start. Thanks Soo Luen for the photo. Read more »
Emma Richardson
Ann Peel
Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu