Erik BJORGAN for Parliament

If anyone needed more proof that both Harper and Campbell have similar agenda, they got it this week with the provincial budget and the speech from the throne. What we see in both are accelerated attacks on the environment couched in terms such as “modernizing the regulatory system”.

Both governments fail to address the triple deficit we have: fiscal, ecological and democratic. One wonders what kind of world such men think they are creating for the children. What do they know that we don’t know? Could it be they don’t understand that technology will NOT save us? that humans cannot live on this earth once we will have destroyed all we evolved from?

We’re already seeing many places in the world where you can’t breathe the air and can’t drink the water, yet it seems both these “leaders” are intent on copying the practices that lead to that destruction. Here are budgetary concerns expressed by the Green Party:

• By 2015, CIDA funding will see significant cuts in expected funding of nearly $2 billion.
• No revival of the ecoEnergy Technology Initiative.  Renewables will receive Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance benefits. The 2010 budget augments this only very slightly.
• AECL still gets $300 million in new funding despite its failure to operate Chalk River for secure supply of radio-isotopes.
• No news on pension reform.
• No commitment to Own the Podium.  $22 million/year confirmed for high performance athletics, but it will be left to a later day to announce the program.
• The optimistic assumptions of revenue growth from corporate taxes of nearly 40% over 5 years, with corporate tax rates going down, underpin the climb out of deficit.  These assumptions are questionable.

for more details on the speech from the throne see : http://greenparty.ca/media-release/2010-03-04/harper-budget-delivers-job-killing-tax-fails-confront-canada-s-triple-defic

http://hilltimes.com/page/view/heard_hill-11-2-2009

Author William Deverell, who released his book last week, Snow Job, was in town for the Ottawa Writers’ Festival.

Mr. Deverell’s book chronicles the life of a fictional Green Party candidate elected to the House.

He attended the Question Period last Monday along with Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. Lucky for him, it was the same Question Period when more than 100 climate change activists loudly heckled and disrupted the business of the House and had to be physically removed from the Chamber.

Mr. Deverell is the creator of the CBC series Street Legal and a founder of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and will be a guest at Green Party fundraisers across Canada over the next few months.

The young greens are the youth wing of the Green Party. Their membership extends to all GPC members between the ages of 14-29. They currently have over 1300 voting members who work in local ridings, campus clubs, Green youth clubs and various communities.

This is impressive because we all know how few young people vote. We all deplore their apathy, and all wonder how to change that. Well, so do the Young Greens. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.bclocalnews.com/okanagan_similkameen/vernonmorningstar/news/63340887.html

More than 100 people confirmed the nomination of Lumby’s Huguette Allen as the next federal Green Party candidate.

Speaking at the recent annual Green Garden Party [held at Hettlers' Pilgrims' Produce organic farm] in Armstrong, Allen said, “Forty years ago voters wanted medicare and they got it. Today voters want government with a green agenda. We’ve got it and voters can get it, when the next election is called.” Read the rest of this entry »

MIND MADE UP

I’d like to comment on the Green Party’s politics now, before the election. I wish I had taken note long before because the chance this will be printed in time to be of any influence is almost past. Read the rest of this entry »

Party’s ‘axe the tax’ campaign is pure political opportunism

Andrew Weaver,
Special to Times Colonist

Over the years, I have given numerous presentations on the science of global warming. Midway through, I show a graph that demonstrates that no matter what trajectory our greenhouse gas emissions follow, the projected global warming over the next two decades is about 0.2 degrees C per decade.

This is the level of global warming to which we must adapt, regardless of our emissions trajectory. By the end of the century, things are very different and the world our grandchildren inherit profoundly depends on the choices we make today.

More …

http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=c6c925c4-fbc9-4bc9-bb0a-181db5c4593f

- Andrew Weaver is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria. He was a lead author of the second, third, and fourth IPCC Scientific Assessments of Climate Change and is author of the book Keeping our Cool: Canada in a Warming World.