Green party leader Elizabeth May visited Gibsons on Aug. 1 to discuss the Green platform and stir up votes for local candidate Ken Melamed.
Melamed is running for member of Parliament in the electoral district of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country.
“We can’t have Conservatives in Parliament, because it allows Stephen Harper to be Prime Minister,” May said. “That is the core reason that we need to make a major change.”
Although an outright victory for the Green party in Canada seems unlikely at this stage of the election process, May is more concerned with stacking a minority Parliament.
“With Greens elected, with Ken Melamed with me in the House of Commons, with enough Greens in a minority parliament, we can negotiate in a very friendly-like way with the parties that need our support,” May said.
She touched on issues important to the Green party, such as introducing a national pharmacare plan that she said would save the Canadian economy $11 billion.
She also talked about reducing youth unemployment from double that of national unemployment for adults, as well as ending poverty in the country.
“We know we can create more jobs in a green economy than in – as [Melamed] says – last century’s economy,” May said.
She has tabled a private member’s bill in Parliament to ensure that all government policies be put through an impact assessment to see how they would affect small businesses, in advance of implementation.
“When the price for a barrel of oil became linked to the value of our currency, a lot of Canada suffered,” May said. “We lost pulp and paper jobs, we lost manufacturing jobs, we lost jobs in tourism.
“We should not be allowing any export of raw logs. We need to be getting wood to mills for value-added forest products,” she continued. “We need to be sure that we expand our tourism sector, do more with film and TV production, protect our fisheries from open pen fish farms.”
One plan for immediate job creation in the Green party platform that May discussed is the retrofitting of every building in Canada, whether residential, industrial or commercial.
“The retrofit program in our platform would not only help us meet our climate targets, but it would create immediate jobs in every part of the country, in every community in the country,” May said. “It’s a huge economic stimulus package but it happens to be a climate strategy.”
The federal election will be held on Oct. 19. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the election on Aug. 2, the day after May visited the Sunshine Coast.
