Recent Climate Economy
We will act now to construct a more caring society and a recent climate economy. Together, we will transform Ontario from a climate failure right into a world leader.
Mike Schreiner, Leader, Green Party of Ontario
We’d like honest, ambitious climate motion now.
The trail forward is specified by our ambitious, honest and achievable climate plan, one which relies on daring motion – not half-measures – to get us to real net-zero emissions by 2045.
Ontario is missing out while the federal government doubles down on gas plants and concrete sprawl, scraps renewable energy contracts, goes to court over carbon pricing, and snubs money incentives to make EVs reasonably priced for the typical person.
If Ontario desires to attract jobs and investment within the trillion dollar clean economy, we want to indicate that we’re a province that takes climate change seriously.
We will create tons of of hundreds of jobs retrofitting our buildings, manufacturing EVs, and creating low-carbon products and technologies. And we’ll deal with our own backyard, preserving nature as our greatest defence against climate change and moving to a zero-waste economy.
We will support farmers on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Agriculture should be a part of the solutions to the climate crisis. Our plan calls for protections and investments to assist local food systems thrive.
Our communities and infrastructure were never built to face up to the acute weather events which are becoming common and more intense with each passing 12 months. We’d like to support municipalities in adaptation. Working with Indigenous communities, we also must protect and restore nature, which is able to reduce climate pollution and help us adapt to extreme weather events.
Stopping climate pollution can also be a possibility to enhance our overall health and well-being. Even meeting the comparatively modest federal climate targets would save about 112,081 lives between 2030 and 2050 on account of air quality improvements alone.
The climate crisis provides a possibility to embrace a future where we deal with one another and the planet. Ontario has the progressive businesses, natural wealth, geography and workforce to take the lead. It’s time to start out now.
Real net zero by 2045
The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is obvious that there should be ‘rapid, deep. and immediate’ cuts to emissions.
Dianne Saxe, GPO candidate and former Environmental Commissioner of Ontario
The transition to a low carbon economy and a net-zero future is specified by our climate plan, Roadmap to Net Zero.
Yr after 12 months, scientists tell us that we want to urgently phase out fossil fuels. Governments make guarantees about cutting emissions, after which make policy decisions that do the other. Greens will get Big Oil out of our wallets for good, and introduce the primary Zero Carbon Law that can keep Ontario inside our fair proportion of the world’s total remaining carbon budget.
We’ll end fossil fuel subsidies immediately. We’ll also join other provinces by adopting Zero Emission Vehicle standards and position Ontario on the forefront of the EV revolution, from mining to manufacturing. Incentives for green constructing retrofits will create good jobs, reduce climate pollution and help people get monetary savings by saving energy.
Motion on climate change must be strong and immediate, and it could actually be a possibility for Ontario to steer North America in the brand new climate economy.
Phase out fossil fuels
- Establish a Fair Share Carbon Budget for Ontario for the remaining of this century and incorporate a legal annual reporting requirement on progress and pollution reduction plans.
- Cut carbon pollution in half by 2030 and hit real net zero by 2045. Take over administration of the federal carbon fee system and increase the worth by $25 until it reaches $300/tonne in 2032. All carbon fee revenues collected from individuals will likely be returned to individuals as dividends.
- Work with the federal government to ascertain border carbon adjustments to create a level playing field for Ontario’s low-carbon producers.
- Eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation the fastest way compatible with our fair proportion carbon budget, aiming to phase out fossil gas by 2030.
- Stop recent gas hookups and recent fossil fuel infrastructure by 2025.
Move to renewable, clean energy sources
- Double Ontario’s electricity supply by 2040 and make Ontario’s electricity emission-free as quickly as possible with the intention to electrify transportation and buildings with clean energy.
- Allow homes and businesses with renewables to earn credits toward energy use for excess energy production.
- Electrify every thing practicable, including buildings, transport and industrial energy.,
- Negotiate to purchase and/or exchange power with Quebec if each power and transmission can be found at an inexpensive price.
- Add no less than 7500 MW of short- and medium-term storage to assist our electrical grid run easily.
- Don’t construct recent uranium mines or nuclear plants that add to our huge pile of dangerous nuclear waste that has already been in “temporary” storage for 50 years. Shut down the aged Pickering Nuclear Plant as scheduled or earlier if continued operation is unsafe.
Increase access to electric vehicles and charging infrastructure
- Increase demand for brand spanking new low-emission vehicles with money incentives as much as $10,000 for purchasing a completely electric vehicle and $1,000 for an e-bike or used electric vehicle.
- Phase out the sale of recent gas and diesel passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and buses by 2030.
- Require trucks in urban areas to be 50% Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by 2030, and 100% ZEV by 2040.
- Make electric charging infrastructure:
- Increase the variety of fast-charging stations on every 400 series highway rest stop.
- By 2023, require all recent or re-surfaced parking areas (private and non-private) to put in EV charging.
- Provide a tax incentive for businesses to put in charging infrastructure.
- Require existing parking lots and garages (public or private, above ground or below) to put in access to EV charging in 25% of spots by 2024, 50% by 2030, and 75% by 2035.
- Amend the constructing code in order that recent homes are EV charging ready.
- Create EV supply chains to grow jobs and businesses in Ontario (see Construct our Recent Climate Economy for detail).
Make buildings energy efficient
- Create tons of of hundreds of recent jobs by retrofitting 40% of existing homes and workplaces to net-zero (conservation plus heat pump and solar, for instance) by 2030 and 100% by 2040 to assist people get monetary savings by saving energy.
- Amend the Constructing Code, so all recent industrial and residential buildings are built with the bottom carbon footprint possible and net zero by 2028.
- Provide net-zero retrofit grants for non-profit housing providers, co-ops and low-income households to lower their energy costs and consumption.
- Release the pent-up demand for green retrofits by ensuring owners and tenants have access to low-cost financing and incentives to insulate and electrify their home. This may reduce energy bills and protect Ontarians from international energy price jumps.
- Encourage using sustainable and non-toxic constructing materials, and take away regulatory obstacles to mass timber construction using FSC-certified wood.
- Make building-level fossil fuel use transparent through labelling and disclosure.
- Establish strong, integrated conservation programs for electricity, gas and water, including ensuring that multi-unit buildings improve energy efficiency and install individual meters for each unit.
Lead by example
- Set aggressive GHG targets for provincial government operations, and expand pollution reduction programs to incorporate hospitals, schools, universities, and other public institutions.
- Put a powerful climate lens on all government decisions, including a shadow carbon price on capital investments.
- Eliminate fossil fuel use in recent and renovated government buildings by 2025, and in all government buildings by 2030.
- Require all large private and non-private organizations to reveal and reduce their carbon footprint and climate-related financial risks.
Support municipalities to be climate leaders
- Provide municipalities and practitioners with knowledge, technical expertise, resources, and training via a Green Infrastructure Support Hub.
- Attract private investment into municipal and industrial Property Assessed Clean Energy programs (PACE, also called Local Improvement Charges) with seed capital and a provincial loan-loss guarantee.
- Allow municipalities to borrow money to make municipally owned buildings more efficient and pay the loans back out of the savings.
- Require all municipalities to adopt plans for reducing corporate and community emissions so far as possible to net-zero by 2045, and provides them the authority and tools to implement them, including long-term, predictable funding.
- Restore the 50% provincial cost-share for transit operations and support electrification plans for all municipal transit systems.
Construct our Recent Climate Economy
Climate motion is job motion. It’s so simple as that.
Christian Proulx, GPO candidate
Ontarians are problem-solvers, not problem-deniers. The trail to a net-zero future will not be easy, nevertheless it is obvious, and Greens are able to roll up our sleeves and prepared the ground on climate motion.
We will make this occur. We will make decisions that construct livable communities and a greater economy. Selections supporting green innovations that result in recent businesses, careers and higher jobs, and that make it more costly for industries to pollute and more profitable for them to decarbonize. Selections to cover the tutoring costs for expert trades and clean energy in order that we will launch an enormous green workforce.
And decisions to present individuals who need it probably the most a helping hand because the world makes the transition. Billions of dollars are flowing into the brand new climate economy. If Ontario desires to attract these jobs and investment, we want to indicate that we’re a province that takes climate change seriously. We must show strong support for growing green businesses, including supporting a talented workforce, research, financing, inputs and procurement to assist them thrive.
Ensure a just and equitable transition
- Focus no less than 25% of the general advantages of public investments to scale back climate pollution on disadvantaged communities.
- Fund a $6B climate bonus for low-income households by adding a 1% climate surcharge levy on the province’s top 10% income earners.
- Focus conservation subsidies on retrofits that reduce energy use for those unduly affected by the fee of energy, especially rural, distant, low-income, and Indigenous communities.
- Redirect the annual $7B taxpayer subsidy for electricity prices to support energy efficiency and climate motion, maintaining energy subsidies only to those in need while also providing free access to upgrades that lower energy costs and consumption.
- Conduct a transition census of vulnerable jobs and economic sectors to develop strategies that help employees and businesses adapt to a recent climate economy.
Train today for the roles of tomorrow
- Create tons of of hundreds of recent jobs by retrofitting 40% of existing homes and workplaces to net zero by 2030, and 100% by 2040.
- Modernise the apprenticeship application process to supply candidates with an electronic, single-entry access to the apprenticeship application and registration process.
- Reduce the ratio of journeypersons to apprentices to one-to-one.
- Increase training opportunities by providing incentives for businesses that take part in training and certification programs in job growth areas akin to green constructing, biomedical technology, renewable energy, and sustainable transportation.
- Provide incentives for businesses involved with green retrofits, reforestation, and other types of green economic activity to supply Ontario youth with precious job experience.
- Over the 4 years, give 60,000 people the talents and experience to work within the green economy through a 12 months of free college tuition plus a 12 months of guaranteed work after they graduate with targeted recruitment of girls, Indigenous people, and racialized communities.
Support and grow green businesses
- Construct on Ontario’s strengths in mining, innovation, financing, and auto manufacturing to create a powerful electric vehicle manufacturing strategy and electric transportation industry supply chain.
- Provide incentives for businesses investing in energy efficient and low-carbon equipment, buildings, and vehicle fleets.
- Starting in 2023, set a minimum and increasing percentage of public procurements of GHG intensive materials that should be low-carbon, providing a marketplace for heavy industries which are transitioning to low-carbon technologies and processes.
- Redirect existing business support programs to assist small and medium-sized businesses scale up or transition to the green economy.
Prepare Ontario industries for the brand new climate economy
- Scale up EV innovation and production through an EV technology innovation fund and a Climate Bank.
- Set strict standards for polluting industries and help them meet their goals via support from low-interest loans, the Ontario Centres of Excellence, collaboration with clean-tech providers, and public procurement.
- Support Ontario entrepreneurs to construct world-leading clean businesses in energy storage (e.g. batteries), electric/ fuel cell mobility, smart transit and low-carbon biomaterials.
- Fund research, demonstration, and commercialisation of low-carbon industries and low-carbon capital investments in existing industries through grants and loans.
Make Ontario protected and resilient
- Plan the right way to manage the health risks to people, including heat, wildfire smoke, flooding, drought, and insect-borne diseases.
- Create a Climate Adaptation Fund funded by a dedicated adaptation levy to assist get the overdue work underway to arrange municipalities, infrastructure, buildings, agriculture and forestry to face up to the increased effects of climate change.
- Require all large private and non-private organizations to judge their vulnerability to climate shocks and stresses, and to plan the right way to manage them.
- Integrate climate resilience into land use planning and when designing, sizing and siting infrastructure.
- Expand natural infrastructure on private and public lands to extend resilience to climate risks.
Protect our natural ecosystems
Let’s protect the places we love by conserving and protecting no less than 25% of Ontario by 2025, and 30% by 2030, especially areas of particular importance like wetlands and natural heritage.
Michelle Angkasa, GPO candidate
Ontario’s wetlands, forests and watersheds are only a number of the advantages our natural environment provides that make Ontario special. These ecosystems are key in keeping our air and water clean and protecting the nice soil we depend upon to grow our province.
Protecting our natural heritage helps preserve biodiversity and directly affects a few of our most significant economic sectors: tourism, forestry, food, and farming. In terms of climate change, our natural ecosystems provide our greatest low price solutions to maintaining a clean water supply and providing flood protection.
Now could be the time to strengthen protections for the places we love, the natural heritage we have fun, and the food and water resources that sustain us. We’d like to expand the Greenbelt by adding a recent Bluebelt that protects our supply of unpolluted water.
Protect natural spaces
- Protect no less than 25% of lands and water in Ontario by 2025 and 30% by 2030.
- Work with Indigenous communities to ascertain Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) where Indigenous governments have the first role in protecting and conserving ecosystems through their laws, governance and knowledge systems.
- Permanently protect Provincially Significant Wetlands, Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest and Provincial Wildlife Areas on Crown land.
- Protect and restore natural areas that sequester carbon and protect biodiversity, including grasslands and peatlands, old growth forests, and ecological corridors between protected areas.
- Strengthen and fund the ecological integrity role of Ontario’s public parks system and create five recent provincial parks.
- Strengthen the Greenbelt Act and make recent highways through the Greenbelt illegal.
- Reward sustainable forestry and land management practices that protect the Boreal forest.
- Enhance urban tree cover targets and improve legal protection for urban trees. Dedicate 15% of the present infrastructure funding for green infrastructure, including urban forests.
Safeguard our source water
- Double the scale of the Greenbelt to incorporate a Bluebelt of protected moraines, river systems, and watersheds that features the Paris Galt Moraine, Carruthers Creek, Grand River Watershed, and lots of other critical bodies of water.
- Work with Indigenous Peoples and the federal government to ascertain National Marine Conservation Areas in Hudson and James Bay, and within the Great Lakes.
- Implement a plan for cutting phosphorus entering Lake Simcoe to 44 tonnes by 2026 and support the creation of a phosphorus recycling facility..
- Restore provincial funding for source water protection under the Clean Water Act and expand drinking water source protection to northern, distant and Indigenous communities.
- Bring back oversight and public consultation to scale back flooding and protect people and the places we love. Mandate vegetated setbacks along lakes, rivers, flood plains and drains.
Use water sustainably
- Fix the Permit to Take Water process
- Stop industrial water extraction and ban bulk removal of water from a watershed.
- Restore municipal regulation of aggregate extraction below the water table .
- Add water usage to reporting obligations for giant buildings and the general public sector.
- Incentivise water conservation and reuse, akin to greywater systems in households.
- Require multi-unit residential and industrial buildings to put in water metres.
Reduce waste
- Set high recycling and management standards for printed paper and packaging (Blue Box) materials, and a minimum standard of 85% for plastic packaging by 2030.
- Adopt clear, stringent, and enforceable prolonged producer responsibility standards for waste and packaging generated at workplaces, schools, and in public places – the sectors answerable for nearly all of Ontario’s waste.
- Expand the federal government’s list of banned single-use plastics to incorporate water bottles, coffee cups and other unnecessary packaging.
- Ensure a broad range of right to repair laws to increase the life of products and protect purchasers.
- Ban food waste from landfills or incinerators and expand food waste collection to all municipalities across the province.
- Set targets to significantly reduce Ontario’s material and consumption footprints and track and report on progress.
- Set required minimum use of recycled aggregates in infrastructure projects in addition to providing research and education funding to be sure that all reclaimed concrete material may be re-engineered and re-used as effectively as possible.
Stand strong for environmental justice
- Strengthen and uphold the Environmental Bill of Rights.
- Require the Ministry of Environment to develop and report on a method to deal with environmental racism.
- Establish more strict monitoring and enforcement standards for air and water pollution in areas where communities are exposed to potential health risks from multiple industries.
Strengthen environmental oversight and public consultation
- Restore the Office of the Environmental Commissioner.
- Establish and implement industry sector standards for air and water pollution that protect health.
- Restore a sturdy environmental assessment process and reverse changes that allow for assessments to be “streamlined.”
- Ensure assessments consider climate impacts and climate friendly alternatives to a project as a part of the evaluation process.
- Restore automatic environmental assessment of public-sector projects, plans and policies, including timber management on Crown lands and regional assessments.
- Include private sector projects that can have long run environmental impacts, including mining and smelters.
- Rapidly repeal all recent changes that limited Conservation Authorities’ authority and supply stable funding mechanisms so Conservation Authorities can fulfil their mandates, including watershed level protections.
- Reverse changes in Bill 245 that merged all land use planning tribunals, including the Environmental Review Board, into the Ontario Land Tribunal, and reverse damaging changes to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT).
- Uphold the duty to acquire free, prior and informed consent from First Nations and Métis communities regarding decisions which will affect them.
Protect biodiversity
- Restore the unique Endangered Species Act, 2007 and a science-based system for determining species status, recovery, and habitat protection while eliminating exemptions for industry.
- Properly fund and support endangered species recovery efforts and habitat stewardship programs.
- Cancel the Species at Risk Conservation Fund (aka “Pay to Slay”) that enables businesses to easily offset their harm to biodiversity by paying into the fund.
- Protect pollinators by ending the outdoor use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Restore the pesticide advisory committee.
- Regulate recent outdoor lighting to incorporate dark sky protection.
Strengthen animal welfare rules
- Ban the breeding, possession, use, and sale of untamed exotic animals as pets and implement a more comprehensive licensing system for zoo facilities housing exotic wild animals.
- Ban road-side zoos and prohibit inhumane and unsafe animal-visitor interactions as per the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums guidelines.
- Enhance animal welfare standards for animal agriculture. Implement more robust regulations and inspections of the housing, sale, and transport of agricultural animals and ensure enforcement.
- Oppose using furs on ornamental, except by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit individuals, and where such use is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
- Repeal all provincial breed-specific laws.
Help local food systems to thrive
We’d like to guard farmland that’s being paved over at an alarming rate. We’ve got to act now to support farm-to-table agriculture here in Ontario.
Aneep Dhade, GPO candidate
In Ontario, we’re losing farmland at an alarming rate of 175 acres a day, largely to urban sprawl and aggregate mining. We’d like to supply everlasting protections for prime agricultural land to maintain it from being destroyed by urban sprawl, highways, and gravel mining that threatens our groundwater supply.
Greens will support farm-to-table agriculture here in Ontario, making it easier for small farms to make use of the newest technology, access the web and switch a profit. We’ll also provide support for farmers to adopt more sustainable practices in order that farming and climate motion go hand-in-hand.
Healthy soil is crucial for the health of Ontario’s farms and food system. It also impacts yield and quality, water and nutrient retention, resilience, biodiversity, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. So we want to support our family farms while they protect this precious resource.
Our plan provides solutions that can create higher connections between farmers and consumers and construct a stronger, healthier regional food system. It’s increasingly expensive for Ontarians to place food on the table, and the present sprawl agenda of paving over the farmland that feeds us doesn’t help this.
Protect farmland
- Freeze urban boundaries now.
- Permanently protect prime farmland from being lost to non-agricultural use, akin to urban sprawl, highways, and gravel mining.
- Move class 1 and a couple of soils from the Whitebelt to the Greenbelt.
Increase access and support for local, nutritious food
- Introduce a nutritious school lunch program for the general public school system.
- Provide start-up funding and land for community-owned healthy food markets, community gardens, and rooftop growing spaces, particularly in urban food deserts.
- Set measurable, made-in-Ontario food purchasing targets for all public institutions.
- Treat surplus food as a precious resource. First, use it to feed people, then animals, and never send it to landfill.
- Provide tax incentives for local food and beverage manufacturers who purchase inputs grown by local farmers.
Support local sustainable farming
- Pass the Organic Products Act to control using the term “organic” inside Ontario.
- Spend money on research and innovation that improves the sustainability of how we grow, produce, and distribute our food.
- Revise crop insurance programs to support farming practices that improve soil carbon and soil health.
- Incentivise on-farm composting of agricultural waste that leads to biogas recovery.
- Spend money on an Organic Growth Strategy to support transition, small-scale certification, access to organic advisors and capital, expansion of organic research programs, and increased promotion of Ontario’s organic products.
- Ban the routine use of unnecessary antibiotics in healthy animals.
- Pay farmers for programs that produce, enhance and maintain ecosystem services resulting in cleaner water and air, habitat, carbon sequestration and climate resiliency on agricultural lands (e.g. ALUS).
Spend money on the subsequent generation of farmers
- Create policies that support the retention of family-owned farms, farming by experienced farmers amongst recent Canadians, and the succession of farms to a younger generation of farmers.
- Provide education and grant opportunities to encourage students to enter into the agri-food business.
- Promote training in specialty programs that deal with sustainable practices and soil-health inside agricultural schools.
- Proceed to reinforce the availability management system to incorporate more farm products and ensure offsets or grants for those seeking to enter the system or with a lower ability to supply.
- Rebuild agricultural extension programs and hire soil-health focused agronomists.
- Purchase available farmland and place it in protected Land Trusts so it could actually be made available for dramatically lower costs to recent farmers who would otherwise not have the option to afford farmland.
- Advocate for the federal government to limit farming products from future trade deals.
Make family farming more profitable
- Make sure the Federal-Provincial-Territorial grocery retailer code of conduct is mandatory, enforceable, transparent and advantages each customers and farmers.
- Increase investments within the Risk Management Program to satisfy or exceed the previous 85% coverage to enhance financial security for farmers.
- Establish a food processing infrastructure fund to support investments by Ontario-based corporations in food processing facilities.
- Eliminate property tax penalties for farmers with small-scale, value-added production facilities on farm.
- Protect farmers against losses for as much as ten years as they transition from chemical agriculture to soil-health agriculture.
- Shift program dollars from supporting industrial and intensive animal agriculture to supporting soil health and regenerative agriculture.
