OTTAWA – The Green Party is asking for increased spending to deal with the climate emergency, the housing crisis, and chronic holes in Canada’s social safety net when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland brings down this 12 months’s federal budget next week.
Of their pre-budget submission filed late last month, Green leaders warned the minister against giving in to the fear of inflation and delivering an austerity budget that risks turning an uncertain post-pandemic economic recovery right into a recession.
Among the many priorities identified within the Green Party’s submission:
- Latest programs on mental health including housing for individuals with mental illness, mental health research and free access to counselling services for people on low and middle incomes.
- Testing a latest approach to poverty elimination by sharing the associated fee of a Guaranteed Livable Income with the provincial government of P.E.I.
- Taking motion to lift Canadians living with disabilities out of poverty by moving forward with the Canada Disability Profit.
- Increased funding to construct inexpensive housing and non-market housing, including a considerable investment in cooperative housing.
- A focused fund to replenish core scientific capability in key government agencies.
- Improved access to funds to answer climate disasters and financial help for home and business owners to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
- An instantaneous end to all fossil fuel subsidies.
- Laws and funding to ensure employees within the fossil fuel sector a just transition to the clean, green economy of the twenty first century.
- A significant investment in modern, inexpensive, low-carbon intercity ground transportation with rail because the hub and spokes of sunshine rail and electric bus connections.
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For more information or to rearrange an interview:
John Chenery
media@greenparty.ca
1-613-562-4916 ext. 215
