Green Party of Saskatchewan Election Platform 2003
Adopted at GPS Convention 2003.(This is the latest offical platform statement. All Platforms must be debated and approved at an Annual Convention. Unlike other parties, our platform process is open and democratic, and not cooked up in back rooms with advertising people and a few backroom stategists.)
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A Green Energy Policy
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will develop a Green Energy policy that protects the environment and creates sustainable jobs, with emphasis on energy conservation and the development of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources , and which encourages the establishment of small-scale, equitable power production.
The Green Party of Saskatchewan supports the implementation of the Kyoto agreement in Canada.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will create a special task force to establish a participatory process for developing a sustainable economic policy for Saskatchewan. The goal of a new policy is to cease treating Saskatchewan’s unique ecosystem and communities as commodities for the use and exploitation by both trans and multi-national corporations. The GPS supports local economic control and opposes globalization. ( e.g. international trade organizations and agreements such as NAFTA and the WTO which reduce local sovereignty)
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will reform Saskatchewan’s taxation system so that it is more just and more effectively supports the development of local communities and sustainable, self-sufficient local economies.
These reforms would include:
- a reduction of regressive PST and property taxes, with a subsequent shift of education funding to general provincial revenues.
- reduced taxes on environmentally “friendly” purchases
- the elimination of municipal business taxes
- a return to communities of a percentage of the PST as a “Community Development Tax Return”, enabling municipal and community groups to provide services to citizens according to locally determined needs and priorities.
- The establishment of a scaled (graduated) revenue tax that would apply above a given threshold to replace the current municipal business tax system.
- the implementation of a more progressive income tax system based on ability to pay,
- a minimum tax imposed on all profitable corporations,
- a luxury value-added tax,
- higher royalties applied to the extraction of natural resources to support local communities, and a community based economy.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will support the family farm system of production and will encourage the Federal Government to also finance the transition to ecologically sound, sustainable and organic agriculture that supports independent farms and farm cooperatives rather than large agri-business ventures, and so will:
- support a food production, processing and distribution system which encourages a Saskatchewan grown and processed food industry
- support the creation of a provincial “Food Charter” and then will work with local communities to ensure that the safe food and nutrition guarantees of the Food Charter are met for all Saskatchewan citizens.
-- limit non-resident ownership of farm lands and prohibit foreign ownership of farm land
- limit the spread of intensive livestock operations and carefully monitor those already in operation to ensure that they will adhere to sound, humane, environmental and health considerations. We will encourage smaller scale and environmentally sound operations.
- oppose all patent claims on living organisms or genetic information.
- subsidize the building of solar-heated straw bale greenhouses at appropriate latitudes to grow vegetables in all seasons, particularly in the winter, to provide fresh certified organic food, to create employment, and to reduce energy used in transporting food from California and Florida.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will:
- immediately raise the social assistance rates to satisfy basic needs and index it to the cost of living.
- provide free publicly funded childcare with fairly paid and competent staffing, and increase the number of spaces in day care centers to at least the Canadian average.
- support affordable, quality housing through rent controls and inspection systems and the development of social housing. and programs will be established to encourage home ownership and co-operative housing.
- support a “guaranteed annual income” system of social support.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will act to limit truckers work hours to protect truckers and all citizens on our roadways. A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will introduce pay-equity legislation.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will immediately begin a dialogue with existing Aboriginal and Metis organizations in order to explore and address the issues associated with inherent First Nations and Metis rights, including rights to land and resources, as well as discussing urban and taxation issues.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government strongly supports the role of Crown Corporations where appropriate in the development of Saskatchewan and in providing essential services to Saskatchewan people, but will prohibit Saskatchewan Crown Corporations from investing their profits in out-of-Saskatchewan ventures unless it is in partnership with a Canadian firm whose primary role and operation is in Saskatchewan.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan government will oppose the private corporate ownership and control of natural resources now held by the Crown for the people of Saskatchewan.
The Green Party of Saskatchewan recognizes that an effective health system requires that healthy air, water and food is available to all Saskatchewan citizens.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will create a democratic participatory process for an effective community voice in determining health policy at the local level.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will support the introduction of more community health centers, pharmacare, alternative medicine, dental care and home care.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will support preventative health care, considering social, economic and environmental factors.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will ensure adequate funding is available to maintain the five principles of Medicare and is opposed to the privatization of health care services. (c.f. Canada Health Act)
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will introduce a system of proportional representation accepted by the people of Saskatchewan through a referendum process during its first four-year mandate.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will pass legislation to limit contributions to political parties to individuals and will support public funding of the electoral process by giving a grant to Saskatchewan’s official political parties equal to $1.00 per vote received by party candidates in the previous provincial election.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will require that all multinational corporations permitted to operate within the borders of Saskatchewan be required to meet standards and obligations which benefit Saskatchewan people and the Saskatchewan environment, and require that they be shown to not be operating elsewhere in the world in a manner causing suffering or exploitation of people or damage to the environment.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will work against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (IBRD), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which contribute to many of the problems of poverty and degradation of the world’s environment.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will oppose the location of any nuclear fuel waste dump in Saskatchewan and opposes any plans to build a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan. The mining of uranium will be quickly phased out with a just transition for affected workers. A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will hold uranium mining companies accountable for cleanup of mining sites. Exports of uranium to countries with nuclear weapons and Depleted Uranium weapons will be halted immediately.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will accept responsibility for funding early childhood intervention and “pre-school programs” where required, in addition to traditional responsibility for the K-12 education system.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will ensure the implementation of an “Ecological Literacy” curriculum, which also has practical application components, in all Saskatchewan schools.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will mandate the democratic establishment of “School Councils” for each Saskatchewan school, these School Councils to have the responsibility , along with adequate funds, to make appropriate school-based decisions.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will restore adequate public funding to Saskatchewan's universities. The corporate sector's growing stranglehold on universities shall be eliminated. All qualified citizens of Saskatchewan are entitled to free higher education as they are to health care and secondary education. For all academically qualified residents, student tuition fees will be rapidly reduced and eventually eliminated for four years of education.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will oppose government-sponsored gambling as socially destructive and as a regressive form of taxation. A referendum will allow the people to decide if they wish to continue to permit such gambling to continue in their community.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will immediately declare its intention to eliminate the need for food banks, and will seek to meet on-going food and nutrition needs of disadvantaged citizens through new initiatives arising from a province-wide food charter, and from the transformation of existing food banks into “community kitchens” and community nutrition education centres.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will support initiatives to create community food production cooperatives and cooperative ventures with farmers to grow, store and distribute organically produced vegetable crops, and also to produce organic dairy and meat products.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will support the rights of the citizens of Saskatchewan and the world by declaring that:
“because water is a common heritage of human kind,
- earth's fresh water belongs to all living species and therefore must not be treated as a commodity to be bought, sold and traded for profit as an economic good.
- local human communities have the primary responsibility to guarantee that water is treated as a common heritage.
“ because water is a fundamental human and social right,
- the right to water in quantity and quality sufficient to life is an individual and collective
inalienable right which cannot be submitted to any constraint of social (sex, age, income) political, religious or financial nature.
- the cost to satisfy such a right for all must be financed by the collectivity.“because water is essential to the security of our communities and societies,
- its ownership, control, delivery and management belong in the public domain.
-- citizens must be at the heart of the decision process in water affairs.
-- water management policies must ensure social equity such as gender equity, public health and environmental equity.” (c.f. U.N. Declaration on Water Rights)
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will support a series of initiatives which would result in the creation of a “Quality Saskatchewan” program which will promote Saskatchewan agriculture, industry, products, institutions and communities nationally and internationally as being certified high quality, environmentally responsible and economically sustainable products, institutions and communities.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will commit to applying a fair portion of all resource development revenues obtained by the government of Saskatchewan to Community Development programs determined by First Nations communities to ensure that all Saskatchewan people benefit from “Quality Saskatchewan” and “Community Development Tax Return” programs.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will initiate a process that will result in all of Saskatchewan’s Crown forests and forest products achieving certification by the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada, and subsequently, all Crown forest operation license holders will be required to follow operation procedures compliant with these certification standards in all of their forest operations within Saskatchewan.
A Green Party of Saskatchewan Government will halt all new introductions of genetically engineered organisms into the environment and ban genetically engineered wheat from Saskatchewan, including test plots.
To see how these platform statements correlate to Policy Resolutions adopted at Conventions 1998 - 2005, CLICK HERE
