Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

The GPO climate plan prioritizes action in those sectors with the highest GHG emissions: transportation, buildings, and industry. Our plan also seeks to maximize nature’s carbon storing ability, and to help communities adapt to our changing climate.     

In order to meet Ontario’s legally binding GHG emission reduction targets, the Green Party of Ontario will:   Establish more ambitious GHG reduction targets for Ontario. Our goal is for the province to be carbon neutral by 2050 instead of the current target to reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

We support the province establishing 5 year targets between now and 2050 to measure progress toward the target of being carbon neutral by 2050.   Transition Ontario to a revenue-neutral carbon fee-and-dividend system. Under this approach, a fee is levied at source on all goods and services that result in greenhouse gas pollution. We propose a steadily increasing carbon price at a level that exceeds the federal government's minimum price. We would not immediately cancel the current cap and trade program, instead supporting a transitional period to carbon fee and dividend.  

Return all pollution tax revenue to citizens’ bank accounts. The more you conserve the more cash you and your family can save.  Transition Ontario budget expenditures away from infrastructure, products and services that are fossil fuel dependent to expenditures for low carbon infrastructure, products and services. This would result in expenditures on programs to reduce GHG pollution that exceed those currently funded by cap and trade revenue and would eliminate expenditures that undermine and contradict Ontario’s climate change plan and GHG reduction targets.  

Pass liability laws to give Ontarians the legal means to seek compensation from the world’s major polluters for their fair share of the costs associated with the climate crisis. 

Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

While we know that farmers are crucial to this province, we continue to do little to protect the land that is so central to the food we eat. Only 5% of this province’s land mass is suitable for growing food, and even less (just 0.5%) is prime farmland, of which Ontario is losing 350 acres every day.

Thus, it’s imperative that Ontario commit to halting the loss of prime farmland and making healthy food accessible to all Ontarians.     Limited access to high quality food is not only an issue of decreasing farmland, but also one of poverty. People in Ontario continue to lack the financial well-being to purchase nutritious food for their families. Last year, Ontario food banks saw a 20% increase in new users, yet the issues of malnutrition and equal access to natural resources are rarely discussed at Queen’s Park.    

It is unacceptable that people go hungry in a province as wealthy as our own, especially when we continue to waste a staggering amount of food. Most studies indicate that Canadians throw out roughly $31 billion in food each year. This waste is bad for our economy, our environment, and our citizens.     The GPO remains committed to supporting local, sustainable food, and ensuring that all Ontarians are able to enjoy it.

Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

We absolutely support a complete ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.   Our vision for Ontario includes investing in, identifying and promoting pollinator friendly alternatives & recognizes that loss of biodiversity is a major issue that requires immediate attention and resources. 

2 things specifically in our plan regarding pollinators are as follows; Provide incentives for pollinator-friendly farming practices and invest in research about the economic value of wild pollinators for farmers and their crops.  

Establish an independent science advisory body on wild native pollinators to ensure that the best available science informs implementation and evaluation of the government’s Pollinator Health Action Plan. 

Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

Strategy: Move People and Freight More Efficiently   

Ontario’s transportation system doesn’t work for people or planet.     Traffic congestion in the GTA alone costs our economy $11 billion a year in lost productivity.   

Transportation accounts for 35% of Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions, the largest and fastest growing share of emissions from any sector and a large contributor to air pollution.    

Better transportation networks are also an economic bonus, supporting small businesses and increasing the efficient flow of people, goods and resources. Liveable communities foster thriving main street economies.   

Our plan starts with better land use planning, re-designing roads and streets with the safety and convenience of all road users - drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users.    

This also means new strategies for moving goods as well, such as using central depots and more efficient vehicles to bring parcel deliveries to a final destination into denser neighbourhoods.    We need to scale up investments in public transit, and we need to be honest about how we are paying for this. Transit decisions need to based on data and science and removed from political interference that can lead to costly decisions. 

Establish a Complete Streets Act, which would require streets across Ontario to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained to enable safe, convenient and comfortable travel and access for users of all ages and abilities, regardless of their mode of transportation.  Require all new and resurfaced highways to have paved shoulders for safe cycling. Establish commuter cycling networks across Ontario.   

Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

Our plan includes phasing out the single use bottled water industry in Ontario within 10 years. 

It also includes;

Strengthen rules to protect our environment

Apply a climate lens to all planning decisions, environmental assessments and planning laws to help transition our communities to a fossil fuel free future. 

Increase funding to Ministry of Natural Resources and Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to better carry out their responsibilities after decades of underfunding. 

Reform the Environmental Bill of Rights to include the principle of the right to a healthy environment for all Ontarians, ensure meaningful citizen participation and provide funding for education, and empower the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario to initiate investigations.      

Ensure that new international free trade agreements only be made in consultation with municipal governments, local communities and indigenous people, without jeopardizing our environment.

Oppose investor-state dispute mechanisms that undermine our sovereign ability to protect Ontario’s water, farmland and natural resources.  

Instill a culture of collaboration and open dialogue between Ministries to ensure natural heritage is protected. This includes encouraging critiques when decisions put our environment and health at risk. For example, Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry can make poor resource extraction decisions that threaten our water, a Ministry of Environment and Climate Change responsibility. 

Increase oversight for industry development that affects our land, water, and wildlife. 

Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

Strategy: Protect the People and Places We Love    

Ontario is losing greenspace and farmland at an unsustainable rate. Aggregate mining is prioritized over protecting water, natural heritage or farmland. Urban sprawl threatens the places we love.     

Add climate change to the mix, and it’s clear that threats to our environment get more complicated and challenging every year.     Yet for decades, Ontario has spent less year over year on environmental protection programs and natural resource management.    

The Green Party has a plan that balances the demands of businesses and the rights of citizens to conserve and protect the natural world around us.     Our vision for a path forward uses sensible extraction fees and royalty rates; measures the value of activities by looking at more than short-term economic benefits; and requires companies to clean up after themselves--or better yet, not make a mess in the first place.    

Our plan builds up, not out, and increases protections for provincial parks, forest reserves, farmland and other natural heritage. Protections are particularly needed for Ontario’s neglected wetlands, of which over 72% in Southern Ontario have already disappeared.    

We also need to stop the war on wildlife. The current management system is not working to protect and restore Ontario’s wildlife populations. Reform the Endangered Species Act to remove exemptions that protect companies from facing penalties for harming animals and their habitats.   

Protect local food supplies with a complete ban on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Experts agree that these are killing off bee populations, a key pollinator in the food chain, and threatening our food system by building up toxin levels in our groundwater.    

Strong environmental legislation in Ontario is critical to our economy.  The Ministry of Natural Resources says that our benefits from ecological systems total $84 billion a year, or about $8400 per person. 

Our natural heritage has been protected since 2007 by the Endangered Species Act. But now the Liberal cabinet, in a behind-the-doors decision, has left the Act in tatters. On the table are broad industrial exemptions that lower the standard of protection for Ontario’s species at-risk, like the woodland caribou, and their habitats. The Green Party of Ontario wants the government to restore protection for endangered species and the ecosystems in which they live

Green Party 

Lisa Carriere

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share the Green Party of Ontario's vision for the future of our planet, and to also thank you for the work you do.

The GPO is the only party whose focus is wholeheartedly on protecting the planet and its richness. There is no planet B and it's imperative that we make the changes needed today.