Green Party candidate hoping to rebuild province, work across party lines

May 26, 2022 · 0 Comments

Written By Sam Odrowski

Laura Campbell is running again as the Dufferin–Caledon candidate for the Green Party of Ontario in the upcoming June 2 election.

Campbell first ran in 2018 and said her campaign has grown to be much bigger this year.

“I think people are really excited that they have a strong green here and that we can build the movement for collaborative politics, just thinking about prevention of some of the problems that we’re seeing in society,” said Campbell.

“The foundations of the province are really cracked and broken, and instead of just papering over them, putting in plugs, band aid solutions, we want to make sure that we are actually fixing the foundation. We can do this through new types of solutions to these old problems.”

Some prompt actions the Green Party would take, if elected, is addressing the “immediate crisis” in healthcare by bringing more nurses into the system and repealing Bill 124 which caps wages for nurses at one per cent per year.

The Greens would also make sure Personal Support Workers (PSWs) have a permanent wage increase, starting at $25 an hour for new hires, said Campbell.

Making all of long-term care not-for-profit is another platform item for the Greens, she noted.

“In conversation with other experts from the sector, it’s very clear, the fact that it’s not standardized causes a lot of chaos in the system. Some of the homes, in particular, the ones that are run publicly or through the County are great places to work,” she explained.

“Then some of the private long term care homes, they can’t retain staff, and these people are paid minimum wage – it’s just not right.”

New climate economy

She told the Citizen the Green Party of Ontario sees capitalizing on the “new climate economy” as the best way forward to start reducing carbon emissions and be ahead of the curve.

“It’s a multi trillion-dollar global opportunity, and we have this skilled labor, we have the resources. I think we need to revitalize types of manufacturing in Ontario, because that’ll create the prosperity to fund the important public services that we need,” said Campbell.

Manufacturing in Ontario helps reduce climate emissions as goods don’t have to travel overseas and there are stronger environmental regulations compared to some developing countries where goods are sourced.

With the rapidly rising cost of fuel increasing the price of everything that is transported into or across the province, Campbell said “Big Oil” isn’t very economical and dependency on oil depresses the economy.

“It’s great profits for the oil companies but it doesn’t really trickle down to the rest of us. It makes life a lot harder,” Campbell said.

The transition to a green economy will be gradual, she noted, and the Green Party of Ontario has a clearly laid out a plan and path forward to achieve net zero by 2045, with most reductions taking place before 2030.

“That’s a really intense timeline, but if you set those targets, then what happens is government can sort of step in and create the investments needed to actually make those reductions happen,” Campbell reasoned.

She said energy retrofits for houses and buildings is critical for making progress towards net zero and the Greens would offer up to $25,000 in grants for homeowners to make these changes.

Reducing carbon emissions from transportation is essential for the new climate economy and not as daunting now with the invention of electric vehicles and electrified transit, according to Campbell. She added that electric bikes, scooters, and forms of active transportation would fit into the transportation grid as well.

With the right incentives, there could be a boom in the electric transportation and retrofit industries, Campbell noted.

She said an important part of moving to electric vehicles is ensuing that the rare minerals needed to manufacture the batteries are being sourced from Ontario where possible and responsibly extracted.

With respect to extraction, Ontario is rich in lithium and boron, two key minerals for making electric vehicle battlers, however much of it is located near First Nation reserves.

“We need to be working in consultation with the Indigenous communities and making sure that they essentially profit from this and that they have a hand in this work,” said Campbell.

“I think that the consultation piece is always front and centre with what Ontario Greens are doing, because we are really driven by an indigenous worldview, which is that were planning for the next seven generations.”

She added, “I just personally don’t trust the Ford government to do this in an ethical way.”

Living up to commitments made in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and meeting the recommendations in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are a priority for the Greens as well.

Creating good jobs

Another key component of restructuring the economy around clean energy and reducing emissions is creating good paying, long term jobs.

“We’re creating a future where people aren’t going to get consistently laid off. Knowing folks who have worked in the oil sands or other types of industries, we know that the boom-and-bust cycles are really disruptive for communities and hard on people who work in that industry,” Campbell remarked.

In Ontario, 50 years from now, Campbell said she anticipates there will still be some fossil fuel energy used in the province’s energy infrastructure in some capacity but it needs to be scaled back dramatically.

She told the Citizen she’s critical of other provincial parties claiming to take climate change seriously when they have no clear climate plan.

“Without actually saying how you’re going to get to net zero, what it’s going to cost, and how you’re going to pay for it, it’s not a climate plan… it’s a fairy tale,” she remarked.

Rethinking politics

Campbell said a problem with the current Queens Park system is it encourages election promise gimmicks and politicians doing whatever it takes to be re-elected instead of really thinking about solving issues, which her party is doing.

“We have a culture within the Greens that emphasizes working across party lines to get things done. We emphasize community and community needs, and making sure that we take what we’re hearing from our community and are advocating for those things at Queen’s Park,” she noted.

Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner was instrumental in working across party lines to ban commercial evictions so all of the small businesses impacted by COVID-19 measures couldn’t be kicked out of their communities, Campbell lauded.

Voting percentages

When Campbell first ran under the Green Party banner for the provincial election in 2018, she came in third place with 12.53 per cent of the vote last year, just ahead of the local Liberal candidate who received 12.46 per cent.

The NDP candidate received 20.34 per cent of the vote, while Progressive Conservative incumbent Sylvia Jones received 53 per cent.

Campbell said she’d encourage everyone to get out and vote Green on June 2 in the provincial election.

“The reason you vote Green is because we’re going to be honest with people about how we’re going to pay for things, we’re always going to be honest with people about what is needed to get things done,” she said.

“The only way you’re going to get what you want is to vote for what you want. I just don’t think strategic voting works – it’s never been successful anywhere. You just got to vote for what you want to vote for.”