Toronto has over 565 school buildings, 99 libraries, 350 community housing apartments, at least 70 subway buildings, over 150 recreation centres, and many, many office buildings.

The Good Jobs for All Coalition believes we need to use this publicly-owned roof top space in our campaign to build a local green economy and a publicly-owned green electricity grid.

The City and Toronto Hydro need to buy made-in-Ontario solar panels and install them on appropriate public buildings across the city. We believe we can tackle inequality and green the grid by requiring our utility to commit to equitable hiring practices so young people, people of colour, and newcomers have access to new green jobs in manufacturing and installation.

Unemployment in Toronto is no joke – hovering at about 10%. It’s far higher in the city’s poorer areas, and among immigrants and young people who are competing with more experienced people for the same jobs. An incredibly depressing article by Atlantic Monthly on the jobless crisis in the United States, reveals how sustained joblessness has crippling effects, not just on our own credit cards and self-confidence, but on entire generations, who can fall permanently behind, and a country’s psyche.

With the passage of the Green Energy Act, the Ontario Government is kick-starting a green energy sector by offering guaranteed access to Ontario’s electricity grid and attractive feed-in-tariff rates to utilities and companies that generate renewable energy. The government offered tax breaks and other incentives to Samsung in order to entice them to establish four manufacturing plants, as well as wind and solar projects, in Ontario.

Although this is good for building a green economy, we believe w can do better. The coalition thinks our publicly owned utilities should be true leaders in building a green energy economy. Foreign companies send profits offshore; public utilities reinvest the money into the economy and the public sector and offer cheaper rates to customers. Toronto Hydro will always be more accountable to citizens than a foreign multinational. It’s far easier to convince a city agency to buy local and hire its citizens in a fair way than a private company headquartered in Korea.

Join us and endorse our campaign. Better yet, encourage a public building to partner with Toronto Hydro and go green. Contact us for more information – info@goodjobsforall.ca.

November 17, 2010

(Ottawa) Stephen Harper has done what he promised to never do, allow the Senate to go against the will of the majority of Members of Parliament and the Canadian public. Last night, Stephen Harper’s Senators voted to defeat the Climate Change Accountability Act (Bill C-311) before the bill even had a chance to be debated.

“The Climate Change Accountability Act (Bill C-311) has been the only strong piece of climate change legislation before Parliament. It has been supported by a majority of MPs twice, and represents the will of the majority of Canadians who want our government to take strong action on climate change,” says Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada. “In using an undemocratic, nineteenth-century institution to avoid dealing with the twenty-first century’s most pressing environmental problem, the Harper government is being both hypocritical and irresponsible.”

The Climate Change Accountability Act passed through the House of Commons to the Senate in the spring of last year. Because Conservative Senators had chosen not to take the opportunity to debate the bill, the bill had not yet been referred to a committee for study. Instead of doing so, Conservative Senators called a surprise vote last night, and managed to kill the bill while many of its supporters were away from the Senate.

“It seems clear that the Conservative government doesn’t want to be accountable to Canadians about setting and meeting climate targets,” said Clare Demerse from the Pembina Institute. “This bill would have required the government to publish regular reports explaining its climate policy to Canadians – and as things currently stand, every one of those reports would have created bad headlines for the government.”

“This manipulation of the democratic process is irresponsible and goes against the campaign promises that Stephen Harper made on accountability, transparency and democratic fairness, not to mention Senate reform,” says Steven Guilbeault of Equiterre. “The Harper controlled senate has been delaying discussions of this bill for months, and now they have killed it without even the due process in terms of bringing the bill to committee and debating it. It is like a jury arriving at a verdict in a trial without hearing any witnesses or knowing what they need to know about the case.”

“In the face of the climate change crisis, and weeks before the United Nations climate talks begin in Cancun, this is a clear signal that this government is refusing to take global warming seriously,” says Graham Saul of Climate Action Network Canada. “Right now, Canada’s government is on track to arrive at the UN climate talks in Cancun with no plan to reach its target and having just killed the country’s best chance to do better, despite majority support from MPs and Canadians for stronger climate action.”

“Global warming impacts are already being felt by hundreds of millions of people around the world, including communities here in Canada,” says John Bennett of Sierra Club Canada. “This is a brazen move that sends the message that Stephen Harper’s government just doesn’t care.”

Climate Action Network Canada is calling on Canadians who care about this issue to contact Prime Minister Harper, or members of his Conservative caucus, to call for a democratic response to one of the most important issues of our time.

For further media inquires:

Hannah McKinnon
hmckinnon@climateactionnetwork.ca
613.276.7791

Ottawa – A legal opinion released today and handed to visiting European Union members of parliament argues the proposed Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has considerable potential to “constrain policy, program and regulatory initiatives needed to address pressing ecological priorities, including those relating to the impacts of oil sands development.”

“It’s clear the Canadian government views the CETA negotiations as another way to defeat efforts in the EU to address climate change. The Harper government has already threatened to use existing trade rules to the same end in the United States. We can now start to see how the proposed Canada-EU trade agreement would put unrestricted trade and investment protections above the much more pressing need to reduce the carbon content of our economies,” says Andrea Harden-Donahue, energy and climate campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

The legal opinion by Steven Shrybman of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, commissioned for the Council of Canadians and The Indigenous Environmental Network, was released today following a meeting in Ottawa with EU members of parliament. The MEPs, who sit on a committee dedicated to EU-Canada relations, were in Canada to visit the tar sands at the request of the Alberta government. They then flew to Ottawa to meet with Canadian trade negotiators and business interests campaigning in support of CETA.

The federal and Alberta governments continue to lobby against efforts in Europe to categorize tar sands-derived oil differently than conventional oil because of its heavy carbon footprint. The so-called Fuel Quality Directive is supported in the EU and Canada by First Nations communities and environmental groups as a positive step towards discouraging tar sands production.

The legal opinion released today and handed to EU politicians in Ottawa explains that not only would CETA make such policies vulnerable to trade challenges, it would “seriously exacerbate current problems by providing EU based oil companies with new rights to challenge efforts to contain the pace or character of oil sands development.”

“The debate over the tar sands extraction needs to come down to the fundamental human rights of First Nations to exist and have a future with a safe, clean and healthy environment,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller, Tar Sands Campaigner with the IEN. “First Nations access to basic human necessities is protected by domestic and international law but CETA, by encouraging more extraction and giving that kind of investment strong new protections, threatens First Nations access to clean drinking water, land and sustenance.”

The Council of Canadians and IEN state that climate change and other severe ecological stresses are the most immediate threat to the Canadian and European economies, but through CETA, Canada and the EU would prioritize trade liberalization at the expense of Indigenous rights and effective environmental regulation.

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Contacts:

Dylan Penner, Media Officer, Council of Canadians: (613) 795-8685; dpenner@canadians.org
Clayton Thomas Muller, Indigenous Environmental Network: (218) 760 6632

Download the legal opinion here.

October 25, 2010

Young Canadians Raise Concern over Backward Trade Deal with EU

(Toronto, Ontario) A new free trade deal between Canada and the European Union would be a backward step in the fight against climate change and should be impetus enough for the federal government to halt talks, said Canadian Youth Climate Coalition National Director Amber Church.

“Canadians have long insisted that government use its regulatory powers to address our most pressing environmental challenges, yet these powers are under threat of being dismantled under the proposed EU trade pact,” Church said.

Under CETA, federal and provincial governments are being asked to relinquish their right to manage public goods and services contracts, which could include the abolishment of “buy-local” food policies as well as other environmental regulations that govern public resources. Already, EU negotiators have taken aim at Ontario’s Green Energy Act, citing its local manufacturing content policies as potential unfair barriers to trade.

“Stripping away the rights to manage, control and direct our economy to meet our environmental, social and economic goals only sets future generations up to fail. We can’t throw away our capacity to develop innovative policy solutions through democratic channels if we are to become a more sustainable nation,” Church said.

The CYCC joins with a growing chorus of labour unions, farmers, environmentalists, civil society groups, as well as politicians and prominent Canadians (including Maude Barlow and Stephen Lewis), to publicly voice opposition to these trade talks, which are moving at a rapid pace and scheduled to be completed in 2011.

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For more information, contact: Amber Church, CYCC National Director, (867) 335-4884

Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (CYCC): Formed in 2006, the CYCC is Canada’s largest and most diverse, volunteer-based youth organization focused on climate activism. The Coalition is composed of students, young workers, Aboriginal activists, environmental activists and other civil society groups. The Coalition is currently running a national Green Jobs campaign that aims at raising awareness among Canada’s youth about the importance of creating good jobs in a green and sustainable economy.