At our 2016 Convention in Edmonton the delegates voted to encourage riding associations to debate the merits of the Leap Manifesto over the next two years in preparation for the 2018 Policy Convention.
From a Globe and Mail article:
The manifesto’s proposals include:
- Shifting swiftly away from fossil fuels so that Canada gets 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable resources within 20 years and is entirely weaned off fossil fuels by 2050.
- No new infrastructure projects aimed at increasing extraction of non-renewable resources, including pipelines.
- “Energy democracy,” in which energy sources are collectively controlled by communities instead of “profit-gouging” private companies.
- An end to all trade deals “that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects.”
- Expand low-carbon sectors of the economy, such as caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public-interest media.
- Vigorous debate on the idea of introducing a universal guaranteed minimum income.
- Declaring that “austerity – which has systematically attacked low-carbon sectors like education and health care while starving public transit and forcing reckless energy privatizations – is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth.”
- Paying for it all by ending fossil fuel subsidies, imposing financial transaction taxes, increasing resource royalties, hiking taxes on corporations and the wealthy, introducing a progressive carbon tax, and cutting military spending.
