Another voice, another choice
Green Party leader Jim Harris gives his perspective on debated issues
Signy Holmes Staff
On January 9, the four main federal political party leaders gathered for the second English-language debate to talk about the issues relevant to the upcoming January 23 election day. The Green party and their leader, Jim Harris, were not included in the debate, and have launched a formal complaint over the matter.
The Manitoban recently had the chance to ask Harris for his stance on the topics and questions that were raised during that debate, as well as his feelings on his exclusion from the four formal debates held during the campaign.
Thank you for agreeing to speak with us. Before we get started, do you feel that the Green party should have been included in the debates, and why do you think you weren’t invited to speak?
Jim Harris: Well, absolutely, we should have been included; we’re running four times as many candidates as the Bloc — that’s 308, one in every riding. Yesterday in the Globe and Mail’s poll we were at 6 per cent, which indicates that 800,000 Canadians have already made the decision to vote for the Green party, but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that, another 4.6 million actual voters are considering voting for the Green party, according to Decima research, which found out this summer that 34 per cent of all voters, in addition to all those who’ve already made up their minds to vote for the party, are now considering it.
Or consider, for instance, the EKOS [Research Associates] poll, published 11 days before voting day last election. When they asked Canadian voters, “If you were to change your mind, how would you vote?” 18 per cent of them said, “If I changed my vote, I’d vote for the Green party.” So, we have a huge amount of support that is just below the surface and not visible in the numbers. When I look at the NDP in 1993, they elected nine MPs with 6.9 per cent of the vote. We’re on track to elect our first Green MPs . . . . This is the perfect breakthrough opportunity for the Green party.
Moving on to some of the issues from the debate, which I assume you saw, I’d like to start with government and ethics. It’s been suggested that there’s a history of the opposition running on “cleaning things up,” but failing to do so. What are your comments on this and on government accountability in general?
Well, not just “failing to do so.” For instance, when the Conservatives were in power we saw some of the same abuses of the system that we are witnessing with “ad-scam.” Fixed-price contracts where things [that] were promised by the contract [but] were never done, yet the contract was paid in full by the government . . . where the advertising agency in turn donated money back to the Conservative party. The very same abuses that we saw under “ad-scam” also occurred with the Conservative regime. That’s important to remember: it’s Tweedledee and Tweedledum in many instances.
Secondly, we need to actually create systems that are accountable to Canadians. We have an electoral system . . . but imagine five parties running in every single riding across Canada, and all five parties get 20 per cent, but one party wins one more vote in all 308 ridings. That party would have 100 per cent of the seats in Ottawa with 20 per cent of the vote, and would you call that fair? And let’s look at the other four parties that collectively have 80 per cent of the votes but don’t have a single seat. Would you call that fair?
We need accountability in government. In that sense we would make the ethics commissioner an independent office at arm’s length from government. We need to strengthen the powers of the auditor general, being able to audit not just government departments but any government body that receives government funds [and] that is funded primarily by government . . . . So yes, absolutely, we need to strengthen accountability. And the final thing I’d say about accountability is that “accountability” is used only in the narrowest sense and “scandal” is used only in the narrowest sense.
We look at the fact that one in every five children today has childhood asthma when 20 years ago it was one in 100, and we ask, “Who is accountable for that?” This has occurred under NDP, Liberal and Conservative governments, provincially and federally — parties of every old-line stripe. It’s easy to see why one in every five children has asthma: because 4.3 billion kilograms of respiratory toxins are injected into our air every year. Why are we using our own children as the canary in the coalmine to warn us of the impending need to change? Are we going to wait until one in every four children has childhood asthma before we do something? One in every three? Are we going to wait until every other child has asthma before the old-line parties find the political will to do something about this? Maybe when every child has asthma, then we’ll see the old-line parties get serious about this.
So, who is accountable to those one in every five children? Who is accountable to parents as childhood asthma continues to rise? Who is accountable . . . for Kyoto? Mr. Martin says he supports Kyoto, but under 12 years of Liberal [governments], CO2 emissions have risen more than 24 per cent — in fact 24.4 per cent — not fallen by the 6 per cent required. Who’s accountable for that? On accountability and government ethics, we have a far broader definition.
[We’ve called on] the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) to use ethical standards for investing Canadians’ money in the stock market when the CPP only considers investing for the highest rate of return . . . . We’re saying: should the CPP be investing in companies that make weapons of mass destruction? What about child labour in developing nations? What about companies that don’t have good environmental standards? Canadians have social values, and we want the CPP to reflect those social values in their investment strategy.
Moving on to social issues, what are your feelings on private, for-profit health clinics?
Well, the Green party is unequivocally opposed to a two-tier health-care system. We’re unequivocally opposed to using public money to fund private clinics. We say that in the case of Chaoulli [Ed note: a doctor arguing for a partially-privatized system due to wait times] in Quebec, if you have to wait for over a year to get a hip replacement, that’s completely unacceptable. The Supreme Court was correct to rule as such, but we’re arguing that Quebec should use the notwithstanding clause to override that decision for five years to allow the province time to fix its health-care system to prevent our system from . . . entering a two-tier reality.
The Green party is unequivocally in support of a publicly-funded, publicly-accessible, universal health-care system. It needs to be improved, and the way we focus on it is through prevention. Fifty per cent of cancers are preventable, 70 per cent of strokes, 80 per cent of diabetes, 80 per cent of heart disease. If we don’t actually focus on prevention, we are never going to be able to spend our way out of the health-care crisis that we face.
Mr. Martin announced $41 billion of spending for the health-care system, which is a very big number until you consider, one, that it’s over 10 years, and two, that two-thirds of that amount is eaten up just by inflation. When you consider that new treatments, new drugs, new equipment are all expensive, when you consider that the population is demographically aging, and as we age we place more demands on the health-care system. When you consider that in reality . . . what is actually required for spending to just keep our system the way it is, is $86 billion, more than double what Mr. Martin promised.
The Menard report, which just came out in Quebec, says that if current trends do not change, 50 cents of every dollar spent by Quebec will be on health care. Clearly it’s just not sustainable, so we have to focus on prevention, because we’re not going to be able to spend our way out of the health-care crisis if we don’t.
Now taking a look at the economy. Parties seem to be offering tax cuts, but during the debate it was suggested that Canadian cities need around $45 billion to deal with failing infrastructure. How do you think those two issues go together?
Well first off, we oppose the tax cuts Mr. Martin is proposing for corporations — $10 billion of tax cuts. We would not be cutting corporate taxes as he has suggested. In fact, there’s a TD [Bank] economist who says that it’s entirely unnecessary because corporations are awash in cash. They’ve had the four most profitable back-to-back years in history over the last four years. So, we don’t need the tax cuts that automatically save companies $10 billion.
The Green party is talking about tax shifting. We’re talking about reducing taxes at the lowest tax bracket for all Canadians by $3.5 billion a year, which over five years is a $17.5 billion tax cut, putting more money in the pockets of Canadians, and shifting or transferring those taxes to natural and non-renewable resources. We would put that on the early stages of oil and gas production so that oil and gas companies, if they want to reduce their tax burden, the only way they could do it would be by improving their efficiency and meeting their Kyoto goals. They’d have an economic incentive to meet their Kyoto goals.
We look to BP, which is British Petroleum and in the United Kingdom. BP has reduced its operating costs by £150 million [approximately $306.7 million Cdn] a year, which over eight years is about a billion pounds or $2 billion Cdn, and that’s been by meeting its Kyoto goals eight years in advance. Rather than being a threat, this is a huge business opportunity for oil and gas, and by tax shifting, it would have no impact if you were an average Canadian driving an average car and average distance, because the money you saved on taxes would be equal to the difference you’d pay at the pump. But if you walk to work, if you cycle to work, if you mass transit to work, if you have a fuel-efficient vehicle like my Toyota Prius, it’s a huge gain. If you drive a Hummer, you know, maybe you want to vote for another party. What this [would do] is encourage people to use our non-renewable resources judiciously and give Canadians more money in their pockets and a benefit if they conserve.
Now, you were talking about cities, and how are cities going to deal with their infrastructure. We support, for instance, Mr. Martin’s giving gas tax to the municipalities, but we would say that currently there are 25,000 taxis on Canadian roads, and each taxi drives 10 times the distance of a normal vehicle. We have a big problem with smog in our cities, especially in Toronto. We had more smog days than any other year on record, and the Ontario Medical Association has said that 5,800 people are going to prematurely die this year because of smog-related illness. Further, there are going to be 17,000 emergency-room visits because of smog-related illness in already crowded ERs, and it’s going to cost Ontario $7.8 billion in health-care costs.
By shifting the 25,000 taxis from being normal cars as they are now to hybrids, we would not only save each cab driver $1,200 to $1,500 a month in gas savings, we’d save the entire industry $5 billion over 10 years, which is half the total amount of what Mr. Martin has said Kyoto will cost us. So, Mr. Martin’s estimates on Kyoto are way off.
But, this has a profound impact on health-care costs, because it lowers, in Ontario, health-care costs by $7.8 billion, and it stimulates green economic activity, like building hybrids right now, right here in Canada. We have to have better, breathable air in our cities. We cannot accept — the Green party cannot accept — 6,000 deaths a year in Ontario due to smog-related illness.
We need to share that gas tax with cities, and the way we’d do it is to say, “If you have any legislation that prohibits taxis from being hybrids, you won’t get a penny of that gas tax to invest in infrastructure like mass transit”. . . . If in the second year, 15 or 20 per cent of the taxi fleet that your municipally licenses aren’t hybrids, then you won’t get any gas tax, and gradually work it up.
We believe in supporting cities and building infrastructure like mass transit to promote livable cities. We would work to prevent urban sprawl . . . and work to promote a sustainable economy.
The last issue dealt with in the debate was national unity. Why do you think we are revisiting the question of sovereignty when Québécois people have already said no twice?
Well, because at the moment the Liberal scandals in Quebec have driven people away from the Liberal party and into the arms of the Bloc Québécois. And it’s not necessarily pro-Bloc support, it’s an anti-Liberal vote. The way to really address this is to bring higher ethical standards back to government with some of the things we talked about earlier.
The Green party is comfortable in recognizing the unique nature of Quebec society. When you look at the 1978 Pépin-Robarts Commission, it said that Quebec was distinct because of five areas: distinct law, history, culture, language and sentiment. I have no problem in recognizing the distinct nature and character of Quebec. The Green party believes, as one of our principles, in decentralization. Whoever voted for one-size-fits-all socks? I know I never did.
When we look at Canada, it’s a very diverse country. In Victoria, British Columbia, there are more retired people than any other city as a percentage of residents. In Toronto there are more mother tongues spoken than in any other city in Canada and the world, and in Montreal, different services are needed again. And so, when governments deliver service in Victoria, by definition it’s going to have to deliver different kinds of services than it will in Toronto or Montreal.
We embrace a decentralized approach to government delivery of services, which addresses some of the issues Mr. Duceppe was addressing in the debate . . . . The Green party believes in diversity. It believes that the government that governs best governs at the level closest to the people.
