This week there was a bright spot - our leader Jagmeet Singh announced that an NDP government would bring back the Electric Vehicle Subsidy canceled by the Liberals this month, doubling it to $10,000 for Made-in-Canada EVs. He also called for a 100% tariff on Teslas, to which I say: thank you very Musk, Jagmeet! Hell yeah.[1]
Because right now, our news feeds feel like they’re written by lobbyists for big corporations intent on seizing the crisis for more mega-profits: it’s all about reviving zombie pipelines, mines and megaprojects that were buried long ago by concerns for the environment and Indigenous rights. Or shelved by plain old market forces - unprofitable without massive corporate welfare.
But we don’t need to go backwards to the old economy. This is a true look-in-the-mirror moment for Canada. We need to seize this chance to build a safe and caring future of genuine sovereignty.
For starters, it’s long past time for us to have an independent foreign policy. And with the sudden bromance between Trumpian populists and tech billionaires, we need a fightback plan around the power of Big Tech in our lives and country - and that includes a public option for AI. Most urgently, we need to rapidly scale up a domestic economy grounded in our common interest: zero emissions energy, local food production, manufacturing for the domestic market, and the connective tissue of care work that holds our society together.
"A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another"
That’s why this week we’re starting to share with you some visionary policies - the “ideas lying around” - that would set Canada on a brighter path.
By the way, that’s a reference to an anchor quote in my wife Naomi Klein’s historic book, The Shock Doctrine. It was Milton Friedman, the grandfather of shock therapy who said, “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
So while our downstairs neighbour the Mad King pours forth a daily torrent of “Shock and Blah”, we’re going to highlight policy ideas that are already “lying around”, thanks to inspiring progressive wonks who have been working away on them for years.
🚌 MEGA PUBLIC TRANSIT: A COST OF LIVING CLIMATE SOLUTION
The federal government should spark a made-in-Canada electric bus boom, vastly expanding the convenience and ridership of public transit everywhere, while slashing emissions. Instead of another bailout for US-based Big Auto, we can have a bailout for Canadian autoworkers, commuters and the climate.
According to an excellent new report [2] from Environmental Defence and Equiterre, Ottawa has no current plan to boost public and active transportation. That’s bonkers! Plus, the feds insist on funding shiny capital projects rather than transit operations - leading to 1,700 buses sitting idle right now across the country.
Right now, people are stuck fuming in their cars, or suffering a daily stress-filled transit nightmare on the way to work. It doesn’t have to be this way - especially in a dense urban riding like Vancouver Centre, where most of us rely on walking or transit every day.
For less than $3 billion/year over the next 12 years, we could pave the way for an E-bus revolution, while doubling transit use by 2035. Transit is our second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions: we can attack that with better transit everywhere, a domestic destination of steel, and a surge in manufacturing jobs. Public transit for the public good!
THE SOLUTION FOR HOMELESSNESS IS…HOMES
People in Vancouver Centre are scared, anxious and heartbroken about the growing population of folks living outdoors, violence on the streets (including the violent clearing of encampments) and the toll that the crisis of homelessness is taking on our city. I see it as a glaring sign of the moral failure of our economy.
But it also lights up the irrationality of our system: rather than paying for more cops, or the 20,000 extra annual hospitalizations caused by this situation, it's actually cheaper for Canadian taxpayers to simply provide supportive housing for people.
That’s where the “Housing First” approach comes in, as advocated by Stephan Hwang, Canada Research Chair in Homelessness, Housing, and Health [3].
This approach uses rent allowances to move people experiencing chronic homelessness directly into permanent housing, and provides them with intensive support - from mental health to addiction treatment to life skills and other forms of care - to help them succeed in this transition.
"A landmark Canadian research study [3] showed that with this approach, homeless individuals achieve stable housing with an 85-per-cent success rate."
We have the approach that works - but it’s never been tried at scale, with full resources. The federal government is the only level of government with the financial resources to step up and actually solve a socio-economic health and housing problem like this. It’s long past time.
These ideas are just lying around—waiting for someone to pick them up and make them real. We’ve started with transportation and housing because they are close to home in Vancouver. But getting these ideas to work takes organizing, and organizing takes resources.
If you want to see bold ideas like fare-free transit and real affordable housing move from “what if” to “what’s next,” chip in today.
In passionate solidarity,
Avi Lewis
Vancouver Centre
Sources:
- https://www.ndp.ca/news/singh-announces-cash-rebates-canadian-electric-vehicles-100-tariffs-musks-teslas
- https://environmentaldefence.ca/2024/02/27/expanding-public-transit-can-double-ridership-and-reduce-polluting-emissions-report/
- https://maphealth.ca/at-home-chez-soi/
