In the dying days of the campaign, with the Liberals and Conservatives throwing out tax breaks left and right, the NDP remains focused on the two top issues of this campaign – climate change and income inequality – and its policies to deal with both.

“The two are not unrelated,” says Chris Stephen, the NDP candidate for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound. “Internationally, it is the poorer countries at the equator or in the southern hemisphere who are feeling the effects of the climate crisis most acutely. But it is the industrialized countries in the north who have, over the past few decades, emitted most of the pollution that is driving climate change. Canada, unhappily, is one of the world’s largest polluters per capita. We need to change that.

“We know that 100 corporations are responsible for 70% of carbon emissions worldwide. Twenty fossil fuel companies are behind a third of all emissions.

“Within Canada, it is marginalized communities that are most impacted. Poor communities in cities find it difficult to escape the increasing severity of heat waves and flooding to the detriment of their health. The climate crisis is already adding extra costs to the health care system.* First Nations see the climate crisis play out in real time on their traditional territories, especially in the Arctic which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the country.

“Inequality in Canada is the sixth highest among 17 peer countries. That is producing its own set of problems which require solutions … and money. To meet these twin threats, the NDP will shift Canada’s wealth from the top income brackets to the lower and redirect corporate welfare, like subsidies to fossil fuel companies, to averting climate catastrophe.

“We can only halt greenhouse gas emissions by radically shifting our economy off fossil fuels and onto renewable sources of energy.

“Rather than seeing the solution to the climate crisis as a drain on the economy, let us see it as the best opportunity to gain a more equitable society. The Global Commission on Adaptation estimates a $2 trillion investment in mitigating the effects of climate change will yield $7 trillion in benefits. Old jobs will disappear, but new opportunities will be created in the shift to a renewable economy. We predict 300,000 new, well-paying jobs.

"As Tommy Douglas once said, ‘Courage my friends, ‘tis not too late to build a better world.’”

source: media release